XTrain - Hard Strikes

Cathe works out in a brick set with 4 background exercisers to some great new music. You will only need weighted gloves & dumbbells for this 46 min boxing and conditioning workout. The dvd is fully chaptered and contains premixes & bonus segments.

After a warmup, exercises include: fun punch combos - often keeping your feet moving so you really keep your heart pumping, knee pulls, jack rope and scissor drills, jump squats, ice breakers, flurries, shuffle- hook and traveling punches. The upper body Conditioning segment includes: alt military press, bear crawl press ups, balance bi's, side plank shoulder press, tri dips, sit up & punch combos, and a sit up & push up combo. There is a separate cooldown section.

Bonus Core (10 min): sit up variations, crunch variations, V twists, gorilla walk, plank knee drops & knee pulls, plank toe taps, plank hold, & banana roll crunches. This was a tough little ab routine!!!

Bonus Burn Set Tris (14 min): Exercises include tri pushups, lying overhead tris, tubing French press, and kickbacks.

Bonus Heavy Bag (13 min): Wearing weighted gloves Cathe leads you through 4 sets of tabata punches, various punch combos for 20 seconds followed by 10 seconds of rest. I dont have a heavy bag so I just shadow boxed & still got a great workout.

Rep Bicep Challenge (7 min): 100 reps of barbell bicep curls!

I rate this a high intermediate routine in terms of intensity but found the choreo easy to catch on to. Fun routines, with lots of variety, cardio drills, boxing combos, and upper body strength work make this an awesome calorie burner & upper body toner. The time really flew by and I enjoyed the pace & worked up a great sweat! I received this dvd to review.

I think this is an awesome dvd for those days when you have lower body DOMS or don't want a weighted lower-body workout. The 1st section (warm-up/cardio boxing/kickboxing) somewhat mixes plyometrics/standard cardio with boxing/kickboxing moves. Some examples of plyo/cardio: squats (pulses, full-range, traveling wide-stance), jump rope, jumping jacks, jumping scissors, running in place, hopping foot to foot. Some boxing moves you'll see: boxers shuffle, jab/cross/knee smash, speed bag upper cuts. Nothing too choreographed, no long combinations, more of a drill-style.

The conditioning section is a great little upper body burner: overhead press, bear crawl, biceps/hammer curl, side plank with dumbbell press, triceps dips, sit ups (with jab/strike, speedbag, pushups). If you tack on the Bonus 100 Rep Biceps Challenge and the Bonus Burn Sets Tris, you'd get a heavy duty 30 minute upper body blaster! (In fact, this is probably one of those many premixes included on the dvd.)

Here are some time breakdowns (approximates):

Warmup/cardio: 31 min

Conditioning: 12 min

cool down/stretch: 4 min

Bonus core: 10.5 min

Bonus BURN SET Tris: 14 min

Bonus Heavy Bag: 13 min

100 Rep Challenge Biceps Curls: 7 min.