I had no idea ...!!

that Cathe's Low Impact Series: Athletic Training would hurt so good in the legs!! Just did it yesterday for the first time after coming off Christmas week where I hosted, for the first time, an amazing Boxing Day Christmas dinner with my family. This was all done while nursing a not so nice achy-breaky cold no less. So with that I thought I'd start out with something "lighter" and less challenging to ease my way back into Cathe and yoga. It looked so innocuous! Well, Cathe fooled me again. I woke up to a hint of soreness in my legs and thought great it DID do something for me, surprise, surprise! Well, I was in for more of a surprise when I came home from some pre-Miami trip shopping and low and behold my legs were in AGONY, like a full on heavy leg workout!! What was I thinking. Cathe snuck up on me again. Never underestimate this woman! lol!

Athletic Training

Cathe's Athletic Training is part of her Low Impact Series and is a low impact circuit workout done metabolic style. You start out with the step doing a very simple athletic repetitive steps done really fast and leaves you out of breathe pretty soon. It snuck up on me pretty fast, and I had to pause a couple of times due to being out of breathe and my legs aching. It was a bit repetitive as I'm used to very advanced interesting choreography and more jumping. But surprisingly enough it's quite effective! And just what I needed for post-cold workout and for my neighbors sanity. Lol! Then we moved onto weighted leg work using the step at 3 risers. I used 15lb when Cathe used 8lbs, I believe. I wanted to go heavy (in terms of this type of evercise) with my legs. From then on I used heavier than Cathe on all the leg work except the one where we did shoulder lat raises where I did do the 8-10lbs called for. At this point I really didn't think I was working my legs much even though we went up to 3 risers. As I consider this quite light weight work. Who knows I'm still flummoxed as to what worked my legs out this much. Whether it was due to the cold or due to working with weights on the step repeatedly. Whatever it was, it worked! ... I've now come to the conclusion that it's using weights while employing a higher step. As I just saw a guy doing the same thing at the gym. And if a dude is doing it, ya know it's effective!

Then we went on to more weight work. However, by the time we got to the pushups off the step I had had it. This workout is MAJOR anaerobic cardio burn!! I was sweating and huffing like you wouldn't believe. Even though it's metabolic in nature and I find this approach usually does NOT give me an effective strength workout for neither my upper or lower body. Nonetheless, it's incredibly effective in upping your cardio anaerobically. It worked for me!! And I was dying!! I nearly fainted at one point! Lol! I felt myself receding and my surroundings darkening when Cathe was going "Now lets do pushups off the step." Ya right! And I usually have no problems with pushups on the floor or incline with feet on steps. So I knew I was beat and surrendered the white flag! AND I even felt that exercise induced nausea too! Starting exercise at the tail end of a cold is not for wussies!!

... practice, suck it up and don't be a wussie, and all is coming!!

I'm Busay!!!

... what with Christmas fast approaching. And what with feeling rather tired and draggy of late fighting a cold for nearly 5 weeks no less. I don't have a cold but my body's trying desperately to push this virus out of me for that long with me taking a vitamin C powder in my green smoothie. The darn vitamin C powder is working enough to keep it at bay with hints in my throat and if it leaves my throat it tries to give me an eye cold. So the darn virus has been moving back n forth, up n down for nearly 5 weeks now, whilst everybody else at my work is dropping like flies. But I am DETERMINED to kick it out of me for good. So my new tactic is to up my Vitamin C to morning and night. And it seems to be working. Darned if I'm going to get a cold when I'm putting on Christmas dinner!! So take that you virus!! So what with that and the added busyness I've been feeling a bit wonkered and my workouts have been lagging. But I'm proud of myself that when I'm feeling a little up to it I fit one in. But I'm not pushing. So with that I managed, finally, to fit in a workout with both Gym Style Legs and tacked on the floor work of my new Cathe dvd, Lean Legs & Abs. Both are leg workouts but I had a sneaky suspicion that Lean Legs would be too light on my legs and heavier on cardio and I was right. So I was really glad to mix the two dvds as Gym Style is just what it is, a nice heavy leg workout making your legs toast if you use heavier weights than what's called for, which I do. So I got my sweat on with these 2 workouts. 

Gym Style Legs

Gym Style has lots of squats with barbells, lunges with pulses (believe they'll get you burning), plie squats followed with low ends, 15 low ends followed by 15 more to be exact! And I use a barbell of 55lbs as opposed to their lighter dumbells. Suffice to say, I'm still working on completing the 15 low ends without breaking. But I'll get there yet! There's also leg presses where I use a 15 lb weight rather than their stretch band. 

