Review: The Firm Total Sculpt plus Abs

The Firm's Total Sculpt plus Abs is a circuit workout from their Body Sculpting System 2 (BBSS2). It is lead by Jen Carman. 

BSS2 uses the Fanny Lifter (which I like better than the Transfirmer or blue box ("death" box), but BSS2 is when The Firm introduced their "Sculpting Stick." I think it weighs 9 lbs. It is a cool concept, but in this workout it is misused in parts. For example, at times it is used for balance, and I actually like that. I also liked using it during the abs section of the workout, but they use it for things like lat pulldowns and 9 lbs isn't very heavy for back work. But I simply swap out to my 18 lb Body Bar for that section. For the other 'Sculpting Stick' moves, I use my 8 lb Body Bar. Works great!!  In one section, Jen uses the Sculpting Stick as a blanancing stick with one hand while she does leg presses holding a dumbbell on her should with the opposite hand. The first time I did this workout I tried that, then thought if I did them that way I would only be able to use half the weight I normally use for leg presses (since I’d be using only one dumbbell) so I ditched the stick in lieu of a second dumbbell. But I have decided that I actually prefer to do them with one dumbbell and a Body Bar. This is for two reasons – 1.) I have plenty of DVDs that do leg presses using a barbell or two dumbbells so I don’t mind doing them a little differently in this workout and 2.) I find that I get a really deep contraction and range of motion when I use the balancing stick.
Jen is strong and cues well in this workout. She is no nonsense and moves quickly. I prefer her in cardio workouts but liked her in this workout. She is much more serious here than she is in Better Body & Buns and Super Cardio, but she seems a little less dry than she did in Body Sculpt from BSS1.

This workout starts with a 5 min warm up and then goes into 33 min of cardio/weights. It is almost all weights; there are 3 brief cardio sections. Low impact floor aerobics, step aerobics (I really liked this section!), and 4-limb aerobics (this section is VERY similar to one of Jen’s 4-limb sections in Super Cardio). The music, for the most part, was really good. Some of it was bad but more than half of the tunes I really liked. After the cardio/sculpt portion of the workout comes a cooldown, a short 4-min abs section, and a thorough 7 min stretch. I really like this stretch.

This workout had a good amount of biceps and triceps work. It felt a bit light on back, shoulders, and chest, but my shoulders and back get worked a lot with kettlebells and boxing, and I could have added some pushups at the end if I wanted to (but didn't have time).

I would consider this a sculpting workout with cardio rests as opposed to a true Firm AWT workout, since the cardio is so sparse. But the leg work got my heartrate up so it did have a cardio benefit during those segments.  A pretty good workout from the post-BBH era Firms.

DOMS-inducing factor: 6/10
Fun factor: 7.5/10