Crunch Burn & Firm Pilates

Ellen Barrett
Year Released: 2004

Categories: Pilates/Core Strength


This is one of the Crunch pilates fusion workouts featuring Ellen Barrett, before she started her own Studio series. As I work through her Crunch workouts after having already done most of her Studio workouts, I am finding the Crunch workouts to be more athletic and traditional, but still infused with Ellen’s charisma and knowledge of pilates technique. This workout incorporated light weights so I consider it a prelude to Studio Slim Sculpt and Skinny Sculpt. This workout is not as difficult as those Studio workouts but is still a challenge. Ellen leads with several female and one male background instructor. One of the girls provides beginner modifications and does not use weights. The set is the classic Crunch open set, and the music was pretty good and included some tunes I thought I recognized from 10MS and/or Firm workouts. Ellen gives really clear instructions and reminds you about your posture and to engage your core. They work out with sneakers although I think you could just as easily (if not even easier) work out barefoot. I did the workout barefoot. They look like they are using about 3# weights and I did the same. That was about an appropriate amount of weight.

The workout is about 45 minutes long and includes a long warm up (about 7 minutes), a non-weighted standing pilates aerobic segment (about 7 minutes), then three standing pilates aerobic tunes which take up another 20 minutes, then down to the floor for about a 10 minute pilates mat series which includes some weighted arm work and some unweighted ab and core work. The workout moved quickly with no time wasted, and includes lots of plies (it is an Ellen workout, after all), reaches with and without the weights, lots of step touches and some mambos, and quite a bit of backwards and forwards lunges. My knees did NOT like all those lunges and by the end I really had to just walk it out during the lunge segments. Because of this, I decidedly like Crunch Fat Burning Pilates and her later Studio workouts better – I’m glad she doesn’t use all those lunges later on.

The workout really was pretty intense and the weights made it even more so. Besides the lunges I really did enjoy myself and will probably reach for this on a semi-regular basis, when I just want something different. It has a cardio impact but also lots of toning, so like others said it is fairly hard to categorize. Collage rates this as beginner-intermediate but I would rate it intermediate. Probably a keeper for any Ellen fan. It wouldn’t be my highest recommended of the Ellen Barrett collection but it’s a decent workout. Grade B.

Instructor Comments:
Ellen is very enjoyable. She isn’t quite as mystical as she is in her later Studio workouts, tending to be more athletic and down to business. She gives very clear cuing and she mirror cues. She gives clear instruction on pilates technique.

Emily B.

12/30/2010