The Firm: Bootcamp – Maximum Calorie Burn

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A 52-minute calorie burning cardio/ sculpt fusion from The Firm. Alison Davis instructs.

Intermediate exercisers. It’s straight-up intermediate, a little too intense for advance beginners and probably not intense enough for many advanced exercisers. You also need to be a quick learner when it comes to moves, ’cause there’s a lot of ‘em. You’ll need two to three sets of weights, around 3, 5 and 8 pounds. (For the record, I used all three sets.)

Not all bootcamp-style workouts have basic choreography. Take this Firm workout — the moves come at you fast and because of The Firm’s multi-limbed approach, they’re often complex. That said, it’s not a dancey workout; the moves are athletic style. There’s also a lot of plyometric work here — in other words you do a fair amount of jumping, which is great to keep your bones strong, but not so great if you have bad knees or you’re worried about jarring your joints, so keep that in mind. You’ll definitely want a variety of weights for this workout. One set of 5-pound dumbbells won’t do it — you won’t be challenged enough for some moves. There is one drawback to this workout: the production. I don’t know if the editor is at fault, or if the camerawork was lacking, but it looks like it was put together by someone who didn’t know how to film an exercise video. There’s too much footage of the modifier (especially when you need to see how the full version of a move is done), and all too often, there are close-ups when you need to see what the instructor’s legs are doing. This makes an already fairly complicated workout that much more difficult to learn. But if you can get past these drawbacks and take a little extra time to get the steps down, you’ll get a good workout.