Noises I LOVE Mady. I also love Charlie Follows for her soothing coaching and beautiful settings. She even sometimes has a border collie present, attn: @samthebordercollie
Tess, yes exactly, the app is good for straight lifting but there is little cardio and there seems to be less and less variety in the moves. Without counting it felt as though there were fewer than 30 different moves in all of ten weeks of Max (excluding Fridays which were just abs, arms and banded glute things from what I could see).
OK I'm gonna count (between work calls) because I'm bored out of my skull.
All moves on Sunday to Thursday MAX workouts:
- RDL (variant: staggered RDL)
- Shoulder press (variant: Arnold press)
- Squat (variation: heel elevated, staggered squat one time)
- 1 arm row (variant: supine row)
- Hip thrust (variation: one legged hip thrust one time. Actually the opening workout, which remains my favourite!)
- Chest press
- Rear step lunge
- Static lunge
- Bulgarian lunge
10. Sweep
11. Rear delt flye
12. Lateral raise (variant: diagonal raise)
13. Stability ball rollout
14. Dumbbell pullover
15. Chest flyes
16. Glute bridge
17. Upright row
18. Sumo deadlift / squat
19. Push up
All of those moves occurred in week one. Every week thereafter was the same set of moves with the addition of only:
- Goblet squats ( variation on #3)
- Diamond press
- Rear delt row (she only performs with same weight as #11)
- Rotational row (variant of #4)
- Step ups - the closest thing to a cardio move all program and they occurred I think once(?) on day 12
- Curtsey lunge
- Hammer press
- Frontal raise
- Around the world (variant: arc raise)
- Cobra or diamond pushups (variant on #19)
- Lateral lunge x1
So thirty, if you generously give each lunge variant its own number. Of course there were a couple of additional moves for biceps and triceps on Fridays, but overall- you could just do week one on repeat and get the full benefits of the programme. Every week was the exact same.
Sunday - focus on heavy compound moves. Always included a hip thrust or glute bridges. Always a good workout. The first day got me quite excited about the program.
Monday- light shoulder work (2x4kg moves), lunges and/or stability ball rollouts. Only those, ever. Very boring esp if long sets of unilateral sweeps... switch side... repeat. My god. I passed on a lot of these including Day 2. The contrast between this lunge hell and the excellence of Day 1 was too great for me!
Tuesday: some heavier moves again but longer intervals and higher reps overall, usually incl glute bridge or hip thrust. Usually good. But sometimes the 25sec rest period was awkward with moving a barbell or using adjustables- so pausing was needed, which probably negated the point of the workout
Thursday: heavy day, compounds- including hip thrust or bridge. Sometimes push ups and things and sometimes some subtle creativity or innovation in the layout like a kind of staple or almost triset or other variation in the moves. Generally my favourite days!
Friday: undemanding circuits of abs and arms and some lower body bodyweight thing like sissy squats or banded glute bridge which according to comments were always so spicy or fire but which did zilch for me on the few occasions I bothered with these. Biceps and triceps were pretty adequately covered by heavy rotational rows, push ups etc on other days anyway, but I sometimes added in arm workouts from other trainers, including this Israeli meathead who yelled at me to MAN UP the whole time, which made a change.
I really liked a lot about Max to be honest. Great if you don't have time for the full 45mins or an hour. There were usually three days a week of thrusts or glute bridges which is probably overkill unless you want a huge badonkdonk, but I didn't mind that so much, having run some Contreras programs in the past- this wasn't just glutes by any stretch. But overall it was mind numbingly repetitive when it was weeks and months on end especially. I wouldn't mind doing it interspersed with other workouts- which is how I did it, or about 65-75% of it, anyway.😁
I have a shortlist of definite favourites and have already repeated several of the workouts.
The one thing that surprised me was the TOTAL lack of cardio. Even PE had a few short plyo bursts sprinkled in. You could end up like the stereotypical gym bro who gets winded climbing the stairs with this program!