Saturday, February 7, 2015

Review of Beachbody 21 Day Fix: Plyo Fix


21 Day Fix: Plyo Fix

This is the free workout that comes with 21 Day Fix. You only get it if you order through a coach. If you don't have a coach, you can use my Beachbody Coach Link. I didn't do this workout during my first round of 21 Day Fix because it wasn't part of the regular workout schedule. It might have been part of the Doubles Week, but I didn't do Doubles Week. I was pretty scared to do this workout. I'm not a big fan of Plyo stuff. For those of you who don't know what Plyo is, I'll save you the Google search. It's basically anything that involves propelling yourself off the ground. So jumping squats, jumping lunges, push ups where you push off the floor and your hands lose contact with the floor. That pretty much sums up all of the stuff I hate in a workout, but I had to do this. 

This workout followed a similar format as the rest of the 21 Day Fix workouts. It had 6 rounds. Each round had two exercises that were repeated. Each exercise lasted 30 seconds (down from 60 seconds in the others). There was a 30 second rest between each exercise (up from 15 to 20 in the others). The shorter exercises and longer rests made this doable for me. I did modify some stuff, but I did my best to go hard core. I did this after a rest day so that helped!

You have the option to do this with subtitles or not. You also have the option to do this with the music on or off. I skipped the subtitles and kept the music. As always, it starts off with a Shakeology commercial. 

There are no weights in this workout. You just need water and a towel. The thought of the day was You Can Do Anything. 

The warm up is the same as the other 21 Day Fix workouts. It's about 3-1/2 minutes. We started off running in place, then moved to jumping jacks, then windmills forward and backwards, then we did side bends and finally toe touches. We did all of that again. She emphasized that we needed to get our arms up all the way over our head. She referred to T-Rex arms. It always makes me laugh.

The first round was Squat Jumps and Single Leg Squat Jumps. The Squat Jumps weren't that bad. it was only 30 seconds. I've done longer with squat jumps in Les Mills Combat. The single leg ones were a bit rough. I couldn't balance on one leg and jump and land and not kill myself. One leg wasn't bad, but my left leg was just not working for me. My right leg ended up on the floor, but my weight was all on my left side. The right was just to keep me from falling. This round wasn't that bad.

The second round was Tuck Jumps and Frog Jumps. Tuck Jumps are just so hard for me. I was trying to be quiet so my husband could sleep so that didn't help, but Tuck Jumps just suck. So Tuck Jumps for those who have never done that. In these, we went down like a squat and then jumped up and pulled our knees up as high as we could. It's basically the move you need to do a Box Jump, but we didn't have a box to jump onto. The are just hard! Frog Jumps were interesting. So you squat down with your toes turned out and your heels kinda close together. You squat down and look like a frog. Then you jump up. The modifier didn't jump. She just came up onto her toes. I kinda liked these because it was fun to watch all of them look goofy doing them. It was also nice because these people looked like they were dying during this stuff.

Round three was Burpees with a push up and a jump at the end. The modifier stepped back instead of jumping back. She didn't do the push up and she didn't jump. Then we did Plyo Push Ups.  She had us just push off the ground with our hands, but one of the people did them with their toes coming up as well. Autumn said that made it easier. I didn't try it. Something about the hands and the feet going up at the same time was too much for my brain to grasp. I kept forgetting to do the push up with the burpees since I just got done with my PiYo mini round and the burpees didn't have the push ups in them.

Round four was Moguls. It's hard to describe, but we did skier arms as we jumped up and angled to the right and then jumped up and angled to the right. Imagine a Moguls skier. We were supposed to look like that. Then we did Skater Jumps. I'm just not a fan of skaters, but doing them for 30 seconds was a piece of cake. We did these for 60 seconds in one of the other workouts. I loved that these moves were only 30 seconds. If the 30 seconds work and 30 seconds rest is too easy for you, you could always increase the work and decrease the rest. Just keep moving until like the 15 second mark of the rest period and only take the 15 seconds. You could even go non-stop if you're really in good shape and don't need the breaks.

Round five was Jumping Lunges and Twisted Lunges. The jumping lunges were just regular lunges facing forward the whole time and we jumped between them. I didn't really do them the way they did, but I didn't modify them all the way and just do regular lunges. I had this hop in there, but it wasn't really with both legs. I can't describe it. It's interesting though because during the second round one of the other people did the same thing I was doing. The twist one started by facing one wall and then we jumped and twisted so we were facing the other wall. I didn't bother trying to jump for these. I just stepped. My knees can only handle so much.

