#197 Cardio Kickboxing & Cardio Barre is an intense cardio workout. Though “barre” is in the title, you are not doing any real barre work. The barre (or chair back) is more of a balance assist for the last 8:30 minutes of the workout–which is just more intense cardio. The warm up is all low impact but once the warm up is over, the impact begins and does not end until the stretch. I was working hard during this workout! According to my FitBit I was in my peak heart rate for half of the workout.
After the warm up, Cathe speeds up the beat of the music and, IMHO, things got weird after that. The rest of the workout was done at a very fast pace. Many of the moves were off the beat and sometimes the workout seemed disorganized. That did not stop me from getting an intense cardio workout but at 4:30am (that’s what time I workout Monday-Friday) it was unpleasant to constantly feel off the beat and out of sync. The cardio kickboxing portion of the workout is made up of lots of cardio moves and some punch and kick drills and even a combo or two. But like I mentioned, I felt like I could not get in sync with Cathe during this workout which is unusual. I do a lot of her kickboxing workouts, both on DVD and her live ones, and I have no problems staying in time with Cathe, which makes me think it wasn’t all in my head. Plus, during one of the cardio segments she kept commenting that she couldn’t get on the right foot and even started one move over. The cardio barre set up time was actually exactly enough time for me to remove my weighted gloves, get a drink of water and set up my Fit Tower. The cardio barre portion of the workout is almost entirely plyometrics. Two of the moves are low impact–the rest are all jumping.
You can do Cathe’s live workouts by subscribing to her streaming site or purchasing the individual downloads. Here is a video clip of this workout.
Cardio Kickboxing & Cardio Barre is 47 minutes; 11 minute warm up. The first 33 minutes of the workout is cardio kickboxing. Then you take your gloves off, get a drink of water and and either grab a chair or set up your Fit Tower. At about 34:15 the barre work starts. The next 8:30 minutes is cardio barre work and the workout ends with a 3 minute cool down and stretch. Equipment: boxing gloves or weighted gloves and Fit Tower or chair.
Cardio Barre:
- Squat lunge jumps (stand beside tower with one hand on bar, do a wide plie squat then hop to turn towards the bar, landing in a lunge, arm is extended out to side when in plie squat then arcs up to tap the bar when in lunge)
- Face your tower and with hands on the bar, do alternating jump lunges
- Repeat #1 & 2 on other side of barre/body
- Step out squats (stand beside tower with one hand on bar, lower into a squat and step out with foot furthest away from tower 3x then step foot back in, remaining in squat the entire time)
- Plie cross jacks (face the tower with hands on bar, jump out into a wide plie squat and when you jump feet in, cross then and hop 2x with feet still crossed, alternate which foot is in front each rep) (if you are using a Fit Tower like me, then you will need to stand beside the tower with one hand on the bar, otherwise the base will get in the way of your feet)
- Repeat #4 & 5 on other side of barre/body
- Stand beside tower with one hand on bar, do plie squat jumps w/ arm pull downs with other arm
- Face the tower with both hands resting on the bar, do a curtsy lunge then raise the knee out to side of the body, continue alternating the curtsy lunge with the knee raise while extending arm overhead when lunging and bringing elbow down to knee when it raises
- Repeat #7 & 8 on other side of barre/body
