A Team Boot Camp

This is a 50/50 cardio strength workout led by Amy Bento. She is working out in a nice pale yellow room with 3 background exercisers. The workout is divided up into six "drills" each drill has 2 minutes of TOUGH cardio followed by a short recovery period, and then 2 one minute strenght moves. For this workout you will need various dumbbells, a step bench, a stability ball, resistance tubing (could easily sub dumbbells), and they use a barbell (I just used heavy dumbbells).

The cardio is TOUGH and its a nonstop two minutes. She does flying cutsey lunges -touching the floor w/ your hand, a "river dance" move (jumping up and criscrossing your legs), jumping onto and off of the step, and other explosive anaerobic cardio moves. The good news is she gives you a recovery phase after the 2 minutes of cardio-side steps usually.

The cardio moves were UNIQUE, fun, and did I mention tough. There is nothing dancy or hard to follow. They are straight forward athletic (bootcamp-esque) cardio moves.

The strength work was also unique and effective! She thoroughly hits the legs & buns with a squat while kindof bouncing on the ball, a 1 legged deadlift, a unique lunge move while moving the dumbbell around your knee, etc., She does a side plank with your feet on the step, and nice standing ab work in addition to some upper work. I enjoyed the strength moves as well. She does incorporate stretching throughout the dvd after each strength segment.

This workout is clearly advanced in cardio and stregth work but like I said there is recovery & stretching time so I didnt feel like I was going to die or anything. LOVE this workout!!!! I would say this a must have for an Amy fan or a bootcamp fan. AWESOME and unique. Tough but still fun! Her cueing is spot on, I was never left wondering what to do and she has poundage rec's throughout. (happy to say I matched her poundage!)

lindseylu8

It was a good video but not as good as Advanced Step Challenge or Cardio Step Pump. The drills were intense but there was a lot of lag time in between them and she did lot of deep inhaling, which was tiresome after a while. She doesn't lead pump sections as well as cardio... she never quite seems sure what to say (e.g. "and so... uh... grab your free weights... and... uh..."). After an hour I felt very fatigued but not necessarily like I'd gotten a good cardio workout (even with the cardio sections). I also got a little bored doing the same movements for two minutes straight... I would much prefer more cohesive segments.

There's a lot equipment list but she only uses the resistance tubing once, the plate loaded bar three times (once for stability) and the stability ball twice. The equipment changes were really distracting for how little you actually used them.

She kept mentioning the time over and over and I found that really distracting. I prefer to just enjoy a workout and not discuss time.

So a decent video but not her best. I'm planning to keep it but I wouldn't really recommend buying it.

Instructor Comments:
Amy is wonderful. Energetic and professional. She seems to really enjoy what she's doing and is very motivatng.

DW

This workout brought me to my threshhold at times (during the 2 minute cardio drills) which was a happy thing.

I liked the moves - some of them were different enough to put a special spin on a move I might have done a hundred times before.

The moves I especially liked were:

the power lunges - I liked doing 4 on one leg and then switching. Less chance of tricking out my 4 decade old knee.

the riverdance jumps

The squats on the ball. Those really wiped out my quads - and I consider myself to be in decent shape.


The music was the standard workout music, but it had oopmh to it- a driving edge, the vocals in it coming in at just the right time.

I like Cathe's style of workouts (with the exception of most of the gymstyles - I hated the music in those, and didn't really jive with those workouts as I did with the Body blasts and intensities). I also tend to do a lot of Cardio Coach workouts. I am intermediate/advanced by my own reckoning.

A+ for the $20 I spent.

Instructor Comments:
Amy is very friendly and encouraging without veering into cutesy, condescending, etc.

Her physique is inspiring - she is lean and ripped.

Lots of whoo-yeah's (where the yeah's sound more like yeagh! Kind of tough and bootcampy sounding). These sounds didn't bother me, but if you do find this kind of thing annoying, there is a lot of it.

Leela