Lean Legs and Abs

I stopped there and went onto my new dvd, Lean Legs and Abs, which I had been looking forward to doing for awhile now but just hadn't fit it in yet. Finally I got to and it was a fun workout. Rather metabolic in nature with alot of compound moves while working out the legs with lighter weights. Cathe kept it quite aerobic based while she kept saying "I want to keep your heart rate up." And she wasn't mincing words! Cathe never minces words! lol! The cardio kept on creeping up on me with her non-stop squat presses, lunges, jumping sumos, lunges to jumping scissors with nary a break in between. I was glistening with sweat in Gym Style, but by the time I got a third of the way through Lean Leg's floorwork I was pouring sweat like any cardio class or sweaty studio Mysore class, and huffing and puffing to boot! And the music was the boss! Nice! So, even though I didn't find it a heavy leg workout, I find it PERFECT for tacking onto a heavier weight dvd to get a nice chisel effect to the legs and some cardio/metabolic work at the same time. A perfect combination!

... so fit in a practice, no matter how big or small, and all is coming.

Had a Blast! ...

... tonight with Cathe's Lower Body Blast dvd. Check out my sweaty forehead to prove it. Okay, it could've been sweatier but I kept forgetting I was going to take a pic and kept wiping it off with my oh so cool superstar wristband.

I can't remember where or when I got that thang and discovered it in my drawer just lately. And I'm oh so thrilled it appeared. It's definitely handy, if I do say so myself. lol! And check out the pink nail polish, in the middle of winter no less. Very matchy matchy. I promise it wasn't planned. I was just trying to channel summer. But I digress ...

Lower Body Blast!

I decided to do my new fav lower body workout again. I have a secret, I don't really want to admit to myself. But I think I ramped up my high impact cardio too quickly for my achilles' own good. Humf! So now they're kinda complaining, with their old injury giving me reminders. I get over enthusiastic with cardio as I LOVE step and I LOVE jumping as it reminds me of my old love ballet. I was really good at jumping in ballet. My teachers used to say I had amazing ballon, I had height ~ took air ~ and looked weightless when I jumped. So getting achilles tendonitis or a hint of soreness there is my nemesis as I LOVE to jump. So, I've been really diligent about icing but it seems to be still creeping in. Yuck! With that I've been taking calculated risks trying to figure out how many high impact cardio's I can slip in here or there to assuage me need for speed and before my achilles say it's really time to go grounded now. So I decided Lower Body Blast is now or never. And I must say it was a blast! 

It's a 60 minute funtastic, effective, lower body strength workout that intersperses fat burning cardio blast intervals in between the strength segments. It worked me good! We started out with a warmup into the first cardio blast off the mini step with  repeaters, power 7's, jacks, etc then into the first segment of leg work using free weights, barbell, gliding disks and stretch band for floorwork. And man she worked my legs good with walking lunges Cathe burn style, low step ups to low lunge (really works the thighs and glutes), barbell squats with pulses and low ends (I sub plie squats as they're safer for my knees), barbell plie squats, lunges, sliding warrior lunges, dead lifts, hover squats (killer), you get the drift. Done at an almost non-stop pace with cardio blasts interspersed to keep the heart pumpin and the fat burnin. And all to great music. I felt the burn and Missy Cathe kept my sweat glistening and me wiping with my superstar wristband. Cathe never fails.

P.S. Me hopes I'm still walking tomorrow or the next day! Those DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) can really sneak up on you and take you by surprise. Just like when I did my step aerobics on Saturday (still have to post on that one as I was so proud of myself) using 3 risers instead of 2 and surprise, surprise, my legs were killing me not on Sunday but on Monday!! Ouch!! I haven't had sore quads from step in YEARS!! ~ until those 3 risers kicked in!! Wow!!

... so have fun and ballon and all is coming.

Flex Train Choo Choo!!!

More like Woo Hoo!! Or Whoa Hoa!! Last night Cathe burnt my triceps and shoulder muscles with her new workout Flex Train. Ouch! Yah, that picture on her front cover says it all! She will burn your shoulders silly. And here I was trying to keep to my new workout schedule,

~ Nice huh! ~ but she burnt my triceps and shoulders so bad that the plan to do Ultimate Yogi's Strength was killed quick time. It was a night of rest for me. Travis' penchant for all those power chatarunga's would've took me out in no time flat. Travis and Cathe, you guy's kill me in a good way.

