Leslie Sansone - Walk at Home Advanced 5 Mile Walk

Today is Saturday. I don't normally workout out on Saturdays. Although, I did do the Fat Burning Deluxe DVD last Saturday. I thought that my husband was going to work overtime today, so I decided that I wanted to try my first five mile DVD on a day that I didn't have to work. Turns out, he didn't have to work, but he hung out in the bedroom so I could do my workout. I picked the Walk at Home 5-Mile Advanced Walk. WOW! This thing was intense. I'm really glad that I did this on a Saturday. I've only done one 4 mile routine before, so I'm not really sure what possessed me to do a 5 mile, but I wanted to try. I'm glad I did, but WOW!

There is essentially no warm up in this workout. You do some walking in place while she talks a bit. That's followed by some gentle side steps, but she usually goes about five minutes before the pace kicks up. It's a few more minutes before she usually has you digging into the side steps, but in this workout, she started digging into those sidesteps at about the three minute mark. She didn't start off by going over the steps either. She did mention that if we were doing this DVD that we were veteran walkers and our bodies could handle getting right into the workout. By the same concept, I guess she figured that we didn't need an intro on the steps. I can see her point too. 

Each mile had it's own theme of sorts. It came with a different concept, different clothes and sometimes different people. At the half mile point of each mile, she makes an announcement that you're halfway through the mile. At one point, she said that we were half way down with the workout, and I thought to myself that it had gone quickly and I could handle the full workout no problem. She then corrected herself and said halfway through the mile. I think that happened in the second mile.

The first mile used the hand weights that look more like wrist or ankle weights, but she just holds onto them. You can see them here. Nothing major happens in this mile. Other than the basic steps of walking in place, side steps, front kicks and knee lifts, nothing too crazy gets introduced. There are kicks backs and walking forward two counts and back two counts. The are movements are pretty typical stuff like clapping when you walking up and back, raising your arms up over your head and other stuff like that. 

 The second mile is "the fastest mile" according to Leslie. I didn't time it, but it did seem to go very quickly. There were jogging intervals in this mile, but there were no walk boosters. Again, nothing crazy happened and the moves stayed pretty basic. They were pretty fast and they were stacked with not so much walking in place in between them. This one was definitely about keeping the feet moving fast. There were arm movements too, but it was more about the feet.

The third mile had the walk belt. This was the longest mile of my life. I'm not really sure why, but this was like the never ending mile for me. I didn't use the belt, and to be honest, the walkers didn't use it much either. It took at least five minutes for her to even get to the belt and then she didn't do much with it. It was interesting to see that the tubes on her belt looked like they had been knotted up to make them shorter. She also talked about holding them by the base of the handle to make it more intense. This mile was more of the same moves with nothing different happening.

The fourth mile was a fast mile again. It did not include any walk boosters. There were no jogging intervals though. There was a lot of talking in this mile. Actually, there was a lot of talking in the entire workout. I don't think she shut up at all. She kept referencing some secret. I won't ruin the surprise for you, but it was weird because by the time she revealed the big secret, I already knew the answer because she slipped up in a previous mile. This mile was pretty much your standard moves. This might have been the mile that included doing knee lifts while walking forward, but otherwise, it was straight up basic moves plus kick backs and walking forward and backwards.

The fifth mile used the stretchie bands. I didn't use it though. This was my first five mile, and I needed to just get through the workout without doing anything extra. Even without using the stretchie band, my shoulders were still upset with me. They're pretty weak from using the walk belt in the Walk-N-Tone DVD from yesterday. This mile did't do anything beyond the basics plus the kick backs and walking forward and backwards two counts. It was still a good workout even without the bands. Sometimes the stretchie band parts slow things down, but in this DVD, she kept the pace up while using the band. 

After the fifth mile, you go into the stretch. It's just Leslie and two other people. The stretch is a bit more intense than the stretches for other workouts. You stay in the calf stretch position longer and then you add another step where you drop your need on the leg that's stretched back. I had some balance issues the longer we held the position, but my balance is getting better. 

I'm glad that I got through this workout, but it was hard for me! My legs were pretty much Jell-o by the end. I was tired and soooo ready to be done! I wanted to push myself to do a five mile because I thought it would help me force myself to do more four miles. I've only done one, and I haven't really been doing that many 3 miles either. Part of it has been that I'm a bit restricted since I only have access to a limited amount of DVDs, and not many of them are 3 or 4 miles, and part of it is me not getting motivated early enough in the morning to actually get a long enough workout in. Once my Netflix trial is over, I might be able to change things up a bit. I've been trying to do all of the workouts on Netflix that I know aren't on Gaiam TV which is my next free trial to test out. 

Below are my BodyMedia Link device screen shots. A week or so, I was trashing on Leslie Sansone for talking about burning off a meal by doing the workouts. I had done one of those workouts a few days after I had eaten half of a Papa Murphy's pizza which was about 1,000 calories. I was complaining because I was concerned that someone might listen to that statement and think that they could workout every morning and still have McDonald's for dinner each night. I think the workout had burned right around 500 calories which would not burn off going to McDonald's unless you ate a salad, and why go to McDonald's if that's what you're going to eat. According to the workout tab below, I came pretty close to burning off that Papa Murphy's pizza. That many calories seems a bit crazy and I started to question the accuracy of the device, but if you look at the big blue blob on the image to the right, I was moving fast for the entire workout. It shows I never went below about 13 calories per minute for the entire workout, and I went up to about 18 for a few sections. When you look at it like that, it does seem possible. Whenever I really doubt the accuracy, I just remember that the people on The Biggest Loser use these things, so they must be fairly accurate.