Jessica Smith - Sunset Barefoot Walk

What I Picked and Why...

I picked Jessica Smith's Sunset Barefoot Walk. I had no desire whatsoever to workout today. I'm still recovering from my Sunday of I don't really care about losing weight, I'm going to eat what I want and do what I want. Monday I didn't workout at all. Yesterday I only did a 10 minute workout and I really only did that half-heartedly. I probably could have put a little more effort into maintaining a plank even if I couldn't do all the crazy lifting of limbs while planking. With that said, I'm was still pretty sore this morning. Oddly enough, I didn't feel it much in my abs. I felt it in my chest and my shoulders. I went to JessicaSmithTV.com to see what nice gentle workouts she had. I just wasn't in the mood for anything too fast. She had a couple 10 minute walks and I almost did one of those, but then I felt guilty about doing a ten minute walk after only doing 10 minutes yesterday. I'm so close to hitting 20 pounds of weight loss so I knew that I really needed to do more than 10 minutes. I saw this walk called the Sunset Barefoot Walk. That sounded nice and peaceful. I figured I could handle it. 

The Workout

There wasn't much of a warm up, but there usually isn't with these. She started off by marching in place at a comfortable pace. She talked about not needing shoes for this workout but said to put them on if you needed them. I do all of my workouts barefoot. I just can't wear shoes in my house. It's not a clean freak sort of thing. I don't like shoes on my feet at all, but I have to wear them outside of the house. She also said that this would be a nice easy walk with just the basic moves. I was all happy because this was exactly what I was looking for. 

I can't really remember the chain of events after that, but I will say that this was not a nice gentle easy workout with just the basic moves. Keep in mind though, that she's an itty bitty thing who's is in uber shape and I'm 299 pounds and in not so great shape. I'm sure she thought it was a nice easy walk. :) I was happy that it didn't involve lunges, squats or weights. I was also happy that overall, the pace was good. I wasn't running all over the living room at crazy fast speeds. 

This workout was pretty intense for my arms. Now, keep in mind that I did mention that my chest and shoulders her from the workout yesterday, so maybe that's why I felt that this thing was pretty intense. I'm sure the fact that I have the wimpiest shoulders on the entire planet didn't help either. I also had a hard time with some of the steps. I don't do well with choreography and I have a really hard time reversing things. I wish there were workouts where someone faced away from me but had a mirror so I could still see their face, but I could follow their feet going in the same direction as mine. My brain just has some mixed up wiring. 

One of the moves that I had a hard time with is hard to explain, but it involved stepping up and wide to the left and then up and wide to the right. Then you step back and in with the left and back and in with the right. This took me a couple times to get the feet right. Once I finally felt good about my feet doing the right thing, she threw me a curve ball. While the feet are doing the step front and wide, the hands are going up in the direction of the foot. So as my left foot goes up and left, both of my hands go up and left. As my right foot goes up and wide to the right, my hands go up to he right. As my left foot comes in and back my hands go down to the left. As my right foot comes in and back, my hands go down to the right. The hands weren't a big motion, but moving four limbs at the same time and not in a consistent motion is not so easy for me me to handle. She does mention a few times in her workouts that she knows it's a lot like rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time. I don't think she said it for this one.

There was also a dancey type move that was hard for me. I don't think I ever ended up doing it right. So we took a couple steps angled to the right and then did a knee lift sort of move with the right foot. Then you step back to the starting position and step three times in place. Then you angle a couple of steps to the left and knee lift with the left leg. Then you angle back to center and step three times in place. Then we repeat the whole thing again. That sounds all nice and easy, but I just couldn't seem to get the lead off foot correct so I was doing the knee lift on the correct leg. Oddly enough, she made it slightly more difficult by doing a sort of squat with the knee left, but that made it easier for me. Or maybe by then, I had just done it enough that I was almost figuring out what to do. After that was a mambo type move which I liked! 

This workout was pretty heavy with arm movements and some of them made me feeling like a fish out of water, literally. There was some side stepping with a swimming motion with the arms. I felt like a dork, but it was kinda fun. There were a lot of times were she had you do one thing with your feet and then you'd change up the arms. So while doing knee lifts the opposite arm went straight up, but then after a bit the arms went straight out and then we rotated back and forth between up and out. 

There was one wicked intense shoulder thing! I've never done anything like this one. I really do like that she finds ways to change the angle of things and mix it up. While this one was wicked painful for me and I had to stop a few times to give my shoulders a break, I really appreciated that she found a new angle. So many workouts do the same things and you miss out on working some muscles, but she finds a way to hit them all. Okay so this move...The easiest way for me to explain the position to be in is to stretch your arms out straight in front of you. Now, bend your elbows to a 90 degree angle. Now, turn your palms to face you. Okay so now that you've got the position, lift your hands straight up and then return them to the starting position. It killed me, but I did enjoy it. 

There wasn't much of a cool down prior to the stretch. She actually said something about not needing much f a cool down since we hadn't done a lot of work. Once again we discover how drastically different our opinions are. My shoulders were on fire and I was out of breath. There were a few other times where she mentioned something about not working very hard and barely breaking a sweet. I think I said a few choice words when she said that. If you're reading this, I still love you Jessica, and I'll be working out with you tomorrow, but dude that was not easy or basic!  

There were some weird editing and focus things with this workout. All of her workouts are filmed live and they are done with one camera angle. She kinda of reminds me of that survival show where the guy is his own camera crew. Although, sometimes if Peanut isn't in the video, I imagine Peanut running the camera. (Okay I'm a bit of an odd duck) Anyway, back to the point.....so it's filmed live with one camera shot, but this video was obviously edited to take out a couple of chunks. It was a bit distracting for me at first, but it wasn't a big deal. There were also some focus issues with this one. I think Peanut really was doing the camera work at times. Its a free workout, and it's a good workout that I would recommend people do, but I did want to mention the wonkiness with the editing and the blurriness in case that's an issue for some people.

BodyMedia Screen Shots 

Here are my BodyMedia screen shots for the workout. So, I mentioned that she had said that this was an easy basic walk, but I just did her Stride and Strength the other day, and if my BodyMedia device is accorate, this burned more calories and had more vigorous activity. I will admit that the other one was more physically draining though since there were sooooooooooooo many squats! I even burned more calories in this than the 30 Minute Power Walk. Although, that one did have 3 extra minutes of vigorous activity. I liked the workout and I'm glad I did it. 

 

Where to find Jessica Smith

You can go to YouTube and search for Jessica Smith, you can go to jessicasmithtv.com or you can buy her DVDs from Amazon. I encourage you all to check her out. I'm really enjoying her workouts. I'm going to do another one tomorrow. Maybe it will be a kickboxing one.I need to get my fix in now since next week will be a Leslie Sansone week alllllll week long. I've got a 5 day DVD and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to renew it at the library since it's a popular one. Stay tuned for my week long review and then my end of the week recap on that one next week! I wonder if anyone has even gotten this far. This was a really long post!