CIA 2205: Two Workouts in One (Knockout Hi/Lo & Stepped Up Step)

Debbie Burns, Ann Saldi
Year Released: 2002

Categories: Floor Aerobics/Hi-Lo/Dance , Step Aerobics


Warm-up: 9 min
Cardio: 39 min
Cooldown/Stretch: 8 min

I want to start out by saying that this workout reminds me a little bit of Cathe Friedrich’s Cardio Kicks workout. It is a combination of kickboxing and hi-lo that includes drills of both kinds. This workout seems to be a little more kickboxing with hi-lo, rather than the hi-lo with kickboxing, which I find CK to be.

Debbie starts the warm-up by warming up shoulders, back, legs, and arms. There are some dynamic and ballistic stretches for all the major muscle groups and 2 sets of 8 pushups.

The first cardio section includes a few combinations and a few sets of drills. There is a lot of punching and a little bit of kicking. The drills in between combos are a fairly low impact and can be modified to stay low impact. An example combo is boxer shuffle, 4 jabs, slip in and out, 4 jabs back, 4 punches, and 4 jabs to all corners of the room. There are direction changes and times when your back is to the TV, but nothing too hard that involves a lot of pivots.

The second cardio section has more kicking and quite a lot of high impact. Some modifications are shown, but most you’ll have to come up with on your own. For example, there are modifications shown for plyo squats side to side, but not for jumping jacks or scissors.

I had to get used to the punches and kicks being called by different names than I am used to, but it didn’t take long to figure out and I shouldn’t have too much trouble following the workout from now on. There are a couple moves that she adds her own flavor to by calling them after Ali (a boxing move) and Rocky (plyos). Debbie has fairly good cueing—at least I didn’t have much trouble following along and often times poor cueing can make or break a workout for me. It does move along fairly fast though, without much teaching time, so it might take more than once to “get” everything.

Debbie does offer form pointers on using hips to pivot for kicks, etc. However, I don’t feel this is a good beginning kickboxing workout as there aren’t enough pointers on holding in abs, chambering, where to aim punches and kicks, etc.

Karen (Rhae)

11/26/2005