Cathe’s Muscle Endurance

Just like Bootcamp, I am updating and rewriting the Muscle Endurance review. It was the second review I wrote for this blog (posted 4/20/12) and like I mentioned in the new Bootcamp review, I knew what I wanted, but I clearly hadn’t achieved it in those two reviews. However, I am leaving them up–so if you want to check out the original review, here it is.

I love Cathe’s multi-workout DVDs. It’s always awesome to get multiple full length awesome workouts on a single DVD, but some of them contain bonuses. You not only get the two main workouts and their associated pre-mixes, but you get bonus premixes that mix the two workouts together! It just doesn’t get any better than that. Bootcamp + Muscle Endurance is what started my Cathe obsession. They are fun and effective and, Muscle Endurance in particular, is super tough. And though I love them both, Bootcamp isn’t one I do often because it’s not the best strength workout–however, the bonus premix that combines Bootcamp + Muscle Endurance changes everything. See below–I will review the amazing bonus premix after the Muscle Endurance review.

Cathe has a lot of super tough strength workouts and this is one of them. As you can tell by its title, it is an endurance workout, so expect a lot of reps. I went moderately heavy and really burned my muscles out (in a good way!). One thing I now know about this workout, that I didn’t know when I first started doing it, is that Cathe is using a 16 inch high step for leg presses! Not a 14 inch step like I originally assumed. I didn’t have a high step or a club step when I first got Muscle Endurance–I only had a transfirmer, which goes to 14 inches. I thought that was the standard height of all high steps. Well, with a high step and a club step, they are as high as you want to them to be by adding and removing the risers. In Muscle Endurance she uses 6 risers + the topper, which equals 16 inches. That is quite a high step! But I loved it. I am so glad I bought a club step and a high step, they definitely give my workouts more versatility. No buyer’s remorse here!

Muscle Endurance is a 65 minute strength workout; 6 minute warm up, 45 minute strength training, 10 minutes of abs, 4 minute stretch. The workout time clocks in a little longer than 65 minutes because Cathe does an intro that last a minute or two–just fast forward through it after watching it once.

Equipment needed: barbell, dumbbells, 16 inch high step, 8 pound medicine ball, mat for ab workout and stretch, and she uses a 10 pound barbell plate when she does leg presses, but you can easily substitute a dumbbell of the appropriate weight. I initially thought 10 pounds was too light for me–and it was initially, but keep in mind you are doing a lot of leg presses on a 16 inch step. I started out holding a 25 pound plate and by the end of the workout, I was holding a 15 pound dumbbell.

Legs:
Leg presses with barbell plate
Squats with barbell
Deadlifts with barbell

Back (5 minutes):
One arm rows with dumbbells
deadrow/clean and press combo with barbell

Biceps (3:30 minutes):
Barbell curls–lots and lots of reps (crazy 8s, too)

Legs:
Leg presses with barbell plate
Static lunges with barbell

Chest (5:30 minutes):
Chest flys with dumbbells
Pec squeezes with medicine ball
Push ups

Triceps (4 minutes):
Tricep dips off high step
Double tricep kickbacks with dumbbells
French press with barbell plate

Legs:
Leg presses with barbell plate
Glute raises

Shoulders (4:30 minutes):
Standing rotation presses with dumbbells
Front/side raise combo
Seated rear delt raises
Seated side lat raises

The workout ends with 10 minutes of abdominal  work. I tend to not care for the long abdominal sections in Cathe’s older workouts because they are not very creative, but that is not the case with this one. She uses a lot of different exercises to work out the entire abdominal area. You use the medicine ball through the first part. If you’ve done Bootcamp, then you’ll recognize a lot of the moves like long lever medicine ball crunches, reverse medicine ball crunches, side plank hip raises with medicine ball and oblique twists with medicine ball–to name just a few! Muscle Endurance however has many more and varied core exercises than those (Bootcamp has 8 different core exercises). I would only skip the core work if I was trying to keep the workout under an hour–otherwise I will always include Muscle Endurance’s awesome core work.

Premixes: Express 53 minutes, Upper Body Split 44 minutes, Leg Press only 7 minutes, Lower Body Split 39 minutes (lower body includes all of the leg segments + warm up and stretch).

Bootcamp + Muscle Endurance bonus combo is 67 minutes long; 6 minute warm up, 47 minute training time, 10 minute abdominal work and 4 minute stretch. The bonus combo uses the warm up from Bootcamp and the abdominal section and stretch from Muscle Endurance. The training time is broken down into 4 circuits that combines segments from the two workouts.

I LOVED this workout. It was a tough and excellent full body workout that gets the heart rate up there. I’ll probably use this premix more than I use the other two individually now that I know it exists! But I do love all three. Another Cathe gold mine!

Equipment needed: barbell, dumbbells, high step at 16 inches, an 8 pound medicine ball and mat. Cathe uses the 10 pound barbell plate for leg presses.

Bootcamp: warm up

Circuit #1

Bootcamp Cardio: jack series

Bootcamp Legs: Squats

Bootcamp Upper body: Barbell rows

Muscle Endurance barbell deadlifts

Muscle Endurance deadrow/clean and press combo with barbell

Circuit #2

Bootcamp Cardio: Sumo squats

Bootcamp Legs: Static lunges

Muscle Endurance: Leg press with barbell plate

Muscle Endurance: static barbell lunges

Muscle Endurance: barbell bicep curls

Circuit #3

Bootcamp Cardio: Sequential power kicks

Bootcamp Legs: Front and side kicks

Bootcamp Upper body: Military dumbbell presses

Muscle Endurance: Seated rear delt raises
Muscle Endurance: Seated side lat raises

Circuit #4

Bootcamp Cardio: Jack-jab, plyo jacks

Bootcamp Legs: Plié squats

Muscle Endurance: Leg press with barbell plate

Muscle Endurance: barbell squats

Muscle Endurance: Triceps dips off high step

Muscle Endurance: dumbbell tricep kickbacks

Mucsle Endurance: dumbbell chest flys

Bootcamp Upper body: Pushups

Muscle Endurance: abs and stretch