Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

Shape Magazine and Nike have teamed up to offer a FREE 40-minute workout featuring Serena Williams. You can download it here:

• Nike and Shape Magazine 40 Minute Audio Workout featuring Serena Williams: Right click the link and choose “Save As…” The MP3 will work on any MP3 player.

This workout has you walking or running and then gives you several strength training exercises to do between the bouts of running. There are lunges, squats, and the idiotic triceps dip, which is an impossible move for a beginner made more difficult by adding a leg extension. Many of the strength training exercises are just too complicated to be described with words. For some people (like me), even photographs wouldn’t help. Ideally, Nike and Shape would have put videos on their websites showing beginners HOW to do these exercises, but they didn’t.

I used this workout on a treadmill with my Nike+. I was worried that the Nike+ might pause the workout because I was standing still for some of the exercises, but they never lasted long enough to trigger the Nike+ pause feature. The seamless integration with Nike+ is a true positive to this workout.

Another great feature of the workout is its versatility. Just because the audio track is 40 minutes, doesn’t mean you have to dedicate that long to exercising. If you are a beginner or only have a short amount of time, you can choose to bow out at the 20 or 30 minute marks. Serena gives you instructions to end your workout early if you are too winded or short on time.

The music is pretty heavy on the Rap side of the music spectrum, but it was never irritating enough to make me want to end the workout. My two favorite artists in the mix were Time Machine and Jacques Renault. I found them on this mix on Amazon:

• Ron Herman After Dark at Amazon.com

If you have been feeling bored on the treadmill or running outside, this is a FANTASTIC workout to try and you can’t beat the price! Thanks Nike, Shape and Serena Williams for making this available to us!

Via: Serena Williams: Free 40-Minute Workout