"All Aboard the Pain Train" - Day 3

• Izzy Mandelbaum: "If you want to live in a butcher shop, I'm gonna treat you like a piece of meat."

Day 3 of Insanity is called "Cardio Power & Resistance." At this point, I am looking for Mr. Mandelbaum to hook me up to a convertible, scream "It's go time" at me, and then drag me for a few blocks behind the car. That would probably feel better than what I just went through this morning.

This workout starts out pretty much like Day 2, but some of the warm-up exercises (~11 minutes) are slightly different because the workout will use those muscle groups more. My heart didn't think it was that much different because I still hit the 90% max level (165 bpm) about 4 minutes into it. I am finding it difficult to hear Shaun T encourage me to keep going while knowing I should slow it down to let my out of shape heart catch-up. I think that is the competitive streak in me coming out, and he is a lot like a couple of the good coaches I have had in the past.

The 7 minute stretching portion is a nice relief from the warm-up. My heart rate calmed down to a respectable level of 135-140 bpm. The stretches include some core work that I can't keep up with yet. Hopefully, as I stick through this, I will be able to do all the component of the stretch.

After the water break from stretching, I got into the meat of the day's workout. First, there were two 2 minute circuits of of Power Jumps, Belt Kicks, Hit the Floor, and V Push-ups followed by a 3 minute circuit that added Tricep Dips and One-Leg Tricep Dips to the previous 4 exercises. Somewhere in this mess, I did something called a Tricep Ball Push-up. I spent most of the time in these sets near red line where the body will just completely shut you down if you don't back off a little.

After all that, I was just about ready to quit when we started Hurdle Jumps, Globe Jumps, Moving Push-ups, and Floor Sprints. My arms feel like jello pushed through a mesh screen and then left to dry in Death Valley.

After a short (15 second break), the workout finishes with a 1 minute crazy thing called 8 Hop Squats/8 Push-ups. This is the point when I said to myself that I should have quit 8 minutes ago. The cool down session is pretty good, but I am still going to be hurting after this fiasco. My heart was back below 140 bpm (just barely) after the 3 minute cool down. I am down to 116 bpm at 15 minutes post workout.

The Insanity warm-up does a good job of getting the blood flowing. It doesn't quite get the soreness completely out, but everything does feel a little better while the heart is moving the blood at a pretty good clip. This is the first time I have used a workout video seriously. I have a couple of Tae-Bo sessions with Kristy under my belt, but I don't remember it being quite like this. The timer on these Insanity videos is a really nice feature. It lets you know how much longer you are going to be suffering. It also runs WAY too fast during those "30 second" breaks. They feel like 3 second breaks. I will have to work on getting the whole recovery thing down because it is "Interval" training. It is important to get the heart rate into a recovery zone before going way back up.

Tomorrow is "Cardio Recovery," but I am going to guess that my definition of recovery is something very different from Shaun T's definition.

"Sweet Fancy Moses" - Day 2

• George and Jerry, "Sweet Fancy Moses!"
• I am sure many of you would have said this had you seen me "dancing" to Insanity this morning.

Day 2 of Insanity was called the "Plyometric Cardio Circuit." They should call it "You Feel Like Dying, But You'll Probably Make It." I had to stop twice during the 11 minute warm-up to catch my breath. I have this cool new heart rate watch that told me I was doing about 155 bpm or 86% max heart rate during the warm-up. I am not sure if that really is a warm-up unless the maximum heart rate knob actually goes to 110% (OOOOOO, maybe that's what coaches have been talking about for all these years). The stretching lasted about 5 minutes, so my heart rate went down to about 70% max.

Then, the real workout started. I did something called Suicide Drills, Mountain Climbing, Alpine Skier, and something else that oxygen deprivation prevents me from remembering for about 2-3 minutes. Then, I took a 30 second break. My heart rate at the break was 165 bpm which is pretty impressive because when I got out of bed this morning, I sat at 62 bpm. The madness continued through another 2 circuits of those drills before we did 2 or 3 circuits each of "football drills" and "basketball drills."

A couple of things that I noticed. The sweat on the video is real. The people on the video that look like they are about to collapse are really about to collapse. I played junior high and high school basketball for David Stahler. The closest comparison that I can find to this type of workout is to take one of his off-season days in the middle of the week, multiple it by two and then do it in half the time. He drove the team to the designated puke trashcan a few times over the years.

