Insanity In Depth: Cardio Recovery

Now that I've almost completed a month of Beachbody's Insanity workout, I feel that I can take a little bit more in depth look at each workouts.  Today I fished the Cardio Recovery (CR).  I don't give CR nearly enough the attention that I should give it.  I always think that it's the easiest of the workouts until I do it, then I realize that it BURNS!

Here's how it went:

Unlike the other videos, CR starts off with light stretching and breathing instead of warm ups.  This is a bit unusual since as I understand it, the current workout trend is to never stretch before warming up.  I may have mentioned it before, but Cardio Recovery does not involve quick (relative to other videos) movements, but rather poses and holding the pose.  CR has a lot of breaks throughout the video and you're going to need 'em.

First, I started off with plank work.  Honestly, this isn't really a problem for my core, but my arms gets tired easily supporting my body weight.  Plank pulses, which came after the plank work was where I really started to feel the strain in my arms.  I won't go into details of how each workout looks like (if you want to know, you should buy the dvds).

Then some more light stretches.

Then comes pain.  Shaun T leads you into slow squats.  I'm thinking to myself, "this ain't too bad."  Sure, I feel it a little, but it's very manageable.  Then the movement ends and you hold the squats.  Oh dear, it burns.... it BURNS.  The people in the video must have thighs of steel, because I have to take a break.  I couldn't hold it non-stop.  Then you do some squat pulses, which is a relief since it's a distraction.  

Now my legs are shot, but I can't take the time to recover.  We do lunges and my legs starts burning again.  Then I hold position.  I hate holding position...  I don't make it and take a short break in the middle.  Then lunge pulses.  After a short break, we repeat the squats.  See above paragraph, but at a slightly faster pace.  Then we do the lunge with the other leg.  By this time, I'm cursing Shaun T.

After the lunge, we do another stretch.  While in most situations, this would be a nice blessed time to recover, but this stretch is done in squat position.  I really have to practice this position so that I would be able to do all these exercises without taking short breaks in the middle.  I also think I have a low tolerance for pain. 

Quad Strengtheners are next.  I'm just glad that it isn't lunges or squats anymore.  It's not too bad.  Then we go to Oblique Work.  My weakened legs comes to bite me and I have a hard time maintaining proper posture.  After the Oblique Work, we're done and we go through the cool down stretch.

I know it doesn't seem like much, but I've always been rather bad at these yoga/hold your position type of stuff.