Workouts from #IDEAworld and #BlogFest #wildworkoutwednesday

For me, one of the biggest draws to BlogFest was the association with IDEA World, which is the biggest fitness convention in the world. As a fitness professional and fitness blogger, it's literally the best of both worlds. I intend to share some of the blogging tips I learned at BlogFest, but I'm super geeked out over the workouts I tried. And since it's Workout Wednesday, it's a perfect day to share them.

Between the expo and all of the continuing education courses, there was plenty of opportunity to test out some butt-kicking workouts (like the "Pimp My Playlist" ride I did). Additionally, both IDEA and BlogFest lined up some really great speakers that were also willing to share their group exercise formats.

I literally geeked out on exercise the whole weekend.
Starting with a fun run before BlogFest started.

After a long night of travel, my legs needed a good shakeout. We ran three miles at a pretty good clip, but that didn't stop me from making some new friends. Like Hollie from Muscles and Munchkins.

She and I were in the same group for the HIGHX workout, too.

I had no clue what HIGHX was before BlogFest. It's actually Gabrielle Reece's pride and fitness joy. She was the keynote speaker at BlogFest, and she blew us all away with her frank speech. More on that later.

The HIGHX workout is "a high intensity explosive training and conditioning program designed to maximize the body’s ability to burn fat, build muscle, optimize the body’s hormone and physiological response to exercise while improving overall daily and athletic performance." A typical workout consists of multiple mini circuits of two exercises each, which are done for :30/exercise until 3:00 is achieved, at which point you rotate to the next mini circuit. Translation: It's an ass-kicker. Take a look:



I was pretty sweaty at the end.
Poor thing posed for pictures with a long line of people, all sweaty like me:

Shortly after that, I tested out the dynamic cable training system from FlexLine. Think cable machine, without the need for a pin and weights. The power to add and subtract weight is all in the handle. Literally, there are buttons on the handle that let you increase or decrease the weight. Super, super cool. In their workout, they mixed up high intensity exercises like mountain climbers with more  traditional strength exercises, like chest flyes:



That was on Friday, my Spinning class was Saturday morning, and then I worked out with Jillian Michaels. Which was AWESOME. Renee, Annemarie, Nicole and I were all super sweaty:

Say what you will about Jillian. We all have our opinions. But I think her BODYSHRED group exercise format is pretty sweet. It's right up my alley with its minimal use of equipment and super intense 3-2-1 combo of traditional (and non-traditional) bodyweight exercises.

Three minutes of strength.
Two minutes of cardio.
One minute of core.
Repeat for 30:00.

I'm really bummed I didn't write down all the exercises.

Suffice it to say, my body was shot after this and Spinning. But the show must go on so I got some lunch and headed into my next session, which was a barre class for instructors that teach without a barre. It burned my booty something fierce.

All in all, I left IDEA World and BlogFest totally sore and newly inspired. The workouts at this fitness convention where off the hook, and I only experienced a portion of them. Doing continuing education on the computer is super convenient and often cheaper, but being there in person...that's an incredible experience that I recommend every fitness professional give themselves at least once in their career.

Question: Were you at IDEA World and BlogFest? What was your favorite workout? If you weren't there, which of the above interests you most?