Insanity Max: 30 – Week 1

I decided not to blog every day about the workout, because the context of the posts would have been the same; man, this is hard.  Instead, I will do a weekly recap of the program and my results and thoughts.  I might have a random post mixed in sometimes, depends on how I’m feeling.

So this week, there were 4 workouts over 5 days with 1 of those workouts being done twice.  On Tuesday and Thursday, it was Tabata Power.  Tabata training is basically just a form of high intensity interval training.  20 seconds on, 10 seconds off.  It’s tough because if you push yourself to do as best you can, your heart rate is always in the upper spectrum.  On Wednesday was Sweat Intervals and today was Friday Fight.

Friday Fight was the toughest workout so far.  It’s intense cardio, and the program goes 15 minutes, then a 30 second break.  Then 11 more minutes and another 30 second break.  Then the final 4 minutes.  It’s tough, and by the end of the workout, I had almost completely spent all my energy.  It was difficult to even do some of the more simpler moves.  The ones that kill me the most are the tricep dips. You’re basically in a legs bent seated position.  You put your hands behind you to your sides, with your hands facing your feet.  And then you do tricep dips.  It’s not easy.

As like previous Insanity programs, it’s all about cardio.  There are no weights or other equipment needed.  Any strength building is done with your own body weight.  Push-ups are plentiful in this program, but you also need very strong legs to do a lot of the jumping.  My legs (quadriceps) are usually what fail me first.

I’ve officially lost 20 pounds.  I don’t usually like to share my weight loss right away.  When I started back on July 6th, I weighed 198 pounds.  (I think I posted about why I started all of this in not wanting to reach the 200 pounds mark).  I’ve now completed 8 weeks of exercise, and on Wednesday I weighed 177 pounds.  I’m refraining from posting progress pictures until I’m done with this program, which has 7 more weeks.  But I feel great.

We are trying to follow the meal plan a bit better.  It was confusing to have to try to put stuff in containers to measure, so we modified it a bit and are just doing a calorie count.  I think my target was supposed to be 1700 calories a day, but I am probably averaging about 1200.  The thing is, since I have altered my diet now for 8 weeks, I am not hungry during the day.  I eat oatmeal for breakfast, and that gets me to lunch.  I eat a salad or something similar for lunch, and that gets me to dinner.  I no longer have the cravings for mid-afternoon snacking; in fact I feel fuller longer after eating.  My hardest part is trying to force myself to eat more.  However, as I’m not doing muscle building, the calorie deficit is help progress my results.

Which brings up another point.  Because this program is so cardio intense and less about muscle building, there will almost guaranteed to be muscle loss.  I’ve noticed it a bit in my arms already.  If I was doing muscle building, I would need to make sure that my calorie intake was higher.  I think after this is done, I will probably go back and do P90X to try and gain back some muscle.

So that’s my progress for this week.  This is a great program, and I would recommend it to anyone…as long as you are into cardio.  Until next week!