Physique 57 DVD Review

I've been on the quest for the perfect fitness DVD collection for a while. When I was considering the Core Fusion DVDs I came across a similar NYC based competitor that I knew I had to try.  Physique 57 is highly touted as the best workout classes in New York, shaping the body of ultra-fit Kelly Ripa and other starlets.

Since I'm clearly not in NYC I decided to save up a little cash and purchase the 3-pack of DVDs, including the classic 57 minutes DVD, 30 minute express workout, and the arms and abs workout.

My first workout with P57 I tried the classic 57 minute workout because I really wanted a challenge!

P57 classic starts with the standard Lotte Berk high step warm-up the quickly moves on to arms. Starting off with your heavy weights (I use 5 lbs.), you work biceps, shoulders, and back by doing quick reps. Then switching to a lighter set of weights (I use 3 lbs.) we begin working the triceps. Once tri's are complete you then move on to push-ups, planks, plank runners, and tricep dips! Once the arm set is over, it's time for a nice soothing stretch to shape and lengthen the muscles we just built.

Now moving on to legs. We start with plies while raising your heels. This gets pretty intense. The instructor incorporates some fun hip shaking mid-squat to really push you to the limit and shape more areas on your thighs.  The real test comes when you place a playground ball between your thighs while pulsing and squatting on the tips of your toes!  Next is the most torturous thing in the whole DVD: thigh dancing. You basically sit on your shins (butt on your heels) and lift your seat up with your quads. It really sucks. I'm not going to lie. But if its burning its working!

Times for some glute work and we're going back to the barre. These moves really test your ability and lift and shape your tush. One of my favorite moves for glutes is the pretzel. You sit on the ground cheerleader style (legs in a z) and raise your back leg off the ground. This totally works the love handles which is amazing. It really burned at first and I wasn't able to find the correct positioning but after a while I was able to find the best position to create and awesome burn!

Now we are moving on to abs! There is very little resting and your abs are basically in mid-crunch for the whole series! The moves are very pilates inspired and use the playground ball or mats to make the moves easier or more challenging.

Now we get up in bridge position and do some pelvic tucks. This is where I find the instructor to be both the most annoying and most hilarious. She gets pretty silly but after awhile I find myself saying silly things write along with her. The most are also sort of goofy, lots of hip thrusting and shaking. Might want to do this one without anyone watching you, lol.

Next we flip over and move on to some superman swimming! Laying on the stomach, you lift up your chest, arms, and legs to strengthen the back.

Finally it's time to stretch. The stretching focuses mostly on the hamstrings and lower back, mainly because stretching is done throughout the DVD after each muscle group is worked.

I really enjoy doing the Physique 57 DVD.  Although most people either do Core Fusion or P57, I really like to do them both!  Each style is similar, since they are both Lotte Berk based, however I feel that these to classes are totally different and effective in their own way.  P57 is more fast paced, up beat and dancey. The instructor is sort of chirpy and silly.  The music is pretty cool and I'm actually dying to find one of the songs on the DVD! Core Fusion is more mellow, reviving, soothing, and calming and the instructors are serious but kind and confident.

Both Core Fusion and P57 are awesome DVDs and styles, I really don't think you can go wrong with either! Since it's recommended to do Lotte Berk four times a week, I do two P57 classic 57 minute workout and one Core Fusion Body Sculpt and one Core Fusion Pilates Plus workout each week!

If you are looking for a new and challenging workout, try Physique 57!

Check out Kelly Ripa and Anderson Cooper doing some moves:

Boys are Funny

Today I finally bit the bullet and went out for a jog. Yesterday was my scheduled run day but since we had massive thunderstorms yesterday I decided to wait. Today was absolutely beautiful! It is 73 degrees with a light breeze and not a cloud in the sky! I asked my brother to join me in a jog since he had similar plans.

I had planned to go for about 30 minutes, running 1 minute and walking 4 minutes, but things changed a little bit. 1 minute just didn't seem like enough so we pushed up to 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking. I felt pretty good until the end when I could really feel my hip aching. I asked my brother if he wanted to go for 20 more minutes and I thought I could but once I finished the last 2 minutes I decided to call it a day.

I figured if I kept going I might hurt my hip even more and that is the last thing I want to do. We ended up doing 2.38 miles in 32 minutes.

Now, my brother hasn't done anything active since probably May of 2009 when he last played on my soccer team. He does have a pretty active job working in TV production but he is anything but healthy. While in a healthy weight range (he is super lucky, I seriously don't know what genes he got!) he eats lots of fast food on the road and drinks a ton of soda. His sleep patterns are also pretty funny. He works 3 or 4 days a week and has to drive long distances to get to his gig's  so he'll wake up at 4 and be gone until 4 the next morning and sleep for the next few days. Needless to say he isn't very healthy.

So when we set out for our jog I expected him to be winded and want to stop. However, it was me that wanted to stop running. He also wanted to run MUCH faster than I was ready for. His idea of a first run in forever is to go as fast as you can and burn out early.

He told me afterwards that he had a hard time going as slow as me! He also said that he's glad that we went that pace because he knew that he wouldn't have been able to go as long if he had started out as fast as he wanted to.

Boys are pretty silly about training and learning to run! Anyone else have a story about running with their brother, boyfriend, husband?