Flex Train

This dvd is one of Cathe's new one's and kind of a hybrid between a high rep workout with metabolic tendencies, shall we say. And it's low impact, great for those times when my knees or achilles get twingy. Also great when I want to top off with a full body weight day with added cardio mixed in at the end of the week after having done a heavy weight day earliery on. This will burn! I have to say these metabolic and high rep workouts are new to me as I tend towards heavy weight work and separate cardio work OR sometimes a circuit workout to top off my week. I find dedicated workouts more productive for me as my muscles don't respond to light weight lifting. And metabolic is notorious for using light weights as it's just trying to up the cardio factor and get a little anaerobic at best to burn fat longterm. But to see muscle growth effects, NOT ~ for me anyway. So I've always tended to view them as "time-wasters" and pooh-poohed them. However, done Cathe style, I seem to be enjoying them, surprisingly. And as long as I use them wisely to top off my week or every 2 weeks not replacing my heavy weight days then I'm golden.

If I remember correctly, actually I should remember this correctly as she just about did in my shoulders. In fact, check out all the shoulder work in this preview alone! She started off with shoulder and I made the mistake on the first exercise when we picked up the 8lb weights, I thought I knew better than her and picked up 10's instead. Well, later on I was really sorry I did that! We went from one metabolic shoulder exercise to another to another to another. Waaaa! I was feeling it! I thought when is this ever going to stop!? Next time, I will obey Cathe's cues if I know best. Then we went to heavy back with 25lb, I did 20lb and then some light let's-burn-the-back work. We continued on with bicep, chest and triceps with legs sprinkled in. Then abs to close. I went heavier on the biceps and didn't do the pulses but did more traditional sets and reps. I have to be very careful not to do high reps or pulses for my biceps as I believe that type of lifting is too stressful for my bicep brachialis tendons. And I don't want to get tendonitis there again.

This was a great workout as it gave me a nice two for one ~ high rep and cardio conditioning. How can I go wrong. And I sweated nicely. The only thing that I fault is that you won't get a leg workout with this. Barely burnt the legs except for the last leg exercise where you WILL feel the burn. But there wasn't enough exercises and heavy enough to warrant it in any way close to a leg workout. All in all Cathe's Flex Train is a keeper!

... practice and all is coming.

Premix X49 ... Ya Right!

Yeah, that's right I tried, is the operative word, to do premix X49 on Cathe's new high intensity dvd X10 last Tuesday. Ya right who was I fooling! Delusion is the reason for optimism! ... This awsome dvd is actually 5 separate workouts that are only 10 minutes long, a misnomer as none of them are actually 10 minutes, more like 12 minutes to 17 minutes long, but when you add the warmup and cool down works out to around 25 to 30 minutes each. They were designed to be used as mini-blast-that-bootie-into-afterburn workouts that you can do when you're short on time or want to tack it on to a weight training or yoga day. Or you can use the premix section and do a number of the workouts all in one. All these ways are equally valid and this dvd was purposely designed for all these varied uses in mind. It includes 5 workouts: Step, Low Impact, Hi/Lo, Cardio Blast and Fat Burning Circuit.

So with that I thought I'd go all out and do the X49 premix. Now, I got to premise that the amazing Cathletes out there have been running forum threads that they did X77, the most powerful and cardio blasting of ALL 5 workouts strung together. Talk about ironman! Well, I have no inclination to go to nosebleed levels in the near or far future but I just thought why not try X49? It's just 3 sections, the step, low impact, cardio blast sections plus warmup and cool down. What can it hurt? Oh ya, it hurt! I could only get up to low impact and I was through. Done in! Caput! But come to think of it I only had one more section to go. So really not so bad, eh? So I'm still proud of myself and won't disturb my ego by comparing to the nosebleed Cathletes.

