30 Minutes to Fitness: Home Gym Intervals DVD

Remove the wet laundry from your home gym equipment and jump on for a time efficient whole body workout that integrates your home cardio equipment and compound weight exercises. There is variety in the DVD to accommodate those who have an elliptical, stationary/spin bike, and/or treadmill. The weight intervals are compound exercises and always address and challenge more than one muscle group at a time. 2014 DVD release

Equipment needed: home gym equipment (treadmill, stationary bike, elliptical), weights (heavy)

Details:
Kelly Coffey-Meyer leads the workout with three backup exercisers on various pieces of home gym equipment. This is a great concept as many of us have gym equipment that has become part of the furniture rather than part of our daily routine. Home Gym Intervals integrates cardio intervals on your equipment with whole body compound exercises using heavy weights to trim and sculpt the body. This is a time efficient workout that has no breaks. You move rapidly on and off the treadmill and the intervals emerge quickly one after the other. Kelly provides you with the speed and incline level she uses on the treadmill as a guide, and cues that the weights used should be those that you can continually lift (with good form) for about a minute. Kelly demonstrates various moves on the treadmill including standard walking and running in addition to side slides (‘hold on to the rail’) and skipping.

Workout 1: Weighted compound moves supplement the cardio portion of this workout and include exercises using one heavy dumbbell such as: side leg lift with simultaneous bicep curls that moves into a squat to change legs, hot potato throw with weight toss hand to hand overhead and coming into a squat with the catch, arm rows with alternating squats side to side, and trunk rotations with a weight ‘step and throw’. These compound exercises translate into a very efficient workout. Kelly gives her level of treadmill work throughout the workout (incline-1 and speed-6) and gives instruction to go faster or slower as needed. She gives cueing for technique for elliptical (‘if you want more rear leg work, shift your weight back’). There are no specific recommendations for the spin bike but plenty of encouragement to increase your workload so that during the workout you are working at 80% of maximum.

Workout 2: Compound moves with weights again make an appearance and Kelly gives the weight levels of her fellow exercisers (Kelly has 12’s, Sammy has 8’s, and Marcus has 15’s). Exercisers at home are again instructed to do cardio sprints at 80% of max on the various pieces of equipment. Kelly continually gives encouragement such as “do what is comfortable for your body...lengthen your stride if you want to work the back of your legs (on treadmill)”. Intervals in this workout are a little more defined with 1 ½ minutes for cardio and about 1 minute for the weight work. The music has bells and changes to indicate an upcoming change between cardio and weights. Compound weight exercises include: bicep curls with squats, tricep kickbacks, overhead pull downs (to knees), simulated cable pull, weighted knee smashes, and tricep dips on the floor. These exercises, upon completion, have targeted all the major exercise groups.

Bonus Waistline Workout: This is a nice adjunct to the cardio and weight intervals and targets the abdominal section without doing a single standard crunch. The exercises include moves such as elbow crunches (to opposite knee) and cross punches, planks with shoulder taps and knee taps, isolation of the rib cage side to side with following downward cross punches, cross elbow to opposite knee, and upper body curls bringing elbows to knees. A very brief stretch ends this bonus segment.

Buyer’s Guide:
Home gym intervals is a non-stop cardio and weightlifting interval workout that has you dusting off and finding new use for your home gym cardio equipment. This is a great idea for those of us who have invested in equipment and just have it sitting. The workout is whole body and I felt like I worked just about everything (back, chest, obliques/abs, biceps, triceps, quads, hamstrings) by the end of the workout in addition to sweating from the cardio. The weighted compound exercises are challenging when done with a 12 pound weight (as I used). I would comment that in making these compound moves so comprehensive there is a lot of lower back work that is incorporated into the workout, and for me personally, too much; your mileage may vary. Kelly is a ray of sunshine throughout this workout. She clearly enjoys what she is doing and this makes the workout fun and enjoyable. She has some funny lines during the workout, i.e. “Anyone screaming uncle yet?’ and ‘It’s okay if you don’t like me now, but you will like me when this is over!’ Kelly is encouraging and at the same time asking if you can work harder. She provides cueing for safety and good form throughout the workout. I like that she was short of breath just as I was throughout the workout. I also like that the intervals are fast moving and there is no lost time in long explanations of the move about to be done.

Workout 1: total Time: 32:48
Warm up: 5 minutes
Cardio and Weights: 22 minutes
Cool Down/stretch: 5 minutes

Workout 2: Total Time: 28:42 minutes
Warm Up- 5 minutes
Cardio and Weights: 19 minutes
Cool Down/Stretch: 5 minutes

Bonus Waistline: 9 minutes