Insanity Day 11: Cardio Recovery

So thankful for this!  The early morning cardio annihilations was starting to get to me.


Also, Cardio Recovery is a bit on the shorter side (~35 min), which ended up being great today since I ended up doing school related things (mostly AT school) from about 9am to 10pm.  As a recap of what this one is all about, there's no cardio, and it's mostly a series of stretches but also some deep power moves: squats, etc.  It's at times relaxing, but definitely tough on a few of the exercises.  Katie and I both had to come out of the held poses a few times!


For tomorrow I'll be doing P90x Chest, Shoulders & Triceps to shake things up a bit and give myself some more upper body work.  I posted about these way back in the day when I first did P90x, but I'll probably do a full review of the workout since I have somewhat of a new "audience" reading this blog.


Diet Notes
Breakfast: Green smoothie


Lunch: bowl of fruit, roasted almonds, Trader Joe's strawberry soy yogurt, gluten free sweet potato chips from Costco, turkey/avocado sandwich on gluten free bread (was actually quite delicious), Cliff Z Bar


Dinner: sea bass marinated in soy sauce in white wine and vinegar and mustard, encrusted with sesame seeds; cabbage, snow peas, carrots, onions with white wine and vinegar; brown rice

Insanity Day 8: Power Cardio & Resistance (aka "we've met before, haven't we?")

With Katie's finger still on the mend, today was another foray into the world of Shaun T. on my own.  And although I certainly feel as though I'm improving and can see some aesthetic difference since only a week ago, it's much easier (and much more fun) to push yourself when you have someone working out next to you.  Oh well.


Being Day 8, today called for some more Power Cardio/Resistance, which is definitely one of the hardest workouts in the program.  Oh who am I kidding?  They're all hard!!


Workout (44 min)
The warmup, like with Day 6, was actually very doable this time.  I'm pushing as hard if not harder than the folks on the DVD, and just as a reminder, the warmup isn't like any other you've ever tried before.  It's an all-out sprint for the last 1/3 of it.


Following the stretch I jumped into the actual workout, which, as you'll recall, puts a lot of emphasis on power and resistance moves like squat jacks and plyo jumps for the legs and v pushups and moving pushups for the upper body.  Unfortunately, despite my feelings of accomplishment in the warmup, this part of the video did me in again.  Lungs burning, muscles fatiguing.  During these intervals it's almost impossible to envision myself ever being able to best this workout.  Shaun T, you have made a monster of a program.  This becomes clear enough in this workout in particular when Shaun T asks one of the background exercisers how she feels: "I feel like sh*#."  That pretty much sums it up.


Thoughts for Today
To go along with my hardcore exercise regimen, Katie is going to help me on the diet portion of this as well.  As a matter of fact, I'm going a little extreme with this (might as well since I'm already killing my body exercise-wise) and am going to try my hand at venturing towards the paleo trend some people are moving towards.  The real emphasis here is on whole, raw foods (although I won't be 100% paleo here), and I also plan to cut out dairy and a few other things at least for the next few weeks.  The real trick though is to make sure I'm getting enough calories with the diet.  I sure as heck need them!  Katie and I are already pretty regimented in our intake (green smoothies every morning, etc.), so I feel like this is at least doable.


Will keep everyone updated on how that goes.

Insanity Day 3: Power Cardio & Resistance (aka "death cheated once again")

Today Katie and I were at it again and once more survived the fitness madness that is Insanity...although perhaps not gracefully.  


A few things to note.  Things are still hard (VERY hard), but I think our bodies are at least starting to know what to expect.  And I dare say that today's workout, Power Cardio & Resistance, was even harder than yesterday's if that's even possible!  In all it was about 40+ min long with a bit more focus on resistance-based moves like pushups.


WARM-UP (~10 min)
This essentially was the same as yesterday (3 three-minute cycles of intervals followed by 30 second breaks), although some of the moves were a little different.  

• Jog (running/sprinting in place)
• Power Jacks (a plyo version of a jumping jack; you start off in a deep wide-legged squat before jumping your legs together)
• Log Jumps (these suckers are hard! Jump side to side extremely high like you're jumping over a log)
• 123s (basically, these are heismans with a little bit of pitter-patter footwork in between)
• Butt Kicks (running in place with knees down, kicking your heels to your butt)
• High Knees (running in place while making sure your knees raise up to your waist with each "stride")
• Vertical Jumps (from a moderate squat position, jump as high as you can as if you're shooting a basketball... kills the calves)

Again, at the end of the last cycle was a series of additional moves, that I can't quite remember.  But you finish up hard!

Stretch (10 min)

Today it occurred to me during the stretch sequence that these static stretches go against a lot of what I've heard elsewhere about warming up.  I had been under the impression that any "stretching" after a cardio warm-up should be ballistic stretching (vs static) to keep everything loose for the actual workout.  Especially when the workouts are as plyo crazy as these.  Save the static stuff for post-workout.

Oh well.  We haven't pulled anything yet, but we'll see.  I will say though that having the somewhat subdued stretch break provides a much needed breather!

Workout (~20 min)

• First Interval (3 rounds of following moves)
• Power Jumps (Hard!  Very deep squat into a high jump, tucking your knees in at the top)
• Belt Kicks (basically a squat, come up and kick your leg and then repeat on the other leg)
• Hit the Floor (Don't even know how to describe these, but they sort of resemble a blend between shuttle runs and jumping)
• V push-ups (have your feet up towards your hands as close as possible so that your butt sticks up in the air to make a "v"... have your fingers pointed towards each other, head down, and then perform the pushups so that your shoulders feel the burn!)

The only one of these that didn't seem to be that effective was the belt kicks.  You really need to tighten your core on these to feel them, but I found it too tempting to cheat. 

• Second Interval (3 rounds of the following moves)
• Hurdle Jumps (sprints in place, followed by a mock hurdle jump)
• Globe Jumps (squat jumps: forward, left, back, right..repeat)
• Moving Pushups (with moving push-ups you start in plank, move your right arm and right foot to the right, do a push-up, move to the right again and do another pushup.  Then it’s back to the left twice.  You go back and forth until your minute is up. )
• Floor Sprints (essentially mountain climbers)

Oh yeah, and at the end of this second interval you get to do one last exercise: 8 hop squats/8 pushups...and repeat till your muscles collapse!

Recap

All in all, this workout didn't seem all that different from yesterday, although it was certainly more resistance heavy with all the pushups.  

That said, I do have some early thoughts on the program, and not all of them are positive.  First, unlike P90x, it seems that Shaun T's repertoire of exercise moves is pretty limited.  These workouts are killer AND effective...but they all feel pretty similar, which could make this repetitive and maybe even boring pretty quickly.  Fortunately, Shaun T's a pretty good motivator.  

Second, it's somewhat DE-motivating to see background exercisers  pretty much drop out left and right because the workouts are so stinking hard.  I guess it's comforting to know that I'm not alone in my agony, but it also feels like the bar is almost too high... that this is simply a workout than can never be mastered.  That can be good or bad I suppose.

In any case, another solid/killer workout today.  It will be more of a challenge squeezing these into my schedule going forward since school is starting back up tomorrow, but Katie and are planning to make it happen!  And fortunately, so far, our diets are in tune with all the fitness craziness we're doing.