Search - The Firm: Body Sculpting System - Body Sculpt on DVD

Decent strength video offering separate segments for lower a

Beth Cholette | Upstate NY USA | 07/17/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Body Sculpt is from The Firm's Body Sculpting System 1 and is led by Jen Carmen; there are four background exercisers, one of whom shows beginner modifications. The 48-minute workout uses the Firm Fanny Lifter, which is a tall box that can be set at three different heights, and three sets of dumbbells.

The workout begins with a 6-minute warm-up which includes standard Firm moves such as squats, body waves, grapevines, knee ups, and moving stretches. Next comes the 15-minute lower body section. Jen uses heavy weights throughout this segment (I used 10#), and it is tough! She completely exhausts one side of the body before moving to the other. You do squats, lunges on one side, plie squats, lunges on the other leg, dips off the Fanny Lifter, hover squats (adding a 3-count hold), leg press on the Fanny Lifter (same leg), side squat onto the low step, repeat Fanny Lifter work on other leg, squat with abduction, side squat on the other side. One thing that I didn't like here is that you are doing a lot of disassembling/reassembling of the Fanny Lifter throughout the sequence.

Following the lower body work, there is a 5.5 minute segment which includes stretches for the lower body and warm-ups for the upper body, including both stretches and two sets of push-ups on the short step. Next comes 15 minutes of upper body work. Here Jen uses two sets of weights, medium and light. Beginning seated on the Fanny Lifter, she does a row, a bicep curl, and a row with a twist. She then does push-ups with hands on the Fanny Lifter, clean & press, and single French press. Returning to a seated position, she does several shoulder moves and a double French press. Next, Jen has you lie with your torso over the Fanny Lifter (I found this uncomfortable) for tricep kickbacks and additional shoulder work, and finally, she moves to the floor for chest press and pectoral flies. The workout finishes with a 5-minute stretch for all major muscles groups, coming in right at 47.5 minutes.

Overall, this is a solid full-body workout. For the lower body in particular, Jen accomplishes a lot in a short amount of time, but I felt that the intensity of the upper body work did not match that of the lower body. When working the arms, Jen frequently alternated sides; this would've been fine if she was using heavy weights, but since she wasn't, I made the upper body exercises harder by working both of my arms at the same time. Furthermore, although the upper and lower body portions are quick and efficient, there seems to be a lot of wasted time in this workout. Not only did the warm-up feel a bit too long to me, but also the stretch sequence between the lower and upper body workouts felt completely unnecessary. One example of wasting time is that you do a basic triceps stretch at FOUR separate times during this workout: during the warm-up, during the middle stretch, during the upper body portion, and during the cool-down. For a workout that does not include abdominals, this just seemed too long; I would've preferred 40-45 minutes. Finally, fans of The Firm's aerobic weight training style may be disappointed that there are no cardio segments in this workout (although my heart rate did stay in my target zone for about 20 minutes, mostly during the lower body portion).

This is definitely a decent strength training video that's probably best-suited for advanced beginners-to-intermediates. If you like The Firm's strength workouts and enjoy Jen's style, then I would recommend the workout and give it about 3 1/2 stars."