Cathe Live: Fitness Fusion

Thank goodness I was feeling better this morning! I was so sick yesterday during Upper Body Sculpt that I decided if I felt as bad this morning I would skip working out and just rest. But I felt so much better I decided to do Cathe Live as planned. This morning was Fitness Fusion and I loved it! This is my 4th Cathe Live and so far my favorite. I love them all so far, but this one was awesome, fun, varied, unique and an all around great workout! Fitness Fusion starts out with kickboxing–and that includes the warm up, which is kickboxing inspired. Then you do some familiar and yet unique HIIT training, some lower body work and end with core work. Your heart rate stays elevated through the entire workout. This is different from Boxing w/ Leg Blasts in that the kickboxing segment in Fitness Fusion was much more structured. Also, in this workout I feel like I got the first taste of why her Live workouts are considered more intermediate than her DVD workouts–you get longer rest periods. I feel the intensity of the exercises you do is equal, but you do get longer to recover between some (not all) of the exercises. Oddly, I didn’t see that in the first 3 Live workouts I did. They seemed to move at as fast of a clip as her DVDs–in fact, in PHA Training it moved even faster! You seemed to get no rest periods in that one.

For this workout Cathe recommends having boxing gloves (I used my 2 pound weighted gloves), a mat, and 8 and 10 pound dumbbells. The mat is for the HIIT and the core work, and the dumbbells are for the lower body work. I found that I could easily have used only 10 pound dumbbells for the lower body workout and probably 12 pound dumbbells for all of it.

Fitness Fusion is 53 minutes long. It originally aired 8/06/15. Here is the video clip for this workout that Cathe posted on her forum. Start with your boxing or weighted gloves on for the warm up. The warm up is 10:30 minutes long (and is mostly cardio kickboxing); kickboxing is 12 minutes long, HIIT is 11 minutes long, lower body conditioning is 10 minutes long, core is 6 minutes long, and stretch is 2 minutes long.

The cardio kickboxing is kickboxing combos alternated with cardio bursts. The HIIT segment is very unique. She does HIIT exercises any Cathelete is familiar with, however in the past she did them on a step. For the HIIT segment in Fitness Fusion she has you lay out your mat on the floor and the mat simulates a step. Very cool! The moves are still high impact but I supposed not as advanced using a mat rather than a step? My heart rate still got up there and I liked the variety! Here the HIIT exercises:

1. Slam its–do wide squat jumps on a diagonal, one foot lands on the corner of the mat then squat jump to other side, alternating sides;
2. Circle jumps w/ knee ups–circle arms and jump with one foot on corner of mat then bring outside knee to opposite elbow 7 times, alternate sides;
3. Squats in a box–one foot is on mat and one is off; jump in a box pattern, forward, side, backward, side;
4. Lateral skates over mat.

Put mat away.

1. Squat digs;
2. Long reach lunges;
3. Quarter turn power squat jumps;
4. 3 jumps forward, 180 jump, 3 jumps forward, 180 jump–and keep repeating!

Lower body conditioning was pretty cool because it contains two exercises that I have not particularly liked in the past. Now, I always do them when Cathe presents them in any workout but I just never cared for them. One is walking lunges and the other is a version of diagonal lunges that she introduced in Ripped w/ HIIT. In this workout, Cathe presented the walking lunges in a way I really liked! The other exercise, diagonal lunges, is always done so fast in Ripped w/ HIIT workouts that I always seem to suffer balance issues. In this workout, tho she did not do them slow, she did them at a more controlled pace and I actually liked them! For this segment you use the 8 and 10 pound dumbbells. Though I will indicate below what weight Cathe uses, if you are at a high intermediate or advanced fitness level you could easily use 10 pounds or even 12 pound dumbbells for every exercise. In fact, I will in the future!

1. Walking lunges w/ 8# DB–3 walking lunges (for each lunge pulse 3x), pivot into plie and pulse 3x; 4 of these combos
2. Plie squats w/ 10# DB–12 reps, pulse 15 2x, short break, pulse 15 2x
3. Diagonal lunge w/ one 10# DB–lunge diagonally and pulse 3, bring front leg in, pivot and lunge to the back but diagonally (other leg is front leg now) and pulse 3; this is one rep, do 7 reps both sides (she says you are doing 8 reps, but you only do 7)
4. Sumo marches w/ one 10# DB–while in plie take 8 small steps forward and 8 back; this is one rep, do 3 reps
5. Alternating side lunges w/ 8# DB, 10 reps
6. Reverse lunges w/ 10# DB–pulse 15 2x, pulse 7, pulse 3 2x, 8 singles

Core:

1. Butterfly sit ups–on back, knees bent and wide, bottoms of feet touching; 10 reps
2. Straighten legs (still on back), raise on arm straight to ceiling and bend the other at side, planting elbow into ground; raise torso, keeping elbow on ground for 10 reps each side
3. 10 V sits
4. Windshield wipers–on back, arms to sides, legs raised straight to ceiling, move legs side to side, bringing legs 12-18 inches from floor; 10 reps
5. Bend legs and lift head/shoulders, arms straight close to body and pulse 8x while reaching for heels then put hands behind head and do 4 crunches; do this combo 4 times
6. 8 hip lifts w/ bent legs and 8 hip lifts w/ straight legs
7. get into elbow plank and step feet out to outside of mat then back in 4 times then march feet in place 8 times, repeat
8. while still in elbow plank tap knees to floor 32 times, speeding up halfway through
9. Superman variations.