Review: Insanity 60 Day Total Body Training Program
- May 31, 2010 11:06 pm
I’m not a little dude (the domain name is sarcastic). I was looking for two things from Insanity; first, I wanted to lose weight. Second, I wanted to improve endurance and speed for hockey and tennis. This 60 day workout was remarkably successful on one account and marginally successful on the other.
In the Box
There are only two things you need for insanity: the package of 10 disks (and a couple more as a bonus) and the Insanity calendar. It’s a 9 week program with some form of exercise every day except Sunday. You start on a Monday with your first ‘Fit Test’ which is a measure of how many of various exercises you can do in allotted time. After that every day you pop in the disk the calendar says and follow Shaun T’s instructions. No gimmicks or gadgets to buy. Every couple weeks there’s another fit test so you can track your progress. The first four weeks are the regular-old Insane workouts clocking in around 45 minutes a pop, followed by a recovery week of lighter workouts, and then 4 more weeks of max-Insane workouts.
The Workouts
I’ve never done workout videos. The closest I’ve come to something like those would be Yourself Fitness or EA Sports Active which are basically computer-customized workout videos. I can tell you the intensity of workout on these videos is FAR greater than anything I’ve experienced from those sources. Honestly, I’ve never worked out this hard.
The workouts tend to follow a similar pattern. All workouts, including recovery and fit tests start with a warm up. It’s usually a jog, some form of jacks, and a mixture of high knees, Heismans, etc. Most of the regular intensity (week 1 - 4) workouts had a very similar warm up and most of the max intensity (week 6 - 9) workouts had their own very similar warm up. After getting the heart rate up you get a short break and then it’s a stretch. Shaun T will stretch you hard too. Then into another break. After that the real workout starts. The interval workouts are usually 3 minute intervals with 30 second breaks. The same interval repeats three times with increasing intensity. After a couple of those interval cycles most of the workout time is spent so there may be some final high intensity ‘push it to the limit’ work before the final rest and stretch. The cardio workouts are a bit different in there’s no interval. Shaun and his team are up there exercising the whole time breaking whenever they’re too tired to go on.
That’s one of the interesting things about Insanity. No one can do all of Insanity. Period. Every workout has at least a few people that have to take a break. Heck, even Shaun T himself has to stop once in a while. To me that’s a great thing as participating in a workout where everyone is on-track and me being the only one ‘wussing out’ is a crappy feeling. I’d probably be more inclined to work until my first tired-out point then stop the video if I didn’t see others getting tired, shaking it out, and jumping right back in.
The Experience
On my first fit test I was expecting to do some jumping jacks, push-ups, and maybe some sit ups. You know, break a light sweat, count out your heart rate and move on. Nope… The Insanity fit test is just as intense, albeit a bit shorter, than any other disk. For the first two weeks of the program it was a struggle just to get through the workouts. I was soaked, sore, and cursing Shaun and his skinny smiling supporting cast. It was absolute torture. The next couple weeks, the last two of the regular-insane workouts were much smoother. I kinda felt like I hit a stride and I wasn’t breaking much more than the people on the Insanity team. I thought I had really turned a corner, hanging right there with real-life fit people. The recovery week came and went. It was a nice break… then it was the max-insane stuff.
The first couple weeks of the max-insanity workouts I felt like I was back at week one. Frankly, the intervals are ridiculous. I want to meet someone who can do the Max Interval Plyo or Max Cardio Conditioning workouts property with no breaks other than the interval. That person doesn’t exist. They certainly aren’t in the Insanity videos. Honestly, the last 4 weeks was crushing but there’s a purpose. These are the never-ending challenges. These are the workouts that will always be impossible no matter how fit you become. And, well, they’re the reason you can still improve after already going through 4+ weeks of incredibly intense workouts. You just have to push as hard as you can. No you can’t keep up, but you can still push as hard as you can. And it’s the pushing, not that actual movement that keeps your heart pumping.
Results
So, as I mentioned in the opening paragraph my Insanity experience was overall a success but more successful in one goal than in the other. I have two metrics to measure by: first my weight taken with a cheap plastic scale in out bathroom, second my fit-test scores; five of them over nine weeks.
First, the marginally successful goal: weight loss. I lost in the neighborhood of 10lbs over the 60 days. I would deem that ‘adequate’ and would be thrilled if this was a typical workout program however with the intensity of these workouts I was expecting more weight to drop. Not to say I’m disappointed. It’s obvious that in addition to losing 10lbs off the scale there is meaningful, visible fat to muscle conversion and that should pay dividends on all future exercise endeavors. Thus, the results are marginally successful.
Now the the other goal: improved speed and endurance (as measured by the fit test). Frankly, the results here were rather astonishing. By the numbers I had improved an average of… wait for it… ninety-five percent! Yes… that’s right, I almost doubled my performance on average. This improvement in cardio has translated very noticeably to improvements in hockey endurance and speed. I am absolutely thrilled with these results.
By the numbers, my most improved measured fitness activity was Switch Kicks with 149% improvement. My least improved activity was Suicide Jacks with a measly 33.3% improvement (mostly due to my relatively puny arms, next lowest was 76%). There are definitely diminishing returns as my body approaches better fitness in spite of the more intense workouts. My test 1 to 2 improvement was 35.5%, 2 to 3 was 21.1%, 3 to 4 was 13.6% and 4 to 5 was 9.2%. Compared with Tanya and Chris (Shaun’s guy and gal doing the fit test with you), I bested them both on two exercises, went 1 and 1 on five of the and they both beat me on one.
Conclusions
Well, the results speak for themselves. Ninety-five percent improvement… Even in spite of the fairly modest 10lb weight loss that is extremely impressive. The workouts are damn hard so I don’t want to go out and recommend this to everyone but if you have the time and can push through an hour of torment per day for nine weeks, Insanity will deliver.
By the way, Insanity’s website is a bit steep. You can find it a bit cheaper elsewhere.
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