What's it all about? Tone Zone is an all-over strengthening and toning workout. It focuses on using your own body's resistance with exercises, such as squats, lunges, crunches and inner thigh raises. There are also routines combining aerobic moves with hand weights and a step for extra difficulty. The hour-long class begins with a cardiovascular warm-up and ends with a long, thorough stretch.
How hard is it?
It didn't feel that hard until we did what felt like the 120th set of squats or the 900th walking shoulder press. It then dawned on me that this was a deceptively tough class. The combination of squats and lunges with marching and sidestepping is harder than it looks, while the walking arm exercises with weights look girlie but require a huge effort after the first few minutes.
How was it for you?
Really enjoyable. I was impressed by how tough it was, but I didn't feel the need to call in the emergency services or assassinate the instructor at any point. It was testing, but doable and I felt thoroughly worked out and uplifted afterwards.
And the morning after?
My thighs, bottom and triceps were stiff and quite sore for three days afterwards.
What can you achieve?
Tone Zone works problem areas - such as thighs, bottom and upper arms - hard then keeps on working them, so it is ideal to firm up your nastiest wobbles. However, it is not much of a fat burner so it isn't going to make any of them much smaller by itself.
I would do this class if...
I wanted a thorough toning workout without having to kill myself in the process. I'd team it with a dedicated fat burning workout to shrink as well as tone the enemy areas.
* Ruth Nicholas is reviewing classes at Fitness First. Classes vary at different gyms: check local timetables for details.
