To Insanity and Beyond

Even though you are coming out of a recovery week it is still important to take your rest. Your body needs the days off that it gets and today is no exception. Enjoy the day, relax your muscles, try to recover from your recovery.

You will have an insanely challenging day tomorrow. Prepare your mind for it as you rest today. And let your body really get it’s rest. You’re going to need it.

Until tomorrow, when it really hits the fan, rest hard.

Today is supposed to be the sixth and final day of the recovery week for Insanity before taking a rest day and moving into the Max workouts. And normally I’d be stoked about that, except that my back was bothering me more than I would have liked this morning so I chose to take a day off. That is my first day off from working out in 14 weeks, so I think I can live with it without feeling too bad about it.

I’m hoping that taking today off and chilling out on my rest day tomorrow will give me back some amount of comfort for next week, when the workouts get insanely more intense. Until then, hears to a much needed day off. If you can manage it, keep pushing and keep digging deeper. I know that sounds almost hypocritical coming from a guy taking a day off but hey, motivation is motivation, right?

I feel like I’ve been walking in the desert for a long, long time staring out over the same sand and same sky forever. Yes, day 5 of Core Cardio & Balance has that effect on me. I can’t wait for this week to be over. Not because the workout is that challenging. It is challenging, but it isn’t incredibly difficult to get through for me now save for the Hip Flexor Burners. No, more than anything I want this week to be over because I am getting exceedingly bored doing the same thing day after day.

My back has also been burning more and more the last few days which I am still struggle with trying to handle. It feels like I am trying to balance a weight on my head and the middle of my back is bearing the brunt of it. By the end of the day my back feels like it is totally overworked and ready to give out. By morning, it is rested, but extremely sore from the work it was doing the day before. That makes it very difficult to bend, stretch, hop and balance without feeling some amount of pain doing it. Since these movements are the essence of Insanity you can imagine that doing any workout, even Core Cardio & Balance, is very, very hard for me right now.

Still, I push through, trying as hard as I can every time I press the play button. Each day is a new day and, even if I’m doing the same thing, I’m still exercising so that is a win in and of itself. Today was no different. I gave it my all and at the end of it, I had completed everything except for the Hip Flexor Burners without a need for rest. That is a huge success for me and I will enjoy that little victory any day of the week.

If you are in your recovery week, or even on Day 33 like me, stick with it. I know it’s probably a little old for you by now. And I’m sure you are probably itching to get into the Max workouts like I am. Enjoy the rest you are getting with these exercises. Next week will come much sooner than you know and before long you will be picking up your body from the floor wondering why you rushed to get out of this week. At least that’s what I did.

And if you aren’t working out yet, or you are considering working out or even doing Insanity, do it. Make that decision, get out of the thinking chair and get your body in motion. You might hate yourself for a few days in the beginning, but it won’t be long before you are enjoying the fruits of your labor.

Come on ya’ll. You can do it.

Day 4 of Core Cardio & Balance is about the time where I start to get burnt out on this workout. Yes, I love the fact that it isn’t as punishing as the normal workouts and that my body is not getting run through the ringer every day. But I am so hungry for something different by this time that it is almost as much work mentally doing the workout today as it is physically challenging.

That said, I am still striving to complete the entire program. My hip flexors are still a major area for improvement for me as evidenced by my inability to finish the Hip Flexor Burners. I can get a little further into them each day, but I am nowhere near getting through them without bringing my feet down.

Add to this the fact that my back is really, really bothering me today and today’s workout seemed that much more intense. I really need to figure out what is happening with this back of mine. It seems like I can’t stretch it out enough or relax it enough to make the pain go away. I don’t know what’s behind this, but I do know that I need to get a handle on this soon or I won’t be able to do nearly as much as I am now, not just in the Insanity program, but overall.

Still, sore back and all, the only exercise I was not able to complete today were the Hip Flexor Burners. My other nemesis, Shoulder Burners, are something that I can safely say I have a grasp on now as I have been able to complete them the last three times I’ve done them.

So until tomorrow, here’s wishing my back starts to feel better and that I can find the strength in my hips to keep my legs off the ground. Dig deeper!

A few days ago I started to feel some pain in my lower back. At the time I thought nothing of it, chalking it up to perhaps a bad night’s sleep or lurching over my desk at work. Now I’m starting to think that maybe it is a little more than that.

As the day wears on I feel more and more sore, almost as though I am carrying the weight of my day in my lower and middle back. I mention this because, while the pain is worse in the evenings, the soreness is most prominent in the morning during my workouts. Stretches that cause me to bend at the waist really bother my back. Jumping, bouncing and running motions seem to be bothering me as well. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this or how I am going to handle this yet as of yet, but for now I’m just going to keep working through it hoping that I can loosen my muscles up through working out and stretching.

To that end, I again was thwarted in my goal to complete a Core Cardio & Balance by my arch nemesis, Hip Flexor Burners. Everything else I can do without rest, but my hip flexors obviously need some work. So I have yet another area of my body to target for strength training, which I fully plan to do because I really, really want to complete an Insanity workout from start to finish without resting at any point during the workout.

So pull for me. I need to work pretty hard in order to make this work.

Day 2 of your recovery is more of the same as yesterday. And while you are still getting a bit of a rest from the high impact exercises of the normal Insanity workouts, Core Cardio & Balance does get old fairly quickly. I’m not trying to be negative, just telling it like it is.