Round six was Full Body Hops. We were in push up position and we hopped to the right and then hopped to the left. Well, they hopped around. I couldn't get all of my limbs to move at the same time. My legs kinda did a double hop and then my hands stepped over and then I went back the other way with the same kind of move. It was kinda weird, but whatever. Then we did Sumo Squat Jumps. This one is self explanatory. It wasn't that bad either after doing these during Les Mils Combat. Those were worse to because we were doing in and out with those.

The Cooldown was just under 3 minutes. We did some deep breathing, some shoulder stretches, tricep stretches and quad stretches. I'm getting more limber so the tricep stretches actually stretched my triceps. I've never really felt it in my triceps before when doing these, but I do now. We also stretched our chests out. We also did a Figure 4. I had to hold onto the wall for this and the quad stretch.

Overall, I was pretty happy with my performance during this workout. I was pretty nervous about it, but I wasn't really sure what to expect either. I knew plyo lunges would be in there, but I knew that there had to be more involved too since it was a 30 minute workout. I was pretty happy with the 30 seconds work and 30 second rest. I was also pretty happy that a lot of the people in the workout had to modify something at one point or another. This workout made me rethink my ability to do 21 Day Fix Extreme though! I'm still going to get it, but it might be awhile before I actually do it.

BodyMedia Screen Shot

Here is the screen shot. I only got 6 minutes of vigorous because of the 30 seconds work and 30 seconds rest thing. I think I should have had more vigorous minutes! This thing was insane! Although, I did do some modifying. I'm still happy with my performance! 


14 comments:

  1. Loved this review, thank you. Made me laugh too x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad you liked the review and I'm happy that I made you laugh! My goal is to make someone laugh every day!

      Delete
  2. Oh my word, Plyo is SO intense!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It really is! A couple weeks ago, I started 21 Day Fix Extreme and the first workout is Plyo. It's crazy! What's crazier though is that Lower Fix Extreme could be called Plyo as well and then there's the Cardio Fix Extreme which has more jumping. Three workouts with Plyo in them! Madness I say absolute madness!

      Delete
  3. Thanks for this review! I'm just starting my second round of 21 day fix and have been apprehensive about trying the plyo fix. I'm curious about that screen shot you show at the end. Is that an app you use?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad you liked the review! I was definitely apprehensive about doing this workout too, but I got through it, so I'm sure you can too. You can always modify if you need to. The screen shot is from my Body Media device. It's similar to a FitBit, but it goes around the upper arm. I loved it until I got tired of paying a monthly subscription fee. I have a Polar M400 now. I love it because there's no monthly fee and it has a heart rate monitor with it as well. It's also great because everyone thinks it's an iWatch so they don't ask me questions about why I'm wearing a fitness tracker. I'm not really sure why people think it's an iWatch, but they really do. You can check out the M400 at Amazon. I got the recommendation for it from someone who works at Dick's Sporting Goods. They said that a bunch of people were returning their FitBits because they weren't happy with them and buying these instead. It's cheaper on Amazon than anywhere else that I've seen it.

      http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NPZ7WNU/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00NPZ7WNU&linkCode=as2&tag=trainafatch06-20&linkId=YJHOYOMPKF7YUHFS

      Delete
    2. It is really a great workout, but please be careful guess I should have modified. I'm just getting over a bad sicatic nerve and muscle spasms from the Plyo workout, BUT I love all the other 21 day fix DVD's

      Delete
  4. Thanks for the review! Very thorough and funny! I just started my second week and I'm doing so much better. But I don't think I'll be trying the plyo workout just yet. Maybe when I do my second round! x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I didn't see your comment until today. I usually get an email when I get a comment. I'm not sure if I just missed it or if it didn't come through. Sorry for ignoring you. It wasn't intentional. How is 21 Day Fix going for you? Did you decide to try Plyo?

      Delete
  5. Ehi! I loved your review! I did Plyo for the first time ever today, and - like you - I was totally scared because I hate big jumps in workouts. Plus, I live in Italy, now it's june and it's quite hot, so doing crazy jumps with this weather isn't my favourite thing at all.
    Anyway, I read your review, I laught a lot and I did my workout knowing before what I have to do later. It was useful! And it was better than I imaged, even if it's only my first round with Autumn :D
    Ps. Sorry if i did any mistake in english, I'm italian and I have to improve my grammar, I think :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So glad to hear you liked the review! No worries on the English. Your English is way better than my Italian. I think about all I can say is ciao.

      Delete
  6. it gets hard to fit in gym time when everyday schedules get hectic. And when we get busy, Free Exercise DVD

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi can you exchange this workout for another if too hard on your knees?

    ReplyDelete