Leslie Sansone Walk Away Your Hips and Thighs Firming with Ankle Cuffs

What I picked and why

I have been wanting to do this workout, but also dreading it ever since I got this DVD set. I love the concept of the ankle cuffs, but I also had some ideas of what the workout would entail. I don't do well with laying on the floor doing leg lifts and all of those fun things from Buns of Steel. I didn't do well with that stuff when I was 150 pounds lighter, so at 296 pounds, why would I think it would be any less difficult? I still needed to get through this workout so I could write a review on the entire Walk Strong DVD Set. This workout was my last segment before I can do the full review. I was going to do it during my workout yesterday, but I didn't realize how long it would take to do the two mile walk and the firming section. 

Equipment

This workout uses the Fit Cuffs. It has Velcro straps that go around your ankles and resistance tubes that go between them. You can do this workout without the bands, but you'll have less resistance.  

The Workout

If you only do the Firming section, there is no warm up. I think the experts say to do a warm up before strength training, but she didn't mention that in here. I didn't do a warm up because I lacked motivation to get up. The workout starts off with her standing up behind a chair. She already had the fit cuffs on. 

We started off with leg circles. We stood on one leg and put the other one out in front. Then you do a half circle until that leg is behind you. I didn't feel much resistance in the bands for this section. Then we put that same leg back in front of and swept it across the body to work the inner thigh in a pulsing type move. I think we switched sides and did the same thing on the other leg. First the half circles and then the sweeping inner thigh move. Then we went back to the first leg and did it again, but added a move with the leg going straight back in pulses. After that we did some hamstring curls. Switch legs and repeat. For all of this standing stuff, I didn't really feel much resistance, but my plant leg was burning! 

Then we hit the floor! We laid down on our sides so we could do leg lifts. Woot Woot! I hate leg lifts, but she didn't do a boat load of them, so it wasn't complete torture. We did the standard upper leg and then put that foot behind the lower leg and raised the lower leg in pulsing motions. We did two sets of these on both sides. 

Then we moved to our elbows and knees! We put one leg straight back and lifted that leg. These weren't bad, and again, there wasn't a lot of resistance. I think we did some pulsing after the lifting and lowering. Then we pulled our knee in to the chest (as much as a 296 pound person can) and stretched it back out straight behind us. These weren't bad. 

Then we went to my happy place! We got to lay down on our bellies! Oh I could have done this move all day long! Hamstring curls while on our bellies! I closed my eyes and relaxed while my legs just kept curling! After that, we rolled over onto our backs. She rattled on about letting your back fall into it's natural position. We had bent knees for this one. We pulled one leg up so the knee was above the hip. Then we extended the foot up as far as we could go. We were trying to a full leg extension, but I don't know that I quite made it there for all of them. I definitely felt this one in my quads. I think I might do this little move without the DVD once a week! I love leg extensions. I love to make my quads burn without doing squats and lunges! 

After we did our leg extensions on each side, we went into a full body stretch on our backs. We took the cuffs off, even though I don't think she ever said to, but at some point she magically appeared cuffless. Our arms were up over our heads and our legs were on the ground. Then we brought the arms up off the ground and reached for the ceiling. We also spread them out to our sides. Then the leg stretches by pulling the knee towards our chest and also straightening it out. This was a great hamstring stretch, but I don't think we did anything for the quads. The quads are a well used, but under stretched muscle group in most workouts like this. I'll just stretch them on my own. 

She had mentioned in the introduction that if you alternated between the walk and firming segments every other day, then you would have 6 days of 30 minute workouts, but the firming workout was only 20 minutes long. I thought it was going to be longer, so I'm not sure that I gave 100% oomph into every move since I thought I needed to pace myself a bit. I didn't want to fry my legs in the first five minutes. I think I need to do this one again knowing what it involves.  

Overall, I liked the leg cuffs and some of the moves in this workout. I will hold complete judgement until tomorrow when I find out which muscles hurt! I'm assuming my quads will be sore, but I'm not so sure about the rest of me. Although, I didn't think I would be sore at all from my Monday workout this week, but my hamstrings were sore for two days!