Working out on Wednesday

[Guest guest]

Today was cardio + upper body + abs so I did a mish mosh of workouts starting with Donna 's Kick & Jab from her 3-Day Rotation tape. There is also a dance workout and a toning workout on this tape, each workout is 20 minutes. I've never done one of her workouts before, I got this and a few other of her tapes from freecycle. Donna is very attractive and very enthusiastic, the music is also very high energy and fun. There are 4 backgrounders and they all whoop and holler "encouragement" throughout the workout, which got really old, really fast with me. Donna does absolutely no instructing on form or execution of moves so this is not for kickboxing newbies. She starts out with drills and then does combinations. I did fine with the drills but they did nothing for my heart rate and then the combinations confused me so much that while my heart rate was up, it was mostly because I was flailing along, trying to do anything. She does not demonstrate any of the combinations nor build them slowly. She just says something like (and I am completely making this up) "Okay, next we're doing jab, jab, upper cut, jab, jab, jab, hook, upper cut, bob and weave, right knee pull down, kick" and on and on like that (some are shorter but many are a long list of moves and that's all you get). You have to be able to remember the order she listed them in and execute them fast. Apparently I have the attention span of a gnat when someone lists off things like that because I can never remember past the first 3 or 4 instructions and was lost for most of the combinations. I really hate that. If she would have just called off moves even as she did them, to help you remember what to do, that would have helped but she rarely did that, instead you just got the hollering and whooping noises. She also has you changing positions frequently without any kind of smooth transitions. You're punching and kicking (a little, this is mostly punching) on your left and then all of a sudden she's telling you to set up on your right (no bob & weave to get there or anything). That's minor but it made it that much more difficult for me to follow. Yes, I could probably learn the combinations after 5 or more times through this workout but I have other workouts of this length that don't require me to work that hard to learn them and that I'll still probably get a better workout from so the only thing keeping this from immediately going into the trade pile is that it has 2 other workouts, one of which is my favorite (total body toning) so I'll have to try at least that first. I have no hope for the 3rd which is a cardio dance workout but I'll at least preview it. I read very positive reviews on this one and was looking forward to it but it just didn't click with me.

After that was Power Half Hour Arm Toner. I missed Tony's goofiness but I was really tired today and somehow didn't appreciate it as much as I normally do though he did make me laugh some (which makes it really hard to keep good form). He offers lots of good form pointers, there's lots of variety and it moves at a good pace (with lots of quick stretching between groups of exercises which I liked). It has been since last August that I did this workout and hadn't read my notes on it before I did it but while I thought I was lighter on the weights than I had been before, I actually used mostly the same weights! I did a lot more pushups on my toes than I had last August though. There are a lot of pushups in this workout too. I'm still feeling my chest and arms! I really like it a lot but didn't feel confident as I was doing it because I thought I had actually weakened and wasn't using as much weight as I had before (couldn't go any heavier for most). I guess I'll read my notes next time. I was also frustrated from the cardio workout so that didn't help. I had a weird problem with form today though and it is probably linked to my mood but I just couldn't seem to set up comfortably for some exercises and even though I dropped to 5s for one-arm tricep kickbacks (I normally use 7s or 8s) I felt like my elbow kept moving up and down too much. I don't have a mirror down there but can see my shadow so that's what I was going by. Oh well, it was still good to pull this out again.

My abs workout was The FIRM 5 Day Abs Day 4. This is the longest of the 5 workouts, at 9 minutes. That would be 9 non-stop minutes. OUCH! It was my first time doing this one but I really liked it. I only have a problem with the moves where your shoulders are off the ground, legs are up in the air and you slowly lower a leg, bring it back up and then slowly lower the other leg, bring it back up, etc. I feel this too much in my lower back and didn't do all the reps because of it.

Overall, it was a good workout. I think I'll try out some of the other Donna workouts on this tape and on the other ones I have soon. If I don't want them, it would be great to free up the space!

Off to work then tonight is the 1st - 3rd grade talent show at school. Miriam is dancing in it by herself. It should be an interesting evening.