photo credit: Crustina

I’ve been getting several inquiries about the post I did on Danny Sullivan’s Real Kickboxing Bag Workout set and whether or not I know anywhere to purchase it. As far as I can tell, this dvd set has been discontinued. Every once in a while someone on Amazon will have it for sale for an outrageous price; and while I haven’t seen it there lately, ebay might be worth a look now and then, too.

Otherwise, I’ve also suggested people try contacting Danny Sullivan through his website, though I don’t know if that has been helpful or not. Here’s the contact form for Danny’s website. It’s a shame that the set doesn’t seem to be available anymore, as not only are the dvds great kickboxing bag workouts, it was also quite unique since there aren’t a huge selection of bag workouts on dvd, let alone workouts that feature kickboxing with the bag.

That said, there are a few alternatives that I can suggest, if you’re looking to expand your heavy bag workout dvd collection. Generally, it’s easy to adapt many kickboxing workouts to using a bag, especially if there isn’t a lot of tricky choreography. Some of the titles below offer bag specific segments, and others are honorable mentions since they are easy to adapt to a heavy bag.

First up, Amy Bento’s Rumble. This dvd is a nice bargain, as you get 79 minutes of workouts – one main 48 minute workout, a 20 minute bag workout, and a 14 minute stretch. The dvd is chaptered so you can mix and match the segments, and Amy also includes three premixes (43 min, 47 min, 70 min). Amy uses a standing bag during this workout which seems to scoot around the floor for her, but I don’t remember having any issues using the workout with my hanging bag.

Next, Cathe Friedrich’s MMA Boxing workout from her Shock Cardio series also has a heavy bag section. This workout contains a similar flow to Amy’s workout above. The main workout is 49 minutes and includes three rounds of (non-bag) boxing, abs work, and a short stretch. The bag workout is a “bonus” and runs about 18 minutes.  I don’t recall how well the main workout would adapt to a bag, so I’ll update this post sometime after I’ve revisited this one. No premixes are offered here.

Two more to consider are the Everlast Boxing Workouts with Michael Olajide Jr.  There is a beginner and an advanced workout available, and they can sometimes be found easily used, but might have inflated prices. I received one of these with the purchase of my heavy bag – the advanced one, I think. It’s been a while since I’ve checked these out, but as I recall they are straight and to the point in a gym setting.  No fancy choreography, but Michael is always encouraging with excellent cues, plenty of tips on form, and delivers solid workouts.

These two I suggest with caution, as they aren’t true heavy bag workouts, given the gimmicky inflatable bag Billy uses for the routines – Tae Bo Contact 1 & 2 with Billy Blanks. Billy’s usual energy and encouragement are there, and several parts of the workout are easy to do with a traditional heavy bag. There are a few areas where Billy uses the bag to bounce away from himself and other odd moves that you can’t duplicate with a real bag. I did my own thing during these sections, and also thought it might be a good time to move over to a speed bag for fast punching intervals – had my speed bag been hung up at the time, that is. But, these seem to be available and easy to find on the cheap (I think I got mine at the thrift store) so they are worth considering.

A better choice of heavy bag-friendly workouts from Billy is his Tae Bo II Get Ripped series. The full set contains 6 workouts, but one of those is instructional and another is an 8 minute workout, so if you’re looking for the most workout bang for your buck, I’d recommend any of the other four – 2 Basic and 2 Advanced options. This is the usual Tae Bo live class setting that anyone who has seen any of the older Tae Bo commercials will recognize.  Billy and the crowd provide great energy and usually the music is quite good as well.  The crowd features all fitness levels and ages – and also shows someone using a standing heavy bag during the workouts, though they aren’t on camera all of the time. The downside is that it can be difficult to find this on dvd at a reasonable price. But you can find it on VHS (which is what my set is) for pretty cheap.  And if you’re able to do VHS, another good set from Billy is Tae Bo Impact – which was only available on VHS.

One last set of workouts to check out are The Pit Workouts with John Hackleman. I only have the first Pit Workout and CrossPit so far, but from the descriptions, it looks like nearly all of the workouts contain some heavy bag work – especially Twenties, which is now on my wishlist. Some of these workouts also feature the UFC’s Chuck Liddell, so there’s certainly a more gritty, boxing gym feel to these. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, heh. Just don’t expect this to be anything like Cathe or Amy above – or like Billy Blanks for that matter. Definitely worth looking into if you like tough, no nonsense training.

Happy boxing!

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Photo Credit: Bitboxer / CC BY NCSA 2.0

Please pardon the dust!  I’m giving the site an overhaul so things will look a little wonky around here for a while as I get settled in the new pad! For starters, perhaps I’ll figure out how to get rid of the double nav bar at the top of the page (one down) – as well as figure out why some of my pictures are being cropped into thumbnails. Got that one, too, heh.

