Tag: Frustration

R5D17-19 RKC And Mounting Frustrations

I can’t be the only one who is frustrated and confused by not having to work out 90 minutes a day. I know I should be over it by now but it is frustrating me to no end to occasionally have to work out for only 20 minutes. Last night I did TGU however even with the warmup it was 15 minutes. So I did some one arm swings as well and then some cleans and clean and presses. But it left me thinking that I was taking it too easy on myself. So, I know what you are thinking, “just do more”. Well, I would but I don’t want to jeopardize my other workouts and not only that, but I am thinking (paradoxically) that I am also being too hard on my back. I seem to be doing KB workouts 2 days in a row and then deadlifts and then back to KB again which seems like a lot of back work. However, it may also be that this is the way it should be, train your functional parts the most so they stay functional!

I took Thursday off, a combination of late home, an extra hour of coaching and some soreness from the single arm swings from yesterday. However, I have to quit doing that since I love to take Fridays off to celebrate the end of the week! So now I face having to work out today with quite a sore back and the whole weekend, putting together 3 heavy back days back to back to back. I am seriously thinking about having a rest week featuring 8 days of P90X and Insanity workouts to both break the monotony a little and make me feel like I am keeping up with the Hortons.

Round Two, Day 32 – Pure Cardio, Pure Hell

Pure Cardio is the epoch of everything that is wrong with the Insanity program. Well, let me rephrase that, it represents everything that is wrong with the way I am approaching these workouts. I am so used to Tony giving us breaks and time to recover before again blasting the bodypart that my feeble brain is trying to comprehend the logic to Shaun T’s method. You see, Insanity is not the same, not by any measure. The fact is that it will take you at least one run through of each Insanity DVD before you get the hang of it. Maybe it’s just me, but I like to know where the end of the workout is so I can focus on it and work towards it. I can’t push myself hard not knowing when the break will come, it’s just not rational for me. So I end up taking breaks in various places and ending up not having worked at my optimal rate. However, now I know what Pure Cardio is like, the next time I do it I won’t be taking breaks because I will know that there is really only 18 minutes or so of pain to the workout.

Last night, regardless of my back pain, I worked through the Pure Cardio DVD and was happy with the workout as a whole with the exception of the timing being difficult to manage. What I did realize at the end is that unless you really push yourself as Shaun encourages you to, you may not get the workout you were expecting. It is easy to underachieve during these sessions if only because they are so short. As long as you go in knowing that the counter on the screen indicates the total time left minus about 4 minutes you will be fine. Work as hard as you can for as long as you can and then take a break. But… if the counter is sitting at 8 minutes, push through. You can do anything for 4 minutes or so can’t you? For me, the workout was a little frustrating. I was tired, I was pushing but I was in pain. It was not a pretty site. By the end I was left wanting more, only because I had neglected to heed the timer. Had I realized what little time there was left, I would no doubt have pushed harder. Next time…

Pure Cardio, then, is in fact everything that is right with the Insanity program. It is truly a High Intensity workout with only around 18 minutes of lung busting cardio as long as you don’t include the “warmup”. Learn to manhandle that 18 minutes and you will learn the joy of Insanity. It may not be for the faint of heart or the “fat burning zone” treadmill losers but in order to get what you can out of it you should be prepared to push yourself harder than you have done before and that, my friends, is no joke.