My Basement Gym

On Wednesday, I decided to try another Leslie Sansone workout that I hadn’t done before. It’s called 5 Day Slim Down: A Mile Each Morning. The workout contains 5 one mile workouts, as well as a separate warm up and cool down/stretch, making it very easy to customize the length of the workout to fit your needs. Leslie offers an overview of the program in the Introduction, suggesting ways to use the dvd. It’s well chaptered, and also contains a bonus segment, Super Breakfasts, featuring Leslie in the kitchen. She offers 5 quick and easy breakfast ideas, adding in other healthy eating tips during the demonstration. This is probably the longest Leslie workout that I have, since her other 5 mile workouts do not have the warm up and cool down separate from the miles. The full workout – including all 5 miles and the warm up, cool down, and stretch – clocks in around 82 minutes. That’s a lot of Leslie – but she’s pretty calm throughout the entire workout, and is on her own the whole time, as well.

Each mile, referred to as Days 1-5, has a different focus, offering a good variety. The first four miles are 14 minute miles, and the last mile speeds up to a 12 minute mile and is the only one to include a jogging interval. I did the second mile on my rebounder, which was pretty fun. The music also changes for each mile, and I don’t remember hearing a lot of repeats, though I have the music used in this workout during other workout videos. But, it’s nice that the music doesn’t feel repetitive. The warm up was adequate, and the cool down stretch is longer than normal for Leslie’s workouts.

This was a nice workout, and was glad to see that the warm up and cool down were separate, making it easier to use the dvd for a shorter workout. That way, you don’t have each mile contain a warm and cool down, allowing you to keep the intensity a bit higher when using multiple miles at once. I also liked the twists she added for each mile, which made the long workout move along pretty quickly for me. This would be a good choice for someone who’s new to Leslie, to see if they enjoy her style, as you get a little bit of everything in this workout (and it’s usually a good bargain, too!).

Day 1 is a Classic Walk, with a 14 minute mile pace using Leslie’s four basic steps – walking, side steps, knee ups, and kicks. Day 2 is called Sculpt Your Arms, though no weights are used by Leslie. She adds lots of upper body movement to this 14 minute mile, which helped to keep my heart rate up. Day 3, Slim Your Legs, was a fun one and she includes side to side squats, stationary lunges, and some heel digs and other variations on side steps. Slim Your Legs was an enjoyable 14 minute mile that went by very quickly for me. Day 4 is Trim Your Tummy, a 14 minute mile where Leslie adds in several standing crunches, as well as a lot of opposite hand to knee during the knee ups. Day 5, Speed Walk, increases the pace to a 12 minute mile, including a brief (~1 minute) jogging interval toward the end. The Speed Walk mile was fun for me, but then again I usually do prefer her faster paced workouts.

Well, today I had a bit of Monday-itis, and didn’t feel like doing anything overly challenging. So, since I had so much fun with Four Fast Miles last week, I decided to go with another Leslie Sansone workout. I chose The Big Burn: 2 Miles of Intervals, from her Walk at Home series. This workout is about 31 minutes long including a 5 minute warm up and 3 minute stretch, and is chaptered to allow to you choose a 1 or 2 miles walk. There is also a music only option, if you don’t want to hear Leslie chatting with her group of exercisers. Like Four Fast Miles, this workout includes some jogging intervals, and is a bit faster paced overall – compared to some of her less challenging workouts.

This workout was pretty fun for me today, and it was certainly better than doing nothing, which is almost what happened, heh. There are a few flaws in this workout, but nothing that bothered me very much. There are some strange camera angles and focus problems, the music level is pretty quiet relative to Leslie, and there were a few times where I noticed some loud microphone noise – like someone was rubbing against it. One of the backgrounders also seems to have trouble following the moves from time to time, but that made me laugh – glad to see someone more un-coordinated than me! I enjoyed the workout, and may even add in another Leslie workout this week or next. I used my rebounder for about 5-6 minutes during the first mile, through the first jogging interval – and for the other two jogging intervals as well.

Mile One is just over 15 minutes long, including the 5 minute warm up. Leslie uses all of her usual moves – walking, kicks, side steps, and knee lifts. She also adds in wide marches, tap outs, hamstring kickbacks, double knee lifts, and double side steps. She also adds a variety of different arm movements throughout. The pace picks up after the warm up and stays a higher tempo, and then the first 90 second jogging interval starts around minute 11.

Mile Two is about 14 minutes, including the 3 minute stretch at the end. It starts off with a two minute jogging interval, and Leslie adds in higher impact kicks and knees in between the jogging. She also uses traveling side steps with her other steps in between the intervals. The last two minute interval starts just after minute 19. During the cool down, she also takes the time to swing the camera onto another camera man and asks him to do some kicks to join the workout. That’s a bit odd, but Leslie looks like she’s having fun. The beat of the music begins to slow down after the last interval, which takes you into cool down. And as usual, Leslie finishes the workout with a brief stretch.

