Advanced Total Body – Tony Little

[Guest guest]

The full title of this is Advanced Total Body Buttkickin' Workout –

very Tony Little, eh? This workout is made for his Gazelle, but it

worked very well for me on the elliptical. It came in a 3 pack that

I picked up at Goodwill, still in the plastic! I have to say, I got

an excellent workout from this! Despite anything I found odd about

it, I pushed VERY hard with this, especially during the speed

intervals. The workout says it's 45 minutes, but that doesn't

include the warm up or cool down. I had set my elliptical for 50

minutes, but will set it for 55 next time. I ended up going longer

than 50 min to get more of a cool down. I was drenched in sweat from

this one! And I know I wouldn't have pushed near as hard had only

been doing a preset program on the machine while watching TV.

I have a handful of Tony Little workouts from recent thrifty finds,

but this is the first one I've done. I only know him from his

infomercials, and was glad to see that he wasn't nearly as hyper as I

thought he might be. The warm up is only about two minutes, and then

the music picks up. The warm up and cool down music is strange, kind

of like 80s movies/TV love scene music. Weird... The rest of the

music is a bit dated as well, but nothing terrible. But, music

generally doesn't really bother me much anyway. I don't remember how

often the intervals come in, but the workout varies between regular

pace and 60 or 90 second intervals of turbo sprints, where a

stopwatch pops up to track that time. There is a regular clock

running the whole time at the bottom of the screen, which starts

after the warm up.

Tony talks pretty much the whole time for this one, and it didn't

bother me. He's the only one in the studio for this workout, and

there is a whole bunch of different things shown during the workout –

from food images (to help you make better choices), to a random chick

with ripped abs on the gazelle, to video of his kids and dogs

playing. At first I thought it was weird, but it ended up being a

nice way to break up the workout, so I wasn't just watching Tony the

whole time. He offers inspirational/motivational chat throughout,

telling you to treat your body right, and to make sure all areas of

your life are in order, etc. It really passed the time for me. He

makes a few mistakes with the length of the intervals a few times (60

sec vs. 90 sec), but the stop watch is what you follow anyway, and is

a bit goofy, too. But, he only yells during the sprints, which I

actually kind of liked, lol.

I followed his lead with the arms/no arms on the elliptical, and some

of the intervals were lower body only and some total body. Twice he

goes perpendicular on the gazelle, to work inner/outer thighs, so I

just kept doing what I had been doing on the elliptical. I did try

going up on my toes when he prompted for that, though. Neat! I

never tried that before, and it was something different. I also set

my elliptical for the reverse workout, so it would prompt and stop me

periodically to go in reverse. This worked pretty well, except there

were a few times where the elliptical stopped me (it ups the

resistance to stop the pedals) in the middle of a sprint. No biggie,

I just changed directions and took the sprint a little longer.

So, I got a great workout from this one, and I'm interested to try

the other workouts in this set, as well as the strength workouts I

have from him. One from the gazelle set is called Awesome Abs, so I

don't really know if that's a cardio workout or what. I didn't mind

Tony, but I don't think I would like to do an entire week with just

him.

Anne – You might like this workout, as he offers a few personal

stories that you might enjoy, since you knew him back in the

day. Maybe you could find gazelle workouts on the cheap from

ebay or used from amazon sellers.

Sara