I posted a Question on Facebook the other day to see what type of workout would be of most interest.  At first I just asked it and got a wide range of responses on the thread.  Then I used the Question feature and Step was the overall winner - Strength came in second.

Today I posted a question on format.  Since some people are not on Facebook, I’ll ask it here too.  To encourage response, we’ve temporarily lifted the requirement to register in order to respond.

Here are the options:

1. Circuit – Alternating Step with Strength
2. Interval – Alternating Bouts of High Intensity Step followed by Low Intensity Step
3. Circuit WITH Interval – Alternating Bouts of High Intensity Step followed by Strength for recovery
4. Step - Steady State Cardio Step

photo credit: sapheron

Yesterday was reckoning with reality and taking the first step to change – admitting it, not just to myself, but to the world.  Today is the day to start with a clean slate, and like an artist staring at a blank canvas, I need to get started with the masterpiece.  Where do I begin?

I have in mind what the big picture should be, but need to get specific – I need to draw the outlines.

To say that I need to lose weight is your typical New Year’s Resolution – and yes, I’m a cynic about the concept.  Mainly because most people leave it at that – they want the big picture to suddenly appear without ever taking the time to draw the outlines.  If you’re a paint by numbers kind of artist, it’s time to assess with numbers. That means weigh and measure to see where you are right now.  Once that’s done, establish a specific goal and be realistic – 2 pounds per week is considered healthy weight loss.

Next, you have to set a time frame.  I want to lose 12 pounds and at 2 pounds a week, it will take me 6 weeks to accomplish that goal. Wow!  That’s a long time – we’re talking mid-February!  I’m already a bit dismayed at the thought.  So, I’m going to shorten that and really go for the gold. 

The truth is, I have a shorter range goal.  My daughter is getting married at the end of January and you know what that means – photos!  If I can drop just 5 pounds, I’ll be happy.  So there you have it.  My long term and a shorter term goal.  Now, fight the overwhelming feeling, Mary.  Take it one day at a time.

Today’s goal:  purge all leftover holiday stuff from the kitchen, go to the grocery store and cruise the outer perimeter for fresh food and pick up some color (fresh fruits and veggies) but first, go to the gym and knock out a circuit – alternating cardio with strength.  At some time in between, work… and finish helping my husband transfer his office to a new suite.  Yep, got my outlines drawn for the day!  Let’s do this!

Gin's Cramped Quarters

Cramped Quarters is a workout created especially for our men and women serving overseas in the military. It’s a high-energy boot-camp style workout done in 7 segments. This intermediate to advanced circuit workout is designed for small spaces with limited equipment required – just bodyweight and dumbbells.

Within hours of posting, Gin-fans requested the option to get it on DVD. So it’s been replicated with a glass master and now available in our online store. For only $2.99 + S&H the dvds are packaged in a plain sleeve and will play world-wide.

While FREE is cool, most workout fans still have a preference for sweating in front of their TVs instead of their computers. If you’re traveling and need a quick fix, check out the online versions available in Flash or Quicktime.

Cramped Quarters – Flash for PC
Cramped Quarters – Quicktime for Mac & iPhone

You can preview the segments through YouTube to make your selection of any of the seven sequences that fit your fitness needs. Start with the warm-up, select any or all of segments 2 – 6, and end with the cool-down.

Thanks for supporting this project and please pass it on to your friends!

Kenneth Blackstone SFC

When Gin first announced her intention to provide a free workout for the men and women overseas serving in our military forces, I knew it was a great idea. Inspired by Kenneth Blackstone, Jr. who was serving our military in Iraq and had contacted us about workouts to help him teach fitness classes to fellow soldiers, Gin set her mind to task. She ran a contest, cast and shot the segments all of which are boot-camp style circuits.

That done, she moved on to several other projects and the details for delivering the content were left to me. At the time, we were using the free Brightcove player – a somewhat classier version of YouTube. By the time the paid gigs were out of the way and time could be spent on the charity project, Brightcove decided to go the way of paying for the service.

Since we are a very small business – interested primarily in paying the electric bill to keep us connected to the outside world  – we could not afford to pay for the service. That was coupled with the fact that they had discontinued their pay media downloads – which we had tried with limited success on one of Gin’s workouts.

On the home front, we had succeeded in delivering short choreography clips via digital download through our online store. But having worked with a Shopsite shopping cart for nearly a decade, we decided to shop for other shopping carts.

Fast forward to November of last year… it took nearly 6 months to get the new store up and running. Our 3dCart is a vast improvement, but the one thing it lacks is the ease of digital content delivery that we had with the old store – and our current hosting plan lacks the harddrive space to store the content.

Mindfull of the recession that’s upon us, we decided not to upgrade the store to accomodate the huge video files. Since we changed to YouTube for our preview clips, we checked that option for content delivery, but they exceed the time limit.

So we decided to just post the segments on the main site – free for all! This eliminated the quandry of deciding and delivering the content for some (military and their families) and charging others.

As technology has progressed, some at the video fitness forum have discovered the ability to download the files with Real Player. (Not mentioned is that you can also save the file to your computer if you have Quicktime Pro by going to the iPhone page – those files also work on desktops with Quicktime.) One person wondered if we knew they could download them. As the one who has pondered greatly the delivery of this project, I say more power to you!

Nevertheless, there do seem to be those who just don’t have time to figure all that “right click, left click, save as… what’s an flv file?”

For those who viewed and liked the content, but prefer to do workouts the old fashioned way – put the dvd in the player and press play so I can see it on my TV instead of my laptop or cell phone – we have decided to press ‘cost of goods’ convenience copies of Cramped Quarters.

We’ll keep you posted on the availability.

Cramped Quarters Circuit Workout – flash

Cramped Quarters Circuit Workout - iPhone / 3G devices

YouTube preview clips are now available - preview links are posted.

Gin called me yesterday and was rather perturbed.  She’d been politely corrected after teaching a class that was titled “interval” which included strength segments. So she taught her format that alternates strength segments with cardio “intervals”.  After the class, she was told that she took the cardio “too high”.

This has been a long-time pet peeve of us both.  Seems over the years, the misnomer of alternating steady state cardio with strength has come to be known as an “interval” format.   True, they are done in “intervals” or segments and, yes, they alternate aerobic with anaerobic work.  But in this format, the aerobic segment tends to be the higher effort and the anerobic is the recovery.

Reebok University clarified the difference back in the 90′s when they rolled out Circuit and Interval Step programming.  A circuit alternates strength with cardio, and in a group fitness setting, it is done at what they call a uni-station as opposed to moving from one station to the next with some kind of cardio in between.   Interval training is alternating bouts of high intensity work efforts with lower intensity recovery and the goal is completely different from a circuit.

Check the dictionary and you find the definition: series of fast paced exercises interspersed with slower ones or brief rests for training (as of an athlete).

 The ACE Personal Trainer Manual defines it as “repeated intervals of exercises (e.g., jogging or running) insterspersed with intervals of relatively light exercise (e.g., walking)” and further defines “aerobic” and “anaerobic” interval training – all relative to cardio-respiratory fitness.  “Circuit training” is then defined as “taking participants through a series of exercise stations, with relatively brief intervals of rest in between”.

Several years ago, we posted this information clarifying Interval Training:

• What it is and Why it Works
• Types of Interval Training

Despite attempts to clarify, the word interval to describe cardio/strength formats seems to have taken a strong hold.   Is it “wrong”?  Perhaps not.  Is it “confusing”? Without a doubt!

The following is a thread found on the Video Fitness Forum:

http://forum.videofitness.com/showthread.php?t=128307&highlight=interval+definition

photo credit: jontunn