Kicking Things Off With a Bang

Well last night was my first soccer game of the season! I had planned to attempt to walk/jog a couple of times before the game, just to know my capabilities. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it. For some reason I just had this weird fear about getting back out there. Of course I'm not going to be able to do that same workout that I ended on, I haven't ran in 2 months! But for some reason I just couldn't get out there even though I felt ready.

So Friday was going to be sort of a test run. I did a little bit of a warm-up and stretched pretty well. I decided that I definitely didn't want to start so I cozied up to the bench and watched everyone else play.

About 15 minutes in it was my turn to sub. Right when I got out on the field, one of my teammates played an awesome ball right through the defenders and to my feet. I had to sprint really hard and got a pretty weak shot off to the keeper but it felt good to run fast!

I did a little more jogging around the field but wasn't feeling as active as I could be and started feeling kind of tight in the hamstrings/quads so I decided to sub out.

All in all the game went pretty well. I had two similar breakaway sprints and was really impressed at my speed. I definitely wasn't thinking that I'd get there seeing as I haven't been working on those quick twitch muscles at all! I came home and iced my hip which was just feeling kind of tired.

I've got a little bit of DOMS in my quads and hamstrings, a touch in my back, but other than that I'm feeling really good and we won the game!

I've decided that I'm just going to go back to square one with the Beginning Runner's Handbook, probably around week 3 or so, and doing at least two workouts a week and keeping up with my strength training and Core Fusion. I think I'm going to be running on Mondays and Wednesdays with soccer or a run on Fridays if soccer is cancelled. This should be a pretty well rounded workout coupled with Core Fusion/P57 4 times a week and strength training 1 time a week.

That being said, this is my last weekend of unemployment and I'm going to enjoy it! New job starts Wednesday!

Everyone have a great Saturday night :)

February Wrap Up and March Goals

In February I:
-Read Winter Garden, The Lovely Bones and Iron Heart
-Tried a new workout
-It SNOWED a foot in Dallas
-I discovered some workout DVDs that I love: Personal Training W/ Jackie, Body Sculpt, and Pilates Plus
-I quit my job
-And got a new one!

Some other February highlights:
-The final season of Lost
-The Olympics
-The Saints win the Super Bowl
-A new found love for working out

March is a whole new month and a new beginning:
-Soccer season starts
-I start my new job!
-I'm going to start running again
-I'm going to stay injury free during soccer and running :)

It's a Beautiful Day!

This is what I've been doing all day:

Hope you all are having an equally wonderful, beautiful, relaxing, and sunny Saturday!

Iron Heart: The True Story of How I Came Back From The Dead by Brian Boyle

I'm almost at a loss for words at where to begin describing this book to you all. I started reading this book at midnight on Wednesday morning. I didn't stop reading until I finished at 4:15 am that same morning. I'm not quite sure what it is about this book that grabbed me and wouldn't let me go; it could be the medical miracle, the outstanding desire to recover, the athletic determination. It could just be that this story is so awesome and scary and inspiring that I just couldn't put it down. This is the story of Brian Boyle.

“Not since Lance Armstrong has an American athlete been so celebrated for dodging death and competing again.”—Washington Post 


It was a terrible car crash, and during the months Brian Boyle lay in a medically induced coma, his body convulsed whenever his parents spoke. He remembers finally waking up from the coma, unable to speak or move, watching his doctors huddled with his parents in the corner of the hospital room. They didn’t know it, but he could hear them. He heard the words “vegetable” and “hospital for life.” He saw tubes everywhere—down his throat, in his chest, in his arms, on his neck. He couldn’t move any part of his body, couldn’t blink his eyelids. He couldn’t ask why he was paralyzed. He only knew that he was in a hospital and that he was scared.

Later, this 5-foot-11, 230-pound athlete turned 130-pound skeleton, sat in his wheelchair, staring at his immovable legs, willing death to come. For almost two years, survival seemed impossible. . . until the dream of an Ironman triathlon brought twenty-three-year-old Brian Boyle back to life. From learning how to walk again to becoming an Ironman, Brian’s ordeal and triumph are brought to life in his inspiring memoir: Iron Heart. 24 color illustrations.


Brian Boyle had just graduated high school a few months before the horrifying accident. In early July as he was heading back from a swim practice, Brian's Camaro was t-boned by a dump truck at an intersection. His pelvis was shattered, his heart had shifted to the right side of his chest, both lungs were punctured, he had a lacerated liver, his kidney's were failing, he had his spleen and gallbladder removed, his collarbone was broken, and he had massive head trauma.

Brain died eight times. At one point his breathing tube filled with fluid from his lungs and he was without oxygen for nearly two minutes. At this point doctors believed he would be nothing but a vegetable. Brian was put on high amounts of addictive pain medicine to put him in a medically induced coma. He awoke from that coma one month later.

When he opened his eyes all Brian wanted to do was blink. Just a blink of the eyes. The medicine was so strong that he had no control over anything and it took hours to get even the slightest movement. After the doctors began to ween him off the medicine that was putting him in a coma, Brian began to experience drug withdrawal. He was an addict of the worst kind and was now going through the terrifying and painful process of detoxifying his body from the drugs. It was at this point that Brian wanted to let go.

But he didn't. Brian put it in his mind to survive. To live for his parents, his friends, and for himself. This sparked a chain reaction in his life.

Somehow, Brian overcame the odds and became one of the most elite athletes in the world-an Ironman. Brian's story is truly inspiring and breathtaking.



I couldn't put this book down and I bet if you start reading it you will feel the same. 4.5 out of 5 stars.