& PHH Ab Burner

[Guest guest]

I should have known better... although there were no combinations to learn in Austin's The Complete Workout there was footwork that fouled me up! She does some kind of rhythmic double bouncing thing as she does arms and I could not get the feet down most of the time so I jogged in place and did the arms instead! I previewed this yesterday and wrote that it starts really slow. It does for 15 minutes (10 warm-up and 5 barely starting to really move)... then it slams you into 10 minutes of high intensity/medium impact (she calls it low, I don't, you're bouncing) cardio. My heart rate went from the low 60s into the high 80s in very short work and then stayed up there as I was doing the high intensity stuff. I hated it too. The arms were very easy but the bouncing pattern, which I'm sure is very natural for some people, was not for me at all plus I was really tired because I started our back to school get up at 6:30 (kids at 7 and 7:30) routine this week while still staying up until midnight or 1:00 AM most nights watching the Olympics so my attitude towards it wasn't the best.

Anyway, you're almost always standing in the same place so it is not a space hog which is good, sometimes she changes the foot work a little and the arms changed more frequently but not often enough. My arms are actually sore from holding them up for so long. It seemed like a natural fit for choreography-challenged me but it was horribly boring (except that the high intensity stuff was also challenging to stay at that level for 10 minutes straight). did her usual cueing... "Okay, 4 more of these... 4, 3, 2, 1... here we go!" Go where??? After you start the next move and have done several reps she'll say something like, "This is a grapevine!" And then maybe a tiny bit of instruction about it. This is from the 80s I think and the set looks like something out of a game show in the 70s or 80s, cracked me up a bit. After the high intensity cardio you go right into some unweighted arm toning but she never announces that's what you're doing until you're half done. I started with it because we were still moving our feet for a while (and doing biceps curls) and then the legs stopped and I was like, "What's going on?" It was about then she announced we were done with cardio and doing toning. I wanted to do 30 minutes of cardio and was at about 28 minutes so I just ran in place while the tape rewound. There's abs and lower body too but I haven't even looked at those and won't either. This one is going in my get rid of pile. I really hated the cardio and thought about quitting but kept with it. I only burned maybe 135 calories too so it wasn't like a great calorie burn either (to make it worth working on). There is a REALLY weird looking woman in it too. She's constantly doing something with her mouth. I noticed it while previewing it yesterday. I don't know if she's counting, saying things along with or cursing but she'll have her mouth going and then smile over and over. It looked like she was looking at someone off camera too (no doubt telling her to smile). She really bugged me too. If anyone wants this, it is yours totally free!! :-)

Then I went on to Power Half Hour Ab Burner. The name of this workout is very accurate... painfully accurate. There's a lot of cardio in it too, all of it standing (and jumping) abs work. I did great on the upright stuff and had the stamina to do all the cardio at the intensity they were doing it (Dreya and Tony II are in this too) but the floor work was killing me. I haven't been doing consistent abs work in quite a while plus I was probably a little tired from all the cardio but I think the not doing consistent abs work leading up to this (like I was during P90) was the key to my lack of overall success. I had to pause the DVD player at least once or twice maybe 3 and skipped reps here and there just to ease a little bit of the constant pressure on my abs. He goes fast from one movement to another too. Oh wow was this tough. I loved it though and need to do it more often (or something more regularly) to get my abs in better condition (they're not bad but not that good apparently either). Dreya shows alternate moves (lower intensity) in this one and I followed her most of the time. She didn't modify everything, just some of the more intense things. My goal is to get through this without pausing it, without missing reps and following the Tonys through it all. Not sure when I want to do that by yet but I would like to be able to do that. PHH humbled me yet again! :-) I also burned another 168 calories with this one so that's 303 for the entire workout. I'm very happy with it. I'm also really looking forward to tomorrow. That's when I'm doing Ho' Ala ke Kino "Awaken the Body" (a 30 min. Tony yoga video with some pretty challenging/intense stuff along with very relaxing stuff) followed by PHH Stretch. Then I'm done with my Tony Horton week. It has been GREAT! I've enjoyed doing cardio and then toning in 2 half hour blocks to and might do more of that after the Jari Love rotation. I missed Tony too apparently, it has been fun working out with him again!

Off to get my hair snipped!