Insanity

For days a fitness class called Insanity was making facebook rounds. The name itself made me want to try it out. Initially it was not conducted in my gym imagine my joy when I saw a brochure for the class being launched at my gym...

 

Here's my experience with insanity 

Before the class started we were all made to fill and sign a small questionnaire with a few health details this was something I had not done for any of my other classes so when I was filling my questionnaire I was thinking to myself " this class must really be a tough class if they are asking us to give our emergency contact details" my excitement had already doubled 5 minutes before the class just because of the form.

The class was almost an hour long and it was split into warm up, 4 intense working blocks and cool down. 

We started with a 9 minute warm up and then we moved to the working block. Each working block had a set of few exercises. We did each exercise for 30 seconds before moving to the next and we repeated each block 3 times. Each block ended with a minute power exercise. After each set there was a 30 seconds timed rest (though we had to keep moving even in our rest, no standing still)

Now that you have an idea about how the class was structured (hopefully you aren't very confused) moving on to how insane the class was. 

The warm had on spot jogging followed by different skipping/hoping exercises. I enjoyed all the skipping and jumping but by the end of warm up I was a little worried about not being able to finish the class. I have never had a more tiring warm-up. I was seriously worried about not being able to finish but I promised myself I will stop only if I really can't go on...

so I kept at it...the first block was plyometrics & endurance that's when I realised why the warm up was tough because the working blocks were tougher. Block 1 had lots of jumps, high knee jumps, diamond jumps...I really enjoy anything to do with jumps just because it is very challenging for me, I managed but all throughout I was wondering about how much longer I would be able to keep up..

The second block was more about balance and strength. It might sound or look easy but balancing engages a lot of core muscles and to make it tougher some of the balance exercises had a little jump before balance...what fun!!!! 

The third block was all about agility which was speed work and it did require a little bit of coordination which I completely lack I did my best to do these exercises correctly (I get usually get very confused when it comes to speed and coordination)finally we moved to abs/core. 

This is one of those classes where I was sweating so much I had sweat in my eyes. So my burning eyes were an additional pain to my muscle pain. The best thing about this workout was the combination of different exercises. I am used to doing most of these exercises in one of my weekly sessions but I was not used to the different combinations ...for example I am used to one leg deadlift without weights but adding a jump to it is a whole other level or I am used to doing the plank push-up combination (military press ups) but in insanity that combination was followed by a jumping jack in the plank position. So most difficult exercises were made tougher by combining them with either a jump or some other exercise.

Now that I am done scaring all of you I will tell you one very good thing was the fact that even though the name sounds scary it was a class open to all fitness levels and the instructor demonstrated each exercise at two different levels. So you can make it as difficult as you choose to. There were times when I would switch to the easier level for a few seconds and then get back on track

My calves are feeling the after effects the most otherwise everything else is a little sore but manageable.

Note to self: Next time warm up a little before the insanity warmup and push myself more 

If you have this class in your gym give it a try...don't get scared every exercise has a beginners level I am sure you would end up loving how much you sweat :)

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Tanvee