Fitness Friday – July 23 2010

I know what most of you are thinking - “What?!  Fitness Friday?!  Where is the Cass Lake post?!?!?!”  Well, people – things like that take time to craft into a fun, witty post complete with captions and photos and possibly videos.  So you will have to wait until I am good and ready! 

As promised, this week I was going to talk about my favorite barre workout.  But first - what is this barre?  Well, I’ll tell you!  Barre workouts are composed of small, isometric movements that are designed to exhaust the working muscle.  Its non impact and therefore very easy on your joints.  Barre workouts target the entire body and produce amazing results in short amounts of time.  If you want to sculpt a long, lean “dancer’s body” – then barre workouts are for you!  They are pretty intense – but in a good way.  At least, that’s how I feel about them!  Today’s featured workout is Physique 57 – my personal fav. 

You may have heard of Physique 57 as the workout that gave Kelly Ripa her “ripped arms.”  Now, I can’t promise that you will get “Kelly Ripa arms” from this workout.  I think genetics plays a big role in those guns of hers!  However, P57 will definitely sculpt your arms.  The “warm up” is where your arms get worked in P57.  The arm work consists of weight work (2 sets of dumbells – a lighter set and a heavier set) and also some tricep dips and pushups.  Yes, you can do them on  your knees to start and work your way up to doing them on your toes and then finally on one leg. 

Next up is thigh work, which I find to be the most intense part of the workout.  After that is the “seat” portion (butt work).  Finally, there is the abs, pelvic tucks and final stretches.  The entire Classic workout clocks in at  - you guessed it – 57 minutes.  Time seriously flies with this workout.  It is over before you know it!  There are 2 other workouts that they offer – the 30 minute Express workout and also the Arms and Abs booster.  They also have a set of new DVD’s coming out this fall.  Christmas in October for me, people! : ) 

I would have gone into more detail on the exercises that are included, but I thought it might be better to just include a video to show you all what P57 is about.  It really is a great workout.  Men can do it too.  I actually think men would be humbled by this workout.  Its no walk in the park.  A lot of people have trouble finishing this DVD the first few times because it is pretty dang hard.  And what is great about it – is that it never gets easy.  It gets easier in the sense that you are able to complete it but it never becomes easy on your muscles.  As your form improves, you are able to work deeper into your muscles exhausting them faster.  I could go on and on about how much I love P57!  I got this workout in February and by April I was back in my skinny jeans.  As the girl says in the promo video before - “inches melted off.”  That was true for me as well.  I couldn’t believe how quickly this worked for me.  It definitely produced the results I was looking for – fitting back into my pre-pregnancy clothes.  So if you really want results and want them fast – give Physique 57 a try! 

Here’s the video:

And here is a link to their website.