Leslie Sansone Walk it Off in 30 Days Review Firm 30

What I picked and why

I picked the Firm 30 section of  Leslie Sansone's Walk it Off in 30 Days. This DVD also has a 30 minute walk called Burn 30. Firm 30 is all about strength training and Burn 30 is all about cardio. You can do them on alternating days or you can do them together to make one long workout. You can do them on the same day, but at different times. The DVD gives you the option of playing each on it's own with instructions or just the music, and you can also play them together with the instructions or just the music.

Equipment

She uses dumbbells in this workout. I used 5 pound weights for the whole workout since that's all I have. She started with 5 pounds and went up to a higher weight, but I'm not sure which weight it was. She may have said it, but I missed it. If you're just starting out, you might want to do this without weights the first time or you could grab a couple water bottles and use those.

The Workout

It started with a very fast paced walk that lasted about four minutes. She talked about how you have to warm up your muscles before you do strength training. I wasn't quite ready for how fast that walk was. She usually goes slowly into it. It seems like a contradiction to what she says in her other walks.

The workout itself started with a lot of squats. There were squats with the feet shoulder width apart, squats with the feet in together, squats while stepping out to the sides and squats with our feet together and the weights out in front of us. Squats squats squats! I was just happy that it didn't start with lunges! I wasn't happy for long though since we then went into lunges. She did stationary lunges, so those aren't as bad as the moving ones. I barely made it through the lunges. After the lunges, she had us stay in a lunge stance for several other moves. My balance sucks and staying in a lunge stance is just hard for me, so I did a couple of the moves just standing up with my feet close together.

There were single arm rows followed immediately by tricep kick backs. She didn't give us a break between these two and my legs weren't happy since this was one of the moves we did while in a lunge stance. We also did reverse flys in the lunge stance oh and bicep curls too. We did squats again while doing shoulder presses too. The standing portion was about 20 minutes

After that, we got down on the floor to do some chest flys and chest presses. We also did some ab work while on the floor. She called crunches curls. I'm not sure if giving it a new name makes it less obnoxious or what, but she kept calling them curls. So we did some curls, we did some hugging of a knee while the other leg goes straight out. We did a pilates move that she called the one hundred, but we only did about 20 of them. Your legs go straight up while your arms are out by your sides lift up off the floor and fluttering up and down. I've done this before, but I actually felt it this time. After some ab stuff, we got on all fours and then lifted one leg straight out behind us and then stretched the opposite hand out in front of us. We alternated that for a few times and then back on the floor for a full body stretch. The floor portion lasted about 10 minutes.

The only stretching that we did was when we laid on our backs with arms up over our head and our feet straight out. That's it. I find that odd since her walking workouts have such a lengthy stretch, but after muscle stuff we just lay down for about 20 seconds. 

While I'm writing this, my shoulders are on fire! I have wimpy shoulders and doing the shoulder and tricep work before the chest stuff does not help me. I would always toast my chest and then work my shoulders and triceps. We'll see how much pain I'm in tomorrow! Hopefully it won't last all week like that The Biggest Loser Tabata inspired workout that I did last Monday! I loved this workout and will probably buy it. It made me want to go to the gym again and lift weights! I could buy heavier dumbbells for some of these moves and just keep doing this working, but it made me miss doing lat pull downs and some of the row machines. Not a rowing machine that's all about cardio stuff, but the low row and high row and bent over row machines that are about strength training instead of cardio. I love pumping iron!

BodyMedia Screen Shots

Here are my BodyMedia Screen shots. They always look so unimpressive when I do strength training stuff. Seeing the "arc" of this workout, makes me want to run even more! Check out that 18 calories per minute spike there! That had to have been during the brief jogging segment in the warm up. Madness I say, Madness! If I can burn 18 calories per minute jogging, that's over 1000 calories in an hour! Not that I can jog for an hour, but can you imagine the possibilities! I MUST RUN!!!!!!