Cathe Friedrich - STS Shock Cardio

TS Shock Cardio features 11 different intense fat blasting cardio routines that have also been designed by Cathe to be very time efficient to fit your busy schedule.
All 11 Shock cardio workouts have been designed to be used with Cathe's STS strength workouts or as individual standalone cardio workouts. In keeping with the philosophy of always "shocking" your system, Shock Cardio offers a wide variety of different workout types, lengths, and intensities. All of the workouts in this series are under 55 minutes and several are only around 30 minutes in length.

The 11 Shock Cardio workouts are divided into 4 main categories: HiiT, MMA, Step and Circuit. When combined with the STS strength workouts and online tools, you have the most advanced comprehensive home fitness training system on the market today that will not only help to make fitness a lifestyle, but will you give you the results you've been looking for.
Shock Cardio is a strategy that has always been promoted by Cathe as the best way to avoid plateaus, overuse injuries, and mental fatigue. Throughout her 26 year fitness career, Cathe has found that continually shocking your body with different types of cardio workouts that vary in style, intensity, and duration will produce the best results over the long term because your body will constantly be challenged in new and different ways.
Just as the strength workouts in STS utilize the principle of Muscle Confusion, Shock Cardio is used to mix up your cardio workouts to improve your aerobic and anaerobic capacity. This will also help to maximize your calories burned and fat loss.

Cardio Core Circuit
Cardio Core Circuit, 51 minutes, is broken into five fitness rounds and is very cardio intensive. In each round you will do three short cardio drills back to back and then repeat them (so it's six cardio bursts per round). After each of these cardio groupings you will do
intense functional core work. Other than an exercise mat, no equipment is needed for this workout.

Circuit Blast
Circuit Blast is a 44 minute fun and fast paced circuit challenge. This workout consists of a series of six rounds that will surely burn fat and calories, while shocking your muscles. Each round consists of four parts: a) cardio, b) cardio/legs, c) compound exercise, d) core work. We use various pieces of equipment to increase the intensity, deliver variety, and inspire you to work harder. You'll need a set of moderate hand weights, a step, resistance band, medicine ball, and most importantly, your focus.

Athletic Step
Athletic Step is an advanced, all step workout that will keep you jumping and pumping with both new and energizing choreography. While there is no dancy footwork here, you will surely be challenged by scrambling new moves with some familiar moves and making them feel totally different. Be prepared to power up, straddle down, jump forward and shuffle around. There's lots of variety for everyone! Athletic Step is easy to learn and fun to do. Coming in at just around 47 minutes, you’ll find yourself reaching for this quick pick me up often.

Step Moves
Step Moves is a 44 minute advanced, all-step workout, loaded with interesting choreography. It’s the perfect steady state workout for those who like a little rhythm with their step. You’ll enjoy mambo's, cha cha's, pivots, and lots of rhythmic patterns, all scrambled up, in new and exciting ways, to keep the footwork fun, and the action packed. Don’t worry if you don’t get the workout down in the first try or two, just take your time and have fun with it. This is one workout you'll be sure to keep reaching for!

Cathe Friedrich - Low Impact Series 1-10

Cathe Friederich recently unleashed her new Low Impact Series workout DVDs. They are all available separately for purchase. You do not have to buy them altogether. My first purchase from this series was the AfterBurn workout DVD. I have heard others that have the whole series say that this is a great representation of the Low Impact

Series and they say that it may even be the best out of the series. This workout is proof that low impact does not have to mean low intensity.

In this workout you will need various sizes of dumbbells. A good representation of weights would be one 15 pound DB, a set of either 12s or 10s (maybe even 8s if need be) and a set of 5s (or possibly 3s). Cathe also uses gliding disks and Dixie cups for this workout. If you don’t have these you can substitute paper plates for the disks and maybe just forgo the Dixie cups.

This workout alternates intervals of strength moves with low impact cardio moves. Cathe has incorporated low impact HiiT moves and metabolic weight training in this workout. The “afterburn” this effect creates is what gives this workout its title.

In the main workout (not a premix) Cathe does a series of two moves and then repeats them. She starts intense right off the bat in the first series with squat digs and then moves to a squat, curl to press move that gets the heart rate up. Then you repeat it. If your heart rate isn’t up after that, you either aren’t doing it right or you aren’t using enough weight for the squat, curl to press.

Cathe’s instruction is on point and she offers her gentle and fun motivation that is Cathe’s signature and what a “Cathelete” has grown to expect from her workouts.

The DVD offers many premixes. You can do the regular 54 minute workout or you can choose from the various premixes which are: Express (Single Intervals 1-10); Express

(Double Intervals 1-5); Express (Double Intervals 6-10); Random Burn; Double Trouble or Bonus Burn.

I can tell you, I did the “Bonus Burn” this morning. It is 74 minutes long (including warm up and cool down/stretch) and it is the total main workout and then goes back and does each interval all the way through only once. I am looking forward to trying the Random Burn and possibly checking out what Double Trouble is all about.

By the end of this workout I was sweating buckets and knew I had just kicked my own booty. I’m looking forward to trying more workouts from this series.

Cathe Friedrich - Hardcore Series: Kick Max

Kick Max is approximately 70 minutes in length and is broken up into the following segments.
Warm Up (12 minutes).....A nice extended warm up which will incorporate the basic kick and punches into movement patterns plus incorporate new movement patterns designed to enhance your balance and flexibility.