© Sara for My Basement Gym, 2011. | Permalink | Comments | Share
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Well, since I wasn’t too keen on the 10 Minute Solution Game for the Wii, I was reluctant to buy the new Gold’s Gym Dance Workout without seeing any reviews first – despite the fact that it was the game I was most interested in out of the upcoming titles. But, I found myself at my local Gamestop store on the day it was released anyway. The game wasn’t out on the shelf, but when I asked about it at the desk, the cashier pulled a copy out of the drawer. So, here I am. I’ve only played it a few times and haven’t tried every lesson yet. This isn’t a complete review but I wanted to capture my first impressions of the game.

Let’s get started.

The Latin Dance and Cardio Boxing lessons are done workout video style with cueing – no scrolling bar like Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout or other targets like other boxing games. The timing of the cues felt right to me, but I was often watching the lead instructor instead of listening to the vocal cues. There is also a pop up image in the lower right corner showing you what combo is coming up next. The remotes also give feedback, so you feel a vibration when you hit a move correctly. Correct moves are shown on the left side of the screen, with a green “Great” – or red “Miss” when you miss them. For now, I like that the remote gives you feedback – but I’m pretty sure that feature can be turned off, if desired. The controls feel very accurate in the dance and boxing lessons – though there is a slight delay between your move and the movement on the screen. This delay seems consistent throughout though, so once I knew the timing it wasn’t difficult to be successful with many of the exercises and games. I like the music better than Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout, but I wish the music was more selectable. Each song is assigned to a different difficulty and activity, including the tutorials. So, if you want to dance to Good Vibrations, for example, you can only do so during the dance tutorial. I also found some of the song assignments curious. As in, I didn’t feel very empowered doing a cardio boxing lesson to Material Girl, heh. And it seemed like many of the advanced songs weren’t recognizable titles. A complete song list is given in the review section at Amazon.

As far as difficulty is concerned, I found the game pretty doable. And while I’ve discovered that I enjoy dancey video games, I usually don’t like complex choreography and dancey video workouts - since I’m uncoordinated with no rhythm. But, by focusing on the arm movements I was able to score very well in the dance and boxing lessons that I tried out. It reminded me a lot of We Cheer 2 in that regard – lots going on and lots to work up to, but I could still get a good score without adding in any fancy footwork yet (or at all, if that’s how I want to roll). I also found it quite active with the potential to get a good sweat, and think it could provide a pretty decent workout. There is an option to create your own workout and string together several lessons and/or mini games (I think you can select up to 6), so I look forward to trying out that feature to see how quickly the activities transition. One amusing feature is that after each activity, it shows your score by how many (inflated) calories you burned and represents it with some kind of food or drink. I found myself paying attention to see what the picture would be each time.

The Mini Games offer a lot of variety, though they are quite short. You can select a time of either 1 minute, 30 seconds or 2 minutes, 30 seconds for each game.

Matador shows your avatar in some kind of alley -with bulls racing at you. You need to dodge them by swinging the remote from side to side. I got trampled a few times, but I also lost interest in this one pretty quickly.

Bull Ride was interesting, but I’m not sure yet if it is me or the controls that need work. You are supposed to compensate your avatar’s balance by leaning the remotes, but I was thrown off the bull repeatedly and my twisting and leaning didn’t seem to be doing anything. But, it’s too early to say for sure. I need more time on that one.

Canoe was kind of neat – you paddle down river using the remotes in a paddling fashion, and the scenery is nice. Then, an alligator appears and latches on to your boat! You are supposed to be able to shake the remotes somehow to get the gator to release, but I wasn’t able to do so. Again, I need more practice at that one!

Sword Fight was pretty fun – but is very similar to the sword games from Wii Sports Resort where you chop things up in various directions. Except, sometimes there is a Chinese star thrown at you to block or duck from. The time delay in the controls was noticeable for me here, so I needed to adjust my strategy a bit to improve my accuracy.

Marathon is your usual running game, like in Jillian’s 2010 game. But, here you might be grabbed and pulled to the ground by a lion that is nearly twice your size. Seriously. And I’m not sure how you are supposed to out run them, as I was shaking the remotes as fast as I could and I was still getting caught by lions. Not sure how often I’ll try lion running, but it might make a nice sprint interval when I choose to create my own workout.

Jump Rope is you trying to jump a rope that is being twirled by two people – with four other people watching you. I’m about as good at this as real jump rope (as in, not at all) so I need to work on my timing with this one. I’m interested in trying to get better at this to see if the stakes are raised, like more ropes or something. At one point I jumped like 5 times in a row – and I thought one of the spectators was rushing me (I had just been chased by lions, after all) but he was joining in, which totally threw me off and made us both trip on the rope, heh.

