3 days only

[wonderwoman]

Cathe,
I had to cut down my workouts to 3 days a week I am down to Mon Wed & Fri and only have approx 1 hour to get it down. I have all of your workouts. Which ones with give me a good overall balance of cardio and weights. I'm looking to tighten up a bit and lose about 5 pounds.
Thanks for any input you may have for me..

[mini-natty]

I love this one! Great question, you are making me think now.....


Day 1 - High Impact Cardio from these choices: CCC, Imax 2 or 3, KPC, Hiit)

Day 2- Low Impact Cardio from these choices: Afterburn, AT, Slide & Glide

Day 3 - Total body weight training w/upper & lower: Muscle Endurance, Muscle Max, STS Total body


My goal would be to get the "best bang for my buck" in the least amount of time.

[Stephanie0523]

If I were you, I'd try doing the 4 Day Split workouts. You can probably find a premix to fit your time constraints, and you would be doing a mix of cardio and weights each workout, but working different body parts. HTH! You're doing better than I am on workouts. With the holidays, I have had very FEW workouts. So I kind of need to practice what I preach!

[Beth-B-Fit]

Good question. Got me thinking too. From what I've been reading, I would do 1/2 hour of interval cardio and 1/2 hour of heavy weight work each day. If you alternate the upper and lower body you'd do two upper one week and two lower next week.

Monday: Interval cardio and upper body
Wed.: Interval cardio and lower body
Friday: Interval cardio and upper body

Then the next week start with lower body so you're always alternating.

You have lots of interval choices: CCC, HIIT, Premixes from Low Max, IMAX's, the new series (AB, SG), etc.

For weights use premixes and go as heavy as possible: PUB (up only, and down only premixes) Push/Pull, MM upper, etc. Focus on the compound exercises to get the most bang for your time/work.

Good luck!

Beth

[bethj]

Some other ideas:
I would do STS Meso 1 weights. Its designed for 3 days a week, and the workouts use a lot of total body muscles that get your heart rate up, especially in legs which is extremely cardio. But the pushups scattered through the chest workouts are very cardio, as are the pull-ups in back/tris. Using as heavy as you can to fail at 15 reps will really get your heart rate going, giving you both a weights and cardio benefit in the one hour workout.
Another alternative would be circuits that alternate cardio and heavy weights throughout the one hour workout. My favorites are High Step Training, High Step Challenge, and Intensity series Bootcamp (not 4 day split bootcamp.) The Bootcamp DVD also has Muscle Endurance, which has a lot of leg presses scattered throughout which makes it very cardio AND the DVD has a ME/Bootcamp circuit premix that is killer. Even harder (but longer) are Terminator DVD workouts Viper and Gauntlet.
As you can see, you have lots of good options!
Beth

[wonderwoman]

Thanks for all the great options! Lots to think about. Today I did muscle max. The premix option. It got my hr rate for maybe about 15 minutes. The leg portion of it. I wanted to do some cardio later on but came down with some stomach bug. Was throwing up and could not get out of the bathroom for about 2 hours. Then had the shivers afterwards. Was so weird. Now my husbands got it. My 16 month old had on Saturday. It's like trickling down. I hope my 6 yr old doesn't get it!