The Daily Sweat: Action Heroes Rock!

It's time for me to talk about my favorite personal trainer, Valerie Waters. I mentioned her last week, but her workouts deserve more homage in our daily sweat space (http://valeriewaters.com/). I found Valerie through my love of Alias and being in awe of Jennifer Garner's physical fitness - or in other words, her amazing body tone. As someone who loved kickboxing and always wanted to be a spy (studied Russian in college), I was addicted to Alias. Just ask my ex-roomate who got quite sick of waking up in the middle of the night to hear the theme song as it repeated on the DVD over and over (I was sleeping soundly and blissfully on the couch as it played). The show got me through many, many difficult times as JJ Abrams has this amazing ability to develop characters and make a very unrealistic show applicable to your life (note my reference in my Freeing Sisyphus post last week - pager in the Pacific).

So, I wanted to be an action hero babe like Sydney. I thought that with that kind of mental acuity and strength I could handle anything. Yes, I was a bit delusional, but really needed distraction from the daily drudge that was my life, and I wanted to feel strong. So, I did some research on the web and found Jennifer Garner's personal trainer: Valerie Waters. And, get this, she had a series called Action Hero Babe you could buy on DVD. I had that thing shipped to my house faster than superman could fly Lois Lane to the ice caves.

The funny thing about the DVDs are that they aren't all that fancy, but she works your tail off. The cool thing is that she is sweating right there with you. It's nothing like Jane Fonda videos where everybody does everything perfectly and never a hair falls out of place. Valerie wobbles, she gets out of breath, sweats profusely and she even messes up the sequence every once in a while, but in about 45 minutes you will burn almost 500 calories. She has this amazing ability to pack the best exercises in a short amount of time to get maximum results. And she is FAMOUS for what she can do for your backside. Her exercise routines also "fixed" my core imbalance issues. I was always getting injured b/c I wasn't balanced, but since doing her videos and incorporating some of her concepts into other workout routines I have been injury free for over two years (if you don't count my stubbed toe incident on Tuesday which was more laziness as I hadn't moved/unpacked my suitcase from my last business trip). And, you don't have to do a ton of planks. I hate planks. She has these cool things called Valislides that make "typical" exercises like lunges fun - her Valislide reverse lunge changed my life.

Ok, enough gushing, and I promise this is no advertisement. But, for those of you out there who need something a little new and want to see quick results, I recommend checking out her series and blog: http://valeriewaters.com/. She breaks up the Action Hero Babe DVDs into 2 phases of three workouts: build, sculpt and burn which if you are a runner like me it's perfect, because they fit nicely into my weekly routine.

Although being an Action Hero Babe isn't as much of a fixation for me now, Valerie's core concepts have helped me be a bit more balanced. But, I have to admit, deep down, I still think Action Hero Babes rock!

What's your favorite workout series? Do any of you have an exercise out there that changed your life? Any P90X fans? I've thought about trying that one next.

 

As always, please comment or email at freeingsisyphus@allpointswhole.com