The Firm: Bootcamp Maximum Calorie Burn

This is a great 50 minute cardio + light sculpting workout. The cardio sections are alternated with strength segements. The workout seems to flow very well and fly by. There are a lot of fun cardio moves and the strength sections include a lot of four limb movements. Alison is a great lead with Allie & Sue Mi as backgrounders.

I really like the Firm and I like Allison as a lead. It clocks in around 50 minutes. I would consider this an intermediate level intensity workout though it can easily be modified up or down. I really give it my all and I can easily get an advanced workout. Ali and Sue Mi are background exercisers; with Sue Mi providing the beginner modifications. Alison is a greawt lead and cues well.

The workout is seperated into plyo segments and cardio segments. The plyo segments include the strength work. She starts with a grounded move such as lunge and moves it into a flying lunge for example. If you just do the flying lunge the whole time you will definately get an advanced workout!

There are some tough moves in this workout: squat thrusts come to mind! There is a bit of bad camera work when she introduces this move, but once youve done the w/o once you wont even notice.

The last cardio segment is the most fun! She does a tire run, double step touch, shooting a basketball combo that got my HR up and I really enjoyed it. She also has a fun kickboxing segment as well. She does a bit of standing ab work and then more ab work on the floor at the end. Good ab w/o IMO. Lots of variety in this one so I am never bored!

I use the strength portions as cardio breaks because I use this as a cardio w/o. So I use my lighter dumbbells (5#s). You could easily heavy up but the strength minutes are limited so I would rather capitalize on the cardio and use my light dumbbells for this one.

If you're used to (and good at) Cathe, you probably will find this too easy. I am a Cathe junkie myself, however, I really enjoyed this workout. It's done in the Firm style of one side at a time, but what I loved about this workout was how it flowed. I was surprisingly at my aerobic zone throughout the entire workout and she does a lot of calorie burning compound moves which I loved. I even felt my abs burn at the end which is shocking to me. The only complaint I have is that I wish she'd do a little more. Just when you're starting to suffer, she stops which may be a good thing for a lot of you. The other thing I LOVED about this workout is that just like Allie's Aerobic Body Shaping (Transfirmer Series), you can make this workout as hard or as easy as you want by adjusting the weights. I just love that. It's a keeper for a day when I want to work HARD but not feel near death like I do with Cathe.