Insanity Buddies!

I've done it before and the past two weeks have been doing a few random workouts of it just to get past the soreness and am going to officially start the full program on Monday. It's "fun" in a really sick and twisted way lol

I am in the middle of Week 6 of Insanity. Let me give you some tips that I feel will help with your progress, whether it's improving muscle tone, losing weight, or whatever. Sorry this is so long, but while it's fresh in my mind, I thought it would be good to give you a full summary of the feelings I had and how I overcame the intimidation factor and dealt with the difficulty of the workout.

1) It's going to be difficult and some days you will absolutely not want to press play.
2) It's going to be a physical challenge and if you like being physically challenged, you'll get at least some enjoyment out of that.
3) The workouts will go by faster than you think. When you start, it feels like you're in for endless pain, but before you know it, you're at the cool down stretch.
4) Do as much as you can. If you watch in the background of the videos, you will see those people with chiseled bodies taking their breaks in the middle of the workout. Odds are when you start, you'll be taking a heck of a lot more breaks than them. My philosophy when I started was to try to get up to doing approximately 50% of the complete workout (50% of every move/rep, still go through the whole video, but take extra rest where needed). You may start out worse than that or better than that. I then focused on adding a couple more reps every time I did that video until I could get up to something like 75% before the first phase (4 weeks) was over. I would work until it felt like my muscles would give out on the next rep or until I was gasping for breath, take a break, then jump back in before my body could totally recover. I estimate I didn't let my heart rate back off more than 20 beats per minute before jumping back in.
5) Once you complete Level 1, you start Level 2 in Week 6 after a "recovery" week. Level 2 is basically as difficult as starting the program for the first time. You will find yourself knocked back down in the percentage of the workout you are capable of completing. I am currently at this level and basically just went back to "do 50% of the workout for now and try to get back to 75% by the end of this thing".
6) The important thing is to not let your heart rate fall too much if you do need to take intermittent breaks. Try to keep it up as much as you can through the full interval and then let things settle more during the short rest period. Everyone has limits, whether they be cardiovascular or muscular. Just be honest with yourself and whether or not you can actually perform another rep without rest. You should absolutely not put yourself in danger by refusing rest when you feel dizzy, nauseous, a headache, or whatever. Take your rest and when you feel up to continuing, jump back in. If you cannot get your dizziness, nausea, etc. to go away, you shouldn't continue. Try again tomorrow and see if you can get further into the video.
7) When using MyFitnessPal to log the workout, I like to use "High Impact Aerobics" (call it 40 minutes, on average) unless I am in a Recovery day. For Recovery Day, I prefer to log something like Yoga (however long that video is), even if it does undershoot what is actually being done or the pain I felt. For the Recovery Week (Core Cardio and Balance), I used Low Impact Aerobics to log my workout (however long the video is). If I was less miserly, I might invest in a heart rate monitor so I could have a more accurate view of my calorie burn. If that is an option for you, by all means, do it.
8) I have lost 17 lbs in 5 weeks using MyFitnessPal and Insanity (after slowly dropping maybe 10-12 lbs over the previous 6 months or so). This is something like 6% of my total starting body weight, at a pretty steady pace of 3 lbs/week. I have MyFitnessPal calorie setting to plan for 1.5 lb./week average loss, and tend to overrun the net calorie count on a week-to-week basis. I am not sure if Insanity is burning that much more than I am inputting, or if I am overly harsh in counting homemade foods where the calorie count is not readily available. I guess this bullet point is just a little reinforcement for using the settings I notated in Bullet point 7 above.

Best of luck.

I love Insanity! I am currently on the 5th week, going to start month two in a few days. I'm sure you'll love it especially when you start seeing the results coming. Don't rely on the weighing scale though! It's very discouraging. Take before and after pictures and you will definitely see amazing results/progress. Did you measure yourself as well? Inches are way better to find out progress instead of the scale.

First off, congrats on making the commitment!!! I start the 2nd month this monday, so we're only a month apart! My biggest advice is PUSH PLAY EVERYDAY. almost 1/5 of my workouts were done after 9 pm, after i got home from school, so really, NO EXCUSES!!! I noticed all my "sick" days, stressed out days, and apathetic days disappeared only 10min into each video. Also, GO EASY. I was a straight up rock hard 4 season sport athlete before high school, but gained 40 lbs in high school. My first 3 days of insanity, i forced myself to perform as if i still had my extremely fit body from 4 years ago!!!! That was a disaster!!!! Not only did i want to puke every time, but i disappointed myself to see how far ive come unfit wise, and got extremely discouraged. If youre like me, and one push up requires 2 whole minutes of rest afterwards, thats O.K. just continuously build. You want to be better, stronger, faster the next time you do that video, so focus on that. "Today, ill perform better than i did last week when i last did this workout." I lost 5 lbs my first week, but gained it back, and even after the 1st month im still the same weight. Just know that you WILL notice a visible difference. Ive lost inches, and i finally feel the muscles growing that i havent seen in a really long time! The first month is pretty much preparation for the 2nd month, when youll be fit enough to complete every workout and see results. Friend me!

I am starting Insanity on Monday as well. I am not really in the best shape so we can struggle together. :-)

Just do it!

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Insanity. Im currently on my first week of round 2. I went from 26 years of not working out to completing Insanity. The results were amazing...but yes, it was hard work.
Remember what Shaun T says, don't try to keep up with them, do the best you can do. Form over Speed! (:

I am in my second round of Insanity and I love it.
It is hard... oh yes!... but it is worth it.
I am doing the Shaun T birthday challenge at the moment, which means, that I am in week four. and the first month is nearly finished.
The birthday challenge is a great motivation, because Shaun T himself does Insanity at the moment as his own workout. He wants to be in a good shape at his birthday in May.
You should like him on facebook and read his motivating messages.
And what he says, when you can't keep up with the guys on the video, is... JUST MOVE!
You can do it!

I must admit I am tempted... I never thought I would do one of those home DVD workouts but I have heard some great things about Insanity and I fancy a bit of a change and a different challenge. So I am thinking about getting it tomorrow. Some great advice in this thread so thanks!

Well... I've made up my mind and went out and got the Insanity pack today. So am going to start tomorrow myself.