The FIRM: Total Body Time Crunch Review

The FIRM: Total Body Time Crunch
Rebekah Sturkie, 2007

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 ststrengthet. 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.