The FIRM Balance Trainer Kit
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List Price: Category: Sports See more product details |
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Description of The FIRM Balance Trainer Kit
The Balance Trainer is a fun, high energy workout that uses balance to its advantage to create unique exercises that keep your abs engaged during upper body, lower body and cardio moves?..so you sculpt your abs throughout the entire workout! It's a safe and versatile core training tool that helps develop core muscle groups while improving posture and balance.Sports reviews of The FIRM Balance Trainer Kit
Customer Review: The FIRM Balance Trainer Kit from Amazon.com
Sport shop rating: 5 Stars
Good product. Haven't used it long enough to have a real opinion. But it seems to do what it's touted to do in these early days of using it.Customer Review: ALWAYS A HIT
Sport shop rating: 5 Stars
THE FIRM VIDEOS ALWAYS PACK A PUNCH AND ARE VERY EASY TO FOLLOW. ALTHOUGH EASY TO FOLLOW, NOT EASY TO DO, WHAT A WORKOUT!!!Customer Review: Good...but not for everyone.
Sport shop rating: 4 Stars
I got my balance trainer with DVD in the mail today and opened it up did the workout right away! While the workout promises not to pound your joints, it does include some high impact moves including jumping on the balance trainer(this was very scary at first). The workout sure got my heart going and built up a good sweat (I am at an inter to advanced level with most workout tapes) so that is a good thing. The trouble I had with this video was that the Balance Trainer gave me horrible pain in the bottom of my feet. I was also terrified the whole time that I was going to seriously hurt my ankles. I do not recommend this to any one who has problems with their feet or ankles. For those that do not have those problems: The instructor was friendly and cued well. This workout will get your heart rate up and keep it up and the Balance Trainer is amazing for ab work, I have never had to try so hard to keep up with an ab segment in my life. The Balance Trainer also allows you to tone your abs in unique way and hit all angles because of its circular shape...you will feel a great burn. Overall this is a good total body workout.Customer Review: This workout will challenge you!
Sport shop rating: 4 Stars
This workout is awesome! I'm in pretty good shape (I work out 5-6 days/week cardio and weights) and I found it to be challenging. Challenging but fun. I enjoy the moves and I am looking forward to getting stronger and achieving better balance. Some reviews I've read said that the music was a little off, but I found that I didn't notice that at all. FYI the more air you pump air into it, the harder it is. Also, I work out on hard wood floors and the balance disc doesn't skid at all. Don't know how it does on carpet. Really works your abs.Customer Review: Great workout but very poor instruction
Sport shop rating: 3 Stars
The Firm Balance Trainer kit comes with a balance disc (uninflated), a small pump, and the Skills, Drills, Thrills, workout DVD. Unfortunately, the included instructions provide little detail on how much to inflate the disc other than stating "do not over-inflate"; I would suggest that you want the disc to still be a bit squishy rather than completely firm. In addition, you may find the pump a bit difficult to use--a bicycle pump fitted with a needle attachment will do the job just as well.
The 46-minute Skills Drills Thrills workout (there's also a 25-minute express premix) is led by Firm Master Instructor Tina Smalley with two background exercisers, Emily and Dezzy. (Although Tina designates Emily as the modifier at the beginning, she confuses things later by sometimes suggesting that Dezzy will be taking it easy. Also, she states that the moves can be done without the disc, but this variation is generally not shown.) This was my first experience with with Tina, and I was shocked by the poor quality of her cueing, particularly for a Firm instructor. First of all, she did not mirror cue; secondly, she was often off the beat of the music, particularly during the warm-up; and third, the way she refers to things was simply confusing, such as saying "one more" even when there were multiple repetitions to go and insisting that she was still "warming you up" even when the warm-up had obviously moved into the first cardio segment.
Despite Tina's poor cueing, I actually liked the workout itself. The 5-minute warm-up begins with basic balance work on the disc, from simply standing on it to doing slow knee-ups and then repeater knees to tempo. This flows into an approximately 5-minute choreographed cardio segment (which Tina continues to call the "warm-up") that consists of additional knees and repeaters, L-steps, and plyos jumping on and off the disc--you definitely have to be careful with these! I found this segment to be fun, but as mentioned above, Tina was very off-time with the music, which made it a bit difficult to follow along. Next comes a 6-minute toning segment which alternates legwork with core work (push-ups/planks). The leg segments include squats with knee-ups, front lunges, side lunges, and front/side/back dips, and the core exercises are push-ups with one hand on disc, push-ups with one knee on disc, side plank with one elbow on disc, and elbow plank (both elbows on disc). Another 5-minute cardio segment follows, this one with jacks, scissors, v-steps, more plyos onto the disc, squat thrusts, and L-steps with shuffles over the disc.
Following the cardio, Tina moves on to an 8-minute core balance segment. This involves exercises with either one or both feet on the disc such as squats, abductions, reaches to the floor, etc. A 6-minute core segment comes next. Here you'll begin with a "walking push-up plank," which basically means moving the hands on and off the disc in a push-up position. Then it's on to your back for some abs crunches--you'll do these both fully seated on the disc and with the disc placed under the small of your back. Tina rounds out the toning work with 1 minute of bridge exercises (feet on disc) for the hamstrings and then another 2 minutes in a prone position (disc placed under the pelvis), working the back with superman and swim moves. Finally, it's time for the stretch. The 5-minute stretch is performed entirely on the floor and uses the disc; stretches include thread the needle, quad stretch, and hamstring stretch.
I did find this workout to be fun and enjoyable. Although it wasn't hugely intense, my heart rate did get up during the cardio segments, and according to my heart rate monitor, I wound up being in my target zone for about 15 minutes--not bad at all, especially for my first time through. I just wish that this workout had been taught by a different instructor, as I did not think that Tina Smalley maintained the Firm's usually high standards. Overall, I would give the workout a 4, the instructor a 2, so that's why my final rating is a 3.