With the release of the first Turbo Fire workout DVD, we’ve had a chance here at Extreme Fitness Results to watch the workout and give it some thought. Here is our review, along with comparisons to the other main Beachbody workouts like Shaun T’s Insanity Workout and P90X.

The workout we received was the 15 minute HIIT workout. HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training, and works as follows: you work out as intensely as you can for a brief period of time, and then take a break of equal duration. You then rinse and repeat a number of times that is restricted by the threat of an imminent heart attack. Think I joke? True HIIT should not be able to be done for more than five minutes. This is because you need to absolutely red-line when you do it. It needs to be an all out, system about to fail in the next five seconds kind of effort. If you’re able to work out for 45 minutes, you’re not doing HIIT, you’re doing Threshold training. HIIT is where you put everything on the table and leave nothing behind.

Now, in Turbo Fire, Chalene Johnson claims that her workouts are HIIT. While this isn’t absolutely true in the traditional format, she does emphasize the extreme nature of each interval, and urges you to put everything you have into it. The workout is fifteen minutes long, and consists of a general warm up and cool down, with a greater rest period of 35 seconds between each 45 seconds of HIIT. There are nine rounds of HIIT workouts in all, for a total of almost 8 minutes of brain bursting activity. What Chalene does is show you the routine you’re about to go through, slowly working through the moves and asking that you follow along, so that when an alarm klaxon rings you can do them as intensely and quickly as possible.

Traditionally, HIIT involves one exercise repeated at max for the duration of the interval. This could be either sprinting, working on a treadmill or even lifting weights. Chalene however composes each minute’s worth of HIIT with a variety of exercises that you cycle through, following alongside on the screen. These range from punches thrown while in squats to high leaps to alternating lunges. They’re set to infectiously good music, and the crowd of women and men exercising before Chalene’s stage really get into the HIIT workouts, so that you get a sense of being in a high energy environment.

How is this different from what is done in an Insanity Workout? Insanity is not a HIIT workout; Shaun T calls it MAX Interval Training, and while that sounds like HIIT, the sheer length of the workouts (the main parts of the workouts can last up to 20 minutes or more) mean that they’re actually threshold training. Chalene states also that her HIIT workouts are to be done on alternating days, not everyday like Insanity is done.

It’s also completely different from P90X in that while it does focus on a mixture of cardio and resistance training, the nature of the cardio isn’t an hour long plyometrics workout like in P90X, but rather short and intense.

Turbo Fire promises to blend cutting edge

Author Bio: Learn more about the Turbo Fire workout by visiting our blog, where we go into greater depth with more reviews, product info and advice, all for free. Also, be sure to check out the P90X Workout, the infamously tough full body workout that has transformed the bodies of 2.2 million customers!

Category: Wellness, Fitness and Diet
Keywords: turbo fire,turbo fire workout,hiit workouts,interval training,chalene johnson,turbo kick,fat loss