Boxing was the one I was most looking forward to from the screen shots – Kangaroo Boxing, that is! But, I found the kangaroo a bit too cute to want to hit, plus there is a baby kangaroo that pops out of the pouch now and then, making me even less eager to punch. I wish the kangaroo would have been holding punch mitts instead. The cues were new here, too – random red or blue gloves (left or right) popping up, showing you what type of punch to do. And it’s split into offense and defense sections, and I haven’t figured out the defensive moves very well yet. Perhaps in time I’ll be willing to fight back more after being pummeled by said cute kangaroo…

On to Karate. Karate was my favorite Mini Game during my first go round with all of them. You just punch left or right, or chop down on various objects. But the coolest part for me was how responsive the controls were to your speed. The faster you punched or chopped, the more powerful and damage inducing your hit would be to the wood planks, vases, watermelon – etc. It reminded me of how you can vary the power of your hits during the target punching in EA Sports Active. I can see how I could work up quite a sweat (or injure myself, heh) using the hard punches in this game. Well done, Ubisoft.

Balance board support is also offered for the Mini Games, but I like that you are still able play all of the Mini Games without the board as well. Bull Ride, Canoe, Jump Rope, and Boxing all have a balance board option, but I haven’t explored that feature yet. Perhaps the balance board will improve my bull riding skills. So, overall I was pretty pleased with this game – and there is a lot more for me to explore. I’m not sure yet if there are more features to be unlocked, but whether there is or not, I think this is a nice addition to Wii exercise game genre.

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So, I think I’ve mentioned in passing that I really enjoy my Wii. It’s the first gaming system that I’ve bought since Super Nintendo, back in the 90′s, heh. Needless to say, I’m a very casual game player. I like a lot of the fitness titles that have been released for the Wii, as well as other titles that aren’t fitness-specific, but require a fair amount of movement on the player’s part. I don’t use any of my Wii games as my main workout, but I enjoy them for extra activity during the day and after dinner, rest days, or days when I don’t feel like doing a formal workout. I also have had trouble finding detailed information on some games, though this website is a great resource for many of the most popular exercise games, complete with video clips. I wish would have been able to find out more information about this 10 Minute Solution game for the Wii before I bought it – like activities, modes, ability to earn credit toward new items in the game, etc. Since I couldn’t, I figured I might as well review it myself.

This game has the same name and nearly the same cover as the 10 Minute Solution dvd Knock Out Body with Jessica Smith. I really enjoy that workout, so I was optimistic about this game and bought it before seeing any reviews – or many details at all, for that matter. My first thought on the game is that it’s rather clunky. Bear with me while I try to explain the way the game is set up. And I’ll also note that I haven’t tried any of the balance board activities yet.

There are 16 different activities, each of them 5 minutes long. The activities aren’t exactly all different but I’ll get to that, too. All are unlocked at start up, and it doesn’t appear that you will earn more activities – or outfits, songs, new levels, etc. At the main menu, you can select Instant Workout, Custom Workout, or My Fitness Plan. With Instant Workout, the game seems to randomly select two of the workout games. So, you can get started quickly, but you only have control over your environment, difficulty level, and music track. In Custom Workout, you get to select two activities of your choice to play back to back. If you haven’t played the activity previously, it automatically starts with a training session. You can skip the training session from the pause menu, but I’m not sure if it will start with the training session again if you don’t finish training. My Fitness Plan lets you select six different activities, so you would get the longest workout using this option.

The transition between the workouts is a bit slow, and the music isn’t anything special. But, given the price and the fact that 10 Minute Solution isn’t known for it’s music I wasn’t too surprised about that – the graphics aren’t that great either. You have the option to use two remotes instead of the remote/nunchuk pairing. Selecting activities is also awkward, since the activities are represented by somewhat obscure icons, with no description appearing unless you select one – so you can’t wand over something to find out what it is. You need to select it, and if you’re in the two activity limit mode, it kicks out one of your other choices. Seems like adding a few extra words for the description would have been helpful. I’m also confused as to why Jessica Smith’s name is on this. There it is a still image of her with fitness tips and between screens, but this game has no resemblance at all to her Knock Out Body workout that the cover photo and title are taken from. There is a bonus section on the disc that appears to be the abs workout from Knock Out Body, but it just feels out of place. A shame, since I really like that dvd workout and Jessica as a lead. I just don’t understand why this game is supposed to be similar to that workout.

