Modifying Beachbody Workouts
In every Beachbody workout program, you will hear the trainers tell you to modify your workouts to fit your current fitness level. You may be able to carry out perfect form and keep up with the trainer for one exercise, but have to work slower or do less reps with another exercise. You might have to use bands if you do no have weights or even do the exercise without weights to compensate for your fitness level or to accommodate an injury.
Fitness is about listening to your body. It is about properly fueling your body and getting the most out of your strength, endurance, aerobic capacity, and flexibility. Improvements in these areas are proven to improve your health and quality of life as well as help prevent future injuries and illness.
You will always hear me say that you need to find an activity you like and will do consistently. Consistency was my mountain. You can read about my story to learn more about my personal struggle with consistency.
I am writing today to tell you about another type of modification. You have probably noticed that some Beachbody coaches do “hybrid” workouts. All this means is they are mixing up different workouts. I do this as well to keep things interesting. Variety helps keep muscle confusion working on your behalf.
If you are new to Beachbody workouts, I highly recommend going through the entire program as written in your guide. Follow the eating plan as well as the fitness calendar. It may be hard, but you will learn how to eat like an athlete to fuel your body for a fit and healthy lifestlye. You will also gain consistent habits and learn how to incorporate all aspects of fitness into your life, including cardio, strength training, core, and flexibility.
Once you have finished a program like Tony Horton’s P90X or Power 90, Chalene Johnson’s ChaLean Extreme or Turbo Jam, Debbie Sieber’s Slim in 6 or Shaun T’s Insanity…you may be ready to mix up your own hybrid. I highly recommend subscribing to Tony Horton’s One on One workouts if you are a P90X fanatic. Many people like to combine P90X for strength training and Insanity for the cardio challenge.
I like mixing up ChaLean Extreme with One on One or Brazil Butt Lift workouts. I still like throwing in one of the P90X dvds and getting a little crazy with the crazy man himself. What am I doing right now?
I am generally following the ChaLean program but I am working it around my work schedule. Not everyone has a 9-5 Monday – Friday job, so the standard schedule is harder for me. I thought I would start including a weekly snapshot of what workouts I did for the week, since I generally do not write a new review of a workout I have already written about.
This will give you a good idea of what I am doing to stay fit. As always, it will help me stay accountable and consistent. This is what I did this past week:
Sunday – Rest day. Spent the day riding motorcyles with friends.
Monday – Yard work. This is not my favorite form of exercise. I would have to put it at the top of the list for my mother though. She stopped gardening after six hours in the yard only because she ran out of daylight. Arrrrgggh!
Tuesday – ChaLean Extreme Burn Circuit 2
Wednesday – ChaLean Extreme Burn Circuit 3
Thursday – Rest day. Chicken pizza.
Friday – ChaLean Extreme Burn It Off! and Burn Circuit 1
Saturday – Today’s plan is ChaLean Extreme Recharge and I’ve Got Abs in the morning. In the evening, I plan on pressing play with ChaLean Extreme Burn Circuit 2.
Sunday – Sunday’s plan is ChaLean Extreme Burn Circuit 3 in the morning and ChaLean Extreme Burn Intervals in the evening.
Stay fit. Fuel your body. Keep pressing play. Ask questions. Share your experiences.
Brazil Butt Lift High and Tight
The High and Tight workout in Leandro Carvalho’s Brazil Butt Lift program is about 38 minutes in length including the warm up and cool down periods. This Beachbody workout put a burn in my glutes and inner and outer thigh muscles without making me want to just fall over like many butt intensive routines.
I think the secret is in keeping the muscle groups working at different angles without too much time spent in a single exercise. Sounds a little like Tony Horton’s muscle confusion principle in P90X, huh? Well, when I pressed play for my first workout, I wondered how I would possibly make it through almost 38 minutes of sculpting my backside. The time actually seemed to pass quickly.
This fitness program is divided into three sections. The first section is a series of standing band exercises. The second segment moves to a series of floor movements using a band. (By the way, a band comes with the program.) The final section uses ankle weights with floor exercises.
You do not have to use a band or ankle weights to get an effective workout. I used the band for the first two sessions, but I did not have ankle weights for the last session…didn’t miss them either! I feel like I got a nice booty workout without a billion lunges and squats.
