Denise Austin Hit The Spot Core Complete DVD
Tone the Entire Body with this Stability Ball Workout Review
Jan 21, 2009
The Hit The Spot Core Complete workout DVD uses a stability ball and dumbbells to strengthen and shape the entire body. Denise Austin and her boundless energy are at it again.
Denise Austin
Denise Austin is a consultant to the President’s Counsel on Physical Fitness and has written two books on nutrition and living a healthy lifestyle. Her contribution to the world of home exercise videos includes 82 videos, with over 20 million videos sold.
Stability Ball
Stability balls, or Swiss balls, have been used for decades for physical therapy and rehabilitation. They are now a mainstream exercise tool, used to help work the core group of muscles. They are great to train the body for balance and increase strength in the midsection as the core has to work to keep the body stable on the ball.
Hit The Spot
The Hit the Spot DVD includes a warm-up and four workouts
- Core and upper body
- Core and legs
- Core and buns
- Core complete bonus
Each routine is 15 minutes long, with the bonus routine at 18 minutes. A stability ball is required for all of the workouts, as well as light dumbbells for all but the core and legs routine.
Warm-up
No matter which of the core workouts are chosen, the warm-up should always be completed first. The body needs to be warmed up before it can be worked out hard. This warm-up contains no high impact moves, with the core engaged the entire time.
Core and Upper Body
Using the stability ball and dumbbells, Denise completes this workout with four other exercisers. The routine is easy to follow and includes work for the shoulders, chest and triceps along with many variations of ab exercises on the stability ball. There were no exercises for the back, biceps or lower back, all of which could have been easily added in to a ball routine. This could create an imbalance in the body if one were to only do this workout on a regular basis with no back or bicep work.
Core and Legs
Dumbbells are not required for the leg workout, only the stability ball. The workout includes variations of lunges, squats, glute kickbacks, as well as different exercises for inner and outer thighs, hamstrings and quadriceps. It is a well rounded leg routine, including all muscles of the upper leg. The exercises included for the core are creative and create a nice variety of work on the ball. The workout ends with a quick stretch for the abs and legs.
Core and Buns
Using the stability ball and dumbbells Denise uses supersets to get in a glute workout. The core is worked mainly as a stabilizer in this routine as there are only two separate ab exercises, with the rest being for the glutes. There is a stretch for the core and glutes at the end of the workout.
Core Complete Bonus
This workout is made up of exercises from the three other routines and contains no new exercises. It would be considered an all over body workout, but back and bicep exercises are still missing.
Fitness Level
This workout could be considered an intermediate level workout and could even be made advanced using heavier weights and engaging the core even more. A beginner will want to practice on the stability ball before trying the exercises with dumbbells.
For more workouts by Denise Austin see Denise Austin Pilates for Every Body DVD Review and Denise Austin Burn Fat Fast DVD Review.
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