Review: Bob Harper's Cardio Conditioning DVD

I hope everyone is having an awesome weekend and staying warm!  I have been trying to incorporate more free weights and strength exercises into my half marathon training.  I am trying to schedule at least 2-3 days of cross training and/or free weights into my workout plan each week.  I just feel so much stronger and I am better able to support myself when walking for long distances when I my core, arm, and leg muscles are well conditioned.

I have several workout videos that include weights (cardio + weights = 2 birds/one stone) but I usually stick with Jillian Michael's videos like Ripped in 30 or 30 Day Shred.  I was looking for a bigger (and longer) challenge yesterday so I popped in Bob Harper's Cardio Conditioning DVD.  I got this DVD about a year ago and I did the 60 minute workout a few times but never made it through the entire thing.

Yesterday, I did make it through, so I thought I'd offer a review of this workout.

This is a fairly challenging workout and definitely worked muscles that I don't exercise on a regular basis (as made obvious by slightly sore upper arms and legs this morning).  I liked this workout for several reasons:  it incorporated different exercises than I usually do (varied workouts are so important to keep my body from getting used to my workouts), it was longer than most workout videos, it didn't contain lunges (oh, how much do I hate lunges?), and I was sweating pretty good throughout the majority of this workout.  I liked that you pushed yourself for about 45-50 minutes and then went into an ab workout and started cooling down.  There is also a countdown on the screen, which is really nice to know how much longer you have to go.  I believe there is a way to turn the countdown off.

This workout probably would have been more productive to me if I had two sets of weights (one light, one heavy), but I completed the entire workout with 5 lb weights and it was fine.

Now for what I didn't like:  this workout is extremely repetitive.  If you don't like squats, kettle bell-like swings, and dead lifts (with a weird squat included in these), this is not the workout for you.  I don't think I would do this more than once every week or two because I can see myself getting very bored with this and because I tend to get lower back pain with dead lift.  I have previously done the 25 minute workout included in the video (it's more like 23 mins) and felt like it was too short and I didn't get a good workout.

All in all , this is a good DVD, and will likely land in my weekly or biweekly video rotation.

Have a happy and healthy day!