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Old 06-02-22, 09:24 AM  
gigi
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
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Originally Posted by Hazel Porter View Post
I absolutely LOVED the IRON Series! The shorter duration and slightly longer rest periods gave me confidence to lift heavier than I had done in quite a few years, and I will probably do it again (going even heavier) after I get back from vacation in a couple weeks (unless she comes out with something similar before then).

I also liked that the moves in this program seemed a lot more straightforward -- as someone said up-thread, there weren't many half-reps or a few other things she's done in her other programs that bother my back.

OH! And this is probably dumb, but I really enjoyed the muted color scheme she chose for this series. I found it really calming somehow.
I don't understand the half reps, especially for RDL's as that is "working" or "hurting" the back and not the hamstrings. She goes so low for the RDL's (and I know she is in massively good shape) but to do the half repsfrom ankle to knee does not make sense to me if the goal is to work the hamstrings.
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Old 06-02-22, 09:39 AM  
prettyinpink
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
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Originally Posted by cjayd View Post

Just one more thing in CG. I don’t think she really tries to make workouts that are complete per session. Instead if you do her whole rotation it will end up being complete. Clearly she has never been out of shape a day in her life so personally she is always building muscle or maintaining. She works out 5 days a week and fitness is her job. She’s not worried about fitting it in before work or other reasons people want a complete upper body or lower body in one session kind of thing. If she does part of the upper body one week, she’ll hit the other part later in the week or the following week. I find her rotations to be thorough when looked at as a whole. She is very light on bicep work which disappoints me because I like bicep work. However triceps actually have more muscles and biceps get worked in back work and using the weights for other body parts which is why I think she doesn’t focus on them as much. She loves shoulders! Haha.
I haven’t really followed her much and Iron was the first rotation I completed.
I felt it was pretty balanced. I did lose a little bit of upper body strength. If I did it again, I would go heavier and finish before the minute is up so that I get a longer rest in between. With the short rests, this feels to me more like endurance than strength-building for some of the upper body sections. I would prefer less shoulders and more back.

And with that, I would say that she is also in the gym semi-regularly and not just doing her own workouts with dumbbells at home. You don’t get legs like that from RDL’s and variations of split and goblet squats with only ~70# of dumbbells.
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Old 06-02-22, 10:01 AM  
Kathy G
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Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: USA
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Originally Posted by gigi View Post
How much cardio are you doing with the Iron Series? I like the pink too and I liked that she changes the colors up with each series. I'm not fit enough for Fuel. I keept toying with the idea of starting Iron, now that I'm on summer break.
Angela, I’m doing a six week / 30 minute / five workouts per week / iFit program that’s similar to a couch to 5k plan on my treadmill. I’m working back up to running again after an injury last year.

I do it before the Iron Series Workouts as a warmup. If I have time, I’ll add a 12-15 minute iFit walk to it as a cool down before the weights. On the active rest days, I do two iFit walk workouts that are about 30 minutes each or if I’m tired I take a full rest day.

So my total workout time per day averages out to 60-75 minutes a day. I enjoy the cardio and need it to manage stress. Last round of the Iron Series I did an iFit Walk Series as a warmup instead of the C5k and had really good results. I think my body doesn’t like as much stress on it (as I’ve gotten older). But I love running and want to get back to it!
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Old 06-02-22, 10:09 AM  
Kathy G
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Originally Posted by prettyinpink View Post
I haven’t really followed her much and Iron was the first rotation I completed.
I felt it was pretty balanced. I did lose a little bit of upper body strength. If I did it again, I would go heavier and finish before the minute is up so that I get a longer rest in between. With the short rests, this feels to me more like endurance than strength-building for some of the upper body sections. I would prefer less shoulders and more back.

And with that, I would say that she is also in the gym semi-regularly and not just doing her own workouts with dumbbells at home. You don’t get legs like that from RDL’s and variations of split and goblet squats with only ~70# of dumbbells.
Have you joined her Facebook group yet? Some of the members are in amazing shape and only do her workouts at home. They have good muscle definition for not going extremely heavy.

