Body Design

I did this workout for the first time last night. I am an advanced exerciser, have worked out to Cathe, Jari Love, Turbo Jam, Chalean Extreme and have recently gotten into pilates, yoga and piloxing. I found this workout to be such a fun and functional workout. I used a 15 lb bodybar and 8 lb FIRM sculpting stick. Some moves were fine for the 15 lbs but some were too fast (chest work lying on the bench passing the bar from hand to hand) or too heavy (tricep extensions behind the back). As the previous reviewer said there is quite a bit of exercises on the hands/wrists which bother me due to carpal tunnel syndrome as well. I use the step to help this by having my hands on the curved part instead of flat on the step which helps. I placed a towel on the step to provide extra cushioning as well. The exercises move from one to another very fast which makes it somewhat tough to arrange the equipment but I believe doing it a few times will help me know what's next. In using two different bars this quickness was especially difficult but workable. I think next time I will substitute a dumbbell for a few moves as needed. I felt very strong & empowered after finishing it. The cardio was quick & dirty, no non-sense and there were mostly functional moves. I find doing functional fitness helps me so much in everyday life as I get older. I will be trying Kitchen Sink Conditioning soon. After reading the above review I am so looking forward to it since she prefers it to Body Design. However I worry about the use of so many pieces of equipment.

If there was one word I could use to describe this video - it is INTERESTING. I'm an advanced exerciser, Cathe being my current favorite and I didn't find this workout hard AT ALL. With the exception of one or two of the cardio intervals, I don't think my heartrate even got into my zone at all. It actually stayed well below. Besides enjoying Patrick and his "accomplices" which I really appreciated because they look like "regular people" and not super stars, the video did not challenge me much at all. The exercises were very interesting. I especially enjoyed the ab work at the end which was different, effective and innovating. In all fairness,however, he uses a bar for 95% of this work out and my bar was 5 pounds. Had my bar been 15, 18 or 20 - I may be singing a different tune altogether! I would keep this one, if only for the moves, which like I said before, were very, very interesting and different and that's what I look for in a workout.

With strength work, I am an intermediate exerciser, who doesn’t really want to move up to advanced work exclusively, although I flirt with that level sometimes. I have really enjoyed getting into workouts on the ball and Pilates as an alternative to traditional strength training.

Body Design is a functional fitness workout, much like his Kitchen Sink Conditioning workout. Let me first say that I loved, loved, loved Kitchen Sink Conditioning, so if you see a lot of comparisons to it, that’s why. Second, I’m not sure I can give a complete review of this DVD because of the problems I ran into with it. The first time I did the workout, the DVD stopped at a couple of points in the workout and returned to the menu before that section was complete. Thinking the DVD was scratched or something, I contacted Patrick and he immediately shipped me out another one. Same result as with the first DVD. I then tried it someone else’s DVD player and it worked fine. Apparently, a small percentage of DVD players have this problem since I saw someone else posting about the same problem. That other person returned theirs to Collage for a refund. I didn’t even ask Patrick for a refund since it’s apparently an issue with my DVD player. I’ll just try to trade it to someone whose DVD player has no problem with it.

Overall, I am very disappointed that this DVD is glitchy playing in my DVD player because I would have liked to have kept it. I didn’t like it as much as Kitchen Sink Conditioning, but it’s still an enjoyable, challenging functional fitness strength workout for me. He does a lot of traditional strength moves and some newer ones (to me, at least), but everything seemed to be done in a creative way. For me, the workout seemed to fly by. And, I felt worked out afterward. I even did much of the abs section, and I often skip that part in workouts.

Patrick leads the workout with two background exercises. He interacts with them, but not as much as in KS Conditioning. As with KS Conditioning, he stops at various points and goes to point out something about the form of one of the background exercisers. The set I wasn’t thrilled with because it seemed rather dark, but there was no problem seeing anything. The music was okay, but frankly I didn’t pay much attention to it because I was concentrating on doing the moves.

The DVD is chaptered by body section, so you have two lower body sections with upper body in between. If you customize the workout, it takes you back to the menu when you are done with a section to choose the next one.

There were a couple of places I felt there were too many exercises on the hands. I have arthritis and my hands and wrists are my worst joints, so I have trouble with most moves requiring that I support my body weight on my hands. Specifically, the warm up is fun until the last part where he does burpees and pushups. (I just stopped that that point and moved on to the next section.) And, the chest and back section had too many exercises for me from the plank position.