Cardio Karate: Extreme Cardio Intervals

Gay leads this 57 min cardio workout in a martial arts studio with 3 b/g exercisers. You will only need your UR for this workout. The exercises are split into 6 pods (groups) of exercises which you learn and repeat and then are strung together at the end for a full cardio karate workout. Nice Asian-esque music.

After an 8 min warmup, exercises include: palm strikes, kick combos, hammer strikes, X blocks, cardio lunge & sweeping blocks, elbow strike combos, plank jacks, lunge to horse stance w/ punches & blocks, lunge- throw down, roll back (burpee-esque), side lunge w/ blocks and finishes with 18 min of core & cooldown. The core work includes: body toss in a V sit, sit up w/a kick, pushup -side plank, & side plank leg raise.

I rate this an intermediate workout but you can easily modify up or down to suit your needs. I added weighted gloves & some more hops & got a good workout. I like Gay a lot more in this one than in her URX dvds- she does a great job in this one. The combos are shorter in this one than Amy's but the choreo is a tiny bit trickier IMO. Some of the exercises are slow & controlled (karate) and some are more intense (cardio) so there is a variety of intensity levels. There is a countdown bar that has occasional tips & reminders along side it. Love the functional work and felt my core working throughout. I received this dvd to review.