Tag: DVD

Jillian Michaels’ Body Revolution: Preview

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I finally ordered Jillian Michaels’ Body Revolution! I’ve been hankering after this for a long time, and I’m so pleased that I finally got around to getting it. It’s very pricey compared to Jillian’s other products (at £99), but I think it’s a worthwhile investment…

Collection

The programme lasts for 90 days, and contains 12 different weight workouts and three cardio workouts. The reason I was keen to try this particular programme is that it alternates muscle groups – something which Jillian’s other DVDs don’t do. The idea is that you work one group of muscles, and then give them time to rest so that they can rebuild stronger. As I understand it, when you lift weights, you create tiny tears in your muscles, and it’s the rebuilding process, when your body repairs itself, that actually makes your muscles stronger. With more intensive workouts like the 30 Day Shred, you don’t stop to rest between working out groups. I hope that the Body Revolution actually tones my muscles more than I’ve experienced in the past – but first of all, of course, I need to do the workouts first!

The kit comes with three cardboard sleeves, pictured above, which have the DVD collection inside. There are also various booklets that go with it, including a meal guide for her 7-day kickstart programme.

Kickstart cover

Inside are a range of meals for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for you to eat during a week-long period at the start. Jillian is very clear that you only do this once during the 90 days, as the diet is restrictive, and the exercise schedule is pretty intensive.

Kickstart menu

This is the diet plan I’ll be starting tomorrow, along with the exercise plan. I’m waiting for my shopping to arrive! I’ve bought items to make most of the things listed – the recipes are in the back of the book – so we’ll see how I go from tomorrow… The hardest thing will be avoiding tempting Easter treats! The recipes aren’t low in calories, but I do think they’re very low in carbohydrates. Hopefully there’s enough protein in there to keep me going!

Kickstart workouts

Here’s the workout plan for the first week – I’ve cheated a little bit and I already started yesterday, doing cardio 1 and workout 1. But I aim to start properly tomorrow and then work through until next Friday. Over the weekend I’ll perhaps do cardio again and rest on Sunday, so that I can then start Phase One as it should be on the Monday after Easter.

Here’s what the first month of work outs looks like:

Phase 1 workouts

As you can see, it follows a neat pattern which is pretty easy to understand! I really want to make sure I start it on a Monday, because having a real, set in stone schedule is very important to my ability to stick to it. I think that if I alter the schedule in some way, I’ll start making excuses as to why I can put off doing one of the work outs, so I want to eliminate that risk before I even start! Anyway, each block of exercise is approx 30 minutes, which really isn’t a lot to ask in a day!

Phase 1 discs

This is what I’ll be staring at for the next month! This is the inside of the cardboard sleeve for Phase One.

Here’s the explanation of what exercises are on each disc:

Phase 1

I’ll be back tomorrow to review the first day on the Kickstart plan!

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Fitness DVD review: Inch Loss Pilates with Lynne Robinson

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Pilates has definitely been a buzz-word since the Royal wedding, when Pippa Middleton’s famous bum was said to be a result of following this exercise plan. It’s one of those regimes that I’ve been aware of for ages, but never really investigated. I know that it’s something like yoga, was invented by a guy called Pilates, and there’s also some vague notions of it being to do with the war, or soldiers, or something like that. It was always filed in my brain under the heading ‘something to look into at some point’. When I got a press release about the launch of Inch Loss Pilates with Lynne Robinson last month, it became apparent that ‘at some point’ had arrived.

Inch Loss Pilates

This isn’t going to be a proper review of the DVD yet, as after a viewing today I realised that there was a whole post to be written just about my initial observations of the programme, before I’d even tried it out. For the record, I intend to give this a proper trial during January, so keep posted on that!

First of all, Lynne Robinson is something of a Pilates guru – I guess that’s stealing a word from yoga, but hey… It’s nearly Christmas, so I’ll say it was a present. The Times has dubbed her ‘The Queen of Pilates’, and her prolific output on the subject certainly goes some way to proving that. She’s worked with numerous celebs like Sophie Dahl, Holly Willoughby, Liz Hurley – and even the Chelsea football team and England Cricket. Those latter two should help convince you that Pilates isn’t just airy fairy stuff – this is proper, physical work.

However, in the introduction video, Lynne points out that this isn’t a hugely calorie burning endeavour. I guess that’s what had steered me away from exercises like this and yoga over the years. I love high impact cardio workouts – basically pretty much anything that Jillian Michaels has released on DVD. This is the polar opposite to that, really. Whilst Jillian’s 30 Day Shred will have you screaming and pushing your body to its physical limit, Pilates is about really centring yourself, connecting your mind and body together, and sculpting your form through deliberate and mindful movements.

My ears really pricked up when Lynne mentioned that Pilates is really what helped her with her pear-shape – I never realised until I lost a lot of weight for my wedding which shape I was, because when I looked in the mirror, frankly, all I saw was a blob. Since then my self-esteem and exercise regime has allowed me to see my body properly, and the difficulties I’ve had losing weight from my bum and thighs has made it obvious – like many British women, I am in fact a pear-shape. So, I guess I’m the perfect candidate to test Lynne’s theory that Pilates can help with that. She recommends that you do about three hours of Pilates a week – on average, I guess, 30 minutes a day with one day off (that was MENTAL MATHS!). She also suggests you get in some cardio for your overall health, and add in incidental exercise like walking. Of course, you need to watch your diet, as well.