And I agree with you on the shoulder work. I’m not a fan of an entire workout devoted to just shoulders. I prefer it to be Supersets with another body part.
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Old 06-02-22, 05:43 PM  
gigi
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
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Originally Posted by Kathy G View Post
Angela, I’m doing a six week / 30 minute / five workouts per week / iFit program that’s similar to a couch to 5k plan on my treadmill. I’m working back up to running again after an injury last year.

I do it before the Iron Series Workouts as a warmup. If I have time, I’ll add a 12-15 minute iFit walk to it as a cool down before the weights. On the active rest days, I do two iFit walk workouts that are about 30 minutes each or if I’m tired I take a full rest day.

So my total workout time per day averages out to 60-75 minutes a day. I enjoy the cardio and need it to manage stress. Last round of the Iron Series I did an iFit Walk Series as a warmup instead of the C5k and had really good results. I think my body doesn’t like as much stress on it (as I’ve gotten older). But I love running and want to get back to it!
Thanks for the response Kathy! I see the intent behind following the Iron Series with a more "metabolic" series that has more of a cardio factor. It makes sense to me. If I decided to follow Iron Series with cardio on some days I'd love to be strong enough to follow that with Fuel when school starts and I have less time. I also know enough to sub for moves I or my body don't like or can't do. We shall see...
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Old 06-02-22, 05:45 PM  
gigi
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Quote:
Originally Posted by prettyinpink View Post
I haven’t really followed her much and Iron was the first rotation I completed.
I felt it was pretty balanced. I did lose a little bit of upper body strength. If I did it again, I would go heavier and finish before the minute is up so that I get a longer rest in between. With the short rests, this feels to me more like endurance than strength-building for some of the upper body sections. I would prefer less shoulders and more back.

And with that, I would say that she is also in the gym semi-regularly and not just doing her own workouts with dumbbells at home. You don’t get legs like that from RDL’s and variations of split and goblet squats with only ~70# of dumbbells.
I think she could especially since she walks and runs so much so there is no body fat to prevent us from seeing the muscles. Also, genetics probably plays into it a bit and I'm not taking away from her dedication when I say that at all. She claims, I believe, that these are the workouts that she does, and she is open about her walking and running or anything she does in addition to those workouts.
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Old 06-03-22, 03:53 AM  
cjayd
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Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Spanaway, WA
Quote:
Originally Posted by prettyinpink View Post
I haven’t really followed her much and Iron was the first rotation I completed.
I felt it was pretty balanced. I did lose a little bit of upper body strength. If I did it again, I would go heavier and finish before the minute is up so that I get a longer rest in between. With the short rests, this feels to me more like endurance than strength-building for some of the upper body sections. I would prefer less shoulders and more back.

And with that, I would say that she is also in the gym semi-regularly and not just doing her own workouts with dumbbells at home. You don’t get legs like that from RDL’s and variations of split and goblet squats with only ~70# of dumbbells.
I also think it is possible to have legs like hers from dumbbells but some of her muscle definition is definitely due to low body fat. She also may have built muscle prior to Covid that she is maintaining and may have genetics for leg muscles. It wouldn’t surprise me if she adds more stuff in but doesn’t want to share to intimidate us. She does have a full gym in her house where she used to do her personal training. I wish she would film in there so we could see her switch her weights more often. I definitely change mine if I need to but I realize a lot of home exercisers may not have what we’ve all spent years compiling. She’s trying to work for anyone not just people like us. Good on her for that.

I hope she’s honest because it would be nice to be able to attain something close or at least a distant near her physique with her workouts and not the starvation diets those Firm instructors did prior to filming the classics and then sell it like those results are possible just from their workouts.

