Hi folks:
I have previewed all six of the videos from the new series and done three of them.
They are immaculately well produced, completely professional. Overall Cathe is at her most relaxed and having a lot of fun as she films this series. Her crew look great and are probably in the best shape of their lives.
They are an inpiration to us all and what's great about all this is that they are role models: I do not feel any fear encountering this new series. "Intensity" is just a word. The crew have all mastered these tapes, and we can all do it too. I'm sure of that. Have no fear, just leap right in!
I have done three so far and did just fine with them, and I know I am not the strongest person on these forums. I even managed to lift more than I normally do on the pyramid upper tape!
1. Cardio with weights:
Start with this tape, this is just pure fun. I laughed and whooped along with the crew during this one. I had a total blast. The first song Cathe chooses for step work is called "you want this party started right?" and she also features it on the Muscle Endurance tape: it is a great song and perfect to set up the whole of the new series as a party with Cathe and her crew. She even calls Cardio with weights "the party's over!" at one point, and that just sums up her "just having fun" atitude on this one.
The choreography is fab: I have it down after one run through. It's loads of stuff you know and love from other tapes all combined together in new combinations. It keeps moving, no breaks, and yes, it gets your heart rate up there. Someone said it was "easy" on another post. I would say that it's easier than Inerval Max 1 or 2, but not easy. What gets you on this tape and the Boot Camp is the quick and constant changes between cardio, body flying over the step, to a sudden compound strength move. I got winded starting up the second cardio cycle after just doing weights, but then the body adapts to this rhythm and the fun factor kicks right back in. I finished feeling exhilarated, not wiped out.
There are different exercises on this tape that make it interesting, eg. an Arnolds press for shoulders, which I had never done before so I was so glad not to see a standard military press yet again! But be very careful with the abs section: there came a point when I realized I was compromising my back, (both legs of the floor and back at an incline), so I lowered the legs back to the floor in order to ccomplete the exercise. The abs exercises are not to be underestimated by anyone who has back trouble. Please be careful. Cathe goes through these exercises perhaps a tad too fast for safety.
Overall rating A+. (all those who voted to keep this format rather than let Cathe change it to an All Step tape at the 11th hour: good choice!)
Where do you locate it in a rotation? Well,I never bother with such things because I hate to be limited by order and restrictions in my fitness regime (there's enough discipline and order in the rest of my life thank you very much!), so I would count this as a cardio/total body endurance day, and do this tape in addition to my x2 per week upper body strength training sessions.
If you get this on DVD, it will be very easy to just chapter it to do all the cardio sessions only as a 36 minute cardio blast, skipping the weights work, right before some weight training for example. It could precede pyramid upper body perfectly.
2. Pyramid lower body.
This tapes fairly zips along, especially in the first, strictly pyramid section. If you are someone who tends to linger between sets, gets tempted to go put laundry on or chat to the cat, this workout will put a stop to that and your endurance may thank you for it. Once you start a section, especially the superset of squats and immediately, plie squats, you are thrust into this superset and you will not be leaving it until you are done!
So, I think that personally I will grow a lot with this tape, and it will also help with endurance, simply because of the fast pace and the ability to eliminate a tendency towards taking breaks between sets. I used exactly the same weights as Cathe on lower body, more in some places because I do not have a barbell and the dumbells are in set weights and therefore not as changeable as the barbell (eg. no 35 pounds!!!) and I am happy to report that I could have gone heavier and now need to go get a barbell so I can do just that.
This tape allows you to push for a heavier weight that perhaps you might be a bit wary of doing on a PH or Muscle Endurance set when you know that if you do take it up by another 5 pounds, you may not make it through the low ends and "stay down there's." On this tape you can safely push to that higher place because you will only be there for 8 or 2x8 reps, and we can do anything for that long, right?!!
The floorwork in the second section is very similar to the floor work in Pure Stength Legs tape, basically it's the same exercises but just done on the ball. Some of them I think I will prefer to do without the ball as the crew seem to be wobbling a bit trying to keep the ball in place so they could do the exercise. Don't know about this one yet.
Rating: A+ on the pyramid section.
3. Pyramid upper body:
surprised me enormously. I usually have to force myself to train the upper body, I'm an ecto and this is my weak area, especially shoulders and trceps. I went straight into this tape after the pyranid section of Pyramid lower body, and finished it with relish and enthusiasm, which amazed me. I think the thing is, we just need variety in our lives, and these tapes provide just that. It's a different sort of challenge.