I initially thought the warm up would be boring as I don't particularly like floor cardio warmups, preferring step. But the music was so amazing that I forgot all about my funny preferences and really got into it. In fact, I got an earworm of the song in my dreams it was that good. Haha! Actually Cathe outdid herself in this dvd and really chose amazing music for all the workouts. Especially notable was the low impact section that played a revved up version of Aerosmith's Walk This Way. It was a blast and just pushes you to keep going. Speaking of keep going, I thought I was going to die with the step portion. I knew from previewing it I was going in deep and felt it was the hardest workout of the 5 and let me preface this by saying that all of them are hard. And I'm not the only one that feels that, the Cathletes do too. Ha! And the reason it is, is because she starts right off without a by or leave into fast feet shuffles into jump ropes into power 15's with NO breaks at all which she cycles over and over until she moves onto long hop turns etc. Holy nap Batman, when can I breathe! I had to do my forced breaks to breathe. lol! But I made it through and soldiered onto the metabolic section after the step and then onto the low impact segment where I called it a day. And proceeded to have a nap later on. That workout deserved a nap, darn it!

... practice and nap and all is coming.

Sore Muscles, Sore Eyes ... but Beautiful Vision

Everything is sore from sore muscles to sore eye. lol! I do love sore muscles as I know I did some crazay effective workouts. Like yesterday's amazing Xtrain Cardio Leg Blast by Cathe which made my quads and hamstrings sore and the day before Travis' Ultimate Yogi Flexibility which darn well did in my butt, hamstrings and shoulders. So, I've got DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) setting in nicely now. Yowza! With that a rest day was in order today. And to top it all off my left eye began feeling achy when doing some minor grocery shopping in my neighbourhood. Today was the first day I went out with my eyes fully undressed from the protective sunglasses the doc gave me. And my eyes felt the wonky vision full on in broad beautiful daylight. My eyes are so miss matched blurry that the walking around trying to focus through the brilliant haze proved a little too much too soon. Thank goodness I wasn't out too long and still managed to enjoy the fall sunlight. I even took this beautiful vision of a picture above on the way home which made me almost and I say almost love fall! lol! But I digress ...

Xtrain Cardio Leg Blast by Cathe

 

 

I did Cathe's amazing Cardio Leg Bast for the first time yesterday. I had this disc for a while but had to shelve it until my knees grew stronger. So, now I'm enjoying some good ol jumping cardio. It reminds me of my ballet days doing all the beautiful jumping floor work. I felt so light, lithe and strong back then and it makes me feel the same now, so exhilerating being finally able to do it again.

This is a great cardio and moderately heavy weight leg circuit workout with 12 rounds of about one minute plyometric cardio blast (HIT) with one moderate weighted leg work for about a maximum 16 reps which you repeat 12 times. The first 6 rounds are done off the step and the next 6 rounds are done on. No exercises are repeated so it's really fun. At first I used slightly lighter weights than Cathe and crew wanting to play it safe with my knees but then realized if I wanted to feel any burn with just 16 reps I needed to match or go heavier with the weights. So when I hit the round where we did plie squats — my legs are strong for this — I went with my 50lb barbell than their lighter pound dumbbells. I also added some extra pulse squats to the squat section to feel more burn and instead of doing their side lunges after that set — my knees do NOT like side lunge motions — I did pop squats interspersed with jump ropes. I found this more effective for my quads following quad style plyos with weighted quad work. It employs the quad muscles in a way that forces the quads to get strong very fast. Also, I noticed that, especially with the jumps on the step, I bend my knees more than the crew does. I think my ballet training has alot to do with this. This technique creates a softer, quieter, more controlled landing and also takes the impact into the quad and calf muscles more than the knees. Thus protecting the joints while building powerful, more explosive lean legs. I did have to take some extra breathes here and there but all in all I was able to keep up nicely and ALMOST completed the workout. I got to round 11 and quit. Naughty girl! I didn't realize there was only one more to go!

The music was great and keeps you going when it gets hard and was one of the reasons I was able to even get to round 11 and also I love step work. Cathe's a pro at using amazingly hip music and crescendoing it at just the right moments to keep you fired up and getting that extra wind to take you to the next level. Really amazing! (Can you tell music is very important to me for workouts. It actually will make or break what would be a very good workout for me. Cathe is a genius for this most of the time. The one time she derailed was when she did her amazing STS heavy weight periodization program where for me the music did NOT work.)

I forgot to do the bonus Burn Set Bi's at the end. But was probably wise that I forgot. As I'm feeling the sore today and don't need anymore added to it. That's another wonderful thing about Cathe is she's so generous (Amy Bento does the same too) she always adds premixes to all her dvds and sometimes adds bonus workouts from her other dvds in the set. Which she really went all out on with her Xtrain set. Kudos Cathe!

... so practice, get nice and sore, and all is coming.