Review: Get Extremely Ripped & Chiseled with Jari Love

If you truly crave that lean, mean chiseled look, light weights and multiple sets are compulsory, but that doesn’t mean your workout has to be boring; and Jari Love’s Extremely Ripped & Chiseled is anything but.

Get Extremely Ripped & Chiseled With Jari Love Workout DVD Review

We’ll forgive the “workout” jean shorts for the awesomeness of this workout.

Let’s start with the set; it’s fun, reminiscent of a disco. Backlit, the stage dances with spotlight; the only thing missing is a mirror ball. And the music — retro top 40 hits remixed with a pop rhythm — is upbeat enough to keep tempo but not distracting.

Lights, camera, action!

Jari Love is a certified personal trainer and creator of the popular Get RIPPED! workout series. You’d never guess it, but she’s in her 40s and, as you’d expect, extremely ripped. Together Jari and her team of Amazonian women (and I mean that in the most flattering of ways) smile as they guide you through an intense workout meant to burn calories and create muscle definition.

Extremely Ripped & Chiseled is a full-body workout that utilizes light dumbbells and an optional step. Jari recommends 8 to 12 pounds for legs and 5 to 10 pounds for upper body, but I guarantee you’ll be wishing you’d grabbed those 3-pounders instead.

Sets are long, really long; with oodles of reps, but the count is varied (1 up, 2 down then 2 up, 4 down or double-time) so that it doesn’t get stale. The pace is perfect, fast enough to keep your heart rate up (especially while working the legs) but slow enough to develop correct form. The entire workout is 78 minutes long, with the option of dividing it between upper and lower body.

Lower Body

Jari is a big fan of the squat: the innovative crouching squat (with elbows on thighs), the jump squat and the side squat. Mix that up with deadlifts and lunge variations and you’ve got one killer, but fun, leg routine.

The last 10 minutes of the 35-minute routine (not including warm-up or cool down) is dedicated to back and chest. For the dumbbell chest press, the step is used as a bench to afford a deeper range of motion, but again it is not necessary. Without the step, however, you will miss out on the uber-challenging decline pushup.

Four sets of twelve reps will get those muscles screaming.

Upper Body

The upper-body routine concentrates on shoulders, triceps and biceps. Muscles are worked in various ways to guarantee fatigue. For example, three-position shoulder presses (five sets) are followed with anterior and then lateral raises (six sets each) to thoroughly stress each head of that muscle. (Hey, you said you wanted to get ripped, right?)

The running man bicep option also works those abs.

After exhausting your bis and tris in much the same way, you move on to abs. Only five minutes long, it gets the job done, especially with the addition of a hand weight. Basic moves with a bit of a twist and some upper back thrown in for good measure.

Total duration of the upper-body portion of the DVD, excluding warm-up and cool down, is 33 minutes. Both the upper- and lower-body segments use the same warm-up and cool down, so if you plan to work your whole body at once, you will be forced to either take a break (probably needed) or fast forward.

Extremely Ripped & Chiseled is a solid full-body workout aimed at the intermediate to advanced levels of fitness. Modifications are offered and half-time reps are encouraged for those who are less advanced or who suffer joint pain. Jari, sets a good example, and willingly gives the floor to the younger gals when her own body’s limitations tell her so.

This was my first Jari Love workout DVD, and I loved the challenge. I had to skip a few sets and drop some weight, but I made it through!

FBG Rating (Out of 5):
Instruction: ★★★★
Long-Term Likeability: ★★★★
Music: ★★★
Fun Factor: ★ ★★★★
Meets Expectations: ★★★★★
Overall: ★★★★

Fit Bottomed Line: Challenging, yet fun. The type of workout DVD that has you gritting your teeth and digging deep for that last set you know you’ve got in you!

What’s your fitness goal? Does it include getting “ripped?” —Karen