Although the workout has three sections, you can do them separately or all together. The menu allows you to select which of the three sessions you would like to play. Or, you can select the option for playing them sequentially, including the warm up and cool down.
I know my leg muscles are firmer than they were before I started working out with Beachbody videos. Sometime after I am “high and tight” from exercising with Brazil Butt Lift, I will pull out my Slim in 6 program to see how the floor routine feels. When I did Slim in 6, I could not do all the reps for leg work on the floor. That was the most challenging part of Slim in 6 for me.
If you have finished P90X, and you are thinking about designing your own hybrid program, this is a great addition for working your butt. Add it to your P90X Leg routine. Then, your glutes will hurt as much as your quads! Why do we love Beachbody workouts? Because they work…as long as you work! Keep pressing play. Get fit. Stay fit.
10 Minute Trainer Cardio
My workout tonight consisted of a combination of Chalene Johnson and Tony Horton, two of my favorite Beachbody trainers. I started off with the ChaLean Extreme Burn Circuit 3 workout and followed it with Tony’s 10 Minute Trainer Cardio session.
I had really thought about doing some Brazil Butt Lift tonight but I guess I had forgotten how much the Burn Circuit 3 works your legs and butt. My lower body was wiped by the time I completed the ChaLean Extreme session. I was feeling pretty good though, so I turned to my 10 Minute Trainer series. This was one of Tony Horton’s programs in the years prior to P90X.
The basic 10 Minute Trainer series includes five workouts: Total Body, Lower Body, Abs, Cardio, and Yoga Flex. I knew Lower Body and Total Body were out! These ten minute workouts are good to have in your video collection for a many reasons. Here are some of my reasons:
1. You can use the 10 minute workouts individually if you are short on time. This is me in the morning before work! I like to do a little something to wake up, but I do not like doing a full workout in the morning.
2. You can use the workouts together to form a stand alone program to reach your fitness goals. In other words, you can do more than one workout in a day. Do them together or break them up throughout the day.
3. You can use a specific ten minute workout to supplement another workout which is what I did tonight.
4. If you are not feeling well physically or just can not seem to get yourself motivated, you can use a ten minute workout to brighten your attitude and promote well-being.
The girl in the Cardio workout uses a band fastened to a door to give her resistence in her running, jumping, and lunging moves. That looks like something interesting to try some time in the future, but I was a able to get a good cardio workout just using my own body’s resistence.
If you are not familiar with the 10 Minute Trainer series, it makes a good starter program for those new to fitness. I say this because each routine has a “trainer” track where Tony Horton talks a lot about form and how each exercise should be performed.
When you are not a novice any longer, keep the 10 Minute Trainer in your library. I think you will be surprised at how effective these workouts can be even though they are only ten minutes in length. Hey, we are talking about Tony Horton afterall. He would not dare let you out of the gym with a little sweat equity!
Back to CLX Burn Ciruit 1
I am going back to the beginning of ChaLean Extreme (CLX). I had to stop for several weeks following a back injury. I think I am ready to put myself back into action. Tonight, I pressed play with CLX Burn Circuit 1.
I had forgotten how the post exercise burn of my posterior deltoids (back shoulder muscles) and the deep tissue burn in my butt from lunges and squats felt. It is a good uncomfortable feeling though. I know I had a good workout and was able to break down the muscle tissue to force growth.
Why is muscle growth important? Well, for starters, I am in my mid-forties. As we age, we lose muscle mass. This causes the amount of calories we naturally burn (metabolic burn) during the course of the day to support bodily functions, to decrease.
When our bodies burn less calories, we have to burn more calories through cardio activity or eat less. If not, we suffer from excess calories and weight gain…FAT!
Weight training helps you reverse that trend. When you increase muscle tissue (notice I did not say bulk up), you increase the number of calories needed to get through the day without doing anything extra. Wow!
Cardio is still important because that is the type of exercise that supports heart health and ensures your body can adequately carry the oxygen and nutrients throughout your body. Increasing muscle tissue means I do not have to work out several extra hours each week to create a caloric deficit to lose weight. I like that idea!
It also means that I can eat to fuel my body rather than starve it with a DIE-t. Hey, I admit it…I like to eat. So, what I have found that is important for my body is ensuring I have a solid strength training program.
