Supreme 90 – Gangstead

Supreme 90 Wrap Up

This morning I saw the infomercial for Supreme 90 and it reminded me that I still needed to do the wrap up post so that all of my review series is in one place.

Summary

Name	Time	Equipment	Rating	vs P90X
Warm Up and Cool Down	4:19 5:57	none	5/4	P90X
Chest & Back	22:15	Dumbbells, Ball	3	P90X
Core Dynamics	18:07	Dumbbells	8	S90
Total Body	23:18	Dumbbells	5	P90X
Chest Shoulders Tri	34:53	Dumbbells, Ball	7	P90X
Tabata Inferno	37:47	Dumbbells	6	S90
Back & Bi	46:24	Dumbbells, Ball	7	P90X
Legs	22:53	Dumbbells, Ball	6	P90X
Cardio Challenge	31:07	Dumbbells (mat, optional)	9	S90
Ultimate Ball	30:34	Ball	7	S90

Note: there is also an ab workout for a mail in extra fee, which I didn’t purchase. I’d love to borrow someone’s copy and add it to the review.

Do Supreme 90 if:

You only have $20
You’ve already done P90X and have memorized all of Tony’s jokes
You like squats
You have 30-60 minutes a day
You want a series of workouts that are good by themselves without strictly following the program

Don’t do Supreme 90 if:

Your workout needs to be crazy intense 6 days a week
You want a cohesive program with complementary work outs and a useful nutrition plan
You want to use heavy weights (greater than 25 lbs)
You like pull ups
You have 60-90 minutes a day

Bottom Line:

Supreme 90 is a good value for $20, but P90X is a good value at $120 also.

Thanks for reading.

~Steven Gangstead

Supreme 90 Ultimate Ball

I’m reviewing Supreme 90, this is the last in the series.

Warm up and cool down are common on all Supreme 90 workouts and were reviewed separately.

Work out: Ultimate Ball

Length: 30:34

Diameter : 32 inches

Color: Blue

Ennuendo: Aplenty

Equipment: Ball (Ultimate preferred, Penultimate will do in a pinch)

Format:

30 second ball exercises with 30 seconds rest

Review:

I’ll try to get my ball puns out of the way first. Prepare to get your balls sweaty. Hold your ball with a grip that’s gentle, yet firm, or else you risk popping it. The demonstrators balls were gray (and looked old), but mine was blue. Now that’s out of the way, let’s roll along…

Ultimate Ball wasn’t all that challenging. The exercises were either static plank-type or very slow reps. Each one used the ball in some way. The pace was sluggish. Core exercises aren’t the kind of things that leave you gasping for breath like workouts with weights so you end up just standing around between moves because you don’t need to catch your breath. It would be easy to supplement this workout with some push ups or squats instead of 30 seconds off. You could almost take Cardio Challenge and start it at the same time and do 30 seconds core, 30 seconds weighted cardio. Now that would be an awesome workout. There was only one totally useless exercise: side crunch. The demonstrators didn’t know how to do it and neither did I. What the demonstrators ended up doing was an awkward crunch next to a ball.

Tip: make sure your ball has lots of air in it. I thought mine was fine, but it was deforming a lot more under weight than the demonstrators’ balls. A flat ball wants to shoot out from you on some moves.

Score (out of 10): 7

Compared to P90X:

S90 scores another win here as I can’t think of any equivalent P90X routine. There is P90X Core Synergistics, but that is a bad comparison because you are actually tired afterwards. Ultimate Ball is almost relaxing because the pace is so slow.

That’s it! No more exercises to review. I’ll put a wrap up post with links to all the reviews soon. Hope you’ve enjoyed.

-Steven Gangstead

Supreme 90 Cardio Challenge

I’m reviewing Supreme 90

Warm up and cool down are common on all Supreme 90 workouts and were reviewed previously.

Work out: Cardio Challenge

Length: 31:07

Equipment: Dumbbells, mat (optional)

Format:

30 sec exercise, 30 sec off. Repeat a lot. Light weights or just body weight.