Kick and Punch Combo"s (22 minutes).....Similar to the format of KPC"s segment you will now do 4 combinations which feature a punching combo combined with a kicking combo. The first combo is more elementary and each one after that will gradually become more intricate to keep you challenged and working hard. As I tell all of my students during these types of combo"s "you get out of it what you put in to it" so be sure to really "punch the punch" and "kick the kick" Btw we"ll have our hands wrapped for this segment but this is not required.

Kickbox/Bootcamp challenge (15 minutes)......Here you will do 10 high impact conditioning drills (some more intense than others). You will recognize most of the moves in this segment since the purpose is to quickly "see it and do it". This segment provides the bonus burn for those who are wanting a hardcore calorie burning challenge. Good news for those who are not interested in this segment....simply skip to leg conditioning drills and you still get a close to an hour kickbox workout.
Leg Conditioning Drills (18 minutes)....."OUCHIE" best describes how you will feel during these drills (Don"t worry it gets just a little easier with each and every workout. This segment is designed to shape your legs while enhancing your kicking skills and flexibility. The more skilled and flexible you become the more efficient your future workouts will be. You will do conditioning drills for the round/side kicks and hip flexor and front kicks. You will also do slow motion side round front snap and front thrust kicks to really get a feel for them. A chair is required for this segment. Stretch.....a 6 minute relaxing stretch will complete this challenging workout

Cathe Friedrichs STS Total Body

Total Body STS - 66-minute program to work out the muscles of the body with heavy weights - 60-80% of your maximum load (the heaviest weight you can lift once). But if you do not want to make payments, simply take the weight with which you could hardly do the last few repetitions of each exercise.
STS Total Body contains both isolation exercises, and components, but to maximize the use of the time the emphasis is on exercises aimed at several muscle groups at once, and the amount of insulation to a minimum. But do not think it would be easy, because the purpose of this program are aimed at a maximum: the maximum intensity, maximum diversity and maximum results!
Perform this workout 1-2 times a week with a break. Of the equipment you will need: a full-size step-platform (or a bench for strength training), horizontal bar, rod, several sets of dumbbells, elastic tape drives for glaydinga (or disposable plates.)
The most effective movements: squats, lunges, twisting, squeezing, flai with dumbbells, etc. Each exercise is repeated twice - on 16 and 12 times in each set. But the most important technique gives Katie - she calls do less reps, but do them correctly.

Cathe Friedrich's STS - Shock Training System

STS stands for Shock Training System and is based on four of the most important training principles in strength training: periodization, muscle confusion, one rep max and progressive overload. STS has been designed using the latest research and is a 3 month strength training program featuring a different exercise routine every time you work out.

Workouts like STS are very commonly guided by personal trainers and athletic coaches for their clients and athletes, but due to the overall magnitude time and expense of filming 40 workouts, it is quite considerable to understand why nobody has made a similar program for the home exerciser until now.
STS brings a unique, quality health club workout into the privacy of your own home by maximizing the use of periodization, progressive overload, muscle confusion and one rep max testing.

*Periodization is a way of planning, organizing and varying your training program over time to bring about optimal gains in your physical performance. Numerous research studies have been done that clearly show that exercisers who follow a periodization–based workout get superior results when compared to exercisers who don't follow a plan of this type.
STS has been designed to be a 3? month linear periodization program featuring three workout cycles called mesocycles, each lasting four weeks. Each mesocycle will have a different purpose, with the first cycle focusing on muscle endurance, the second on hypertrophy and the third on strength.
You will do a different workout every week for a total of 12 weeks along with an active recovery week between mesocycles to help your body rejuvenate and prepare for the next cycle. Since this is a linear periodization program, each mesocycle is designed so that the intensity (weight lifted) increases from the previous cycle and the volume (sets and reps) decreases.

*Muscle confusion is the principle of constantly changing your workout routines to keep your body's muscles always guessing and challenged in different ways. Muscles should never be allowed to adapt to an exercise to the point where the exercise is no longer effective and not resulting in hypertrophy or the goal you desire.

Instead, a well designed exercise program that utilizes muscle confusion varies the workout routine's exercises, sets, reps and intensity to keep your muscles growing.

This also helps to avoid plateaus and boredom.
The advantage of STS is to maximize muscle confusion by not only giving you a different workout every week, but also by varying the intensity and volume of the workout over the entire program by utilizing periodization. Muscle confusion is one of the most important rules of strength training and no other workout program on the market today utilizes this principle to the same degree as STS.

*Your one rep max (1RM) is the maximum amount of weight you can lift one time for any exercise. In the STS program we will demonstrate a method to easily and safely estimate your 1RM for every exercise in the program. Once you know your 1RM for each exercise, you can quickly and easily determine the correct weight to use for each exercise in every mesocycle and week of the STS series. Knowing the correct weight to use for every exercise is extremely important and will help you obtain the results you're striving for, both safely and quickly.

*Progressive overload is the gradual increase of intensity placed upon your body during a workout over a period of time. This means that in order for your muscles to grow, you need to continually challenge your body by increasing the intensity of your workout in very small steps. In STS you will start the first week of Mesocycle 1 using weights that are only about 60% of your one rep max (1RM). Then every week, except week #3, you will slowly and gradually increase your weights by about 5% so that by the time you finish the program you will be using heavy weights that are up to 90% of your 1RM.