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Friday, February 22, 2013

30 Day Shred Review and Notes

"Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product." - Eleanor Roosevelt

Jillian Michael's 30 day Shred is a workout DVD with 3 complete workouts.  The workouts are 3 different levels which progress to harder and harder.  The workouts all use Jillian's 3-2-1 Interval system which mix cardio, strength and abdominal exercises for more efficient weight loss.

Each workout contains a warm-up, 3 circuits, each circuit with 3 minutes of strength, 2 minutes of cardio, and 1 minute of abs, and finally a 2 minutes cool down. 

Equipment needed for the workout are hand weights and a mat if exercising on a hard surface.  

Each level workout has an advanced workout, with Natalie, and a modified workout with Anita.  

Review:
Most annoying thing for me in this workout is that Jillian keeps saying it is a 20 minute workout.  It is  not a 20 minute workout; each workout is 27 minutes long, just a pet peeve of mine I guess.  

The workouts themselves are quite good and I felt the it was working as soon as I started.  I liked that I was able to progress from modified through advanced at each level (in 10 days) and then have a new workout to challenge me for the next 10 days.  

I did find that I was kind of bored doing one workout everyday for 10 days though.  I read on an Amazon review a suggestion to intermix the levels so you don't get bored and this sounds like a good idea.  I suppose if you were beginning though, level 3 is not where you would want to stop.  

The music in the video is pretty uninspiring, but after you get the hang of the workouts you can mute it and play your own music at your house.  

I would have liked some guidance as to how much weight to perform for each exercise.  There was no suggestion as far as I could see.  

Review of Jillian Michael's web-site:
I did start a 30 day trial of the web-site.  I am always annoyed when things say FREE and then ask for a credit card before you sign up and tell you that it will be automatically renewed.  It's just another way people steal money from consumers.  It took 2 e-mails to make sure that it did not automatically renew, and I was charged  $1 with an email that I needed to look at to make sure I get a refund.

The actual web-site was not very easy to navigate.  There are so many buttons that it is kind of overwhelming. It had a weight tracker, exercise and food log.  The food log was not very easy to use and I don't believe that it accurately assessed some of my food.  I barely used this feature.  The exercise log was fairly easy to use since I was using one of her DVDs, but if I worked out on a "Rest" day than I could not get credit for it.

The web-site is very full of information.  It has pages and pages of information regarding nutrition, exercise, metabolic hormones, and more.  I think I could spend days here trying to read everything.

Results:
I feel my arms are more toned and my abs are firmer.  I feel good about finishing the 30 days.  I am more in the habit of working out regularly. Yay!  I think these are all positive results.

If you have a limited amount of time 27 minutes, you can get a good workout in an efficient manner.

Out of 30 Days:
24 Workouts
6 Rest days

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