Thursday, June 4, 2009

The Wedding Workout: The Rundown and a Few Thoughts

As you can tell from my sidebar, I'm currently working out using Women's Health: The Wedding Workout. Before I get into my initial thoughts on this, I thought it might be a good idea to give a quick rundown of the DVD. (I know I didn't give initial thoughts on Turbo Jam, but that's because 1-I didn't really do it for that long,2-I liked it and felt results right away)

DVD/Set- Women's Health: The Wedding Workout
Instructor- Marie Forleo
Released by- Women's Health/ Gaiam
Style- Traditional workout style with a few twists

The Wedding Workout is a single DVD that contains six chapters or segments-- Warm Up, Upper Body, Abs & Core, Lower Body, Power Cardio, and Cool Down. There's also non-workout bonus segments called Eat Smart, Walk Gracefully, and Love Your Honeymoon.

Warm Up-- This is a quick 4 minute warm up to get things moving. They do a few moves to warm up your legs, arms, chest and hips, as well as some light stretching.

Upper Body-- Weights are a definite must for this workout--you rarely put them down. This workout flows quickly from one move to the next. Marie starts each move at half speed so that you get the feel of the move before you go up to tempo. The moves are a great mix of traditional moves and moves I've never seen before. Just as a warning, there ARE pushups involved, and four of them are half-time.

Abs & Core-- This starts with a little standing ab work then moves to some floor work with planks and crunches.

Lower Body-- This workout uses variations on plies, lunges and squats to get your bottom half into gear.

Power Cardio-- Very simple, light cardio. You start out with some pretty easy steps and arm movements, move on to some jack-style moves and jogs and end with kick boxing.

Cool Down-- This combines a little bit of light movement to get your heart rate down as well as some yoga to stretch you out.

Eat Smart-- This is just a quick run down of foods to eat prior to a big event that will help you look your best.

Walk Gracefully-- I haven't seen this one yet.

Love Your Honeymoon-- Marie quirkily takes you through the basics of stripping. That's right, this is a mini- tutorial on some basic moves for a strip tease.

The DVD menu is set up so that you can choose between pre-set workouts, or you can customize your workout by selecting the six segments in any order you choose. The two pre-set workouts are geared towards Strapless Dresses (focus on upper body) and Body Hugging Dresses (focus on lower body). If you choose a pre-set workout, the specific menu is broken down by days of the week, so there's no guesswork about which workout to do in which day. Just choose Thursday if it's Thursday. Pretty nifty.

It's been a week, and while I find the workouts are pretty good, they're VERY short at 11ish minutes each. You can work out a single area (say, Upper Body) with a warm up and cool down in under 20 minutes. For the targeted workouts I think this is fine. You can complete a total body workout in in about 45 minutes without cardio. The problem lies, for me, in the cardio itself. It'does have a few intense moves, but overall, it's not a very challenging cardio set. Plus, it's only about 10 minutes long. I don't know about you, but ten minutes of cardio every other day (as set out in the schedule) doesn't really cut it for me.

Because of this, I've decided to stop trying to make the cardio work for me. I did the Strapless Dress pre-set workout for a week. Next week I'm going to do the Ab workout and Upper Body workout on one day followed by Turbo Jam Cario Party the following day. I want to give The Wedding Workout a fair shot, but I know that the cardio is not working for me.

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