The DVD has four sections, an introduction, a section entitled Fundamentals 1, then two workouts. Workout one is for a top-to-toe exercising, and workout two is shorter, and more targeted to problem areas. This is not an exercise DVD you can pop in and get started on right away – you need to watch the Fundamentals section first (which is around 27 minutes long), so you can understand more about Pilates, what it tries to achieve, and how to do the poses. You also need some equipment – but nothing you might not have lying around the house already, particularly if you’ve done some home exercising before. You’ll need a flat cushion or folded towel for your head, a fatter cushion to hold between your legs and the like, a chair, a stretch band or long scarf, hand weights (no more than 3 kilos) and ankle weights (no more than 1 kilo).

I’ll be challenging myself to do three hours of this DVD every week during January. Why not join me? You can purchase Inch Loss Pilates from www.bodycontrolpilates.com or www.amazon.co.uk – RRP £14.99, due out 31 December. You can also download a digital version for £9.99.

This post is based on a complimentary product supplied to me for the purposes of review in this blog.

30 Day Shred: A Review

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It seems to me that there’s only a very finite amount of ways to exercise. There are hundreds of types, yes, but the way you do exercise is limited to certain scenarios. Obviously, if you’re a builder or do a physical job, that’s your exercise. You can take a class. You can go to the gym. You can go jogging or swimming. You can workout in a home gym. You can do exercise DVDs. You can play games on your computer. I’ve tried most of these things – except the physical job stuff. I think learning a trade so I can fit exercise into my daily routine is taking it a bit far… Of all the methods you can use to get fit, exercise DVDs are by far and away the best method for me. I don’t have to leave the house, adding travel time onto my workout sessions. I don’t have to wait for people to be finished with workout equipment. I don’t have to buy extra equipment. I don’t have to keep to other people’s schedules.

Before I tried Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred, I’d honestly not done a workout DVD before. I had no idea what to expect. I’d done a few months of exercise regimes on the Wii (EA Sports, Wii Fit, etc), and they were fairly hard work, but you usually had to wait in between exercises, and thusly everything took longer. One thing you can say about 30DS is that there is NO waiting around between exercises.

I think I picked the 30DS DVD up at the beginning of January 2010. Not as a ‘New Year Resolution’, but just to keep my routine fresh, as I was losing weight for my wedding that year (August). In the space of a month, I lost 8lbs, by combining the 30DS with a calorie restriction of 1200 calories a day. It was completely amazing, and gave me so much confidence. With results like that, it’s easy to see why I am such a huge fan of Jillian Michaels!

So, that’s the results out of the way (hmm, maybe I should have kept that until the end?), so I’ll talk more about how the workout is structured. There are three 30 minute workouts (she says 20 minutes, but has since admitted this was a little fib to get people motivated – if you include warm ups and cool downs, they’re closer to 30 mins each), and the idea is that you start at level one, do that for 10 days, then level two for 10 days, then level three for 10 days, throughout the month. You can stop and have a break if you want to, obviously! I think the most rewarding aspect of the programme for me was being able to tell that you were getting gradually better with each repetition of the level. When you start level one, you’ll probably feel like you’re going to die. When you’ve finished level three, and go back to level one, you’ll feel like you’re on holiday. The progression you make in just a month is really amazing.

Since trying this DVD, I’ve only bought three other workout DVDs from other trainers or celebrities. One was a joke gift for my husband, which was the workout DVD of a Corrie star, which took about 45 minutes and felt like waiting for the bus – not hard, not tiring, just very, very boring. One was Davina’s workout (love Davina!), which again, I didn’t feel was efficient, but was okay. I liked the kick boxing elements, but other parts just didn’t feel like a real workout. Then I did Tracey Anderson – but the least said about that the better, really… I’ve since given up on other trainers, because I’d rather work my butt off for half an hour and do some real exercise, than fanny about for 45 minutes and not even get a sweat on. I also really like the structure and progression of 30DS. You have a set amount of time to do it in, you can measure your results, you progress through, and you have an end point. With other DVDs, it seems like you continue until you’re bored, or just lose motivation.

Oh, and Jillian also gets bonus points for her hilarious commentary. I know some people don’t like being yelled at from the telly, but I find it actually really motivated me to work harder. I’d rather watch Jillian telling me to kick my own butt than watch a celebrity tell me that the workout was hard and their legs ached.

You can purchase 30 Day Shred from Amazon (currently £4.99): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jillian-Michaels-Day-Shred-DVD/dp/B002RNOS2Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346329577&sr=8-1. Or, you can download it from iTunes – which is actually really handy. I’ve downloaded it to my phone, so if I go on holiday I can do the workout that way with water bottles or cans as my weights! And, once you’ve completed 30DS, you can move on to Ripped in 30!

GOOD LUCK! – And, let me know if you’ve tried 30 Day Shred, and what you thought of it!