Squeeze Lower Body Challenge
After a running (okay, okay…I walked 20 of the 75 minutes) a 10K with my hubby this morning, we decided to do some strength training. He wants to work on his upper body, so I went though some exercises with him, and then I went to work on my trouble zone: LOWER BODY. I popped Tracy Effinger’s Squeeze Lower Body Challenge into the DVD player and got to work. I like this workout because it’s short and to the point. That said, her choice of warm up really worries me. She wants you to do dead lifts with heavy weights (10+ pounds) on COLD MUSCLES. NOT A GOOD IDEA. This has the potential to cause serious injury. Thankfully, the run had seriously warmed up even the small accessory muscles (thanks, Tracy Anderson!) in my body prior to this workout. After the warm up (which I did using 5 lb weights due to the speed of the dead lifts…I really don’t want to injure my lower back, thank you), she moves on to some wide-plies. These HURT. It’s a good hurt, though. My legs were shaking, as they should be doing an intense lower-body workout. Then it’s on to raised-toe lunges…one word: OUCH. These are different from any other lower body exercise that I’ve done. They work everything from my hip flexors to my calves. GREAT! Then you move on to more thigh work and then some glutes. Overall, this is a good workout. It is done entirely standing, which was a little disappointing, as I would have liked to see the pretzel (there’s a killer pretzel sequence on her Stronger workout that I LOVE).
Things I would change: the warm up (obviously) and more stretching. Although, I have all 3 Squeeze workouts, and they are all lacking on stretching. This is always a frustration of mine.
For only being 30 minutes long, this workout turned my legs into jelly…and hopefully will help to transform them into rock-hard, knock-out sexiness!
