Rev It Up Cardio Delivers Burn and Sweat
Brett Hoebel’s Rev It Up Cardio from Rev Abs works up a good sweat and brings a good burn in my legs and booty everytime I do it. It is my favorite Rev Abs workout but be prepared to do a lot of jumping jacks. I still haven’t figured out if the jumping jacks are for a working rest period or a warm up to go through another series of cardio exercises.
Rev It Up Cardio incorporates traditional exercises like jumping jacks and squats with kicks and Capoeira moves. The first time I tried any Capoeira exercises was in Chalene Johnson’s Turbo Jam. Chalene made the moves fun and more of a stretching out or flexibility routine than cardio.
The next time I did Capoeira moves was in Brazil Butt Lift. I was not particularly fond of Brazil Butt Lift because I felt like a fish out of water. The Capoeira exercises did not come naturally for me. What I have found in Rev It Up Cardio though is Brett changed my views of Capoeira.
He does the move and directs you through it. The choreography and trainer made all the difference for me. I love doing this workout. Not only do I get a great cardio workout, but I also get a lot of work on my legs, butt, and abdominal muscles.
The Rev Abs programconsists of ten workouts on eight dvds, the RevAbs guide which has training tips and motivation from Brett, a nutrition guide to help you fuel your body while losing fat, and an awesome RevAbs calendar. The calendar showcases Brett’s rock hard abs. I have mine haning in my workout room for inspiration to push myself and stay consistent.
The 90 day cardio program also comes with an Anytime, Anywhere Abs guide chart, a body fat caliper, 24 hour online support and a 30 day money back guarantee. If you order from this website, you will also get me as your Team Beachbody Coach to help motivate and support you in the achievement of your fitness goals.
Brett joined popular Biggest Loser series this year as a trainer. You can get him as a trainer in your home for less than you would pay for a gym membership. Call up your sister or a friend and invite them over for a Rev Abs workout or exercise by yourself in the privacy of your own home. Get ready to lose weight, boost your metabolism, shrink inches, and improve your fitness.
Five Steps to Figuring Out How Many Calories You Can Eat and Still Lose Weight
Beachbody gives you tools you can understand to help you lose weight and get into shape. Most people think they have to eat 1200 calories or less to lose weight. Then, they put the weight back on even faster than they took it off. Most people actually need to eat more than 1200 calories per day to continue to lose weight. That’s right. Eat more!
Eating less than 1200 calories in a day may lead to nutrient deficiencies and affect your health. You can follow a 1200 calorie per day diet for about a week, but after that, you need a smarter eating plan. Follow this short formula to determine how many calories you can eat each day and still lose weight: RMR + DAB + DE – CD.
RMR stands for resting metabolic rate. This represents approxiamately how many calories your body burns naturally while you are at rest to maintain body functions such as breathing, circulation, and digestion. To calculate your RMR, multiply your body weight times ten. So, if you are a 160 pound woman, your RMR is 160 x 10 which is 1600.
Next determine your daily activity burn or DAB. This number depends on whether you consider yourself sedentary, moderately active, or very active in your daily routine outside of an exercising program. Now, most of us probably project too high here, so let us assume we are the sedentary type. To get your DAB, multiply your RMR by ten percent. 1600 x 10% is 160.
The third step is to calculate the calories you will burn in your daily exercise or DE. According to Beachbody, an average TurboFire workout burns about 650 calories. So, if this same person used the TurboFire program, her DE would be 650.
The fourth step is to determine your caloric deficit or CD. Since one pound is 3500 calories, you need to have a CD of 500 calories per day to lose one pound per week. If you wanted to lose two pounds, you would need a deficit of 7000 calories per week or 1000 calories per day. This number depends somewhat on your current weight. Again, you do not want go below 1200 calories per day nor do you want to stay on a 1200 calorie per day diet more than one week.
Finally, plug all the numbers into the formula RMR + DAB + DE – CD to determine the number of calories to eat each day and still lose weight. Let’s plug in the numbers for our example of a 160 pound woman using the TurboFire program and having a goal of losing one pound per week. RMR (1600) + DAB (160) + DE (650) – CD (500) = 1910 calories per day to lose one pound per week. Nice!
While you are trying to lose weight, you should periodically go through this formula again to adjust your caloric needs. Let’s say this woman has lost ten pounds and is recalculating her eating plan. She now needs 1800 calories per day to continue to lose one pound per week. (RMR 1500 + DAB 150 + DE 650 – CD 500 = 1800)
If you do not know how many calories you are burning with an exercise program, you may be able to find a chart online or in a book to help you estimate how many calories per hour you burn with a particular activity. You can also get a calorie monitoring device based on your heartrate such as the Bodybugg from 24 Hour Fitness (retails at $199). Or, you can use the free tools from your free Beachbody account.
