Kayla Itsines Bikini Body Guide (BBG) Review

let’s preface this with: the body you see above is not a current result of BBG – I have been recovering from some hip issues for the last 15 weeks and have not been allowed to use any weights with any lower body exercises, so I’ve been limited to what I can do. (aka I’m flabbier than usual haha)

 

I’ve been meaning to write this review forever, seeing as I completed Bikini Body Guide 1.0 (BBG) last July (whoops) But, as always, life has other plans. On the bright side, you still get the review in July, just July 2016.

For any of you who are unfamiliar with the BBG, it is a 12 week circuit training program created by Kayla Itsines and her partner Tobi Pearce.

The BBG is set up with 3 circuit training sessions a week, along with Low Impact Steady State cardio (LISS) and some High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) that gets added later into the program.

The workouts consist of 4 seven-minute sessions, so the actual workout time is 28 minutes long. Majority of the workouts can be done at home, and they are guaranteed to kick your booty.

Here is an example of a workout so you can understand the format:

Doesn’t look too bad right? Wrong.

How the circuits work:

Set a timer for 7 minutes – cycle through the 4 exercises with the rep counts she gives as many times as you can in that 7 minutes.

Repeat this for the next 4 exercises.

Then repeat both of those again. At the end you will have spent 14 minutes with each circuit.

Then take a cool down walk & stretch. Or lay on your mat. You choose 🙂

Kayla is very thorough; there are no details left out of the program (as you can see with the table of contents below)

What I loved about the BBG:

• the workouts are 28 minutes – everyone has time for 28 minutes/3x a week. We would go for a quick warm up jog before and cool down walk after, so we often stretched our workouts into the 45-50 minute range.
• you need minimal equipment/can do the workouts at home – at my house in Michigan we had a mini-gym room (check it out here) and that’s where we did a lot of the BBG workouts
• for people just getting back into working out – there are 4 weeks of pre-training before the 12 week program starts to get you ready
• the circuits force you to do things you hate – (read: burpees)
• you are constantly moving and switching exercises, but the way the circuits are set up allow you to work at your own pace
• they are HARD. I consider myself to be in pretty good shape and there were some days when my heart rate got up to 190 and I thought I was dying. So you will be challenged.
• they gave me a lot of great exercises for when I create my own at home workouts

The only downsides:

• after 12 weeks (or 16 if you do the 4 weeks pre-training) you start to get a little tired of the same type of workout (or maybe that’s just me)
• the program is pretty high impact (aka A LOT of jumping) which isn’t realistic for everyone. But, Kayla does combat this by offering modifications for many of the moves

Overall, I would highly recommend the BBG.

It will get you in great cardio shape (prepare to be jumping a ton) and most likely push you to new limits. If you would like more in depth information about the program or have any questions, please let me know! I have also completed the second round (BBG 2.0) so I can write a review on that if you all would like!

 

Sidenote: Kayla has quite the Instagram presence and there are thousands and thousands of girls out there doing this program (many refer to themselves as part of Kayla’s Army). Many of them have separate BBG Instagram accounts to share their progress, inspire other females, and help keep each other accountable. The community is a very positive and inspiring group, and I highly recommend following Kayla on Instagram and some fellow BBG gals to help keep you inspired to work out 🙂

Have a great day!

-M

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