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