I loved the opening chest pec flyes and bench presses series and was able to go heavier than I normally manage with these exercises on MIS, prhaps because those brutal (to me) push ups were eliminated. And that's great because this kind of success now inpsires me to go heavier elsewhere too, like I'm not the total puny weakling I thought I was! The back exercise was new to me also, the pull overs and again I was surpised how heavy I could go, I had to stop and change up halfway through because I wasn't feeling the burn I expected to feel. Triceps features the overhead extensions, and again, I surprised myself by going heavier over the series of lifts that I normally thought I could do.
Biceps is the killer! It's pretty funny actually because Cathe and her crew all feel it as a killer and as another poster mentioned, Cathe herself says she is having an outer body experience during this one! I tried staying with Cathe and managed it on my right arm all the way through, but my left arm just was not able to lift those 15's after all the preceding reps. I reached muscle failure alright! My arm couldn't go beyond the waist. What a laugh!!!!
The abs work was new and different and I think, quite elegant. I don't yet have a stabiity ball, so did the exercises without one and substituted a dumbell in other places and I did just fine. I actually enjoyed these exercises and don't remember doing any traditional crunches. Were there any?!?!?!?!?
Rating: A+ fabulous.
Overall, I think this upper body tpe will do great things for ectos, and as a whole, I think it's possible to make significant strength gains with the pyramid series of tapes, especially if you intersperse them with the PS series and Slow and Heavy.
4. Boot Camp Preview;
Stupendous variety!! Forget the rigidty of rotations with this tape. Forget classifications! Just stick it in where you can. it's straight back to school and good old YMCA circuit classes with this one. Do you remember burpees from school? They are back and Cathe calls them squat thrust terminators!!! I haven't done it yet, but I'm gonna love it I can tell. There's something of everything in this tape, you just can't get bored. It's a total cardiovascular/endurance challenge, and although you never do anything for very long, the challenge to the body lies in the rapid changes demanded of you.
5. Muscle Endurance:
looks fabulous and I am happy to say there's only one set of lunges! Yippee!!!! Immediately I like it a whole lot more than PH! It is similar to PH but there's a lot of new exercises and the three repeating sets of leg presses is just one of them. The music is one of the best variations of music on any of the new Intensity series videos. Very motivating.
What makes it different from MIS and PH is the pacing. THis video will be perfect for people who find that they could probably go heavier and stronger on upper body exercises (ectos like me) if the upper body section was not all lumped together, but rather with the separate sections for each upper body part distributed throughout the workout. On this video Cathe distributes the body parts evenly, and I think it makes a huge difference. So, no body part will be able to give up completely because it always gets a rest while you concentrate on another part. And the leg work features all the way through, interspersed throughout, so you can keep pushing.
This feature will also make it impossible to split this video into a lower body section one day and upper body another. It's too mixed in for that, and for me, that's a plus not a minus.
6. Imax 2:
Interesting, tons of variety. Fancy foot work! There's a curious anxiety surrounding this tape, it has a noticeably different tone from all of the others. There's a "just havin fun" attitude on the others that is not visible here. It's a clean, professional job, but even Cathe seems relieved when certain cyles are over, the "tough" ones.
I found the soundtrack on this one to be not quite right. Is it just my tape or are they all like this? The music is much louder than Cathe's cueing and I don't think the balance is right. Even previewing it I had to strain to catch what Cathe was saying a lot of the time and it gave me a headache. No one needs to get a head ache doing a workout!!! So I think the balance between audibility of cueing versus loud enough music to be inspirational is slightly off on this tape. Cathe just sounds muffled and not at all clear, is she calling from planet Pluto? On all the other tapes she is perfectly clear and right there in my living room.
Anyone else got this experience or is it just my copy?
7. The Crew:
Overall, Brenda gets my vote of the year for most enthusiastic, jolly-hockey sticks, 'get right in there and give it all you've got' exerciser! She needs to be right up there with Cathe (why is she stuck in the back on IMAX 2?), she matches her every step of the way, even when some of the old hands are giving out with fatigue!
Jai seems less happy on some of the cardio portions, but when it's muscle building time, the camera zooms in on her, she has beautiful form; her chiseled body is a walking doctor's office anatomy chart for musculature of the human body!
And I have new found respect for Cedie (usually not one of my favourites): she counts everything, Cathe couldn't do without her, and she provides all the background whoops and cheers on Boot Camp, helping to lighten the tone and remnd us all, that there's nothing to be scared about in the Intensity Series: it's a blast!
