“Where are my track shorts,” I asked myself as I frantically searched for something comfortable to wear while trying the new Blogilates craze to get in shape for bathing suit season.
My adventurousness quickly turned to skepticism when I saw the pink layout and flowery banner of workout guru Cassey Ho’s website, blogilates.com. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the ease of the site, featuring meal plans and recipes, a newsletter and of course, a list of videos that will get your booty and the rest of your body into shape. The videos are conveniently organized into categories based on what area of your body you want to work out and also grouped into Ho’s custom series, including the Victoria Secret series, which was my first destination.
Eager to start, I clicked on the “Victoria Secret Bombshell Butt Workout” and was first greeted by the quirky, charismatic host, Cassey Ho. I grabbed my mom’s yoga mat and a pair of textbooks, as requested by Ho for this workout, and got started. After getting into a bridge position and Ho promising the audience a butt that’s “firm and perky and nice and rounder,” Ho instructed me to do butt lifts with a fully extended leg.
What was easy and somewhat fun after one minute became hell the next, and I dreaded having to switch legs. What I’d heard was true: these workout videos are killer. With instantly sore glutes, or butt muscles, it was time for the next exercise. What could I possibly be doing with heavy textbooks? After several minutes of weighted, skyward pelvic thrusts, I was nearly exhausted. Eleven minutes and several difficult workouts later, I was glad it was over. But you know what? I really enjoyed it, even though I was questioning my masculinity.
Despite the potential awkwardness and difficulty of these moves, I had the feeling that someone could quickly benefit from these videos. Ho does a great job talking you through the workout, being fun and inspiring you to keep going, all while discussing fashion and family. Still, like most how-to videos, it features an annoying “subscribe and rate for more” kind of ending, which is expected.
Also, some, including myself, may find her cheery attitude irritating after a few minutes. But to get something out of this experience besides sore quadriceps and gluteal muscles, I decided to try another few videos that might be more targeted to a male audience.
Because nice abs are a desirable unisex feature, I clicked her “8 Minute Abs” video, which has a retro look, as it’s a parody of a 1988 workout video. I laughed throughout this tape. This not only had a great, challenging workout, with leg pushes being the most difficult, but the park with a pond filled with ducks in the background, headbands, glitchy television and alternating cameras were hilarious. As a child who saw his mom using tacky pilates videos, I could really appreciate this humor. After this amusement, I tried several more very effective videos, including an excruciating oblique workout, and one for arms, shoulders and chest.
What’s great about this site is the ease of access and targeted workouts so you can get fit in whichever area of your body you please. The arms, shoulder, and chest video was especially useful to me, as these are places I’d like to improve my fitness, and of course, become less scrawny. The fact that I could instantly feel the burn meant that it worked. Although sometimes I wish I had muted Cassey Ho, I found her workouts to be fun and useful nonetheless. I feel the burn she talks about all the time. And as they say, “no pain no gain,” trust me, there’s a lot of pain— especially in my gluteus maximus, medius and minimus, as well as the rest of my gluteal muscles.