Leslie Sansone Walk Away the Pounds Express 4 Mile Super Challenge

Why I chose this workout

All week I have wanted to do a 4 mile workout. This was the only one that I had at home and I hadn't done it yet so I decided to finally do it. I got off to a bit of a late start though. I almost didn't do this workout. I knew if I did it, I was going to be late for work. I had two goals for the week. One was to do a 4 mile workout and the other was to beat my co-worker to work. I try to beat him there once per week and yesterday he pointed out that I hadn't beat him. I opted to do the workout instead of worrying about beating him. I did manage to get there about 5 seconds before him. Win Win for me!

The DVD

The DVD has two workouts on it. I have done the 3 Mile Advanced Walk before without the stretchie band. The DVD gave me the option to select either workout, but it didn't give me the option to choose specific miles or to play the DVD with only the music. 

Equipment

The cover shows Leslie with a stretchie band but the band does not make appearance in this workout. It is in the 3 Mile Advanced Walk on the same DVD. 

The WarmUp

The warm up is pretty standard. It goes through the four basic steps which are walking in place, side steps, front kicks and knee lifts. You go through each of those about two times before the pace kicks up. It lasted about five minutes which is pretty typical for her walks.

The Workout

This workout was just under an hour, and Leslie talked for just about every moment of it. Maybe I was super sensitive, but she just never shut up. There were spots where we'd be kicking away and she'd just be chit chatting up a storm. I have no idea how she didn't run out of things to say, but she just didn't. She's obviously in tremendous shape because I wanted to die and she just kept kicking and talking and kicking and talking. Nothing really earth shattering happened in this workout. There was a ton of side steps and double side steps and a lot of kicking as well. 

The things beyond the basics were kickbacks, (at this point, can't she just say she has five basic moves and include kick backs?) double side steps, double kick backs, side steps while walking up two and back two, walking up two and back two, double knee lifts, grapevines, side steps with a tap at either side, walk three counts and tap, double side steps with a knee lift at either side. Okay, I guess there were several things beyond the basics in this one. I enjoyed the workout, but for this one, I would definitely prefer to have been given an option to shut the sound off. I don't want to play my own music because I'd like to be able to hear the beat to keep the pace, but she just wouldn't shut up! I've talked a bit about her continuous talking, but this workout was really over the top with the talking. It was also weird because she had so many walkers that they couldn't all fit in one camera shot so when doing the side steps, some of the people on the fringes were be in the screen and then off the screen. 

Overall, there wasn't a lot of arm movement in this workout. There were the standard up and down, up down out and in, and alternating the arms going out when the opposite foot kicked, but overall, there wasn't a whole of of arm stuff. She really spent a lot of time focused on getting down into the side steps and the kick backs. My hamstrings were yelling at me by the end of the workout. 

The first mile wasn't slow, but it wasn't fast either. It was a good pace. The second mile went by pretty quick and a nice brisk pace. (I can't type the word brisk without hearing Leslie say the word brisk. She really is in my head a lot!) The third mile started to slow down a little which surprised me. The fourth mile was pretty slow since it was leading into the cool down and then the stretch.

The Cool Down / Stretch

The cool down was pretty gradual. The whole last mile really slowed down over time. It doesn't really look like it on my body Media screen shot though. It felt like a very gentle cool down, but my screen shot looks like a nice gentle curve down and then I fell off a cliff. She had us walk slowly and do the other moves really teeny tiny. Then it was some yoga inspired stretching. It involved the standard calf stretch where one leg goes back and you lean your weight forward while planting the heel of the back foot so you really stretch your calf muscles, but she also added some yoga stuff while in that position. 

BodyMedia Screen shots

I love to look at the arc of the workout on my BodyMedia activity manager. The phone gives some really nice colors, but the computer lets you zoom in to see just the sections you want to see. I think that funky dip in the first third of the workout is when I ran into the kitchen to unplug my egg cooker. I forgot to get my eggs going when I woke up, so I set them up just before the workout started. Of course the stupid thing went off right while we were doing some intense kicking. I'm not really sure what that little spike at the end is from though. Maybe it was when I ran to the bathroom for my shower. I thought I would have had more than 19 minutes of vigorous activity since it felt like I was kicking and sidestepping allllllllllllllllllll day long! It is what is is though. The 714 calories burned in that workout meant I felt less guilty about eating the Papa Murphy's pizza for dinner. I had planned on a nice healthy dinner, but my husband's schedule got messed up and he was going to be home when I got home. I knew he wouldn't want to cook, and I certainly wasn't going to cook, So, Papa Murphy's to the rescue. I tried to cut the calories down by ordering a medium, but the kid asked if I wanted a large for only $1.00 more. How can I refuse that! I'm such a sucker for a good deal!!!!