Review:

This is my favorite work out so far. I’m highly skeptical of cardio workouts because how much cardio can you really do in the few square feet of your living room in a half hour? Especially if you’re like me and regularly go out and run for half hour/hour at a time during the week or go bike for 2/3 hours at a stretch on the weekends? I was pleasantly surprised that with a light amount of weight you get pretty thoroughly worked out in Cardio Challenge. The pacing is good. 30 seconds recovery and a good description of the next exercise gives you ample time to switch your PowerBlock or other adjustable dumbbell. Good variety of exercises, this is more of a total body workout than the Total Body workout. There are no repeats, but variations mean you come back and do a similar move but with a twist — that’s exactly how a workout should be. I think this particular workout would be well suited for a runner. With light weights you aren’t going to be jogging through a lactic acid burn the next day, but it’s still going to build up muscle so that you don’t get that emaciated striated runner’s build. If you are trying to get huge ripped muscles: this ain’t it. Go to Gold’s. My only note/tip for this workout is to go light weight for most of the exercises. This is supposed to be cardio, you aren’t doing 8-12 slow reps with a heavy weight, you’re doing 30 seconds fast (15-20 reps) with light weight. Since the instructor gives really vague statements like “Don’t make it heavy this is cardio, but don’t go too light either!” I’ll give a specific example. One exeercise is a bent over row, a move that’s also in the weight lifting work outs. I’d normally do 8 reps with 30’s, on this workout I used 15’s for the 30 seconds (not sure on reps, 20 maybe?).

Score (out of 10): 9

Compared to P90X:

The cardio workouts in P90X are Kenpo X and Plyometrics X and to a lesser extent Core Synergistics and MAYBE if you are really liberal Yoga X (I never did Cardio X, so I can’t speak for that). I’d say that these (Kenpo and Plyo) don’t really compare chiefly because they don’t use weights. Plyo has a different focus so if I was comparing Cardio Challenge to one P90X workout it’d be Kenpo. Kenpo was a great workout for me the first couple weeks, but after that I got used to it and my heart rate didn’t go up very much. I don’t think I’d have that problem with S90 Cardio Challenge because I could always go from 10s to 15s or 15s to 20s (or a 2.5 lb increment if I feel like using the PowerBlock adder weights). S90 wins this round.

There is only one workout left to review, Ultimate Ball (snicker).

-Steven Gangstead

Supreme 90 Legs

Quick recap. I started to review the workouts in the Supreme 90 Day workout program, but since I recently updated my twitters to go to my faceplant and my blegs to my twits this will be the first review to go from my bleg to your face. And Bob’s your uncle. Basically this is the first one that might get some reads. If you want to see the other S90 workouts I’ve reviewed they are here.

Warm up and cool down are common on all Supreme 90 discs and were reviewed previously.

Work out: Legs

Length: 22:53

Equipment: Dumbbells, Ball

Format:

1 core set (3 exercises X 2), the rest of the workout is like a bad company that doesn’t really have an org chart and thinks that’s a feature. It’s a bunch of random squats and lunges, and at some point in the middle he says repeat it and you do some of them again. One ball set is called a Triple Header (maybe Triple Heater) and is thrown in there randomly. Just don’t worry about the structure and follow the leader.

Review:

If your leg consisted solely of glutes and if your lower back was part of your leg then this workout would live up to its name. As it is I left it with fresh calves and even fresher quads. That’s not to say I’m not tired, I did get a decent workout. Twenty minutes of squats and lunges will take the spring out of anyone’s step. There is quite a lot of variation in terms of different kinds of lunges and squats, but little variation in terms of other muscles used. Since the same group is hammered with no rest my lunging muscles were all lunged out and I just couldn’t give a squat at the end. The ball was used effectively except the “Bulgarian Split Squat” was real difficult to imitate and is more useful with a chair instead. The leader’s charisma really shines through on one exercise he does with the group and he is encouraging them to stick with it and do the last couple reps with him… except two of the demonstrators are done already and are just watching him. Truly inspirational. Like most S90 work outs if you are using adjustable dumbbells be prepared to pause if you want to change the weights at all. The demonstrators only use two weights though and they don’t appear to use more than 15 pounds.

Score (out of 10): 6

Compared to P90X:

P90X legs are done the same day as back (pull ups) so your legs get brief rests. Also P90X has a whole hour so they do some useful static exercises like wall squats. P90X also wins by recognizing that legs also have quads and calves.

-Steven Gangstead