This morning when I woke up, I was so not in the mood for a work out. Totally shocking I know. Once again, the blog won and I got off the couch and put in a DVD. I chose the Walk Away the Pounds 5-Day Fit Walk 30-Minute Walk. I have already reviewed the Get Up and Get Started, the Leslie Sansone Power Mile, and the High Calorie Burn 2 Mile on the same DVD.
The one is in the same set as the Power Mile, and it has the same sound issue, but I think this one is worse. I could barely hear the music. When I turned the sound up, her voice became too loud. The music isn't really that good anyway, but it's nice to be able to hear the beat that my feet should be moving to instead of just watching to make sure that my feet match their feet. This workout had more of her instructors than the 1 mile.
The workout opens with a brief introduction and then you start marching in place. She then takes you through the other basic moves which are side steps, knee lifts and front kicks. After you've gone through those, she starts to incorporate your arms. You lift them over your head, stretch them out to your sides or reach in front of you. Adding your arms really does add to the aerobic aspect of the workout. I think it's also doing some strength training for me since I'm so out of shape. My shoulders started burning by the end of some of the moves!
Once you're all warmed up, you'll move into some more intense things. She has you do some kickbacks and talks about squatting down a little bit to engage more muscle and burn more calories. There are a few times where you march in place with your feet apart. You also walk forward for two counts and back for two counts. There is a section where you do knee lifts and move forward for four counts and back for four counts. There are a couple places where you march in place, but your feet are spread apart a little bit. She also has you do knee lifts with your legs spread apart. Later in the workout she gives you a knee lift challenge. You start out doing regular knee lifts, but then you do two on each leg. After you do that for a little bit, she has you do four on each leg. She introduced tap outs in this workout. You move your leg out to the side and then tap the floor before moving it back into place. You then alternate legs. Towards the end of the workout, she has you do tapouts again, but then you turn your body and do a sort of lunge maneuver. I wasn't a big fan of these. It caused an uncomfortable twist in my knees.
The pace picks up several times. I just wish they had timed it better so it happened while we were marching in place. It's much easier to catch the beat if I'm just marching. The warm up part is gradual, but the cool down goes pretty quickly. There was only one or two slow downs to the beat leading up to the stretching at the end. The cool down consisted of shoulder rolls and leg stretches.
I hit 12 minutes of vigorous activity doing this workout. My previous record was four minutes. The workout was good, but the sound was terrible. There were also several times where she wouldn't tell you what you were going to do next. One of the things that I have enjoyed about these workouts is that she's been very good about saying we're going to do four more of these. After that, you know you're going to march in place. While you're marching, she usually would tell you what you were going to do next, and then she's count down four more before you went into the next thing. She didn't do that very much in this workout. Her instructors were even a little confused during a few spots. One time, she even said what she was going to do, but then told everyone to wait because she knew her legs weren't going to do it.
She talked a lot in this routine. She mainly focused on motivational type things like how it's okay to modify the workout if you need to or if you need to stop doing something that it's okay, but you should march in place until you're ready to get back at it. She also talked a lot about posture. She even commented that anytime she wants you to do a lot of a specific move that she talk a lot so you just keep at it. I preferred the other 2 mile workout on the same DVD, but this one gave me a harder workout. My legs were all tingly for a few hours after the workout, and I got 12 minutes of vigorous activity. This workout finally had a big girl in it, but she's one of the instructors, so she wasn't even breathing heavy. Most of the walkers had perma-smiles planted on their faces. Once again, I would just like to have someone on the screen look like they are miserable like me. When I did Tae-Bo, they had one person who was my size. I would always watch her and think to myself, "If she can do it, so can I!" I just don't get that with these. I huff and puff, and they just sit there all smiling like it's nothing for them.
Below is my BodyMedia device screen shots for the day. The big blue blob on the left is the workout. The rest of the blue blips are me walking around at my job. With all that walking at work, I have no idea why I'm so fat. Oh wait, I suppose all of the ice cream and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups could be the reason.
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