"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.