I agree on the shoulders too! Lol. Back and arms please. I do like the way my shoulders look now though! Less hip raises. Haha.
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Old 06-03-22, 10:23 AM  
prettyinpink
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
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Originally Posted by gigi View Post
I don't understand the half reps, especially for RDL's as that is "working" or "hurting" the back and not the hamstrings. She goes so low for the RDL's (and I know she is in massively good shape) but to do the half repsfrom ankle to knee does not make sense to me if the goal is to work the hamstrings.
I missed this before. I agree I don’t like the half reps, and for two of the lower body workouts, I was starting to feel my back tweaked by the end. It could be just me, but I think it’s the sequencing of so many exercises that can get into the low back, and so many reps, that my body didn’t like. I do fine with fewer reps with a heavier barbell with RDL’s and deadlifts, even with pauses or EMOM or that kind of thing.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cjayd View Post
I also think it is possible to have legs like hers from dumbbells but some of her muscle definition is definitely due to low body fat. She also may have built muscle prior to Covid that she is maintaining and may have genetics for leg muscles. It wouldn’t surprise me if she adds more stuff in but doesn’t want to share to intimidate us..
You’re right, very low body fat is a lot of it, but there is also a lot of muscle. I don’t doubt she does her own workouts, but since she does have more equipment, she can go heavier when she does the same or similar exercises, especially the posterior like deadlifts and hip thrusts. It is not that easy to build back there IME so the base muscle had to get there at some point. I used a barbell for the hip thrusts in this rotation because even matching her dumbbells is too light (and I am nowhere near her physique, lol) and because dumbbells are horribly uncomfortable sitting on the hips and lower abs. If someone used a barbell for all the split squats, Bulgarian split’s, RDL’s, and more, they’d still be using only her workouts, just with more lower body weight.
I just know I could not always match her for upper body, at least not through all sets, but did for lower body and could have done more (and did, for a few things), yet I am positive she is a lot stronger than I am in all ways, lol.

I hope I don’t seem to be knocking her or her workouts at all. I really enjoyed Iron and I plan to do her workouts again, maybe for a couple weeks at a time instead of a full six weeks. I probably should put more of her cardio into my routine since I do enjoy her stuff. I need to step it up.
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Old 06-03-22, 11:57 AM  
Kathy G
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Join Date: Nov 2001
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Originally Posted by prettyinpink View Post
I missed this before. I agree I don’t like the half reps, and for two of the lower body workouts, I was starting to feel my back tweaked by the end. It could be just me, but I think it’s the sequencing of so many exercises that can get into the low back, and so many reps, that my body didn’t like. I do fine with fewer reps with a heavier barbell with RDL’s and deadlifts, even with pauses or EMOM or that kind of thing.



You’re right, very low body fat is a lot of it, but there is also a lot of muscle. I don’t doubt she does her own workouts, but since she does have more equipment, she can go heavier when she does the same or similar exercises, especially the posterior like deadlifts and hip thrusts. It is not that easy to build back there IME so the base muscle had to get there at some point. I used a barbell for the hip thrusts in this rotation because even matching her dumbbells is too light (and I am nowhere near her physique, lol) and because dumbbells are horribly uncomfortable sitting on the hips and lower abs. If someone used a barbell for all the split squats, Bulgarian split’s, RDL’s, and more, they’d still be using only her workouts, just with more lower body weight.
I just know I could not always match her for upper body, at least not through all sets, but did for lower body and could have done more (and did, for a few things), yet I am positive she is a lot stronger than I am in all ways, lol.

I hope I don’t seem to be knocking her or her workouts at all. I really enjoyed Iron and I plan to do her workouts again, maybe for a couple weeks at a time instead of a full six weeks. I probably should put more of her cardio into my routine since I do enjoy her stuff. I need to step it up.
Wow, you’re strong! I only have dumbbells up to 40 lbs. (and I can load my old Firm barbell up to 60 lbs.) but the majority of the time I’m using 12 - 25 lb. dumbbells. I started using soft 1 lb. wrist weights and my platemates to slowly increment those weights (especially for upper body). As I’ve gotten older, I’m more prone to injuries so I’m taking it slow!

I get what you’re saying, she probably had a great muscle base to begin with after years of lifting. Her body fat is so low that she has great definition. That’s my downfall....the kitchen portion, lol. I have an old Tony Horton magnet that says “Abs are made in the kitchen” on my fridge.
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Completed Races:
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(2) 42 milers
(1) 50k
(10) Marathons
(2) 20 milers
(3) 25k’s
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(1) 20k
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Old 06-03-22, 01:43 PM  
prettyinpink
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
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Originally Posted by Kathy G View Post
Her body fat is so low that she has great definition. That’s my downfall....the kitchen portion, lol. I have an old Tony Horton magnet that says “Abs are made in the kitchen” on my fridge.
Yes! And getting older doesn’t help, does it?

Plenty of instructors aren’t able to maintain the same physique past mid-40’s and up, even if still super fit. Aging is wonderful in many ways, but not so kind to the waistline.
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