Workout - One on One with Jackie

[Guest guest]

I used this dvd for my strength training this week, and overall I

really liked it! It's light weight, high reps, with cardio intervals

so obviously it's not really for building muscle, but a good easy-for-

me to follow (and not feel left behind) workout anyway. I would rate

it intermediate.

There are 3 twenty min workouts - upper, lower, and abs. I used

light dumbbells for the upper body, but no weights for lower or abs.

I did them on M, W, Th with short cardio afterwards. All the

exercises are done in one min intervals, with cardio intervals thrown

in every 3-4 exercises. For me, this really makes the time fly! All

start with a brief warm up for the area you are about to work, and

are followed by a brief (probably too brief) stretch. But you can

always add more stretching on your own, of course. The moves are all

pretty basic, which I liked as well. Jackie doesn't count the reps,

so it's nice to know the moves and just focus on form until she tells

you to change to a new exercise. I know I missed reps here and there

during some of the transitions if I had to watch to see what the

exercise was, since they don't do a demo first.

Upper body is made up of exercises like hammer curls, push ups,

triceps extensions, bent over rows, chest press/fly combos, skull

crushers, delt raise combos, etc. The cardio intervals included

jumping jacks, ski bunny jumps, speed bag, and some high knee lifts

where you also rotated the opposite elbow to the knee. I liked that

there was a different cardio element each time. That way, if there

was something I didn't like much, I knew I only had to do it for 1

minute, and wouldn't have to do it again later, lol! I felt like I

could keep up pretty well with this one, but think I might need to go

a little higher on weights next time. It felt pretty hard at the

time, and I know I had to half some of the reps at the end, but I

only felt a bit stiff later the next day, not really sore.

For lower body, you get to do lots of variations of squats, lunges,

and kickbacks. And box squats - a sneaky name for a squat-lunge

combo. Lunges are my least favorite thing to do, but I was able

to keep up, just going less deep as I started to fatigue. Again, I

didn't use any weight for this routine, but holy smokes are my quads

sore! Walking is okay, but going up/down the stairs is agony, lol.

Some of the cardio intervals were frog jumps, jump/shuffle combos,

and military knee ups. I think I blocked out what the other ones

were for now, heh. I was really feeling this toward the end, so some

of the higher impact cardio stuff with lots of moving/jumping was

replaced with jogging in place. My legs just didn't want to shuffle

and do all that other stuff anymore.

Abs is mostly floor work, which I like. You start with standard

crunches, and also do bicycles, planks, clams, etc. The nice thing

about this segment is that all four trainers are working along with

Jackie, so there is a less intense modifier and a more advanced

modifier, too. I followed the less advanced modifier for pretty much

everything here, but sometimes the camera wasn't on her all the way.

But I could usually figure it out. The cardio potion was mostly on

the floor too - something new for me. She did seated torso twists,

high speed bicycles, and some fast elbow to knee stuff, too.

Probably one to be careful with if you have any lower back issues.

So again, I really like this one. One thing that would have been

nice would be if Jackie would count down your time toward the end of

the 1 minute segment. She'll say " almost there, just a little bit

longer " but it would be more beneficial to me if she counted down

from 10 or something, as I tend to push harder if I know I only have

a few more seconds. And clearer transitions, sometimes, too. I

liked seeing the exercise and then just minding my form, without

having to watch the tv (which sometimes messes up my form, esp on the

floor) but a few times she would transition and not actually say the

new exercise until it was already started.

I'll be interested in hearing what someone more conditioned thinks of

this one. I thought it was a decent, pretty tough (depending on how

hard you make) workout that packs a pretty good punch in 20

minutes.

Sara