The RevAbs Review

On November 15th, I started a new workout program called RevAbs. It’s not that I was unhappy with my morning workout per se, I just wanted to invest a solid three months into a structured workout regime — moreover, I specifically wanted to target an area of my body that I felt had been really hit hard by poor diet and lack of physical activity for the majority of the time that I lived in Seattle — my abdominal area. What better workout program to use than something called RevAbs — right?

There has been a natural order and progression of events that has led up to me getting and starting to use RevAbs a little over two years ago. It all started with a friend of mine telling Elizabeth and I about P90X, an exercise program that makes major usage of the somewhat controversial notion of ‘muscle confusion’ — a simple search for the term ‘muscle confusion’ will leave you with no clear notion of whether ‘muscle confusion’ is one of the best things to happen to working out ever or if it’s a hype filled bunch of bunk that doesn’t work at all.

At the time, I had a neighbor who was a fitness expert who assured me that her detailed in depth research had brought proof after proof that muscle confusion was closer to a good thing that worked than hype.

I ordered P90x shortly thereafter and then started with a very hopeful review. Unfortunately, I was all too right in my early review — the lack of equipment would catch up to me, as I noted in the second review. The next big problem was coming up only a few weeks after the second review and that was the fact that I was going from Seattle slicker to New York vagabond, and I wouldn’t have a set home base from where I could work out.

This turned out to be a bigger problem than I had anticipated. From the time I moved to New York until the time I had a place that I could call my own, nearly a year passed and I was worse for the wear. I thought about starting up P90X again and restarting the review process.

While I was waiting to get my own home base back, I did some different workouts that centered on cardiovascular activity and focusing on the core — i.e., the center of the body from which our entire body springs forth. I’m pretty sure that doing these workouts prevented me from getting out of shape but I felt that I needed some kind of structured program to really help me get going.

A few weeks ago I discovered a DVD program called RevAbs, which was developed by a fitness instructor named Brett Hoebel with the express purpose of getting the audience’s abdominal area in excellent shape in a matter of ninety days — the caveat being that the person using the program has the obligation to follow the program as closely as possible to schedule.

That was exactly the sort of schedule I wanted to follow. I also took note that the course did not require anything other than a couple of free weights or a tension band, of which I had many. I decided that I wanted to give it a go because I have been unhappy with my abdominal area for years now and I wanted to try to do something about it.

It has now been three full weeks since I began the program and I am happy to report that it is working quite well. I would like to update you with more photographic goodness towards the end of the ninety days, but until then think about how I looked before I started P90X.

I look quite a bit better now, I think. So, how does the program actually work? It is 90 days which is broken up into two forty five day periods. There is an accompanying calendar that you can use to help with the daily motivation — it starts on Monday and ends with a rest day of Sunday, so I modified it just a little bit so that I started on Sunday and ended with a rest day of Saturday.

There are a total of seven actual workout DVDs, though there is an option to buy a deluxe edition that comes with two extra DVDs. The first 45 days puts you through three of the DVDs whereas the second 45 days gets you through the next four.

Things that have been getting me through each workout include the length of the workouts, the motivation offered by the instructor, and the fact that I have really been feeling it as I work out. The workouts range in length from between half an hour to forty five minutes. This works well with my morning schedule — I wake up at five in the morning and work out right away.

I get into the shower and get ready for the rest of the day. If the workouts were longer I would feel as though I had to skip certain parts of them just to get through them. There were some P90X workouts that were over an hour long and despite having no set clock for my work schedule, I felt really badly for taking so long to work out.

The instructor, Brett, offers excellent motivation. He continually offers you reassurance that if it is too difficult, there is a modified option available. Every workout has one person in the video doing the modified workout and Brett goes out of his way to explain what the modification is, should you wish to do it. The key point that he drives across very well is that it is better to do the modified version of the workout than to do no workout at all.

I really do feel the workouts as I am doing them. Many mornings I wake up and I feel like not getting up out of bed at all. I force myself to do it and about ten minutes into any given workout, I am actually already up and active. I breathe in deeply and, as silly as it feels, exhale forcefully — and push out my abs as I work out. I will discuss this technique more in depth in my next review of RevAbs.

Has RevAbs worked for me? I can tell you that as of now, I am thinner in the waist than I was when I started the program and I feel a lot better every morning when I wake up. Whether I will have “ripped” abs at the end of the ninety days is something that will be determined — in about 68 or so days!