Jessica Smith Chair Cardio Workout Review

What I picked and why

On Sunday, I came up with a plan for the week. I had specific stuff to do Monday through Wednesday, but Thursday and Friday were up in the air. I planned on doing something, but I didn't plan anything specific because it's inventory week at work and tonight I have a graduation to go to that's two hours from my house. Well yesterday, my foot started to hurt. It's my right foot and it's pretty much whatever muscle or tendon is where my heel is. It hurts a little to walk, so I didn't want to do a walking workout or one that would have me up on my feet bouncing around. I knew that www.jessicasmithtv.com had a chair workout, so I figured I would take this opportunity to do that. I thought it was only a 20 minute workout though, so I procrastinated. I finally got logged into YouTube and discovered that it was 37 minutes, but it's broken down into two different segments. I did the cardio section, but not the strength section.

The Workout

The whole workout is done in a chair. It looks like she has a fold up chair, but I used a recliner. I don't recommend doing it in a recliner because I had to modify some stuff because the chair got in the way. Just grab a kitchen chair or something. I think no arms on the chair would be best. You'll also need a towel although you could probably make it more challenging if you used a stretchie band.

My shoulders are still weak from my workouts on Monday and Tuesday. I'm not sore, but they really weren't into this workout. They got really sore during the workout. I had to stop a lot of the moves because of it. The workout mainly has your arms doing a lot of movements. Your legs will do some as well, but your arms are going the whole time.

Most of the leg moves consist of knee lifts, leg extensions, calf raises and toe raises. There is one section where you do jumping jacks while seated. That was interesting. Your arms go up and down while holding onto the towel. Your feet go out and in. It really was like doing a seated jumping jack. The only jumping jacks I've ever done that I didn't hate! So the arm movements are a lot of up and down, push forward and pull back and then there are some figure eights. There was one section where we did basically a seated bicycle ab move. Our arms were up over our heads. We did alternating knee lifts while twisting our upper body so our opposite shoulder came in to meet the knee that was lifting.

Overall, this was a great seated workout. It was just what I needed with my sore foot. I might look for more of these tomorrow if my foot is still sore. If it's sore on Saturday, I'm going to be very upset because we have a hike planned! I don't want to give up my hiking! I worked up a sweet and got some heavy breathing in.

BodyMedia Screen Shot 

The BodyMedia screen shots are less than impressive, but it's still about four times what I would have burned by just sitting on the couch. I think I'll do this one again when my shoulders aren't so sore. Maybe I can put more ooph into it and get a better burn. Having a different chair might help too.