The One Thing The Insanity Workout Is Missing
The Insanity Workout is almost complete. It's almost everything you need to effect a total body transformation in only 2 months. Including a fantastic Nutrition Plan, a host of workouts that will make you a new person if they don't break you, a wall Calendar to track your workouts, an online support community and all the information you need to begin your incredible journey, it seems like a galaxy of support and encouragement and challenge. But there's a crucial component missing. There's something that people notice a couple of weeks in, something without which leads to increased soreness, increased pain, and makes the workout harder than it needs to be. What's this crucial component? Don't laugh folks, I've received endless complaints from people who have noticed this deficiency: calf stretches.
Have you guys seen these things before? As popular across the internet as they are rare in gyms, kettlebells are the province of Russians, fitness fanatics and the truly hardcore. Looking like cannonballs with handles affixed, they seem to be a curious version of dumbbells, primitive tools belonging to strongmen from centuries past. So what about these weird looking workout tools is so effective, so hardcore, so amazing? Why do people practically claim they can cure cancer, help us get back to the moon and make the most beautiful person you ever met fall irrevocably in love with you again? Read on, brave and gentle reader, and learn of the extreme nature of kettlebells, and why you should consider adding them to your workout?
I see it over and over and over again. Scores of people line up to begin a health and fitness challenge. Whether it's acting on a New Year's Resolution at the beginning of January or a sudden resolve to undertake the Insanity Workout, people get fired up, impatient, determined to get radical results today. They can't wait, they've got the fever, they need to start as badly as drowning people need to breath. But then, a few weeks later, they're done. Stop cold. Endless number of people go through this pattern. So what's going on?
We're going to be kicking off a series of articles here on the Extreme Fitness Results Blog examining the world of extreme exercises. While many people throw themselves into P90X or the Insanity Workout, there's a whole slew of others who like to get Rocky Balboa on their workouts and try a variety of intense exercises. Over the next few weeks we're going to examine a number of these off-the-beaten track workouts, and evaluate whether they're worth considering. Today we're going to kick off by looking at a very cool exercise: the sledgehammer Tabata. It's cool because you get to swing a sledgehammer around, and if you're a boy, that's like returning to be a nine year old. If you're a girl? I don't know. Do girls like swinging sledgehammers around? Probably! That's just how awesome sledgehammers are.
The message is always the same: Never Give In, Never Surrender. Work through the pain, tough it out, walk it off. Dig deeper, bring it, be all that you can be. But sometimes life intervenes, sometimes events go awry, and you just have to stop. An injury, a new job routine that hogs all your time, a complete implosion of your willpower, a failure to get the results you needed to stay motivated, something comes along and you find yourself unable to get out of bed and do your workout. What do you do then?
Sports supplements come and go, promising to be the magic bullet that will suddenly turn us all into supermen, but one by one their claims are disproven and they are forgotten, only to be replaced by new and more exciting promises. However, one supplement however has survived all the scrutiny, has been tested by hundreds of scientific teams, has been used extensively these past two decades and still stands tall. If any single sports supplement out there can be said to work, than its Creatine, which leads us to the question: should you take it when about to undergo Insanity or P90X?
A lot of people ask me about the timing of their recovery drink or protein shake. Some people have an almost religious belief that you need to drink it immediately after your workout, and take it into the gym with them, chugging it all down just as soon as they drop the barbell. Others believe you should have it in your system before you even workout, while others say that as long as you have it within forty minutes of your exercise, you're fine. Which is right? The discussion on nutrient timing has become intense of late, with some people going as far as to say that it doesn't actually matter what you eat, as long as you eat it at the right time (which is nonsense). So what's the real deal? When should you drink your recovery formula?
One of the questions we get the most from people trying our extreme workouts like P90X or Insanity is why they haven't dropped as much weight as they had hoped. Three, four weeks into the workout program, and they're standing on the scale, looking down at the numbers with a mixture of resignation and defeat as they see that they haven't changed as much as they had hoped. Despite the work, the sweat, the effort and careful eating, the pounds haven't fallen off like water. Are they doing something wrong? In fact, they are. They're focusing on the wrong thing.
If you want to look at the greatest warriors ever portrayed on film, the most heroic fighters with blade and shield, the ultimate paragons of fitness, strength, agility, tenacity and the almost inhuman ability to keep going when all others have dropped, you need look no further than Conan the Barbarian or King Leonidas. Both men have become iconic, paragons of male power and brutality, washed in blood and standing defiant atop mountains of bodies. But which was the fittest? Which man would trump the other? In today's blog post we examine their strengths and weaknesses, and reach what can only be a controversial verdict.
Turbo Fire - Chalene Johnson's new extreme workout will build upon the incredible success of her Turbo Jam program and kick things up to the next level. Slated to be released this May, it's being billed as being as tough a DVD Workout as INSANITY, and featuring a potent combination of intense kickboxing cardio with High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). Turbo Jam took the world by storm, and has become an incredibly popular program, drawing packed crowds at gyms where instructors are trained and licensed to teach it. Where Turbo Jam leaves off, Turbo Fire kicks in, and is a program for the seasoned grads of Turbo Jam who are ready to really bring on the burn!