The FIRM: Skills, Drills & Thrills Review

The FIRM: Skills, Drills & Thrills
Tina Smalley, 2007

This set comes with a green balance disc and a dvd. The dvd is a (light) AWT workout that has a lot of core & balance work in there as well. The set is the wood floors/ white walls/ fake city view windows set. There are two background exercisers-Emily shows the beginner modifications. The dvd has a 25 minute express version of the workout on it as well. All you will need for this w/o is the disc that comes with the dvd.

I really like this workout. There is one challenging cardio segment and some of the balance moves are actually quite challenging. Balance is my weakpoint so take that w/ a grain of sea-salt. The rest of the cardio and the strength moves are not that difficult. All the cardio is straightforward and easy to pick on. You can easily add in more plyos though and work up quite a sweat-I did!

Tina has you doing squats on the disc, lunges onto the disc, reaching front-back-and side off the disc, side lunges onto the disc, pushups w/ 1 hand on the disc, and plyos on/off the disc. For some of the segments you use the disc as a step and do an L-step, knee raise, etc onto the disc.

The ab work in this one is good! Like I said-you are working your core in a lot of the balance moves too. You do some standing ab work (lunge onto the disc and twist), then you move onto floor ab work -V sits on the disc, crunch variations w/ the disc under your low back and then you move the disc and sit on the very end of it to work the core in a slightly different way. I was really feeling it by the end!

You can make the workout easier by inflating the disc less, more challenging by inflating the disc more. I would rate this workout as a high intermediate because of the balance challenge and the fact that its different and has a learning curve. It does have its place in my collection and Im glad I bought it. I like Tina (though she tends to "whoo" alot, doesnt she)-she cues ok in this one and has a nice demeanor. This is worth having for variety and fun factor IMO. I did not receive this dvd to review.