Hi everyone! I’m Sara – a long time reader of FitFig and other fitness blogs, and I was excited to see her post asking for blog help! And even more excited that she accepted my offer to contribute to her blog, heh. In fact, I even won one of her Figaways once. I’m a 30-something, happily married, dog mom to three pups, who can’t resist a bargain. :mrgreen: I ramble on about my workouts over at My Basement Gym, and I have a variety of exercise interests – with body part splits with free weights being my first love. Though I do vary from that style often, since I also have a short exercise attention span.
I’m relatively new to the exercise video scene compared to many of the long time video workout devotees that I’ve meet on some of the internet forums. I bought my first workout video set in 2003, the original Core Secrets set. I had been weight training for about 4 years at that point (learning everything from books and magazines) and was looking for some more variety and got suckeredinterested by the infomercial for the Core Secrets workouts. I bought the rest of the workouts from that series as they were released, too. I’m still bummed that the series is discontinued. And while I haven’t reviewed any Core Secrets workouts on my blog yet, they remain some of my favorites and still make it into my rotation regularly. I slowly added more workouts to my collection over the next few years, starting with a few Jari Love and Amy Bento workouts – and even a few from Leslie Sansone, since I’m rather choreography challenged. I also saw Cathe’s workouts on FitTv, but it was a few more years before I actually purchased some of her videos. Can you say intimidated? (more…)
Had to take the day off from thePowerFIT rotation today! Yesterday I injured my back doing – of all things – vacuuming (see, housework WILL kill you!)! I hate when that happens. I was actually vacuuming and reaching for a magic marker that rolled under the table simultaneously. I’m not sure if injuries bother me more when they happen during a workout or during something stupid like housework. For good or bad, I’ve been through this before and I know it will heal up over time. It certainly isn’t the worst back injury I experienced (one of the very worst was doing the ab work in Core Fusion Pilates Plus – I will never do barre-style ab work again!) and I’m pretty able to move around, but I didn’t want to stress it out too much by doing anything too crazy, so today I spent 20 minutes on the recumbent bike and 25 (or so) minutes on the treadmill. I did 2 miles on the treadmill, I was going to stop at the 20 minute mark (Stephanie has me well trained with 20 minutes!) but decided I’d go until I hit 2 miles instead – since I was pretty close to that at 20 minutes. I added on a long Pilates workout – Pilates for Weight Loss with Suzanne Deason. This one is very good for Pilates newbies or those dealing with an injury or limitation. The workout is not rushed – and three levels of modification are shown from beginner to more advanced. So, you have an idea on how to modify something if it isn’t agreeable with your body at the moment. The DVD starts with a warm-up/awareness section in which Suzanne helps you put your body in proper alignment for the work to come. The main body of the workout is traditional mat work – but done at a slower pace with a lot of set up time in between the exercises. It worked well for me. I was able to do everything to some extent following each of the modifiers depending on the exercise. The movements that most bothered my back were the “bird-dog” (on all fours – extend opposite arm and leg), the back arching exercises (I couldn’t do “swimming” just had to arch and lower gently and slowly) and the bridges. I was able to do them, following the level 1 or 2 modifier, but my back definitely felt the work. (more…)
Today is a busy one – I am volunteering at the book fair at my daughter’s school today – my “shifts” are the one right before school and the one after school. I am a big book person so I love being around the book fair. Of course, my daughter picked out some books and so did I. At the moment I’m really into reading young adult literature. It all started when I became nostalgic for some books I read as a teen/tween. I guess what started me thinking about them is watching my daughter’s reading take off – she is pretty well into chapter books these days which is amazing to me because she is only in first grade. The schools seem to push the reading a lot harder and earlier these days as I am pretty positive I was not reading chapter books in first grade. I suppose there are ups and downs to that. Anyway, my current read is an old favorite – Julie of the Wolves. I appreciate it a lot more as an adult than I did when I first read it as a “tween”. I picked up some more young adult literature for myself at the book fair and I’m looking forward to reading some new authors and finding books to share with my daughter when she is older.
Today I started thinking about rotations. I know many of us plan our workouts and design various “rotations” in which to alternate them. I get a lot of my inspiration to design my own rotations by reading about what others are doing, reading rotations that instructors put together for their various “systems”, and just generally having fun with trying to combine different workouts, instructors and styles. It is a bit like fitting together the pieces of a puzzle. Sometimes I’ll find a set rotation and add my own tweaks (as with Stephanie Huckabee’s rotation – I am following her 2-a-day plan, but adding on some additional workouts that I choose). Sometimes I’ll decide on a theme or instructor that I want to workout with for a set period of time. Sometimes I’ll come up with a “generic” rotation where I’ll have a category for the day, but allow myself to pick and choose the workout that fits my mood for the day within that category. It is a lot of fun for me to do this and keeps me motivated. After I finish up with Stephanie Huckabee’s rotation I plan to do the Montenegro Method workouts – not quite sure how I’ll put it together yet, but I have some ideas in mind and some time to plan it out since I still have a couple of weeks left in this rotation. In future posts I’ll be sure to include some of my past, present and future rotation ideas! (more…)
Yes, I’m back into the swing of things and ready to give something away. When I was heavily pregnant or busy with new baby, I received a couple of Denise Austin DVDs for free from Lionsgate and put them aside. This weekend I stumbled across them and thought, “Oh yeah! Need to give these away!” So I’m starting with one this week and will do another next week.
So this week it’s Denise’s Body Makeover Mix. You can see a full description and a clip here. I personally don’t enjoy Denise’s workouts, just because she sounds like a Kindergarten teacher. Nothing against Kindergarten teachers — I just would prefer a different voice from my fitness instructors. (more…)
In the interest of full disclosure and in compliance with a new FTC rule (seriously, can you believe the FTC cares what I write on this little blog?), I received this workout DVD free, compliments of Anchor Bay Entertainment.
Now that we’ve got that out of way, I decided my review this time would start off with just copying over the little notes I took between segments, so you can really get my fresh first impressions.
We don’t claim to be fitness experts. We don’t dispense medical advice and we're not qualified to do so. We are also neither nutritionists nor personal trainers. We are just women on the journey to better fitness and a richer life. Please consult a doctor if you are starting a new exercise routine.
Hi everyone! I’m Sara – a long time reader of FitFig and other fitness blogs, and I was excited to see her post asking for blog help! And even more excited that she accepted my offer to contribute to her blog, heh. In fact, I even won one of her Figaways once. I’m a 30-something, happily married, dog mom to three pups, who can’t resist a bargain. :mrgreen: I ramble on about my workouts over at My Basement Gym, and I have a variety of exercise interests – with body part splits with free weights being my first love. Though I do vary from that style often, since I also have a short exercise attention span. 
And while I haven’t reviewed any Core Secrets workouts on my blog yet, they remain some of my favorites and still make it into my rotation regularly. I slowly added more workouts to my collection over the next few years, starting with a few Jari Love and Amy Bento workouts – and even a few from Leslie Sansone, since I’m rather choreography challenged. I also saw Cathe’s workouts on FitTv, but it was a few more years before I actually purchased some of her videos. Can you say intimidated? 
(more…)
