The Firm: Total Body Time Crunch

My review is for the Express 25 minute workout. It seemed to be more weights than cardio and is a "mostly standing" workout. I worked up a light sweat. In my opinion...

Pros: lots of compound moves with upper & lower body combined makes for an efficient use of time. My abs felt worked, the core was activated during many moves. I especially felt them during the double crunches with leg lifts. The stretch at the end felt good, especially the quad stretch.

Cons: Short (but of course it was the express workout!) so not enough reps; perhaps going heavier would help. I used 5, 8, & 12s (my 10s were missing).

I plan to keep it & try the longer version next time.

This is a 45 min 50% sculpt and 50% cardio w/o led by Rebekah with 4 background exercisers. Emily provides the beginner modifications. The set is the hard wood floor, white brick walls with windows set. You will only need dumbbells for this workout.

After a warmup you move right into a strenght set. The workout alternates strength and cardio sets and ends with some lying chest work and an ab section. The strength work includes a lot of multi muscle moves that are put together nicely so the poundage works for all moves involved.

Examples of the strength work are: squat with bicep curls, overhead tricep extension with a squat, tricep extension with a toe tap, dip with chest work and a knee raise, side lunge, quad-star, and a nice kickboxing inspired segment that I really enjoyed.

Examples of the cardio include: hamstring curl, double step touch, plyos, and other basic athletic style cardio. The cardio sets were good-unique and fun w/out being complicated and she adds in ploys and other higher energy moves to get the heart pumping.

While I really like this workout, I wish it were a full 60 minutes. In only 45 minutes theres not quite enough strength work for me to consider my muscles fully worked. It works out fine because I just add on 15 minutes of strength work to fill my hour slot, but done alone, wouldnt quite be enough IMO. My only other complaint is I have a hard time choosing dumbbell poundage because she sometimes says light and I could easily use med or even heavy. But again, I do really enjoy the workout and Rebeckah is a great lead. Its fun and moves right along, gets my heartrate up nicely and is easy to follow. I would rate this a solid intermediate w/o.

I liked this workout. After tripping all over myself in Burn & Shape (no fault of Emily's), I was relieved to return familiar hamstring curls, tri-stars and lunges. Familiar does not mean boring, however. The compound moves using the Cardio Weights (or your own weights) added interest to lunges and squats, and I liked it.

The music was techno workout, but I loved the set the most. It was white brick with hardwoods, similar to all the TransFIRMation workouts, and I liked that the camera seemed to pan in more, eliminating the weird angles of some of the other TransFIRMation workouts that only made the instructors look super short.

I give it an A.