Guest guest Posted October 19, 2008 Report Share Posted October 19, 2008 Just thought I'd pop in and give a quick review of 's Mat Workout which I did today, since there was talk a while back of her comments about not using more than 3 lb. weights. The workout is 57 minutes long and is in widescreen format. You can get directly to the workout by going to " Chapters " from the Menu and selecting " Mat Routine " . The workout breaks down approximately as follows: Warm Up (stretches and wavy moves): 5:20 Standing Legs (with chair for balance): 15:10 (split between right and left sides) Standing Abs (standing dancy moves, rotating midsection): 4:00 Arms (no weights): 8:00 Arms (with weights): 8:10 Floor Legs (pretzel and leg lifts): 6:40 (again both sides) Floor Abs (straight forward crunches, moving arms and legs): 5:40 Cool Down (wavy and stretchy moves): 4:00 She talks LESS than ANY instructor in any vido I've EVER done. She says to do the move and you just keep doing it until she says to change; although you have to watch because she doesn't cue every single move (particularly in the warmup), but the moves are all fairly straightforward, and it's actually a very good toning workout. I thought the arm work was a killer. She does say not to use more than 3 lb. weights, but if that becomes easy (hah!), you can do the arm section twice (as if!). I used 1½ lb. weights and that was quite enough to start with because the first part of the arm workout without weights pre-exhausts your arms and then some. Also the arm moves are fast, so you wouldn't want to be using heavy weights. About her " infamous " comments on not using more than 3 lb. weights, my thought is that she's all about image, building " lean " muscle and not " bulking up " ; she's not about increasing strength as such (although I figure she must have arms of steel!). I can't help but wonder if people who lift heavy weights actually would find the arm work in this video easy or not – you're holding your arms up and out so much which is very tiring. Is there anyone here who regularly lifts heavy like to comment on that? I know when I first did Ellen Barrett's Fat Burning Fusion, I thought my arms were going to fall off from holding them out so much – that's hard work and really works the shoulders. The floor abs portion consists mostly of zillions of straight forward crunches done with assorted leg and arm movements. She doesn't do any obliques (I have read that doing oblique work can cause the front abs to stick out, or something to that effect. I don't know whether this is true or not. It seems for every opinion, there's an opposing one). And talking about opinions, nothing I've said here is meant to start any kind of argument or controversy. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with anything she said – it's just one way of looking at things. Anyone else done this workout? (Another really excellent workout along the same lines is Exhale Core Fusion Body Sculpt which is a bit shorter and broken down into 10 minute sections, which is kind of handy if you only have a short time. I'm waiting for their Pilates one that I'm getting in trade – I think it's the same format). Fiona Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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