Today’s DVD review is from my new intern, Laura! Please give her a warm welcome by leaving a comment on her very first guest post here on SarahFit.com!
Hi readers, I’m the new intern, Laura! I’m a student at BC, a personal trainer, and a fitness enthusiast. I’m reviewing Jackie Warner’s Crunch Free Xtreme Abs DVD. The DVD has two separate routines that you only need a pair of light dumbbells for. I don’t keep dumbbells in my dorm so I used two empty water bottles filled with sand and gravel, but one of the girls demonstrating does modifications sans dumbbell.
I personally hate crunches and think there are more efficient ways to work your core, so I was excited to see what creative routines Jackie could come up with. Both workouts are about 15 minutes long; one is a standing crunch routine, the other a floor workout. Although the standing routine was fast-paced and used some of my favorite exercises like dumbbell swings and figure 8’s, I didn’t necessarily find it that challenging in terms of working my abs, but she puts you in a lot of lunge and squat positions that definitely started to make my legs a little tired.
I didn’t really feel like I had done that much after I finished though, so I was glad to get to the floor routine. The floor workout is exponentially more challenging! It’s basically 15 minutes straight of already fairly difficult exercises (planks, side planks, leg lifts, etc.), made harder. She does some supermans and bridge exercises for your lower back and glutes to so that your whole core area is engaged and not just your abdominals.
Overall, spending the 30 minutes to do both workouts in succession gives you a pretty decent workout, so I’ll grade this a B (C for the standing routine, A- for the floor routine). I’ll incorporate a lot of the floor exercises into my core workouts, but there are definitely better standing ab routines out there. If you want something really challenging, I would start with Jackie’s floor routine, go straight into Sarah’s Standing Crunch-less Workout, and back into another round of the floor routine. I did this yesterday and my abs were EXHAUSTED by the end!
Question Of The Day: What ab move do you think is a waste of time and needs to be retired?
Don’t forget to check out some of my other favorite DVD reviews featuring great abs.
