Day 1 is now in the books. In the morning, the workout was the Pilates fundamentals 1 workout. If you have ever done Pilates before, the trainer, Lisa Hubbard, takes you through a series of moves that will build you to being able to do moves like The Hundred, The Roll Up, etc. Basically, taking you through the moves in stages so that (seemingly) in the later workouts you can put them together to do the actual moves. While the workout is totally low-impact and focuses on core strength and flexibility, you do feel like you did something productive by the end. Hubbard is a good trainer, and the workout features just her as opposed to teaching a class, and she assumes that the people doing the workout have not done any Pilates and are not very flexible. So while she says things like you can extend your legs on certain stretches if you are able to, she basically shows all modified moves. She is in fantastic shape (she was 51 whenever the videos were made, but easily looks like she is in her 30s) but does a great job showing people who are not in as great shape as she is how to do the moves. And, this is a bodyweight-only workout, so you do not need any special equipment (aside from a mat) to do it.
Then, in the evening, I did the first regular Lift 4 workout, which was chest and triceps 50/50. The first part of the workout is three rounds of three supersets in which you alternate a chest exercise and a triceps exercise with very little rest in between. The first superset is ten reps of bench presses followed almost immediately by ten reps of skull crushers. You do that three times, and then the next superset is ten reps of chest flys followed by ten reps of tricep presses, which you do three times, and then the last superset is ten reps of rotational chest presses in which you turn the weights parallel at the end of the reps, followed by 10 tricep pushups. Once you get through all that, you get to the HITT portion of the workout in which you do three exercises back-to-back, the first (and the easiest) being soccer-juggle type kicks for 1 minute, mountain climbers/plank runs for 45 seconds, and then what in Max 30 is called plank-to-squats, but what in Lift 4 are called catchers. You get 15 seconds between each of the cardio exercises, but by the third round that barely helps. After the cardio portion, you do three rounds of two ab exercises, in which you leg climbers for 30 seconds and then windshield wipers with your legs for 30 seconds, again doing three rounds.
The workout was great but it is really tough. Because you are going through the rounds with barely any rest, you really want to lift a bit lighter weights than you otherwise would and then figure out if you need to increase or decrease from there. This is a true circuit workout, even moreso than P90x which has a lot longer breaks between the moves. This one definitely keeps you moving. The trainer, Joel Freeman mostly walks around to the other cast members doing the workout to explain form and to show how the modified moves are done (there is a dedicated modifier). But, he does do some of the moves from time to time. It is a workout that will kick your ass and the good thing is that it is set up so that none of the workouts repeat over the course of the eight weeks.
So, hopefully, by the end of these 8 weeks, I will be more flexible because of Pilates and somewhat from Lift 4, because they do a bit of stretching at the end of every Lift 4 workout, have a stronger core, and continue to increase my cardio strength. And, of course, hopefully, I will be able to drop a bit of weight in the process (or at least lose some inches).
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