By now, everyone and their mother has heard of Shaun T and his “Insanity” program and its big brother, “Insanity Asylum”. I must really be crazy because I’ve done both. Yes, I’m a glutton for punishment. I just love Shaun T’s style of training and motivation.
If you are like me and you think because you got through Insanity that Insanity Asylum should be just as fine to finish, think again. This is Insanity times 3. Shaun does not let up on us. There are very limited structured breaks. He says work within your limits. So, it is up to you to push yourself and then break when you need to.
This is a 4 week program that is said to change your body, if you follow the meal plan as well as the workouts. If you’ve been following along on my journey, then you know that I’m not normal and that this didn’t happen like I hoped it would, even though deep down, I knew it wouldn’t. Insane, right? I know!
This program has 8 total workouts but you really only rotate between 6 of them. When I say this is Insanity times 3, I say that because we introduce weights to this HIIT style workout a few times during the program. I absolutely loved strength day and I hated relief day.
What I loved
I loved the intensity of the workouts. I am an athlete at heart. I ran track for from middle school through my Senior year of college and only stopped because I became pregnant with my oldest daughter. I am used to circuit training and weight training and working hard, so this was right up my alley. Also, this program was athlete and sports driven, so Shaun has us doing exercises that were things you’d do if you ran track, played football, tennis, basketball and baseball. I loved Game Day. Although Game Day was the toughest of all of the workouts, it was one of my favorites because the exercises weren’t repetitive and Shaun took you through all of the sports in one workout.
What I did not love so much
I didn’t love the timing of the workouts. It was difficult to remember the length of each workout because they varied from 25 minutes with relief, to 1 hour with Game Day. Because I work out in the morning, I was adjusting my wake up time to accommodate the workout of the day. I also did not like that the workouts were included on the weekends. There were built in rest days, not many of them, but they weren’t always on the weekend. I’m a 5 day a week workout kinda chick. Shaun tried it!
I didn’t love that there were basically only 6 workouts and you rotated between them. I prefer more variation in my workout regime and I found that I adjusted to the workouts pretty quickly and did not burn as many calories during the last three weeks of the program as I did in the first.
Would I do it again?
Yes, I’d definitely do the program again. I enjoyed it overall and did see some changes in my body, even if not on the scale. The program materials provide for you to do the first month as calendared, and then month two as either a hybrid of Asylum and Insanity or Asylum and P90x. Conceivably, you could do this as a three month program and see significant changes.
From here, I am moving on to the Shedfast weight loss challenge, which is 8 weeks. Once I’m finished with that, I will be moving into the 12 week custom online weight loss program I purchased from Shaun Spencer.
Here are my results. I was frustrated during weeks 2 and 3 because it looked like I was getting bigger but by week 4, things had started to go in the right direction. Here’s hoping I can keep some momentum and remain committed. PCOS sucks!
Journeytopeacewithme.com 