Rapidfire 4: Sweat

This is now my favorite Rapidfire and pretty high up my favorite kickboxing workouts. I just want cardio. I usually have my own thing going on for strength training, including ab work, so I didn't make much use of her weights and ab segments in the past. #4 is all cardio, a full hour. The workout does also include an ab section before the stretch.

There are plenty of premixes for different lengths of time and types of cardio: boxing, kickboxing, blasts. The dvd menu also provides the opportunity to customize your workout by picking chapters in whatever order you want. It would also be quite easy to pick a chapter or two as add-ons.

The workout format is my favorite as well. I think of it as the best of both worlds: I love combos and I love drills. This format is a combo flowed by a drill or "blast." The blasts get your heart rate up, and don't last very long. The combos are not basic, and very fun. I didn't have trouble picking the combos up the first time, but I am pretty good at picking up combos. The combos are interesting enough that they won't get boring.

There are three kickboxing combos + blasts, and three boxing combos + blasts. The nice thing about the boxing combos is that she puts footwork in them, so you're not just standing there throwing a bunch of punches. The blasts included things like squats with crescent kicks, lunge backs to touch floor with a front jump kick, squat thrusts with squat jumps, defensive squats.

As usual, she has a modifier who shows a low impact version. It seems like it would also be quite possible to modify up the impact and cardiovascular challenge if necessary.

Going both by perceived exertion and my heart rate monitor stats, I found the intensity to be similar (maybe a teeny bit lower) to Rapidfire 2 and KCM's Trim Down both workouts premix, Kickbox Burn and Powerstrike 7. It might be a bit more intense than Powerstrike 6. It is definitely more intense than Rockout Knockout. That's plenty for me, since I don't want to go anaerobic all the time.

I loved the music and will probably crank it up next time. No problems with people being off beat that I could tell.

Even though I generally prefer kickboxing to boxing, I think my favorite section was the final boxing combo. It is so much fun and seems to go with the music really well.

I love Susan and think she's really relaxing more in front of the camera. She made a few jokes and seemed more comfortable. I was beaming with joy doing this one the first time. This is such a fun one!

I look forward to doing this one again and know I will get a lot of use out of it.