10 Minute Trainer Set

This series from Beachbody has five ten- minute workouts led by Tony Horton. It is extremely expensive for what you get. Many VFers were interested in the set but the did not get it due to price. I myself do agree that it IS quite expensive and I don’t know what pipe Beachbody was smoking when they decided to sell it for what they are. But at the same time, I am a huge Tony fan and I really enjoy this sort of workout, so I decided to purchase it for myself.

Each workout follows the same format: ten moves, done for 1 minute each. The ab workout features twenty exercises done for 30 seconds, but even in the other routines, they often switch to a variation at the halfway point anyway, whether it be changing sides if the move only works one half of the body, or going up to a more advanced variation. So once you have done one workout in the series, the others will look familiar to you when you try them. In each routine, Tony works one on one with either Janie or Gretchen. Keep your eye primarily on them, because Tony often will stop after one rep to chat with them or coach them (i.e. Tony does not do all the reps himself). There is also a “trainer track” option where Tony talks more and gives lots of instruction. I tried this once, on one tape, and found it a distraction so I did not attempt it with the other workouts.

The workouts come on two disks inside one case. There is also a small booklet (which didn’t say much), a recipe booklet, a nicely done set of "on the go"cards which features a ten-move travel routine, a crash diet which I did not even look at, and some resistance bands with a door attachment and a belt. These latter two items are only used in the cardio routine and they are optional. You need to have three hinges on your door, which I do not, so I didn’t even try it.

There is also a rotation calendar. The calendar lists three options for each day (except the rest day, which only has yoga). In each day, the first workout listed is the primary or compulsory one and you can add on one or both of the other two if you have time. Many people on the internet seemed to feel misled by this. They thought they could get the promised results in only ten minutes a day. But I understood that you are meant to add these together, so I was fine with this premise. I have other dvds from the Quick Fix and Ten Minute Solution series, as well as Gilad’s Express set and Chris Freytag’s Move to Lose set which also use this format (ten minute routines you can combine together to make longer workouts) and I plan to mix and match my other workouts into these. I somehow find three ten-minute workouts in a row much less onerous than one thirty- minute workout, and find that I push myself more in these short programs than I do in the more traditional program.

Here are some comments on the individual routines in this set:

TOTAL BODY: This uses the resistance band. It has a nice mix of upper body, plus one or two ab moves. I was worried there was no upper body tape (unless you buy another kit) so I was glad to see how thorough this one was. I found the bands effective. There was one biceps move that really relied on you using them, but for the others, weights could be used. However, there is not a lot of transition time between exercises, so if you want to put down the band and grab weights, you’ll have to move quickly and you might miss a few reps. I found as well that in moves only working one side, they did not pause the countdown while she changed sides, so you sometimes lost three or four seconds on the second side. That’s not normally an issue, but when you only have 30 seconds (one minute split up between two sides of the body) it’s more of a problem.

ABS: I found this workout to be way too much for me. On the plus, each move is only done for 30 seconds. On the minus, some of them are really hard. There are two exercises in a row which are plank-based and involve you going into a plank and then doing something else while you are there. Each of these moves works one side of the body at a time, so you are actually doing FOUR sets in a row. Never mind core strength, I just don’t have the upper body strength for that! And I am not coordinated enough to manage a plank AND something else at the same time. I found the ab workout to be discouragingly difficult and I am not sure how I can work up to it. I will be dreading it when it comes up in the schedule.

LOWER BODY: Loved it! There are some really cool moves in there (like this great rocking lunge with a band) and a nice mix between actual strength moves and cardio-based lower body moves like kick-squat combos and a sort of squat-hop combo that I really felt in the thighs. I will get a lot of use out of this routine!

CARDIO: Another I really liked. It’s like a shorter version of Plyo X! I wish they had included another one so you could rotate, as cardio comes up in the schedule nearly every day. Tony had some really fun banter in this one, and although it was a tough workout, I really enjoyed it and found it left me energized and proud of myself for really pushing it. That’s what I love about this style of training, I may still have twenty minutes of workout left, but not on this! So it’s easy to push harder since I know it won’t be for long.

YOGA: As I predicted on preview, the weakest of the set. One minute per move is just too fast. It’s not a flowing routine like Slim & Limber from Slim Series. It’s really “do this, now do this, now do this.” It offer a fairly comprehensive stretch when all was said and done, and I felt like it covered all the bases. But at time, I felt like Tony was hurrying me along. Remember, the one minute is per entire move. So if you have to switch sides, it’s only 30 seconds per side, and that can go by fairly quickly.

Final verdict: I love it. These are exactly the sorts of workouts I use often, and it is nice to have some advanced options. Most other cardio I have found which is in this format is either kickboxing, dance or easy. So to have an athletic cardio which is advanced and fits in with this mix and match style of training is wonderful. And I enjoyed nearly all of the other ones too, to the point of being sorry I did not spring for the deluxe kit which has three more routines. But I am still bitter at the price. For what I paid, they should have given me a few more routines so that I’d have an easier ab routine to start with, and enough cardio so that you’re not doing the same ten minutes for thirty days in a row. With the price issue aside and looking solely at the quality of the workouts themselves and their potential uses for me, though---I am pleased. Very pleased. I’ll use them, and often. And I think I will progress very well with them.