21 Day Fix Cardio

Autumn works out with a group of backgrounders, one provides beginner modifications. You will not need any equipment for this 32 minute all cardio workout.

After a warm up, 4 rounds of 2 exercises done 2 times each are performed for 1 min each followed by 20 seconds rest. Exercises include: criss cross jacks, hi knees, skater jumps with floor touches, mt. climbers, dips, burpees, walking squats, oblique knee pulls, elevator planks, and a stretch.

This is a high intermediate routine that is easy to modify up or dodwn. All straight forward athletic cardio that gets the job done! I like that it includes some abs work and gets you sweating in a short amount of time. Autumn is an excellent instructor- great demeanor, and has very motivating physique! I received this DVD to review.

lindseylu8

The 21 Day Fix system is a series of seven workouts (plus several optional routines) plus a nutrition plan designed to change your body when followed as specified for 21 days. The workouts are led by Autumn Calabrese, who teaches each routine live with a group of approximately six background exercisers. In general, Calabrese sets up each move and then walks around the room, offering words of encouragement and pushing the class members to perform.

Cardio Fix comes up on Day 5 in the rotation, and the theme (each workout has a theme) is "When You Feel Like Quitting, Think About Why You Started." It is a cardio workout that is VERY high impact, although there is a modifier, Cat, who keeps the impact lower. The workout is performed in four rounds, with each round consisting of two exercises. You will perform each exercise for one minute, then go back and repeat the round once before moving on to the next round. There is a brief (20 seconds) rest between exercises/rounds. The Warm-Up is EXACTLY the same on ALL 21 Day Fix workouts: Calabrese starts with a light jog and then moves through jumping jacks, side reaches, "windmills" (large alternating arm circles front and back), overhead reaches to either side, and alternating toe touches (about 3 minutes total).

The rounds for Cardio Fix are as follows:

ROUND 1
*Cross Jacks
*High Knees

ROUND 2
*Skater Jumps
*Mountain Climbers

ROUND 3
*Reverse Lunges
*Burpees

ROUND 4
*Lateral Squats
*Oblique Knee Pulls

BONUS ROUND
*Down & Ups (aka spider push-ups)

All of the cool-downs for the 21 Day Fix are basically the same as well. This one is about 3 minutes and starts on the floor with an abs stretch and then moves into child's pose (L-R), butterfly forward bend, wide-leg forward, and finish standing; the entire workout clocks in over 30 minutes (32:51).

This was my LEAST favorite of all the 21 Day Fix workouts. I admit, I'm not a big fan of cardio, but I liked both the Total Body Cardio and the Plyo Fix workouts better than this one. Here, Calabrese included exercises that many people will list as their most-hated fitness moves, such as mountain climbers and burpees. Plus, she combines these with too many other high impact moves AND insufficient rest periods. After doing this workout just once, I skipped it for the remainder of the 21 Day Fix rotation.

Instructor Comments:
I find Autumn's instructor to be just okay. She does mirror cue, which is nice, and she offers decent form pointers at times. But I'm not a fan of the walk around the room style of instructing, which comes across more like a drill sergeant to me; I find it much more motivating when the instructor does the workout right along with me the entire time. Also, I don't like the ways in which Autumn says things that could unnecessarily lead you to push yourself to injury, such as "you can do anything for 60 seconds!" (no, sometimes you can't) and suggesting that you should be getting "all the way down to the ground" when stretching.

Beth C (aka toaster)

This is a review of 21 Day Fix, the Cardio Fix workout.

This workout is led by Autumn Calabrese. She is a personal trainer and bikini competitor. With Beachbody, she created a system utilizing color coded containers to use for portion control and workouts to be done in conjunction. The review is for the workout only.

Autumn is instructing a crew of 6 background exercisers (4 women, 2 men), one of which demonstrate modifications that make the exercises less intense. Autumn is wearing a sports bra top and workout shorts and the other backgrounders are also wearing athletic clothing. None of the background exercisers does anything distracting during the workout.

Set & Music: The set is brightly lit and is meant to resemble a gym. The music is typical of Beachbody and is pretty non-descript and is not noticeably good or bad. There is a music off option.

Equipment: A water and towel. An exercise of yoga mat is optional.

The workout starts with a warm up, then goes into 4 different rounds of 2 exercises, a bonus exercise, and ends with a brief cool down/stretch. With the exception of the cool down/stretch, everything is repeated twice before moving on. The total workout time is right around 30 minutes.

The warm up consists of jogging in place, jumping jacks, windmill arms (both forward and back), side reaches (both right and left), and alternating toe touches. The moves in the warm up are repeated again.

Each exercise in a round is done for one minute with 20 or so seconds rest to transition to the next exercise. The rounds are as follows:

Round 1: cross jacks, high knees. This round is repeated.
Round 2: skater jumps, mountain climbers. This round is repeated.
Round 3: alternating reverse lunges, burpees. This round is repeated.
Round 4: lateral squats, oblique knee pulls. This round is repeated.
Bonus Exercise: down & ups (high plank to low plank, 30 seconds right lead, 30 second left lead). This exercise is repeated.

Cool down/stretch: child’s pose (forward, right, then left) forward fold, straddle stretch (center, right, then left), butterfly stretch, and standing quad stretch (right, then left). There are also very brief stretches for the shoulders and chest as well.

Overall Impressions: It’s difficult to rate this workout as the intensity of each round varies quite a bit. Rounds 1 & 2 are the most challenging and I consider them low advanced as demonstrated by Autumn. Rounds 3 & 4 are more towards the intermediate range. The bonus exercise is very core intensive and feels a bit out of place in a cardio workout. Because of the inconsistent feel of the rounds I didn’t enjoy this workout as much as I did Plyo Fix. While the modifier does a great job taking out the impact, the modifications shown don’t offer relief for someone who has wrist or knee issues. So those people with these particular joint issues will probably not like this workout. This is a decent cardio workout but not one I would reach for outside of the structured rotation. If I was doing the rotation for a considerable length of time, I’d probably wind up subbing this one out.

Instructor Comments:
Autumn is a pleasant instructor and she is very encouraging in this workout.

Sabine Reuter