Yoga Meltdown Workout 1

[Guest guest]

This is so not what I think of yoga. It is very Jillian though. As has been mentioned here before too, it is primarily a body weight strength training workout with yoga poses as the exercises. It is not a mind-body yoga practice at all. She does talk about breathing but mostly telling you to remember to move with your breaths and remember to breathe but there is no instruction on what any of that means so yoga beginners won't know. I would not recommend this to beginners in any case, it is way too tough, but I especially wouldn't say it is a good introduction to yoga either. Because it is a strength workout that uses yoga-style poses though, familiarity with yoga is helpful.

I always have workout amnesia so I can't walk you through the workout without playing it on the DVD and don't have time for that today so... overall impressions, memories follow in totally random fashion. There are 2 workouts, I did workout 1, the easier of the two. Both are approximately 30 minutes, I think this one was around 33 minutes. There is not a lot of flow to it though she does have you do sun salutation a few times. There are a ton of chaturanga push-ups though and I mean a ton. If you are push-up or plank-impaired and like being that way you will not enjoy this workout. I started out doing them right, with my elbows in at my sides, using my triceps and then moved to regular pushups on toes and eventually just did mostly regular push-ups from my knees but ocassionally forced my elbows in. I was not expecting this to be as much of a workout as it was. I don't know why, it is Jillian after all but it was actually pretty tough and I sweated a lot more than I expected to. The DVD case says something like lose 5 lbs in 10 days or something like that but while tough, it definitely isn't a cardio workout and I don't know how you'd lose weight really fast with it. I can see toning up really fast with it though.

There are 2 backgrounders, one does the full pose and one does modifications and both seem to have really good form. I went back and forth between them but mostly was able to follow the advanced (except for all those chaturangas). There are some very challenging poses too. You learn a pose then "rep it out" doing dynamic movments in the pose and then hold the pose itself for what is supposed to be 15 seconds but I caught her going beyond 20 once or twice. It doesn't sound like a long time but when you're uncomfortable, it is! She even says something like, "Learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable!" For example, you hold a chaturanga hovering above the ground (after doing a bunch of push-ups) right near the beginning and I just didn't. I didn't expect to have to work that hard and wasn't prepared for it mentally. I think I was wanting a lighter workout. I could probably have done better than I did though. Another example is you sit on your knees and reach back, one arm at a time toward your feet. You do the reps of that and then hold camel (both hands on your feet) for approximately 15 seconds. The reps of this seemed easy, holding the pose that long was not. The modifier is on the balls of her feet and the advanced has the tops of her feet flat against the floor. There is a Jillian style warm-up at the beginning, but no jumping jacks or windmills. Then a stretch at the end which is good but she starts waxing philosophical during a hamstring stretch and doesn't cue you to change to a spinal twist. I wasn't looking at the TV and was just aware of the burning in my leg, said, enough of this and looked up to see her just starting to move to the next position. The only other cueing problem I had is that she doesn't announce what pose comes next, only the movements to get into it. If she did both, I'd have been able to anticipate more what to expect and I think would have found it helpful. Someone not familiar with yoga, however, as I'm guessing many are who do this workout, would not care. It isn't a big deal either way. The rest was a solid intermediate/advanced workout (with some advanced yoga poses, including warrior 3) and a lot of hard work. I have down that I'll do workout 2 at the end of the week and I still might, but I expect I'll be following the modifier a lot for that. I previewed it and it looked really hard. Since this was harder than it looked, I know that one will be too!