Clare
I have previewed all six of the videos from the new series and done three of them.
They are immaculately well produced, completely professional. Overall Cathe is at her most relaxed and having a lot of fun as she films this series. Her crew look great and are probably in the best shape of their lives.
They are an inpiration to us all and what's great about all this is that they are role models: I do not feel any fear encountering this new series. "Intensity" is just a word. The crew have all mastered these tapes, and we can all do it too. I'm sure of that. Have no fear, just leap right in!
I have done three so far and did just fine with them, and I know I am not the strongest person on these forums. I even managed to lift more than I normally do on the pyramid upper tape!
1. Cardio with weights:
Start with this tape, this is just pure fun. I laughed and whooped along with the crew during this one. I had a total blast. The first song Cathe chooses for step work is called "you want this party started right?" and she also features it on the Muscle Endurance tape: it is a great song and perfect to set up the whole of the new series as a party with Cathe and her crew. She even calls Cardio with weights "the party's over!" at one point, and that just sums up her "just having fun" atitude on this one.
The choreography is fab: I have it down after one run through. It's loads of stuff you know and love from other tapes all combined together in new combinations. It keeps moving, no breaks, and yes, it gets your heart rate up there. Someone said it was "easy" on another post. I would say that it's easier than Inerval Max 1 or 2, but not easy. What gets you on this tape and the Boot Camp is the quick and constant changes between cardio, body flying over the step, to a sudden compound strength move. I got winded starting up the second cardio cycle after just doing weights, but then the body adapts to this rhythm and the fun factor kicks right back in. I finished feeling exhilarated, not wiped out.
There are different exercises on this tape that make it interesting, eg. an Arnolds press for shoulders, which I had never done before so I was so glad not to see a standard military press yet again! But be very careful with the abs section: there came a point when I realized I was compromising my back, (both legs of the floor and back at an incline), so I lowered the legs back to the floor in order to ccomplete the exercise. The abs exercises are not to be underestimated by anyone who has back trouble. Please be careful. Cathe goes through these exercises perhaps a tad too fast for safety.
Overall rating A+. (all those who voted to keep this format rather than let Cathe change it to an All Step tape at the 11th hour: good choice!)
Where do you locate it in a rotation? Well,I never bother with such things because I hate to be limited by order and restrictions in my fitness regime (there's enough discipline and order in the rest of my life thank you very much!), so I would count this as a cardio/total body endurance day, and do this tape in addition to my x2 per week upper body strength training sessions.
If you get this on DVD, it will be very easy to just chapter it to do all the cardio sessions only as a 36 minute cardio blast, skipping the weights work, right before some weight training for example. It could precede pyramid upper body perfectly.
2. Pyramid lower body.
This tapes fairly zips along, especially in the first, strictly pyramid section. If you are someone who tends to linger between sets, gets tempted to go put laundry on or chat to the cat, this workout will put a stop to that and your endurance may thank you for it. Once you start a section, especially the superset of squats and immediately, plie squats, you are thrust into this superset and you will not be leaving it until you are done!
So, I think that personally I will grow a lot with this tape, and it will also help with endurance, simply because of the fast pace and the ability to eliminate a tendency towards taking breaks between sets. I used exactly the same weights as Cathe on lower body, more in some places because I do not have a barbell and the dumbells are in set weights and therefore not as changeable as the barbell (eg. no 35 pounds!!!) and I am happy to report that I could have gone heavier and now need to go get a barbell so I can do just that.
This tape allows you to push for a heavier weight that perhaps you might be a bit wary of doing on a PH or Muscle Endurance set when you know that if you do take it up by another 5 pounds, you may not make it through the low ends and "stay down there's." On this tape you can safely push to that higher place because you will only be there for 8 or 2x8 reps, and we can do anything for that long, right?!!
The floorwork in the second section is very similar to the floor work in Pure Stength Legs tape, basically it's the same exercises but just done on the ball. Some of them I think I will prefer to do without the ball as the crew seem to be wobbling a bit trying to keep the ball in place so they could do the exercise. Don't know about this one yet.
Rating: A+ on the pyramid section.
3. Pyramid upper body:
surprised me enormously. I usually have to force myself to train the upper body, I'm an ecto and this is my weak area, especially shoulders and trceps. I went straight into this tape after the pyranid section of Pyramid lower body, and finished it with relish and enthusiasm, which amazed me. I think the thing is, we just need variety in our lives, and these tapes provide just that. It's a different sort of challenge.
