Cathe Friedrich’s Kick, Punch and Crunch

This DVD has two workouts on it—Kick, Punch and Crunch and Legs and Glutes. I haven’t done Legs and Glutes yet and won’t be doing it for a while. I am currently in the middle of Jillian Michael’s Body Revolution, so that is where all of my strength work is until August 6. Once I complete Body Revolution and post the program review, I will do Legs and Glutes. So for now, I am just reviewing Kick, Punch and Crunch. 

Kick, Punch and Crunch is a 66 minute kickboxing workout; 7 minute warm up, 53 minutes training time and 6 minute cool down/stretch. 7 minutes of the training time is devoted to abdominal work, so total kickboxing time is 46 minutes. I have found yet another Cathe workout that I love. It is tough and it is different. Kick, punch and Crunch is more of a traditional kickboxing workout than her MMA Fusion, but it is still different from the other kickboxing workouts I am accustomed to. After the warm up you do punch/kick drills for 26 minutes. These are a combination of kickboxing and aerobic moves—and they really get the heart pumping! After the drills you move into 20 minutes of kick/punch combos. There are 3 combos, each repeated on the opposite side. They are tough! And then you need a stability ball for 7 minutes of abdominal work. I own a stability ball, but I don’t have a lot of workouts that use them. The ones that I do own I don’t do very often—so I’m not a pro with the stability ball. The abdominal work was very effective—I felt it while doing it! At the end of the ab section there are pikes and knee-ins on the ball. This is where my stability ball inexperience was on display. These were very difficult but I did not get the full effect because the ball kept rolling away! I don’t know what I am doing wrong, but I couldn’t seem to do the pike on the ball properly. The knee-ins worked better—but even with those it rolled away sometimes. Frustrating. I’ll have to keep working on getting better with the stability ball—it’s a challenge now! 

This workout isn’t low impact as most kickboxing workouts are. There is a good bit of jumping in it. I really like Cathe, her cueing is good, but not perfect. Often she is changing the move as she is cuing—so no real warning, so sometimes I missed a rep. Not a big deal, but it doesn’t hurt to cue one rep or so prior so exercisers can stay with you. This is probably a high intermediate/low advanced workout. I used weight gloves which took up the intensity a bit.  I feel it in my glutes and shoulders! 

There are mixes on the DVD where you can mix together sections from Kick, Punch and Crunch and Legs and Glutes. That seems like a great idea since kickboxing is a great lower body workout anyway. 

Overall, an excellent workout. I am looking forward to trying Legs and Glutes—stay tuned for that review!