Strength training has another cool benefit while I am on the subject. It helps you gain and maintain flexibility. Just ask any person suffering from Fibromyalgia or Arthritis how it feels to bend over to tie their shoes and you will get a quick understanding of why flexibility is important.
Tomorrow morning, I plan on doing the Bum Bum workout from Brazil Butt Lift. That is a good cardio workout to start my day. Tomorrow evening, I will unwind with Burn Circuit 2. Find a system that works for you. Then, press play. This one thing I know – it works if you work it, and it won’t if you don’t.
Brazil Butt Lift Cardio Axe
Leandro Carvalho’s Brazil Butt Lift from Beachbody introduces you to Brazilian dance moves with the Cardio Axe (ah-shay) workout. This workout is about 30 minutes in length.
I am not too coordinated when it comes to any dance moves, so this workout was a struggle for me as far as staying focused. I could get the moves when we went through the learning segments, but I stumbled a lot with me two left feet when we put moves together into a combination in the form of dance.
I kept telling myself to just keep doing my best. I knew I was getting something out of it by the fact that my body was moving. I struggled with Turbo Jamthe first few times I did those workouts, too. For some, dance comes easy. For people like me, it’s a good thing the DVD player is in my living room and I am the only one around to watch me shake my booty!
I really believe that I got a much better (more intense) cardio workout from the Bum Bum workout. I have high hopes that the more I do the Cardio Axe, the more I will like it and feel like I am getting a good cardio workout from it.
I think back to my first car. It was so cool to have my own car. The only problem I had to overcome is I did not know how to drive it because it had a manual transmission. It was parked on the street for the first two months I owned it. Finally, I decided that I would learn how to drive a manual transmission. That was 25 years ago! Do you know what I drive now? A manual transmission!
This is my point…sometimes, I am slow to change. I have to do things a few times to find a comfort level. I am not comfortable with dance. I feel like I work against the music rather than with it. I also know that if I practice, I will get better.
Oh, let me add an interesting tid bit about this Beachbody workout program. You can set it up in either the English or Spanish language. You can also choose to use subtitles if you want to read what is being said. I thought those were interesting options and wanted to share them with you.
Who knows, maybe when I get the moves down in English, I will mix it up with Spanish. By then, I will have Leandro’s moves and instructions fine tuned. I might as well learn a few Spanish words in the morning while getting my butt high and tight!
Brazil Butt Lift Bum Bum Workout
When Beachbody’s Brazil Butt Lift first came out, I wasn’t sure I wanted to add it to my workouts. Something about a workout designed specifically to shape the backside intrigued me though. One of the things I wanted to work on was what I considered to be a flat bum bum with excessive hip pockets. So, here I am telling you about my first full workout with Leandro Carvalho’s Brazil Butt Lift program.
Let me start off by explaining that “bum bum” is pronounced “boom boom” and is Brazilian slang for butt. The Bum Bum workout is Leandro’s signature workout that he has used to help supermodels get in shape.
When I was reading the materials for this program, I must have skipped over the part about the Bum Bum workout being an “intense cardio and lower body sculpting” routine. I was expecting the butt sculpting exercises that were on the cards. I wasn’t expecting the cardio portion. I was out of breath from beginning to end during this 35 minute introduction to Brazil Butt Lift!
It felt pretty good. I could feel my muscles working deep; however, it wasn’t the intense sculpting pain I usually get when I work the backside. When I did the Slim in 6 program, the butt exercises on the floor were killer! Leandro keeps you in a move long enough to feel it but then, moves you into a different exercise to change the stress on the muscle group.
This is a 30 day program with five workouts (not including the Booty Basics which demonstrates how to do the exercises.) There are three customized programs designed to give you maximum results depending on your “booty blueprint” and goals. (Learn more about what comes with Brazil Butt Lift.) I look forward to using this program and writing about my experiences.
I will be returning to my ChaLean Extreme program and will probably work both programs together. As you might have read in past posts, I had an injury that slowed me down for a while. Staying fit sometimes means listening to your body and always modifying whenever and however needed. I stay motivated by mixing up my Beachbody workouts. I share what I learn to help others and…it gives me one more reason to keep pressing play!