I loved the opening chest pec flyes and bench presses series and was able to go heavier than I normally manage with these exercises on MIS, prhaps because those brutal (to me) push ups were eliminated. And that's great because this kind of success now inpsires me to go heavier elsewhere too, like I'm not the total puny weakling I thought I was! The back exercise was new to me also, the pull overs and again I was surpised how heavy I could go, I had to stop and change up halfway through because I wasn't feeling the burn I expected to feel. Triceps features the overhead extensions, and again, I surprised myself by going heavier over the series of lifts that I normally thought I could do.
Biceps is the killer! It's pretty funny actually because Cathe and her crew all feel it as a killer and as another poster mentioned, Cathe herself says she is having an outer body experience during this one! I tried staying with Cathe and managed it on my right arm all the way through, but my left arm just was not able to lift those 15's after all the preceding reps. I reached muscle failure alright! My arm couldn't go beyond the waist. What a laugh!!!!
The abs work was new and different and I think, quite elegant. I don't yet have a stabiity ball, so did the exercises without one and substituted a dumbell in other places and I did just fine. I actually enjoyed these exercises and don't remember doing any traditional crunches. Were there any?!?!?!?!?
Rating: A+ fabulous.
Overall, I think this upper body tpe will do great things for ectos, and as a whole, I think it's possible to make significant strength gains with the pyramid series of tapes, especially if you intersperse them with the PS series and Slow and Heavy.
4. Boot Camp Preview;
Stupendous variety!! Forget the rigidty of rotations with this tape. Forget classifications! Just stick it in where you can. it's straight back to school and good old YMCA circuit classes with this one. Do you remember burpees from school? They are back and Cathe calls them squat thrust terminators!!! I haven't done it yet, but I'm gonna love it I can tell. There's something of everything in this tape, you just can't get bored. It's a total cardiovascular/endurance challenge, and although you never do anything for very long, the challenge to the body lies in the rapid changes demanded of you.
5. Muscle Endurance:
looks fabulous and I am happy to say there's only one set of lunges! Yippee!!!! Immediately I like it a whole lot more than PH! It is similar to PH but there's a lot of new exercises and the three repeating sets of leg presses is just one of them. The music is one of the best variations of music on any of the new Intensity series videos. Very motivating.
What makes it different from MIS and PH is the pacing. THis video will be perfect for people who find that they could probably go heavier and stronger on upper body exercises (ectos like me) if the upper body section was not all lumped together, but rather with the separate sections for each upper body part distributed throughout the workout. On this video Cathe distributes the body parts evenly, and I think it makes a huge difference. So, no body part will be able to give up completely because it always gets a rest while you concentrate on another part. And the leg work features all the way through, interspersed throughout, so you can keep pushing.
This feature will also make it impossible to split this video into a lower body section one day and upper body another. It's too mixed in for that, and for me, that's a plus not a minus.
6. Imax 2:
Interesting, tons of variety. Fancy foot work! There's a curious anxiety surrounding this tape, it has a noticeably different tone from all of the others. There's a "just havin fun" attitude on the others that is not visible here. It's a clean, professional job, but even Cathe seems relieved when certain cyles are over, the "tough" ones.
I found the soundtrack on this one to be not quite right. Is it just my tape or are they all like this? The music is much louder than Cathe's cueing and I don't think the balance is right. Even previewing it I had to strain to catch what Cathe was saying a lot of the time and it gave me a headache. No one needs to get a head ache doing a workout!!! So I think the balance between audibility of cueing versus loud enough music to be inspirational is slightly off on this tape. Cathe just sounds muffled and not at all clear, is she calling from planet Pluto? On all the other tapes she is perfectly clear and right there in my living room.
Anyone else got this experience or is it just my copy?
7. The Crew:
Overall, Brenda gets my vote of the year for most enthusiastic, jolly-hockey sticks, 'get right in there and give it all you've got' exerciser! She needs to be right up there with Cathe (why is she stuck in the back on IMAX 2?), she matches her every step of the way, even when some of the old hands are giving out with fatigue!
Jai seems less happy on some of the cardio portions, but when it's muscle building time, the camera zooms in on her, she has beautiful form; her chiseled body is a walking doctor's office anatomy chart for musculature of the human body!
And I have new found respect for Cedie (usually not one of my favourites): she counts everything, Cathe couldn't do without her, and she provides all the background whoops and cheers on Boot Camp, helping to lighten the tone and remnd us all, that there's nothing to be scared about in the Intensity Series: it's a blast!
Clare
