The Everything-Joyce-Vedral thread :-)

[Joanna]

Hi everyone

I have had a few people ask me lately which Joyce they should buy, how many you need etc. so I thought it might be fun for us Joyce users to compare our ‘essential’ Joyce---do you really need all the tapes? Which ones do you need and in what order should you buy them if you can only buy one at a time?

I think step one would be to get two books from the library: Weight Training Made Easier and The Bathing Suit workout. WTME is a great book because it has four progressive levels, and once you learn the information, you can photocopy the pull-out charts and follow the workout that way. The progressive levels offer an endurance workout, a modified pyramid, a modified pyramid in supersets and one in giant sets. As for the Bathing Suit workout, I think the video moves far too quickly for most people. But the floorwork is very good and this is an extremely easy one to follow from the book. You can do it as she suggests in the boom, or video-style, one set for eveything.

For a first video, I would get the Bone-Building Workout. This is my favourite Joyce tape. She has a nice, slow lifting speed, so you can grow with this tape by going heavy. And because you finish one exercise before moving on to the next one, the workout goes by very quickly. You do a solid two exercises per body part and you get a rest after every set. As usual, Joyce lies about the time, but not by much---instead of 20 minutes, each day clocks in at just under half an hour.

The next set I would suggest is Definition. This is a good complement to the BBW because it uses a completely different approach: the full pyramid. It also goes so fast you can only use light weights for it---a nice cross-train with the heavier weights you can use in BBW. It is also Joyce’s most time-efficient workout, with a minimum plan, competently chaptered, that takes just 15 minutes.

I would get Dynamic Tension next because it again uses a completely different approach, so you are not duplicating the same workout but in a different package. I use this tape as an endurance workout, using the heaviest weight I can manage for all 3 sets. But you could pyramid too. Each section takes just 12 minutes, so you can do two a day for a nice split routine in under half an hour. Plus the lifting speed here is very slow and careful.

If you get the workouts on DVD, you’ll already have Non-Stop on the Dynamic Tension disk, and it can be a nice change of pace from the other workouts. It is like the Bathing Suit workout but for the entire body---you do a giant set (one set of every exercise in the workout) with each group of weights. It too is under half an hour.

Finally, I would get Bottoms Up Gold, but this is definitely an optional one. It is similar to BBW in that it moves slowly and you can go heavy, but it pairs up the exercises by body part. It is much, much longer than the ad copy on Joyce’s website leads you to believe---70 minutes for workout day 1 if you do the whole thing. But she chapters each set of 22 exercises as a unit, so you can hit skip after 2 or 3 sets to go through it faster. Dping two sets (i.e. 2 exercises per body part, for 3 sets each) on workout day 1 takes about 25 minutes, which is similar to BBW---but the fast that you have the versatility to go 3 or 4 sets makes this a nice extra workout to have since it will give you a lot of options.

I don’t think you would need any further Joyce workouts beyond this point. Weight Training Made Easier is nearly identical to Bottoms Up Gold in structure, but it moves much faster---and you’d already have super-fast in Definition and Non-Stop. And Fast Forward is an okay workout, but many people find the 3-day split annoying. I think Fat-Burning Workout is decent, but it is a little dated, and I don’t think it will give you anything you don’t already have.

Joanna