Jillian Michaels – Body Revolution Workout Program

Jillian Michaels Body Revolution Workout Program

For Jillian Michaels Body Revolution Workout Program

Body Revolution is a 90 day cardio + strength workout program. It comes with 15 workout DVDs, a fitness guide, a Fat Burning Meal plan, a 7 Day Kick Start, a resistance cable, a 90 day journal and a book mark. You also get 30 days free to the Jillian Michaels online program. The resistance cable is “Level” one—which means not much resistance. So I bought (via Amazon) Levels 2 & 3. Though I will go into more detail about the different elements of the program in the sections below, I want to say in the overview that this was clearly a high quality program from the outset. If you’ve read my blog, you’ll know I am a program junky, so I own a lot of programs. This is packaged beautifully and none of the books or equipment or even the DVD “housing” is cheap. Very nice presentation. However, the program itself is reasonably priced. So it immediately felt like a good purchase. And, of course, being familiar with Jillian Michael’s workouts, books, and podcasts, I knew before even doing them that I would also be getting quality workouts.

Program Structure: Body Revolution is a progressive 90 day fitness and weight loss program. In order to get the best possible results you will need to follow both the fitness and the diet plan. It is set up in 3 phases which correspond to the difficulty of the program; each phase gets more difficult. There are 15 workouts: 12 strength workouts and 3 cardio workouts. Each phase contains 4 strength workouts and 1 cardio workout. Each phase is further broken down into two week blocks. Every two weeks you will do the same 3 workouts. For instance, in Phase 1, the First two weeks you will do Workout 1, Workout 2 and Cardio 1. The second two weeks you will do Workout 3, Workout 4 and Cardio 1. The Cardio workouts correspond to the phases. So in Phase one, you will always do Cardio 1. Phase 2=Cardio 2 and Phase 3=Cardio 3.

Each workout is approx. 30 minutes and you do one workout a day, 6 days a week. You will do 4 strength workouts a week and 2 cardio workouts a week. The strength workouts are set up on the basis of optimized muscle splits. What this means is that you will do strength workouts two days in a row, but you will be working different muscle groups so that the muscles that you worked the day before are able to recover. These strength workouts are set up where one day you work the muscles on the front of your body or the “push” muscles: chest, triceps, shoulders, quads and abs, and the next day you work the back of your body or the “pull” muscles: glutes, hamstrings, back, biceps and abs. You then give the muscle group you worked 72 hours to recover before you work them again. Example: Monday: Push muscles, Tuesday: Pull muscles, Wed.: Cardio, Thursday: Push muscles, Friday: Pull muscles, Sat.: Cardio. The only variance to this is the first week of the program—the “Kick Start” week (which is optional). If you choose to do the Kick Start your food will be tightly restricted and you will add an extra cardio workout to each of your strength days. This is only for the first week of the program.

Each workout is broken down indivdually below, but here is a brief overview of how the workouts are structured. Every workout is set up in “circuit” fashion. The strength workouts are made up of 4 circuits of 4 moves that are repeated. Each circuit features one cardio burst; the cardio burst is not repeated. The cardio workouts are made up of circuits of cardio moves that are repeated 3 times; as the program progresses, the cardio circuits get longer and harder.

**On a personal note, 30 minutes a day, no matter how great the workout, is insufficient for me. I toyed with different ways to do this program—possibly using an add on cardio workout every day to round my workout out to an hour. But in the end I did the majority of the program “doubles” fashion. I did an hour of personal cardio in the morning (one of the hundreds of other workout DVDs I own–Cathe, TurboFire, Insanity, Peak 10/PeakFit to name a few) then after I got home from work I did my Body Revolution workout. So I worked out for approx 1.5 hours a day. There were a few days where I only did the Body Revolution workout due to life getting in the way–but 98% of the program was done doubles-fashion.