Butts & Guts

Beth everything down well, so I will offer some general impressions.

I LOVE this workout. It is challenging without being TOO tough. Many lower body workouts favor the quads, but this one gets the glutes as well. The standing segment utilizes a pair of light dumbells, a barbell, a high step, and a resistance band. The exercises include traveling lunges, squats, one-legged squats, deadlifts, and my personal favorites, firewalkers and low-pulse lunges. We hit the floor for outer thighs on the stability ball, followed by glute/hamstring bridge on the ball. Butt raises on the step with ankle weights, inner thighs, and butt work on all fours round out the routine. Cathe begins a very thorough ab segment with a weighted roll down/up/punch combo. Using weights isn't my preferred method of working the abs but only 2 more exercises with weights follow- weighted obliques and controlled crunches. We drop the weights for bicycles, more oblique work, crunch variations and plank work. Lower back rounds out the core work.

Beth everything down well, so I will offer some general impressions.

I LOVE this workout. It is challenging without being TOO tough. Many lower body workouts favor the quads, but this one gets the glutes as well. The standing segment utilizes a pair of light dumbells, a barbell, a high step, and a resistance band. The exercises include traveling lunges, squats, one-legged squats, deadlifts, and my personal favorites, firewalkers and low-pulse lunges. We hit the floor for outer thighs on the stability ball, followed by glute/hamstring bridge on the ball. Butt raises on the step with ankle weights, inner thighs, and butt work on all fours round out the routine. Cathe begins a very thorough ab segment with a weighted roll down/up/punch combo. Using weights isn't my preferred method of working the abs but only 2 more exercises with weights follow- weighted obliques and controlled crunches. We drop the weights for bicycles, more oblique work, crunch variations and plank work. Lower back rounds out the core work.

I have to admit, I'm a little scared of Cathe. :p Even though I own several of her other DVDs, I know that her workouts are advanced, so I expected to be worked out both HARD and HEAVY by this video. While Butts & Buts definitely IS a challenging workout, I was actually pleasantly surprised to discover that Cathe actually doesn't necessarily heavy up on her weights here--in fact, many of the exercises are done without weights at all, and you will likely get both aerobic and strength training benefits from this workout. Cathe does use quite a bit of equipment in this DVD, including dumbbells, a barbell, a high step, a resistance band, and ankle weights. However, most of the exercises can be modified if you don't have all of the above at home (I don't have a barbell, and the resistance band is only used for one exercise in the main workout).

The main workout of Butts & Guts consists of a Warm Up (6 minutes), Standing Glute Work (31 minutes), Floor Work (19.5 minutes), Abs (14 minutes), and Stretch. There are also two Bonus segments, Bonus Stability Ball Abs (15 minutes) and Bonus Lower Body (6 minutes). Because the Warm-Up uses the stability ball, I found it to be quite different from Cathe's other warm-ups and more fun; it also nicely stretched out the upper body as well as the lower. The specific exercises in the workout are listed below.

Standing Glute Work:

*walking lunge w/plie jump

*1-legged squat w/foot on high step

*forward thrusting hammer punch lunges

*squats with barbell

*walking lunge w/plie jump (fewer reps)

*deadlift w/barbell & toes on dumbbell

*1-legged squat w/foot on low step

*side hammer thrusting lunges

*front-side-back lunge combo

*squats with barbell

*firewalkers (side steps w/band around ankles)

*low pulse lunges

Floor Work:

*outer thigh raises with ball

*hamstring tucks with feet on ball

(add ankle weights)

*hamstring raises with one foot on riser

*inner thigh lifts

*various leg lifts on all fours (straight, bent, elbows, hydrant)

Abs:

(start with ankle weights & 5# dumbbells)

*rollbacks w/punch across

*arm & leg lowers

*leg tucks

*torso twists

(remove ankle weights)

*side obliques

*crunches

*frog-style crunches

*knee-up pulses

*toe reaches

*plank series

Bonus Stability Ball Abs (includes prone lifts, roll outs, torso twists, oblique lifts with stability band, lying side twists, crunches with feet on ball, ball exchange, ball holds)

Bonus Lower Body (Sit-n-Stretch, Leg Press, Glute Squeezes)

Finally, the DVD includes the following three Premix options:

*Standing Glutes & Abs Timesaver, 49.5 minutes

*Overall Legs, 65 minutes

*Leg Blast, 47.5 minutes

*Floor Work & Abs, 59.5 minutes

As noted above, I really enjoyed this workout. My only real complaint has to do with the length: the main workout, WITHOUT the bonuses, is almost 80 minutes long!!! Even leaving off the Abs segment, the lower body workout alone is still over an hour, and none of the premixes is less than 45 minutes long. I actually would've preferred this workout if Cathe had just focused on the lower body work and left out the core work entirely (just Butts, no Guts, LOL!), but that's just my personal preference. Luckily, all of Cathe's DVDs feature a "Mix & Match" option, so I can just select the chapters that I want to do on any particular day.

If you are looking for a highly effective workout that is sure to target every area of your lower body, you can't miss with this DVD; definitely recommended!

There is only one word i can use to describe this video and that word is BURN. I thought I was the Buns queen with all my other videos, i.e., Buns of Steel, the Firm, but NOT!!!! This DVD works your glutes in every possible way from every possible angle at every possible intensity, speed, position. She doesn't leave anything out! Every glute exercise you can imagine - firewalkers, 1 legged lunges/squats, functional forward bounding lunges, (like you're picking something up from the floor in front of you); hammer lunges; side lying leg lifts, "rover's revenge" leg lifts (you're on all fours like a dog lifting your legs behind you); walking squats, lunges......... I'm SURE I've left out many, but suffice it to say that your behind WILL be on fire and you WILL develop strength in your buns and legs if you do this workout faithfully which will help you with ALL of your other workouts. This is a keeper. Not to mention she does great ab and core stuff at the end. Not killer - thank God because at this point, you won't be able to stand anything tough. I laugh when I think about it, but I was almost crying from this video and that's NEVER happened to me before. The burn was the most intense I think I've ever felt.