Body Weight Blast

I loved it!

I expected excellent music, a fun attitude from Patrick, interesting moves, lots of deep lunges and squats touching the floor, lots of core work weaved throughout the workout mostly in the form of plank variations, high intensity cardio and to get my butt kicked. I definitely got what I expected.

Since I know people will be asking how intense it is compared to Lean Hot Body and Extreme Calorie Burn, I would say it might be a bit easier. I managed to get through it for the most part even though I was having a lower energy day. I'm pretty strong and have good balance, so the parts where I did punk out were some of the cardio intervals. The last cardio interval has really fast tuck jumps that even the background exercisers couldn't keep up with! I also think that some of the bodyweight segments felt more like rest periods than in Lean Hot Body. It is definitely a strenuous workout, just maybe not as crazy as LHB.

On to the format: I think this new format is an improvement. It is less repetitive than Lean Hot Body and Extreme Calorie Burn. There are 8 sections with 3 minutes of bodyweight exercises, 2 minutes of "heavy" weights, and a 1 minute cardio interval. Sometimes you do something on the right hand side, and then repeat it on the left hand side, but the whole thing is not going to last more than 3 minutes tops before you're on to something else. It's also nice to have a good idea how long each little section is going to last.

There were some tribal feeling movements, animal movements, a wide variety of moves, returning to Patrick's emphasis on large range of motion in squats and lunges. He continually says to get your weights all the way to the floor on those moves.

What's new is that the weights are meant to be heavier. He said that backgrounder Sheila had 15 lb dumbbells. That is not really my definition of heavy weights, and in a few areas I could have gone much heavier because the reps were so few (bent over rows, suitcase deadlifts), but then he strings them together with some exercises where I would not want to go over 15 lbs. (I started with 15 but dropped to 10 lbs for this first time through the workout) It's a different way of training, and I certainly feel DOMS throughout my body today.

There's a lot of balance work that is fun to do and seems inspired sometimes by yoga, sometimes by dance. Plenty of core work in various plank exercises.

I am so happy with the amount of emphasis given to posterior chain muscles in this workout. Patrick is good at that.

I also want to add that this workout had super super fun factor. The music really is fantastic and goes with the moves. I was so happy to Sheila as a backgrounder, again. Patrick has a lot of fun interchanges with her throughout the workout. He teases her a lot and it makes me chuckle.

Oh, the dvd menu allows you to select the entire workout, or to customize your workout by picking which sections you want to do. You can choose from the warm up, cool down, and all 8 individual sections. This would make using this dvd for add-ons quite easy, as well as designing your own little premix to fit whatever time you have available, or even just scrambling them into a different order.