Insanity

Ow. 

Ow.

Ow.

I just finished working out, which I do now six days a week (insert well-muscled, slightly-too-forceful fist pump here), and my most heartfelt wish is not to be fit, or ripped, or built.

I just want the nausea to pass.

As many of you already know, I have recently joined a 3 Month Meltdown Challenge group, and am 21 days (and very, very, VERY close to 20 pounds) into my journey to getting naked on a beach this summer. (Which will come as a complete surprise to my husband and best friends, who are unaware that we're going to a nude beach. Also unaware are the owners of the beach and the rest of the beachgoers. Fun with surprises!!!!).

Because I am the type of person who requires ABSOLUTE IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATION, lest five minutes go by and I lose interest, when I picked a workout series, I went straight for the hard stuff. No ab toners or Richard Simmons or pretty jazzercise outfits here.

I'm not screwing around.

I went on the website, and this is the first thing I saw.

THE HARDEST WORKOUT PROGRAM EVER PUT ON DVD.

Are you ready for the ultimate challenge? You can transform your body in 60 days with this total body conditioning program. And you won't need equipment or weights—just the desire to dig deep and push past your limits.

In INSANITY®, Shaun T uses a method called Max Interval Training. It's not your typical interval workout. You'll do cardio and plyometric drills with intervals of strength, power, resistance, and core training. It all happens in long bursts of maximum-intensity exercises with short periods of rest so you can burn up to 1,000 calories in an hour.

Here is what I read...

THE ONLY WORKOUT PROGRAM YOU HAVE DONE IN RECENT HISTORY. PROBABLY EVER.

Are you ready for the ultimate challenge? We don't think so, either. But this is a magic DVD, guaranteed to transform your body in 60 days. And you won't need equipment or weights— you don't even need to sweat. Just sit back, relax, and watch the fat fall off your ass.

In INSANITY®, Shaun T uses a method called Max Interval Training. You don't need to know what that means. There's a lot of nonsense about cardio and plyometric drills with intervals of strength, power, resistance, and core training and blah de blah de blah de blah blah blah..... short periods of rest so you can burn up to 1,000 calories in an hour.

Piece of cake. I am WICKED good at short periods of rest. It's stopping them that I have issues with.

The first workout is actually a 'Fit Test', comprised of a bunch of timed exercises. You do as many as you can in one minute, write them down, and compare your results every two weeks.

I don't claim to be the most coordinated person I've ever met, so I studied the pictures of each exercise on the progress chart in order to have a reference point to start with. The black and white sketch lady explained everything, and looked reasonably good in the process, so I hit 'Play' and away I went.

I watched the disclaimer at the beginning of the DVD, chuckling to myself that anyone would be so stupid as to try this workout without already being reasonably fit. I mean hell, I push a fully loaded quadruple stroller back and forth to a school four times a day, and that's 200 pounds right there! And uphill, to boot (only in the one direction, though)!

I started the first exercise, and merrily (somewhat) high kicked my way to glory. At the end of the minute, as I wrote down my number, I noticed it was a good 10 reps HIGHER than the skinny girl in the video. Holy crap! I was amazing! I was a machine! I was... Wait a sec... I was probably wrong. I know I felt reasonably fit, but that girl was like a piece of beef jerky- not a single ounce of fat on her. Then I realized that one rep equaled one kick PER LEG, and my joy deflated like a fat kid's seat cushion. I reduced my number by half.

The next exercise was a little harder, and I noticed that I was beginning to sweat profusely, which struck me as odd, as the black and white sketch lady on the progress chart still looked as fresh as a daisy.

I jumping jacked. I push-upped. I obliqued. I even finally found out what the hell 'planking' was.

And at the end of the last exercise, I found myself laying on my face, sucking in gasps of oxygen and copious amounts of dust, glitter, and the odd salt and vinegar chip from the carpet in the downstairs playroom, thinking about vomiting.

I say I was THINKING about vomiting, because when I decided I was going to, I couldn't stand up. I eyeballed the drain in the floor in front of the washing machine, and seriously thought about crawling over there, but the effort required simply to lift my head indicated to me that a ten foot trip across a cement floor would be an impossibility.

By the time I was able to stand, the urge to vomit had passed.

I went to bed.

I went into the following day's workout with a little more apprehension and a little less clothing. My eyes aren't overly great, and I didn't want to work out with my glasses on, but I figured as long as I could see what Shaun "Obviously a Cyborg" T was doing, it didn't matter how fuzzy the edges were. 

After three rounds of incredibly hard and fast jogging, jumping, kneeing and contracting, with sweat literally POURING off my face, I took my well-deserved water break when Shaun instructed me to. He led us (see how quickly you want to drink the Kool-Aid? I was already identifying with his sinewey band of workout buddies) through our stretches. We slowed down, we checked our heart rates, and we inhaled and we exhaled. When the stretches ended, as I threw myself backwards onto the couch and poured water on my face from a Gatorade squeeze bottle, I listened for Shaun's final words of encouragement for the day.

"OK, " he says, "now that we're warmed up, you have nine seconds left, then we're really going to do some work, and we're really going to get into it. This one is going to push you, so remember to DIG DEEPER!!!!!!!!!!!"

I had failed to see the countdown timer at the bottom of the screen.

As I inched my way closer, squinting for all I was worth, I could see that we had gotten all of 18 minutes into the 40 minute workout. We had warmed up. My leg muscles were shaking so bad I could HEAR THEM, you could play water polo in the sweat in my sports bra, my ears were ringing, and we had warmed up. Oh, sweet mother of pearl. We had warmed up.

I have been Googling inspirational words and phrases to keep myself motivated, and I keep coming up with mildly helpful crap like "Pain is Just Weakness Leaving Your Body", and "Suck It Up, Don't Suck It In", and "You Earn Your Scars". These are all great, but I'm thinking of having my own workout shirt made.

It will say "Just Don't Puke on the Carpet."