Yesterday, I talked about trying out the Hour of Power workout with Bill over the weekend and how it kicked my butt. We did the workout on Saturday night, and by yesterday I was really feeling sore. Since I like a hard workout and pretty much expect that I will be sore the next day (I actually get mad if I don’t!), this DVD impressed me a lot.
What makes this workout special (and incredibly hard!) is that it is a cardio workout that makes the muscles of your upper body work just as hard as your lower ones. Loose translation: you jump around while doing about a million reps with weights.
When I’ve done gym workouts with dumbbells, I’ve usually grabbed 5- to 8-pound weights, depending on the intensity of the workout. But Bill warned me beforehand that I did NOT want to start off Hour of Power with more than 2-pound weights. To which I thought, yikes, this is gonna be hard.
Oh, it was hard.
On Saturday we scooted the couch out of the way in my living room and I had my first look at Hour of Power (one thing to note: the DVD is issued in the UK, so it doesn’t work in a lot of traditional US DVD players. I was able to play the disc on my laptop, which I connected to my TV). I grabbed my cute little pink 2-pound weights and then proceeded to follow along with Rajko Radovic as he led us through a warm-up that could seriously have been a full workout of its own, in my opinion.
Just as I was feeling winded and sweaty, we finished the warm up and launched into the workout itself. It consisted of a combination of easy cardio steps, really just bouncing back and forth from one foot to the next, while doing what at the time feels like endless reps with the dumbbells. It didn’t take long at all for me to be dripping with sweat, and my arms were screaming at me to put down what by then felt like hundred-pound weights. I am nothing if not stubborn, and since I had promised myself that I was going to make it through the workout without stopping I pushed through. It helped a lot that the reps are set to music, and I was able to focus on the beat and my steps instead of how much my arms were burning! But Rajko does offer options to modify down for a bit if you need a rest, which I liked. I also liked that once you get used to the workout, you can always increase the weight of the dumbbells you’re using to push yourself harder.
My overall impression of Hour of Power was that it’s a challenging, fast-paced workout that kept me engaged the whole time. I now feel that it’s a must-own, and I will be ordering my own copy of the DVD.