I do know two things. (1) I am going to hurt pretty bad in places that I have forgotten when the delayed onset muscle soreness hits. (2) My pedometer supplied by Sandia to track my steps doesn't know jack about active minutes if it thinks I only was active for 9 minutes this morning. I was dying (or hoping to die) for 41 minutes. I backed off just enough not to use my barf bucket.

Day 3 of Insanity is  "Cardio Power & Resistance." [sarcasm]I am sure that is going to be easier.[/sarcasm]

"Let's Start the Insanity" - Day 1

• Kramer: "Hey, I'll tell you what, Chubby, if that yogurt has fat in it, I will put myself on an all-yogurt diet for a week."
• Jerry: "Well, let's start the insanity!"

So, today I finished Insanity's "Fit Test" that really determines the level of slovenly life that I have settled myself into. Before getting to those results, I should say something about my current weight. I weighed 193 last night. That is about 10 pounds lighter than the 2 bills+ that I weighed after the Achilles tendon incident. My regular doctor thinks, "You really should try to get down to your weight as a high school senior." From the look on my face, I am sure that he realized that I would never see 155 on the scale unless I was weighing under water. So, he decided that I should shoot for something closer to 175. I would settle for 180.

Here are the results from today's 5:15 am workout:

Exercise	Day 1 Reps
Switch Kicks	35
Power Jacks	26
Power Knees	53
Power Jumps	22
Globe Jumps	6
Suicide Jumps	8
Push-Up Jacks	11
Low Plank Oblique	22

Now, the bar has been set, and it's a pretty low bar if I do say so myself. Apparently, I will be repeating this test on Day 15, Day 36, Day 50, and Day 63. This will give me a way of measuring my progress along the way.

Here is a little summary to let you know how I felt during the video. First of all, my heart rate was above 80% of max when I finished the ~2 minute warm-up before the stretching. Next, the switch kicks (first exercise in the test) are tough to count because I am certain that the ticker was going north of 160 beats per minutes while I tried to do the long division (dividing by 2) in my head. So, the 35 is more of an estimate than an actual number. Next, I thought I was going to collapse during the last 4 exercises. My test results in the last half will improve a great deal if I can improve the cardiovascular fitness enough not to be redlining before I get to them. Finally, if today is any indication, I will need the barf bucket close by for the normal workout.

Tomorrow is my first real taste of the asylum. I am doing the "Plyometric Cardio Circuit" on Day 2 (just like the poster tells me to do). I will report on that little nugget if I survive.

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In other news, you shouldn't leave a "temporary" crown on your tooth for close to 20 years. (In my defense, I was not aware that it was temporary.) It causes a lot of trauma when you finally let the dentist fix it. I struggled mightily to be productive after the 2.5 hour session in the dentist chair this morning/afternoon and lost the battle.

"Serenity Now, Insanity Later"

Well, it has been darn close to a year since my last post. A lot has been going on, so the blog has been put on hold. That, and well, the global warming thing is moving ever closer to the ash heap of history.  For details of that, the Watts Up With That blog has a new story every few hours to handle the issue much better than I ever could.

In any case, I am going to try to use the blog for the next few weeks as my personal accountability tool with this workout video series called "Insanity." The video set arrived in the mail on Friday. I took them out of the box and popped in the "Fit Test." The 25 minute or so test has 8 different exercises. I got a little queasy just watching the video because I began thinking about what kind of shape I am actually in right now. I have a feeling that this isn't going to be pretty for the first couple of weeks.

I once told you that I can relate anything back to Seinfeld. I am feeling pretty serene right now. However, as Lloyd Braun once warned George about his father, "Serenity now, insanity later." Last night, Kristy took the 3 before pictures (front, side, and back) because if you are going to do something crazy, you might as well go "all in."  Tomorrow, if I can lift my arms after the workout and work my way through the pain associated with my dental work, I will post the results for the number of these exercises I can do in one minute:

• Switch Kicks
• Power Jacks
• Power Knees
• Power Jumps
• Globe Jumps
• Suicide Jacks -- Sounds fun, doesn't it
• Push-Up Jacks
• Low Plank Oblique

Who wants to join me?