This workout is a 100% strength routine (absolutely no cardio) led by four Firm master instructors Jen Carmen, Nancy Tucker, Dale Brabham, and Carissa Foster. Like all Anna Benson Firm workouts, this has a very high quality, filmed in the mansion set with a large class, and has wonderful music. In fact I think the music in Super Sculpt is particularly good, even for Anna! If you like the classic Firm style, you will like this workout. Clocks in at 45 minutes and you definitely get an excellent workout and will be sore from this. I will admit what others have said that they do go heavy on the lunges and squats here. I found that during the last segment with Carissa, I subbed another exercise for her long lunge/dip combo because that exercise was already exhausted to me. With that said, there was still a great variety of moves throughout the video, aside from the lunges I think this was one of the most creative of the Firm workouts. You could tell that Anna was trying to make new/interesting moves in this workout.

Breakdown of the workout is as follows:

1. Warm up: This warm up was led by Jen Carmen and was a clip brought in from another video; I believe the companion cardio video that was sold with this workout. Straight forward with great music and included general moves such as step touch, hamstring curls, squats, hamstring and hip flexor stretches.

2. First arm strength segment with Jen Carmen: bicep curls and bent row sitting on the tall box, hammer curls and supinated bent row sitting on the tall box, pushups with hands on tall box, bicep curls (two sets) and upright row (two sets) using barbell, sitting French press, tricep dips off tall box.

3. First leg strength segment with Nancy Tucker: squats, use ankle weights for glute squeeze with leg over tall box to keep from “cheating” (then remove ankle weights), plie squats, LONG lunge/curtsey dip/cross front lunge set, leg press set with creative pulse/slow leg press intervals. This was a great set and VERY intense. My knees were unable to handle the cross front lunges so I kept with curtsey dips. The set was very long and towards the end my back aches just a little, might be best to use lighter poundage or to sub another exercise for part of the set.

4. Second arm strength segment with Dale Brabham: upright row and clean and press (two sets of each) with barbell, anterior and side deltoid lifts with light poundage (two sets), posterior delts bent over tall box with very light poundage (includes pulses which really intensity the move), good mornings (dead lifts) with barbell then sitting back rows with the barbell (two sets), pushups with hands on tall box, triceps dips, one arm bent row with opposite hand on tall box, then biceps. My shoulders always burn the most during this set.

5. Second leg strength segment (also abs) with Carissa Foster: two very long lunge and dip sets (this is where the exercise is exhausted here, I subbed another move), squats (several sets), use ankle weights for standing adductor and abductor work (two sets, one slow and one fast, fun!), then to the floor for a brief abs set. The abs were “just okay”, very repetitive, as it was basically just several reps of two moves: lower crunch with hip swivel, and upper crunch with swivel. I felt the burn, but there could have been more creativity here.

6. Stretch with Carissa Foster: clip brought in from another video (based on outfits, appears to be Maximum Cardio, but I’m not certain). Nice final stretch with an instrumental tune.

Overall I really enjoy this workout. Since there are no aerobic intervals, it was really intense strength work that never stopped. It was helpful to rotate between arm and leg work to give the non working group a break before the next set, yet the sets were long enough to feel pre exhaust. I thought there was a lot more bicep and back work than triceps (shoulders got an appropriate amount of attention, and triceps did get some attention with French press and two triceps dip sets), in fact the back work became exhaustive, but not so much so that I needed to sub, I just used lower poundage. The biceps work was refreshing because the Firm tends to not do as much biceps in some of their other videos. As I stated there were too many lunges, but I subbed other exercises and it didn’t bother me. High intermediate-low advanced in my opinion, based of course on the amount of poundage used. I thought the use of the barbell was very well adapted for this workout, and I also enjoyed the ankle weighted work. Overall grade A for a really enjoyable Anna Benson production, creative moves, with great music. This is comparable to the Tough Tapes in both strength focus and time (45 minutes).

Instructor Comments:
I really enjoy all of these master instructors. I liked Jen’s and Nancy’s sets the most but that was really just because of the exercises. They are all excellent cuers and an inspiration to look at-Jen was particularly built. Nancy and Dale were on the skinny side but they were clearly very muscular, and Carissa is great too. There were somewhat less form pointers in this workout than in other Firm workouts, probably best for the more experienced. One of the instructors always demonstrated how to do the move with common household items, including water bottles or larger green bottles (looks like dishwasher fluid) for weights.

Emily B.