For cardio on Wednesday, I kept changing my mind – treadmill, kickboxing, rowing, elliptical, something else?? I haven’t done a Leslie Sansone workout in a while, so I decided to go with one of hers. I chose Four Fast Miles from her Walk Slim series. I bought the Walk Slim series as a set, and enjoy all of them, so even though her workouts tend to blend together for me – at least I knew I picked one of my favorites. This workout is considered one of her more “advanced” workouts, so the pace is faster – and this one also contains several jogging intervals – which Leslie calls boosted walking. There are seven exercisers in the group, and two modifiers stay low impact for the entire workout – though they aren’t always visible during the jogging. The workout is about 50 minutes long, including a five minute warm up and three minute cool down, and each mile is chaptered – giving the option to customize your workout by starting or stopping at any mile you choose. There’s also a music only option, which is a nice feature for anyone who doesn’t want to hear Leslie’s chatter. The music is pretty fun, too – including vocal remixes of I Feel Good, I’ve Got To Use My Imagination, and New Attitude mixed in with music that I recognized from some of her other workouts.

I haven’t used my rebounder in a while, so I did all of the jogging intervals on it, and had a great time with that! I think I need to do that more often – and for that matter, revisit my Urban Rebounder workouts, too. Leslie is pretty enthusiastic in this one, with lots of joking with her group and some whooping, but she didn’t bother me. If I used this workout frequently in a short time frame she might start to bug me, but I have plenty of her other workouts to rotate through if I go on a Leslie kick. There is also an odd part toward the end of the workout where she brings out a strange little James Brown doll during his song. But, she sure seems to be having a good time, heh. Also, the group seems rather close together considering the large space they have to workout in, and I’m used to seeing her group more spread out.

The first mile is about 14 minutes pace, and includes the five minute warm up and two minutes of jogging at the end. She adds higher impact kicks and knee lifts in between the jogging, too. Leslie uses all of her basic moves – walking, kicks, side steps, and knee lifts.

Mile Two stays fast paced and is about 10 minutes. Leslie adds in tap outs with a turn, arm movements, double side steps or grapevines, and there are two jogging intervals. She also adds pendulum leg swings and to the other higher impact movements during the intervals.

The third mile is a 12 minute mile pace, has a short water break at the beginning – while keeping your feet moving, of course. The same high impact moves from the previous intervals are rotated through the jogging segments in this mile as well. Double knee lifts and hamstring kickbacks are added in as well.

Mile four doesn’t have any jogging intervals, and is also about 12 minutes. Leslie also includes some forward and back walking, as well as some forward and back side steps, and a couple mambos and standing crunches. This also where she brings out the James Brown doll, heh. The brief stretch is after the workout clock stops.

I really liked that warm up was shorter in this workout, as sometimes I feel like her warm ups can be a bit too long. The high energy and fun atmosphere was a good fit for the day, too. Now I’ll have to check to see what other Leslie interval workouts I have, and hopefully I’ll use my rebounder more as well.

Today I tried another workout from Leslie Sansone’s Walk Your Way Thin series – Walk Off Even More Weight. This is the same series that Punch Up Your Walk is from. Each of the workouts in this series comes with a different gadget, and the item included with this dvd is a 2 lb weighted belt. This workout contains two 2 mile walks, at different paces – Classic Walk and Fast Walk – and both are about 30 minutes each, including warm up, cool down, and stretch. The dvd is well chaptered, so you also have the option to choose 1 or 2 miles for each walk from the menu. There is also a bonus “energy boosting walk” that is about 5 minutes long. I did both 2 mile walks today, but not the bonus walk. I wore the weighted belt, and also added the weighted gloves from Punch Up Your Walk. I felt very gadget-y. I like the fit of the gloves okay, but find them a bit bulky, compared to the gloves I usually wear. Plus, my regular gloves are 1 lb each, and the pink gloves from the kit are only 12 ounces each.

Classic Walk is what those familiar with Leslie would expect – it’s her basic walking routine, at a 15 minute mile pace. The warm up felt a bit long at five minutes, since this workout isn’t very intense. Leslie is alone for this workout (and the next one) and uses all of her usual moves – marching, knee ups, kicks, and side steps. A lot of the music sounds familiar, and there seems to be less arm movements than some of her other newer releases. So, nothing new here and I have to admit I was a bit bored during this one.

Fast Walk isn’t much different than the Classic Walk workout was, aside from having a 12 minute mile pace after the warm up. She does add in some tap outs as well as some grapevines toward the end of the workout, but otherwise it felt quite similar to the previous workout. The intensity was a higher in this one, so I did like the faster pace.

While I wasn’t expecting anything new and exciting from this dvd, I bought it mostly because I was curious about the weighted belt – and wanted to see if Leslie was going to do anything different with the workout while using the weighted belt. After the initial mention of the belt, so doesn’t really mention much about it again until the end when it’s time to take it off. Plus, I honestly didn’t feel much of an intensity boost from wearing it – though since it’s only 2 lbs, I guess I would have been more surprised if it had made a difference. But I would probably wear it again for her workouts, since it wasn’t uncomfortable at all. So, not a great workout today, but this is a light week for me anyway – so I’m okay with that.

ETA: It looks like you can now order these kits online.