Cathe Cardio Kicks

[Guest guest]

I'm very proud of me. I am not a cardio fanatic and I am deathly afraid of most Cathe cardio workouts but when my buddy Sara offered to send me a VHS version of Cardio Kicks she didn't need I decided I could not resist. I did it this morning even though I was absolutely not up for intense cardio this morning. I was still quite emotional about DD and the 5th grade camp adventures. I don't think I had enough energy to give it everything but I did try to at times and all other times I just did my best but didn't really push super hard. It didn't help that I did not preview it, as Cathe strongly suggests you do. I think that would have helped me to know what was coming next and how hard I could probably push and still have something left for later. I was more conservative with my energy than I needed to be at times. I still got a fantastic workout from it though.

The pluses: the choreography is very simple for the most part except these darn box things where you're doing a boxer shuffle as you punch and somehow leap/shuffle/punch around in a box shape as you're turning from one side to facing rear to the other side to facing front. It is repeated a lot and I NEVER got it down. There are also drills and I like drills. There's lots of repetition but not so much that you get bored (not me anyway). The combos are not long and complicated. Most of the music is really good. There's intervals and I like intervals. It is kickboxing and I like kickboxing.

The minuses: a little bit of the choreograpy (like the box above) drove me insane. There was one extremely long song near the beginning that had a loud, shrill sound repeated over and over that drove me NUTS. I hated it and almost shut off the volume just to not hear it but I needed Cathe's cues. Speaking of Cathe's cues, she cues late a LOT, especially in the beginning. Later I didn't notice it as much. She relies on punches for intensity for some drills and that just doesn't do it for me. No matter how hard or how fast I punch, it just isn't as intense as using the lower body for me but I do think I'm getting some DOMS in my arms from it.

There's quite a lot of plyo but she always describes low impact modifications and often shows them but briefly. There is no one specifically showing modifications throughout the workout, however. She tells you in the intro this is an advanced workout intended for the seasoned exerciser and makes it clear it is not at all intended for all fitness levels. I was intimidated before I started and then I was even more so when I heard her very sternly and seriously talk about that. I've heard her say it before other workouts but for some reason it sounded more emphatic with with this one (maybe because it was cardio). I did end up doing all the high impact moves except one and did that one low impact only because there was this jumpy/bouncy kicky thing that just got me way too mixed up when I tried adding the bounce. I couldn't get the rhythm at all so it destroyed the intensity and I just did a low impact version so I could keep my heart rate up. That ended up working great for me. I had a lot of fun with a lot of the high impact stuff too.

I wasn't completely sure of the workout when I got done with it but now I think that was my mood at the time more than anything else. I really did enjoy it, I rarely felt lost and I felt great that I was so well able to do it. It was definitely hard but it wasn't I'm going to pass out hard just from the warm-up and its simplicity in terms of choreograpy made it less mentally hard. I still had to stay very focused because of the intensity though and that was great. Definitely a keeper for me. Thanks again, Sara! :-)