One nice thing about this workout is that you can actually see your progress almost immediately in it as you can literally compare today to yesterday to see if you have improved. For me that is a huge win because I love seeing my improvement and accomplishment frequently.

Today, for example, I was actually able to complete Shoulder Burners for the first time ever. Yesterday I was only able to make it through about a minute and a half of them before letting my arms down. Today I was able to keep my arms up for the entire three and a half minutes of the exercise.

That means that for this workout all I need to be able to do is complete the Hip Flexor Burners and I can say I can complete an entire Core Cardio & Balance workout because I can do all of the other exercises without rest. So my goal for the week is to be able to complete all exercises in Core Cardio & Balance in a single workout without resting.

Think I can do it?

Week 5 of Insanity is a recovery week. It is intended for you to allow your body to have some time to not get pounded into oblivion every single day of the week. It is also time for you to prepare yourself for the Max sessions of the program. Core Cardio & Balance is a workout designed to do just that.

It is filled with exercises that test you physically and mentally without punishing your body with jarring, heavy-impact movements. They are slow, deliberate exercises that target your muscle groups, working them out to the point that you battle with your mind over whether this really is a recovery workout at all.

Coming in at just over 37 minutes, this workout starts off differently than almost all other Insanity workouts. The warm up starts with Switch Heel Kicks, a simulated jump rope movement, followed by Mummy Kicks then Football Shuffles, a fast foot movement where you slide across the floor, followed by Over The Log jumps, a move where you sprint in place then leap, high knee style, over an invisible log that is between your feet. Each of these exercises is a minute long then you get a short rest.

After the break you move into the next round of warm ups, starting with 8 High Knees with a Twist/8 Power Jacks then 8 Fast Feet/8 Hooks, again each for one minute. After the warm up is over you move into the stretch before getting into the heart of the workout.

The first exercise you do is Moving Ski Hops. These are the same motion as Ski Jumps except instead of side to side jumping you hop to one side four times then come back. After these, you move into Hit the Floors, Level 1 Drills then Heismans. All of these exercises are one minute exercises.

After a brief break you move right into a longer period of exercises starting with 8 Switch Kicks/8 Hop Squats then High Jumps, a sort of standing vertical jump, then Moving Plank Walks, 8 Elbows/4 Suicide Drills, 4 & 4 Hops, where you hop on one leg four times then switch to the other leg, and finish with Jap Switch Jump Squats, where you take a series of jabs while in a squat position then jump into the air, turning around 180 degrees then landing and throwing more jabs. Finally, after all of these one minute exercises, you get another short break.

The last stage of the workout starts with Hip Flexor Burners, in my opinion the toughest exercise you will do in Insanity. It is a series of exercises in which you bring one knee up from floor to about hip height repeatedly for 30 seconds, the hold the knee at hip height for 30 seconds while pulsing it then extending the leg out in front of you and bringing the foot back down again for 30 seconds. This is repeated on the other leg when you are done.

After a short water break you move into standing Oblique Knee Lifts followed by Shoulder Burners, quite possibly the second most challenging exercise you will do in all of Insanity. Starting in a plié squat you extend your arms out to your side and begin to pulse them up and down for 30 seconds. Without letting your arms down, you then begin to swing them from your sides to your front touching your fingers together before swinging your arms back out to your side. You do this for 30 seconds. Again, without letting your arms down, you raise your arms over your head from yours sides, touching your fingers together above your head, again for 30 seconds. Finally, still without letting your arms down, you once again extend your arms to your side and begin moving them in small backward circles for 45 seconds, then switch to forward circles for the last 45 seconds.

If you happen to have any juice left after this, you are lucky enough to use it on your cool down stretch to close out the workout.

Of all of these exercises today I can say that I am able to do almost all of them, with the exception of Hip Flexor Burners and Shoulder Burners. I am farther along in Shoulder Burners than I have ever been, but I know I have some pushing to do to get through them completely. Otherwise this is a very intense, difficult yet low impact workout to allow your body to rest for a time before moving forward into the max segment of the program.

You never know just how much you need rest until you take it. Today is like that for me. And if you are doing Insanity, it should be for you, too.

Your body has taken a pounding the last six days and it needs a chance to recover from that. At least mine does. So I’m taking my rest with a smile on my face and getting ready for my week of recovery.

Finally, a loss that I can be happy about. Somewhat.

After four weeks of doing my second round of Insanity I lost three pounds in a week. I still can’t figure out why it took this long to be able to get this done but I am pretty stoked. And it couldn’t come at a better time since next week is recovery week and I am pretty sure I won’t be losing any weight next week at all. We’ll see though. This time around has been so much different than the first time around that I’m thinking that just about anything can happen.

Given the way my workout went today I’d have to say that I don’t think I was mentally prepared for today. Today’s workout kicked my butt something awful.

I worked out a little later in the morning today – something I have taken to doing on Saturday to give myself more rest and allow for a better workout to end my week – and while I usually have a bruising workout that leaves me feeling incredibly accomplished today I was the one that was feeling bruised.

I have no idea why but I struggled through the entire workout today and, though I finished it pretty the same way I have been finishing it lately, I was more worn out at the end of it than I have ever been. I wish I can say it was because I had worked so hard during the workout, but I honestly can’t say that.

Regardless, I still managed to lose some weight this week, which, at the end of the day, is the entire reason for me doing this program. So in the end it wasn’t a complete failure, though I wish I could have gone out of the first four weeks a little stronger.