Insanity - Day 4

So Day 4 is "Cardio Recovery". Although the name sounded like a nice relaxing workout I was skeptical that the same workout that brought me Day 2 and Day 3 could possibly understand what a recovery workout was like.

I was however wrong. After 3 days of jumping right into Insanity I was quite sore in many muscles, most notably my calves, shoulders and a bit in my hamstrings. This workout was about 33 minutes of breathing exercises, stretches, core resistance holds and other types of muscle holds. The workout was a rather slow and controlled pace, and a lot of the stretches break up the exercises so you don't feel exhausted or even need a break for water. After the workout I felt refreshed, and loose and ready to take on my "Pure Cardio" workout tomorrow. So I guess "Cardio Recovery" is an appropriate name for this workout, I will see if I still feel loose and rearing to go tomorrow.

Despite my euphoric feeling afterwards, during the routine I found myself struggling to follow along with a lot of the workout. At a point Shaun (the instructor) has you hold lunges and squats for minutes at a time. My muscles just couldn't hold me, they began to quiver and I had to stand up for a short moment to rest them before going back into the hold. Another place where I struggled were the balance exercises. I guess I just don't have very good body equilibrium because I could barely even hold myself steady with one knee up in the air. I expect that my balance should improve as my core muscles get stronger.

One issue I have with most of these workouts so far is Shaun will switch up into moves without really explaining how to do them. At these points I find it useful to watch one round, then rewind and then do the round with him. I guess I understand since you end up watching the same videos and doing the same workouts multiple times so eventually you will catch on, and not even need the reference. But for now I'm new and find it difficult to just jump into some of the moves he is expecting.

Lets see how this "Pure Cardio" goes.

P.S. I hope you all aren't getting bored with these posts but hopefully anyone wanting to do these workouts can be more prepared and encouraged by my experience. There is only one extra workout after "Pure Cardio" before the routines begin to repeat so I will probably post about it less frequently so I don't sound like a broken record.