I just realized as I am posting this that I only have one more rest day during all of Insanity!

As always,  a rest day is much welcomed.  And, as has been the standard the last 2 weekends, I have worked hard in the yard on these beautiful sunny days.  So, I didn’t rest in the true sense of the word.  I was out there tilling soil for the garden and raking leaves that have been sitting for months from fall.  But the yard looks great and we are ready for spring!

The past 2 weeks by Saturday my knees are feeling tender.  It was the same this week.  However, as I write this Monday morning, my knees feel fine.  I think the rest day is so important to this whole program.  In weeks past I would have shifted workouts around to get them all in and workout on Sunday.  But I will not do that anymore as I realize the value of letting your body recuperate.

Only 2 more weeks to go!

Day 48 – Max Interval Sports Training

Since I do not like doubling up on workouts during the week, I decided to take the fit test yesterday instead before doing the Max Interval Sports Training.

There is not really too much to say about the numbers.  I am a bit disappointed as I decreased my performance in 2 exercises for the first time during the entire Insanity.  I don’t know whether to blame it on not having a rest day before the fit test, performing the fit test in the morning, or just simply that I have not improved in those areas.  I am pretty sure on the power jacks I am much more tentative with getting the form right as to not strain my knees.  Either way it is ok.  I am happy about the progress on some of the other exercises though having improved over 100% on two of them so far.

Today is the end of week 7!  Wow, only 2 more weeks to go, it’s hard to believe.

Due to the way I am shuffling this around, today I did my Fit Test and then went right into Max Interval Sports Training.  I didn’t want to do the fit test on Monday due to the time constraints I have mentioned in other posts.  I will post about the fit test in another post.

Max Interval Sports Training is actually a pretty fun routine.  It is about 55 minutes long.  It starts with of course a warm up.  The warm up is more cardio based then strength based and get the blood pumping.  You do variations of jump rope drills as well as other things.

Then you go into the heart of the workout.  The workout is structured with circuits that revolve around a certain sport which is cool.  It makes it fun to do these.  The sports are:

• Boxing
• Football
• Basketball
• Gymnastics
• Track and Field

I am not going to break down each exercise at the moment, but as you can guess, each sport has specific moves.  Like lots of punching for boxing, shooting drills for basketball, and tons of high knees in the track and field section.

I really enjoyed this workout due to the variety of new exercises.  It made me feel, well, ’sporty’!

During this workout I burned 579 calories.  During the fit test (to be posted separately) I burned298 calories.  So doing these back to back I burned 877 calories!  Time to go pig out

Day 47 – Max Cardio Conditioning & Insane Abs Minus Insane Abs

Today was slated to have the first double workout of Month 2, Max Cardio Conditioning and Insane Abs.  This is a struggle for me to do, not because of the workout, but because of the time constraint.  I can’t bring myself to working out for 1 1/2 hours when I get home from work and basically ignoring my family and not being able to eat dinner with them.  So, I had the plan to get up early and do Insane Abs and then do Max Cardio in the afternoon.  The plan fell through   I didn’t feel equipped and fueled at 5:30am to start jumping around the living room.  So I skipped it.  There you go, my first deviation from the program the entire time.

Now, for the good part.  I did Max Cardio Conditioning in the afternoon and it was my best workout thus far of month 2.  I did almost the whole thing it felt like and felt strong throughout.  This is by far my favorite of this month.  I am a bit reinvigorated after today because it felt so good.  Looks like I burned 565 calories.

So, then the dilema was this: do I push back Insane Abs to Saturday and double up?  Or do I do the Fit Test on Saturday so I don’t have to double up on Monday?  I have chosen the later.  I feel a rest day is of utmost importance at this stage so I will do the Fit Test in the morning and then Saturday’s workout Max Interval Sports Training.

In all honesty, I don’t know when/if I will do Insane Abs this month, but I will play it day by day. Heck, my abs are already insane so I don’t really need it!

Day 46 – Max Cardio Recovery

Today was the welcomed recovery workout day.  It is a recovery from cardio for sure, but not from muscle workouts.  This is my second time doing this workout and I fared better than the first time.   There are some insane push up drills throughout this workout that would challenge even the strongest of people.

For kicks, I wore my new heart rate monitor to see what sort of benefit I get from this besides the strength training.  The routine is about 45 minutes long total.  I only burned 237 calories (as compared to 616 yesterday!).  My max heart rate hit 124 and my average was 95.  Looking at those numbers you would think it was easy, but the muscles were burning for sure.

Tomorrow I don’t know what I am going to do.  I am scheduled to do 2 workouts: Max Cardio Conditioning and Insane Abs.  I simply don’t have the time in the day to complete them both   So I don’t know what I am going to do.

Day 45 – Insanity Kicks My Ass

Polar FT7 Heart Rate Monitor

Yay, I finally got my new Polar FT7 Heart Rate Monitor 2 days ago!  Since I got it later in the afternoon on Tuesday, I wasn’t able to use it during a workout until yesterday.  My initial impressions are that I love this heart rate monitor.

