Chalene Extreme

Greetings!  We tried the 30 day free access to Beachbody streaming fitness videos. Honestly, the program is a little like Amazon Prime in that the fancy advertising leaves very important bits in the small print. Nonetheless, we did get exposure to some programs to test-drive them of sorts. I’m mildly interested in Insanity Max and 21 Day Fix Extreme.  Shannan didn’t have a warm fuzzy sensation for either one.  We agreed on the three-month program, Chalene Extreme from Chalene Johnson. Her most popular program is the Turbo series, and she has a new program PIYO that takes Pilates and yoga hardcore. 

We purchased Chalene Extreme. The program has resistance training three days a week along with a cardio and intervals workout. The other two days are for rest or yoga. That framework holds the same all the way through the 90 days. The resistance workouts change each month, Burn Circuit1-2, Push Circuit1-3 and Lean Circuit1-3. The cardio and mixed intervals workouts remain the same all the way through. It goes without saying, using the same two routines week after week is a bit monotonous. We switched out similar workouts from Shaun T, Tony Horton and Autumn Calabrese to replace the cardio and interval training sections here and there. 

The number of repetitions changes for the middle section. In the Push phase Chalene reduced the number of reps, however you are to increase the weight. The key to Chalene’s program is slow isometric movements and what she calls the Extreme set, where you repeat the last move three times very slowly, an eight count. 

We traveled a bit during the three months and found the program easy to complete in hotel rooms using bands. During and after the 90 days we both saw strength increases and Shannan realized notable body changes.

Find a program that works for you and work it.

Tom