Walking Strong - Tracey Staehle

[Guest guest]

This workout is designed for the treadmill, but also shows a modifier

doing the workout on the floor. But, I think I would get quite bored

doing so many marches on the floor for an hour! She varies her knee

height on the marches when the incline on the treadmill is changed,

and does the squats and lunges, but I still think I would be bored.

Tracey and Bobbi (her sister) are the two doing the workout on the

tmills. There is light chatter during the entire routine, with

joking between Tracey and Bobbi. I didn't mind that. On the bottom

of the screen is the speed and incline they are each using. Bobbi is

doing the less intense speed/incline, but I set my own speed and

incline even lower than Bobbi's since I wanted to be sure I could

finish the workout. I didn't make it last time I tried (several

months ago), but I don't remember what speed I used that time. The

numbers at the bottom are helpful, as Tracey's cueing isn't on 100%

of the time, and sometimes she says to change the incline instead of

the speed or vice versa. I just watched the numbers and went with

them.

I bought this workout on dvd from Tracey's website, as I also rec'd

the mp3 (audio only) version as well as the Ipod movie version for no

extra charge. A nice bonus, but I don't know if I will use the other

two versions much.

There are 11 five minute intervals for this workout, and that really

helps to move things along, as there is a lot of variety. The

intervals breakdown like this:

1. Warm Up

2. Upper body – front lateral raises, side lateral raises

3. Lower Body – Walking lunges, Walking lunges with a kickback

on the rear leg, side crossovers into a squat

4. Hill Climb – 45 second hill climbs with 15 second recovery

periods

5. Upper body – Bicep curls, hammer curls, overhead triceps

extension OR triceps kickbacks

6. Hill Climb – same as above

7. Lower Body – same as above

8. Hill Climb – same as above

9. Upper body – upright rows, back rows, bent arm fly

10. Hill climb

11. Cool down

The hill climb format stays the same for each hill interval, but the

recovery periods change a bit as you progress. Instead of lowering

both the speed and the incline for recovery, after about the halfway

point you only lower the speed. For upper body, you slow your speed

a bit during the exercises, and then speed up and walk with the

weights in bewteen the exercises. For lower body, Tracey slows to

1.5 mph and Bobbi to 1.0 mph. I also used 1.0 and was able to keep

up. However, next time I need to move the treadmill away from the

wall a bit for this workout. The extra room would have been helpful

during crossovers and also during a lot of the upper body stuff. The

side crossovers are done with you facing perpendicular to the console

of the treadmill, and you cross one foot over the other, and go into

a squat when you put your foot back down. I did well once I got the

rhythm, but whenever we changed sides, it felt really weird and took

a bit to get the rhythm back for the other side. I remember that

from last time, but at least I didn't think I was going to fall off

this time! lol

I really liked this workout and was so happy that I made it to the

end! I actually thought there were more intervals coming up when we

went to cool down, and I think I could have done a few more! The

cool down goes right to stretches, so I stayed walking on the tmill

for 5 more minutes to get my HR back down and then went back to the

stretches. I felt like I got a really good workout from this one,

and look forward to being able to follow it using Bobbi's speeds and

inclines, and maybe even Tracey's!

Sara