For starters, the watch itself looks nice to me, although I have heard people say it doesn’t look stylish, I kinda like it.  It has that sort of futuristic 60’s feel. The other plus is that it is extremely light so I barely feel it on my wrist.  Also, the wristband itself has about 50 slots to adjust the snugness on your wrist.  In other words, they are very close together giving you the opportunity to get just the right fit.

The chest band is also top notch.  Maybe it’s because I have only had cheaper heart rate monitors in the past, but I didn’t realize they make bands like this one.  The entire band is completely flexible and made of fabric.  It does not have the hard plastic front like the ones I have worn before.  That was my biggest gripe with my old one is that it would slip down while exercising.  This band can be tightened as much as you want and stays put because it is able to fit so snugly against your chest.  It’s very comfortable and you can forget it is there.  I had no problems with it moving around, even during the intense Insanity workouts.

Ok, on to the features.  This watch has just the right features for me.  First you set it up with all of your personal information: height, weight, age so you can get accurate target levels.  Of course you can manually adjust your levels if you wish.   When you finish a workout it records the following and stores past data if you want to look at it daily or as an aggregate:

• Max heart rate
• Average heart rate
• Calories burned
• Total exercise time
• Time in fat burning zone
• Time in fitness building zone

Those last 2 were new to me and quite interesting.  Apparently, under a certain heart rate your body taps into fat in your body for fuel and that is when fat burning occurs.  With higher levels your body taps into carbohydrates and you build your fitness levels in this zone.  At the end of the workout you can see the time spent in each zone.

Overall, I initially love this monitor.  It never lost a signal and the heart rate appeared to be accurate the entire way through.  I also believe the calorie burning number to be accurate as well.  I would highly recommend this watch to anyone that is serious about fitness, but doesn’t necessarily need every bell and whistle available.

If you have any questions, or own one yourself please post some comments below.

Wow, on Day 45 already.  Today was a very difficult workout for me.  The workout I did was the Max Interval Plyo workout.  I know exactly why it kicked my ass today, it was because I was off of my regular routine.  Every day I do these workouts at about 5:00pm after I get home from work.  During the day, I am drinking a ton of water and at 3:00pm I have a nice, healthy, calorie filled snack (like an apple with peanut butter or something).  I need this fuel to get me through the rest of the day and the workout.

Well, today I had to go to a customer’s site and left work about 1:00pm.  It ended up being done about 3:30pm which was nice because I got home a bit early, but because of that I didn’t get to drink much water or have a snack.  It showed up during the workout.  You definitely need fuel in your body for these Max workouts!

I got through the warm up relatively ok, but by the first circuit I was wiped.  It was odd because my heart rate was not high at all, but I just had no gas in the tank.  Of course, I dug deeper and got through it and did as much as I could, but it was discouraging.  It was the first time I actually had the the thought enter my mind of stopping the disc (but I didn’t). Now I just gotta stop letting this day job thing get in the way of my Insanity workouts!

On a good note, I got to use my new Polar FT7 Heart Rate Monitor for the first time and I loved it.  I will write another post reviewing it tomorrow.

Day 44 – Max Interval Circuit

Today was back to the Max Interval Circuit.  I do think this is my least favorite of the month.  I can’t figure out why except for that it is the longest workout.    Today I came into the workout feeling pretty good.  It was a better day and I didn’t have a headache or anything.  Starting the warmup always feels like I am wearing a diver’s weight belt the first round through.  I guess that’s why it’s called a warm up!

I was pretty pleased with how I performed through this workout today.  I felt strong all the way through until the last 2 rounds of the last circuit.  I think I hit my wall and was really struggling to get through that last set.  However, I know I did a lot more exercises than I have done on previous attempts.  I suppose I am getting in the groove of this month if I am making this progress.

I develop an ache in back.  Not really in my back, but the muscle area sort of between the shoulder blade and spine.  Something I did created a nice big knot!  It’s nothing serious, but just one of those inconveniences as I am feeling it when I breathe deep and turn certain ways.  Hopefully it will go away after another heart pumping workout tomorrow.

Oh, and I got my new heart rate monitor tonight!  I didn’t have it set up to use for this workout, but will have it ready tomorrow and will eventually write a review about it.

Day 43 – Max Cardio Conditioning

Today is Monday, and Monday’s typically suck. This one was no different!  It’s always hard to get motivated for anything on Monday.  All sorts of things happened throughout the day from a website getting hacked to databases becoming corrupt.  And this is all before I even got to Insanity!

Once I got home, I was somewhat relieved to get into the workout.  Max Cardio Conditioning is my favorite workout this month.  I think partly because it is the shortest at 47 minutes.   No matter what happens during the day, if you do your Insanity workout, no one can take that away from you! It is your own accomplishment that can erase all the other bad stuff in a day.

Yesterday I mentioned my knees were tender.  I am happy to say they are just fine.  I think it was just a culmination of the pounding and the rest day came at just the right time.  Throughout the workout I was bit more cautious about the knees and afterward there was no pain.

I powered through the exercises as best I could today.  I felt pretty good once I got through the warmups.  This routine is odd in the fact that I generally feel better with the exercies later in the routine than the beginning.  I think they are just harder in the start.  I am happy to get through day 1 of week SEVEN!  It sure seems like time is flying by now . . .

Day 42 – Max Rest Day!