Gin Cardio Express

[Guest guest]

This afternoon I tried a ramping video for the first time, Gin 's Cardio Express. Ramping is (please someone help if I don't describe this well) using an inclined ramp to press against with your feet (especially heel) as part of a cardio workout. I used my club step with slanted risers. A TransFIRMer would also work although the incline might not be wide enough for all the moves.There were (are?) actual ramps sold that looked like half circles and color-coded into 3 sections. I think Sansone sold them and made at least one ramping video too but I don't have it. I noticed that Gin only referred to the colors once during the workout and then a couple of times during the stretch so I'm not sure how important they are. Apparently, stepping at the top of the ramp is easier and it is harder at the bottom and you can set the ramp to various heights. I chose to use only the slanted risers today but could have used other risers with them too, I'm not sure if that would have made a difference though. Gin had a class of 10 very fit people, including one woman who was right behind her so the camera was always on her. The woman seemed to be working very hard and was sweating a lot though I'm not sure why. I was doing the workout like her (advanced moves) and getting very little out of it. Others were doing the same moves and not looking like they were exerting themselves nearly as much. Gin does show different levels for many of the moves and I think there was at least one person showing beginner modifications but the class was all squished together and the moves are almost all low impact so I didn't notice the modifiers. The only time I got near my training zone was when we did little bits of floor work because it was easy to add intensity to those. On the ramp, the only way to add intensity, beside lunging back deep, was to bend your knee more and get lower but you can only go so low before you put your knee in a compromising position.

It was mostly simple choreography, except this one thing she called an hour glass where you put a foot on the ramp then take it off and complete a v-step on the floor, do a backwards v-step on the floor and then foot on the ramp and press off and do it again. Sounds simple but for me it was anything but. She added a little hop kind of step in the middle later and somehow, that made it a little easier (probably because it broke up the front & rear v-steps) but I never did get it completely. The moves in this video are very repetitious (too much so for me if you can believe that) and Gin does a lot of watch me do this, then you do this, which I usually like but since I did know the steps (grapevine was one) I just did them with her. She was much lower key in this than she was in The Best of Step Reebok TV and the cast whooped a little bit but were unmiked so they weren't annoying. Her cueing was mostly excellent and the music was pretty good. There is a ramping tutorial on the disc too that shows you how to set up and adjust the ramp and how to use it. I watched that first to see what I was getting into. It was very good instruction. Without the tutorial the workout runs about 32 minutes. I have one other of her ramping discs, not sure what it is called though. It was still in plastic (got both from VF) and I didn't feel like opening it. I think this was a beginner workout and that one more advanced (not sure though) so that's why I chose to do this one today. I might try the other one next week just to see if it is any better, if not, they're both in the trade box (this one already is).

I did Day 1 of 5 day Abs afterwards, then some jumping jacks (just to get more cardio & more calories burned) and some push-ups (just because I like how I look when I do them, not because I like them). I ended up burning about 180 calories somehow, I really don't know, seems like it should have been way lower because I was only in my zone for 5 minutes and never above it. Whatever, I'll take it. Tomorrow is yoga and I still have to plan next week's workouts but I think I'm going to go with more virgins. This was really fun trying them (and clearing shelf space by getting rid of a few)!