This is my least favorite routine of this month.  I think it is mostly mental just because I know it is the longest.  I mean, working out at your max for a full hour?

I left work a bit early today (hey it’s Friday) to get home and bust this out before my brother came over.  He was passing through for one night on his way to Florida and I didn’t want to spend my time exercising while he was here.

The routine went fairly well.  I am definitely getting better conditioned as the weeks go by.  I was able to power through most everything it felt like, until I got to the last circuit.  By the second round of that last circuit I start to fade.  I did my best and kept form and dug through it.

The knee is doing doing fairly well too.  I mentioned yesterday it was feeling better and I am happy to say that has carried into today.  Although I still feel it, it is less painful than before.  I am extremely conscious of form of course and slow down through the many squat and knee pounding exercises.  I am fairly sure when my 9 weeks are up it will come back to full strength after a few days of good rest.

Pushing it burned a ton of calories today. . . . 727 to be exact!

Day 53 – Max Recovery

It’s always nice looking forward to Thursday and the Max Recovery days.  Today was no different.  Although it is still 47 minutes long, there is not the usual cardio to kill you.

Today was quite good.  I was able to do more of the exercises than in previous weeks.  There is a lot of deep muscle work that will have your arms or legs shaking at some point.  The slow push ups are deadly, but feel good at the same time.  I was also surprisingly better in the plie squat exercises (although I did have to break a few times).

My one concern is still my left knee.  Going into the workout it had been bothering me throughout the day.  I can feel it when I stand up, or go up stairs, or just bend a little too far.  I was very careful during the workout not to overextend it.  Since everything is a little slower, it makes it easier to maintain the form.  During the workout, the pain was more noticeable than ever before.  Some simple moves, like jumping back into plank , were causing me pain.  I just took those moves slow and walked the leg back.

Now for the odd part.  I noticed after the workout was done that the knee actually felt better!  It is not back to normal, but it seems as though the pain has gone away?  I wonder what happened.  Maybe the knee got stretched out or something or magically has popped back in place.  I don’t really know, but I am knocking on wood right now that it is getting better.  I will let you all know tomorrow if the pain returns.

I also did not wear the heart rate monitor today.  Since there isn’t much cardio, you don’t really need to monitor your heart rate.  It’s all about stretching and muscle work on Recovery day.

Day 52 – Max Cardio Conditioning

Ok, back in the saddle!  After missing my first workout yesterday I am motivated to push through these last 11 days and finish strong.  Today is one of those days where you are supposed to do both Max Cardio Conditioning and Insane Abs.  I have resigned to the fact that I am not going to do Insane Abs.  I plan on picking it up after the 63 days are up and will write my reviews and experiences then.  So for now, I am pretending I didn’t see that on the calendar.   As people have posted in the forum, we have our whole lives to get in shape, not just these 63 days!

Max Cardio Conditioning went pretty well for me today.  I felt like I performed most of the exercises and was able to keep the heart rate up and pumping the entire time.  My cardio conditioning is definitely improving.  Some of the exercises they just go too fast for me, but I slow them down and try to keep good form and push through as long as possible.

My knee was bothering me throughout the workout.  I noticed it almost immediately in the warm up.  This did change the workout for me in some ways.  While doing anything with a squat I was very very conscious of my knee being placed behind the big toe.  I almost have a built in warning system now since if  the knee is too far forward I can feel the twinge.  I made sure to slow down on those exercises and concentrate on the form.

I still think this is my favorite workout of the month.  It is non-stop, but seems very doable for me.  Today’s calorie burn: 563 calories.

Day 51 – Max Nothing Circuit

Well, I guess it was bound to happen.

It did.

I missed a workout.

I suppose a 50 day streak is pretty good, but I was really hoping to push the entire way through.  I know it’s not the end of the world, but it’s hard to accept missing a workout.  Plus I have to reveal it here publicly to all of my readers!  I know you guys, and I know you will be supportive

The reason for missing the workout was two-fold.  The first and real reason was that I had a choice to go to our kids first soccer practice and meet the coach, or stay at home and exercise.  For my son, this was his first time.  He is supposed to be <ahem> 4 to play (although he isn’t “officially” 4 until June).  He even told me before we left “Dad, I am going to do great!”.  And of course he did!  So, I wasn’t going to miss being there for my kids.  There are some things that are even more important that Insanity!  By the time we got home and ate dinner it was 7:30pm.  This meant I couldn’t think of starting until after 9:00pm or so.

The second reason is that I think my knees are getting a tad worse.  It is not to the point where they are in constant pain, but I am noticing more and more how tender they are and how I am favoring them, especially my left.  Things like getting up off the floor, and climbing stairs, and even getting out of chairs has me noticing the tenderness.  I really don’t want to make them worse, so an extra rest day may not be a bad thing.  I did notice them hurting a bit during the workout yesterday too. It seems like a good percentage of people develop some sort of knee pain during Insanity judging by all of the people in the forums.  It is a strenuous program for sure and I suppose we really really need to make sure our form is perfect on some of these exercises.

So, those are the reasons that I missed the workout today.  I plan on jumping right back in tomorrow and pick up with the scheduled workout.  I am so close now that I have to finish strong!

Day 50 – Max Interval Circuit

Day 50!  Wow, that is a lot of days when you think about it.

As these workouts progress, it is getting more and more difficult for me to figure out the time constraints and how I am going to get in all of the remaining workouts.  It may end up that I get up at 4:30am and do some of them.   That is not ideal, but I HAVE to finish this program and will do whatever it takes to get them done.

Today was Max Interval Circuit.  This is the longest workout of the month at a full 60 minutes.  I was unable to do this workout when I got home from work due to some other commitments I had to attend to.  So, I had to do it at night.  I wasn’t able to get started until 8:45pm.  I begrudgingly put on my shoes and started the warmup.  It’s really hard to get going when kids are already sleeping and you have already eaten dinner!

But, like all days, I dug deeper and got into the groove of the workout.  I felt pretty good afterwards and had a nice protein shake as a reward (my special mix of vanilla protein powder and chocoloate soy milk!).  Exercising at night did sort of wake me up as would be expected and kept me up later than normal.  But I got it done and that is what was most important.

Day 49 – Rest Day

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