The Caloric Needs calculator is easy to use and will estimate the number of calories you will burn with various Beachbody workout programs. It also has a few other exercising activities such as aerobics and cycling. All you do is answer a few basic questions such as how many times a week you will be exercising and what activity you plan on doing.
The cool thing about this calculator is it will tell you not only how many calories you should eat to lose weight but also how many you should eat each day to maintain your current weight. To use this caluculator as well as a few other helpful weight loss tools, all you need to do is sign up for a free Beachbody account.
Once you have your account, go to the Eat Smart tab of the Teambeachbody website. Click on Nutrition Tools. Then, click on Caloric Needs and fill in your answers. Ok, so you can do the math with the five steps above or just answer a few questions and let the online caloric needs calculator work for you! I hope you have found this article useful. Keep pressing play!
Lifted Heavy Today – ChaLean Extreme
I lifted heavy today working out with Beachbody’s Chalene Johnson and her awesome Push Circuit 3 strength training routine from ChaLean Extreme. As with all of Chalene’s weight lifting routines in this program, Push Circuit 3 consisted of nine different exercises along with some breakdown sets.
This workout targeted the legs, chest, and back. My back muscles are screaming right now as I write this post. Chalene constantly pushes you to lift heavy enough during this phase to fail between six and eight repetitions. That sounds easy, huh? Well, Chalene’s reps are slower than any I have ever done working out in the gym.
Lifting weights slowly and with purpose causes you to do a few things. First, your mind is totally focused on the muscle that you are lifting. When you pull weights in a rowing exercise for instance, your mind is on the muscles flexing your shoulder blades together. In the past when I have used a pulley system or back machines for rowing, I thought about my hands gripping the weight, my arms pulling the resistence and depending on the rowing machine, I might have even used the momentum of my upper body to force the weight back. Ugh!
That brings to mind the second reason I have learned that lifting slowly is helpful. When you lift slowly, you visualize perfect form in your mind’s eye. You can be your own personal coach and ensure your back is straight and your shoulders are up throughout the pulling movement.
The third reason that just comes to mind without even thinking is your muscle fibers stay engaged (contracted) for a longer period of time. Chalene teaches you to hold at the top of a movement and not to let the weight come all the way to a rest at the bottom of the movement. That means the muscle you are exercising works harder because it stays engaged not only through a single rep but through the entire exercise.
There are many lifting techniques out there. There are numerous exercise programs, exercises, and trainers. Pick up a copy of Muscle and Fitness or Fitness Magazine and you cannot help but agree that the variety in fitness training keeps them publishing new material month after month.
I like Tony Horton’s famous words in P90X. He said that we should keep mixing it up to create muscle confusion. When our muscles adapt to their current workload, they need something to change to continue to get stronger. In ChaLean Extreme, Chalene teaches that “muscle burns fat”. She wants you to go heavy to keep the workload changing as your muscles get stronger.
I love both P90X and ChaLean Extreme. They are so alike and so different. I saw results with Tony Horton. I am seeing results with Chalene Johnson. Muscle does burn fat. Muscle confusion is important. Keep pressing play!
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!
ChaLEAN Extreme Burn It Off!
At the completion of week 1 of ChaLEAN Extreme, you’ll be introduced to a cardio workout called Burn It Off! Although the workout is only about 30 minutes long, it is comparable to the Plyometrics workout in P90X. Yes! It’s intense and involves jumping. You’ll be breathing hard and your heart will be pumping. I was sweating more than I thought I would with a 30 minute cardio session.
Chalene Johnson shows us a different type of aerobic conditioning with moves far different from her Turbo Jam series. You won’t see one punch, cross, jab, wheel, or kick in this workout. It’s different from the Cardio X and Kenpo X moves that Tony Horton uses in P90X. What is similar is the use of high intensity interval training to get your heart rate up in a short time.
This fitness workout starts with a warm up followed by five back to back exercises approxiamately two minutes each. At the end of the five exercises, you get a one minute break to rest and hydrate. Then, you’ll be back on the floor for six more exercises and a cool down.
This was an intense workout for me. I tried to push myself because I want to get the most out of my workouts. Chalene has two women in her group who perform modified versions of each exercise to demonstrate how to decrease the intensity or impact of a particular move. She also talks to you throughout the video and reminds you to push yourself but only to your level.
The best part about this workout was getting to the end! I mean that in a good way. This was a challenging workout for me. I made it to the end, so I’m thrilled about that. I know that I’m burning fat. I know I’m boosting my metabolism. I know that I made it a little closer to my goals today. Keep pushing play! It works.
