Afterburn by Alwyn Cosgrove. $54.95, 117 black and white pages, arrives hole-punched and in a black 3-ring binder. Looks to be just run off a copy machine. Nutritional chapters written by his wife, Rachel Cosgrove. Afterburn is an intense fitness program designed by Cosgrove, a well-known coach, owner of a fitness studio and writer for publications like Men’s Fitness, . The chapter on “Energy System Training” describes the 16 week high intensity interval training (HIIT) part of the program. The next chapters alternate between a chapter on resistance training on one on nutrition for each 4-week period. The workouts get progressively tougher and the nutrition plan changes up in promote fat loss. In the latter weeks, the nutrition plan seems an awful lot like a very updated reincarnation of Dr. Martin Katahn’s “Rotation Diet” from the late 80s.

Most of the workouts can be done at home with a weight bench, dumbbells/barbells and a stability ball. However, he does use a cable machine for rows and a dip station. Clear directions and photographs are provided so that you perform each exercise properly. Instead of putting the pictures at the end of the book, sometimes the same pictures/descriptions are used repeatedly in each progression. This could be good if you didn’t want to flip back, but it also means less pages of the program are actual new material.

Afterburn is a fantastically organized plan. If one follows it exactly, the results should be amazing. I felt it was definitely worth the money… however, then I purchased Turbulence Training.

Turbulence Training by Craig Ballantyne. $39.95. This is an eBook, actually a set of eBooks. For that price I received:

Turbulence Training (main book), 55 pages.
2007 Turbulence Training (update of main book), 55 pages.
TT Nutrition Guide by Chris Mohr, PhD, RD, 28 pages.
TT Dumbbell-Bodyweight Fusion Workout, 33 pages.
The 4-Week Bodyweight Program, 31 pages.
TT Fusion Fat Loss, 37 pages.
TT for Women, Home Sculpting Workout, 30 pages.
Bonus 30-Day Fat Loss Workout Guide, 3 pages.
The Dark Side of Cardio, 15 pages.
Tom Venuto’s “Mission Abs”
MP3 Interviews with Craig Ballantyne explaining the program.
The Best Exercises You Never Heard Of, by Nick Nillson, BetterU, Inc. This is a computer program with exercise illustrations and videos.

(Craig Ballantyne is a workout routine and fat loss expert, and writes workout routines for Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines).

As you can see, I got a lot more training bang for my buck with Turbulence Training – what I wanted and more! Craig’s workout design is very similar to Afterburn. It’s progressive, every 4 weeks you change to stimulate progress. HIIT is an integral part of the program design. Every chapter gets harder, be prepared.

The main book has a very informative introductory set of chapters. It is then followed by a “Lifestyle Review” and and 21-day Healthy Habit Building Plan. (I can see these would be wonderful for beginners, in fact, I have recommended it to a few folks already). There are then chapters for basic workout guidelines and interval guidelines, then Introductory, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Core training plans. Very thorough. Great descriptions and photographs. Workout logs are provided (you’d need to copy these if you used them). All of these workouts can be done at home with basic equipment: dumbbells, weight bench, stability ball. Let me say that the Bodyweight Only workout is *not* a walk in the park. (And I like that!)

Both trainers have blogs that you can link up with -- on reading their blogs you’ll find that Alwyn tends to use a bit of off-color language and tends toward sarcasm. His writing is… spirited and that can be enlivening. Craig is very professional - and usually quite interesting. I prefer Craig's - in fact, I have the feed on my Top Page.

I’m was sort of mixing the two programs up, but now I'm basically just doing Turbulence Training. It's got so much nifty stuff! By the end of 16 weeks I hope to be doing 1-legged squats with a bit of grace and to have conquered pushups on the stability ball.

The Eat-Clean Diet by Tosca Reno. $16.99 plus $5.99 S&H from her website, only $11.53 through Amazon (and free shipping if you spend $25). I got it for $10.17 because I pre-ordered – and bought a copy for a gift as well. 224 shiny, glossy, colorful pages.

This is not a “diet” book in the sense that books like “The South Beach Diet” are diet books. This is a book about changing your eating habits to eat in the best possible way to promote your personal health and fitness. The introductory chapter shares Tosca’s own story. The subsequent chapters cover renovating your metabolism, hydration, the importance of breakfast, packing healthy meals, dangers of haute cuisine, cheating, dining out, supplements & superfoods, menus, recipes and a whole chapter devoted toward teaching our children to eat healthy foods. It ends with a Q&A chapter – common questions that readers of her Oxygen column have asked.

I highly recommend this book – and I recommend spending less by buying it at Amazon. J

Glaceau Vitamin Water. One 20 oz bottle has 125 calories and really – to get the 50 – 100% of vitamins in each bottle, you could really just drink a flavored Dasani and pop a multivitamin. Same goes for Sobe Lifewater.

Medicine Balls. These are fun! I have a wimpy 4 lb-er at home and have an 8 lb-er coming. I’ve got my 10 yo doing some things with the little one. It’s good for her and it is fun.

My next purchase will be a wobble board or a stabilty disk. I plan on conquering those 1-legged squats. Either of these items will also help my daughters improve their sit-spins and shoot-the-ducks, there's my justification for buying these things, lol, hey, it's not just for me...

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Monday: Got to the gym way, way later than I planned. If I can't make it in the morning, I like to go when Deep Space Nine is on.;) I didn't get there until the gym rush was in full swing. UGH. Horrible. I did get in 45 minutes of cardio, 25 minutes of which was HIIT. 35 minutes of supersets - by then it had thinned out. Rhianna came with me and complained, "Why do we always seem to be doing dumbbell squats?" I told her it was because she always seemed to come with me on squat day. Rofl, it was like having Caren with me to complain about the squats. I don't understand it - I *LOVE* SQUATS. I love 'em all - hack squats, dumbbell squats, plie squats, suma squats, Bulgarian split squats - and I will conquer the 1-legged variety.

Today: Early, very early - Caren met me for the first time in weeks. We did a 10 minute treadmill warmup, fo rme 7% incline, 4.0 mph. 35 minutes of supersets. She got herself out of two supersets of Bulgarian Split Squats/Dumbbell Rows by chatting it up about Windows Vista. Back to the treadmill - 5 minutes of backwards walking, 14% incline, 3 mph. 5 minutes at 8%, 4 mph. Had to clean snow off the van when I got out of there.

Now that I can breathe, am not hacking and coughing and generally feeling almost well - I have to catch up on my yoga and flexibility training. P90X tomorrow!

There is no reason for this song being here except for the fact that I felt like hearing it today.