Cardiolates

I bought Cardiolates from Collage (after being curious about a new rebounding workout that has Pilates too) and got to try it out this morning. I haven't reviewed a workout in a long time, but this one was so much fun that I just HAD to share my excitement for it!

I previewed it over the weekend and saw that the Pilates portion is really only about 4 minutes minutes long (with a 10 minute warm-up and about a 5 minute stetch) -- so I decided to reverse the order of the workout and do the rebounding first, then get all that stretching at the end.

The rebounding portion consists of a few minutes of warm-up knee lifts and bounces to a little under 30 minutes of rebounding routines, then about 10 minutes of cardio challenges. Collage's time breakdown makes it somehow look like less cardio, but it's a lot -- especially with the form and speed they use.

I've mostly rebounded for the past few years on my own to the hi/lo that I don't like in other videos or during the weights in a cardio/weights dvd to make it all cardio. The only rebounding workout I've done is G-Force, which I love (and always use the hand-weights with -- it's not nearly as challenging as this one).

In the beginning bounce session, I found that they were bouncing slower than I was. I finally figured out (duh!) that I needed to jump higher to achieve a slower bounce and it took the intensity in my lower body up immediately.

The twins who lead the video (Katherine & Kimberly Corp) are 5th Avenue Pilates instructors (and studio owners) in NYC. THey are former Rockettes and have impeccable Pilates form as they jump and amazingly effortless high kicks when they kick.

I thought when previewing that the weight section (usinng one or two pound dumbbells) would be the most challenging. But it wasn't. It was a lot of fun and I was keeping up pretty well. It was when they started their polka song that I went into a higher heartrate and eventually had to modify. Lots of knee up moves and kicks.

There is such a huge variety of jumps, turns, songs (you feel like you're going through "It's A Small World" with the changes in cultures or even American cultures of songs). I think my favorite was the Celtic song because I felt like a Riverdance girl and gained a huge appreciation for them in how challenging it is to kick, hop, and keep your arms down and body erect at the same time.

For the cardio challenge, it wasn't as crazy as I thought it might be and was a lot of fun. More drill oriented like Cathe would do with plyos or something but with different jumps or kicks in a jump 3x kick once, then jump 2x kick twice, then jump once, kick 3x fashion.

By the end, I welcomed the warm-up, felt like I'd been working out for an hour (not in a watch-the-clock fashion, but for feeling like I'd worked my whole body) and was happy for the long stretches.

I never ended up going back to the beginning to do the initial stretches or Pilates because I ran out of time and needed to go take two of my children to summer school. But I'm going to try it that way again on Wednesday. I can see myself using this dvd a LOT! :sun: