Gettin My Pilates On: Blogilates Review
Hi all! Happy happy Friday! Hope your week has been great as always! As promised, today I’ve got a little DVD review for you. First let’s step back in time to about, oh say, a year ago. Back when I was a novice blogger, just starting out . . . o.k., I’m still new to thing whole thing but I do think I’ve learned so much in the past year. Anyways, when I first started out blogging, I began by reading what we in the blog world call “big bloggers”. These bloggers were super popular and have a large following. One of these big bloggers was Cassey over at Blogilates.
Cassey is a pilates instructor who blogs about healthy living, pilates and much more. Her YouTube videos have a massive following (hello inspiration for my videos!) and at the end of last year she produced her first pilates DVD (jealous).
Well, I finally decided to order her DVD recently and after doing it a couple of times, I ask myself what took so long!? Normally I don’t love pilates DVDs because quite honestly, I’ve never really felt the burn enough in mat classes to keep me interested. Because you are so focused on lying on the mat, its much harder to work your larger muscle groups (aka your buns and thighs). Pilates is based on movements that target your core, which is an important muscle to work, but not a huge calorie burner and I like to torch calories and tone at the same time!
Given my reservations with pilates classes, I was pleasantly surprised when I did this DVD. The first couple of times I tried it, I split it up into smaller chunks and added it in to my cardio. After the first class, my abs were sore for two days! When I finally did the entire video in one sitting, I worked up quite a sweat. It’s not a cardio-based program so my calorie burn was not that high considering the video is 60 minutes long (200 calories), but in terms of feeling the burn in my muscles…it was definitely there!
So here’s the details of the DVD:
* The full class is 60 minutes long, but there is a feature that allows you to target certain areas and just do the exercises for those areas. This basically breaks it down into 6 ten minute segments (roughly).
* Cassey says right up front this DVD is intermediate/advanced. I loved this because it was really challenging. If you are brand new to pilates, this DVD may be too difficult for you but Cassey does provide a lot of options so if you are relatively fit, I would consider trying it.
* The name of the game is repetitions, repetitions, repetitions. The muscle burn comes from doing each exercise for a loooooong time.
* Most people think long time = boring. Actually Cassey has a really bubbly personality (probably why she is so darn popular!) and when you listen to her, you can’t help but smile a little, which temporarily makes you forget about the pain in [insert any part of body here].
* The exercises in this DVD are pretty unique. Just like yoga, there are standard sequences and moves in pilates that you will tend to see when you go to class. Cassey really thought outside of the box with this DVD and introduced a lot of moves I had never done before in a pilates class.
* This is a total body workout: legs, arms, booty and every part of your abs/core. Cassey tends to work on area at a time so you fatigue those muscle groups before you move on to another area.
A huge bonus for this workout though was that it was totally doable for me with my elbow. Since I fractured it, I can only do a select few strength/toning workouts. This one was no problem at all! The only thing I could not do were some planks at the end and a booty up thingie (don’t ask, just see for yourself!).
Overall, I really like this workout and will do it again. I most likely will incorporate parts of it into my other workouts because although the hour class is great, I would rather do a few pilates moves at a time than a full hour of pilates.