On to the activities…

Boxing

There are six levels of boxing, each increasing in difficulty and amount of moves used. So that counts as six different activities, even though I would call it one. I tried two (or three?) levels. The format is very similar to Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout, in that uses the scrolling boxing glove format to tell you what move to do. Trouble is, there isn’t a voice prompt telling you cross, hook, uppercut – like in the Gold’s Gym game. And since all of the various Wii boxing games use a slightly different graphic for punches, and I don’t have a lot of patience for Wii tutorials, I was a bit confused about some of the moves. The good thing is that like Gold’s Gym, it’s very forgiving and doesn’t really know the difference between hooks, crosses, and punches and gives you credit for anything similar, heh. On the downside, it took me quite a while to figure out how to get a “bob” to register. I tried all sorts of up, down, and around movements at various speeds and was stuck on “bob” for a while in training. I got to hear all the variations of “keep trying” from the trainer – of which there aren’t very many. Some were funny though, like “I don’t know what that was, but you better try again”. Anyway, after much screwing around, I did figure it out – though it’s nothing like an actual bob. As soon as the down arrows (the graphic for “bob”) get to the start of the target box (like in Gold’s Gym) you need to thrust the remotes quickly up a few inches, then quickly snap them down about the same distance, or slightly more, before the arrow graphic exits the target box – in order produce a significant change for the Wii to detect. Figuring out this pattern increased my accuracy on this move from 0% to more like 85% and up. Makes wonder if I’ll find more puzzles like this to figure out when there are more moves added in. So, to me the boxing activities were similar to Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout, but the controls don’t work as well – and it doesn’t seem like you earn points or money or anything to unlock more features in the game.

AerobicsThis appears to be all balance board stuff – all step aerobics. Again, I’ll call this one activity with six levels. The strange thing about section is that the obscure icons representing the different levels look to be yoga poses. I didn’t have the balance board out, but oddly enough it lets you start these activities, and then seems to run by itself while you stand there – even though it knows you aren’t using the board. Plus, I’m not a much of a step gal – and the Wii versions I’ve played with so far haven’t been fun for me, so this section doesn’t really interest me much.

Mixed GamesThere are four different activities in this section, sort of. They are Defender, Badminton, Disc Grab, and Pugil Stick. Defender is your trainer throwing volleyballs toward you, and you need to return them by flailing your appropriate arm – or ducking out of the way. You’re not playing volleyball, there’s no net – just hitting or ducking the ball and the trainer keeps throwing new balls. Trouble with this one is that I couldn’t figure out the prompt timing – there are words on the bottom of the screen, but I didn’t know if that was what just happened or what was coming. I never knew when to duck, and am not sure if it was me or the game. My attention span didn’t last a full training session with this one. Badminton is what it sounds like – controls were pretty responsive, but I got bored quickly. Oh, and you need to hit the shuttlecock over the net, but then your trainer hits a new one to you. No volley action or need to hit it a certain way to keep things going – probably why the controls seemed to work well. Hee… Disc Grab is a weird one. It requires the flailing arm action of Defender to grab discs, but optionally uses the balance board. Even without the board, there were the animated feet prompting you to use the board while grabbing discs being thrown by your trainer. Didn’t like this one much. So, best of this bunch is Pugil Stick. BUT, it’s simply the same as boxing, except that your character has a pugil stick instead of gloves. Same scrolly thing with action box, Same weirdness with “bob”, same punchy-type moves required to make your character hit with the pugil stick. I liked the interaction of the sticks with the trainer, but it’s pretty difficult to watch the interaction and still hit the moves on time. So really, the summary of this section is arm flail with ducking, arm flail, arm flail with optional feet added in, and boxing veiled as pugil sticking.

Bottom LineWell, I’ve played worse, but there are much better games out there, namely Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout since boxing is the only decent offering here, in my humble opinion. Also, since EA Sports Active and More Workouts are on sale so often – they are both much better than this game for sporty stuff. And I love the boxing offerings from the first EA Sports Active, for that matter. I had hope for Pugil Stick, but if you’re looking to get your inner American Gladiator on, the Joust in Celebrity Sports Showdown is a lot more fun, heh. You even get to push the other guy off the platform into the water and everything. Or even the swordplay in Wii Sports Resort – similar swing/smash style. I do dig all things Wii boxing (except Showtime Boxing<<<—this one is really bad ), so I’ll probably hang on to it for the time being. Oh, and as far as getting an actual workout from this one? Eh, I doubt it, especially if you are a regular exerciser. When the combos get closer and faster in boxing you might be able to sweat a bit – and weighted gloves might help burn some extra calories, but since I usually use my Wii as fun bonus activity anyway, effort level is never a big consideration for me. Overall, I found this to be a disappointing offering from 10 Minute Solution and Activision – and probably not worth the money unless you rent it out of curiosity or find it in the bargain bin.

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