Welcome Back to another Insanity Review.
INSANITY Day 39: Max Recovery Review. Today is day 39 of INSANITY and Max Recovery was on the schedule. I got up before my alarm (whaaaaaat) around 6:45am. At first I was like, ‘Hey! Yay!’ Then I was like, 'This is not a recovery - this is a slow-stretch-and-sweat your butt off workout’. Insanity Recovery Week And Week 5. With that in mind, let’s jump right in to my Insanity week 5 and recovery week check-ins. Thursday: Max Recovery # In the same vein as cardio recovery from month 1, this isn’t really much of a recovery day. It is basically a bunch of deep stretches to help your muscles recover a bit from.
Today I’m reviewing the Insanity Cardio Recovery workout. This workout is scheduled once a week, it’s about 33 minutes long, and has NO Cardio! Now Insanity, is cardio INTENSE, so a break from that Insanity is a welcome relief. Not to mention, your allowing your body and muscles a chance to recover from all the INTENSE cardio, it’s a GOOD
thing. I enjoy this workout, and even though there is no cardio, it’s still a sweatin good time. ?
At the start of the DVD you get about a 3 minute warm up, staring with some good DEEP breaths, and some familiar warm up stretches. Most of the warm up and stretches you have seen on the other DVDs and should be something you are familiar with. You move on to some plank work, but nothing too stressful, or demanding. I really enjoyed this stretch and plank work, you get some good stretches in, and some nice roll ups, stretching the back and stretching your neck. Be sure to keep your back straight and your butt down while in plank. After your plank work, you stretch for a few seconds in downward dog, and then on to stretching out your hamstrings.
With about 24 minutes left in the workout you start doing some deep muscle work, starting with 16 slow wide leg squats. The moves are nice and slow, and nice and deep. At the last squat, you stop and hold. While you hold this squat, you make some short “pulses”. (Small, quick squats, without raising up completely). By the end of this sequence, your legs will feel nice and toasty! But you’re not done. Next you’ll move into a lunge on the left side, with the left leg forward. You start with some deep lunges, and at your last lunge, you stop and hold at the bottom. Nice burn in this hold position. I have to admit, when I first did Cardio Recovery, I let my leg rest, and came out of the lunge. You may have to too, or maybe not, it’s okay if you do. We are all working on improving our fitness, no matter how long or how brief we have been working out. After you hold the position, you do some pulses. You’ll repeat this same sequence on your right leg. In between your right and left leg, you do some more center wide position squats.
With about 15 minutes on the clock, you will start some Plie Yoga Stretches. Basically a wide center squat, but turn your feet outwards. Extend your arms straight out, and and lean to your left side, until your left hand rests on the floor, the right hand is straight up. Repeat on the right side.
The next exercise is called “Quad Strengtheners”. We have all seen the workout videos, where you are on the floor, with your hands and knees on the mat. You then extend one leg straight back, and you raise your leg up and down. Basically the same concept, but just a bit harder. Shaun T has you extend one leg back, but you also lift the other knee off the mat as well. Just and inch or two, but it really works your whole body and core, not just your legs. After you do each side, you will then use the same concept to work your obliques, by moving your knee to your shoulder, alternating on each side.
For about the last 8 minutes you do some yoga stretches, and final cool down stretches.
This workout is still going to be a workout, its just not the cardio intense workout like the other DVDs. You need to recover from your workouts, so please be sure to keep this workout in your rotation. I know I am always thinking, “go go go”, and try to skip these workouts. Sometimes we need to slow down and recover. When we skip these recovery workouts, we risk over training. Then your entire progress comes to a screeching halt, and we certainly don’t want to do that. Workout hard, and recover….. then you can workout hard again! I hope you enjoyed this Insanity Review. Please contact me anytime or subscribe to my blog. See you next time! ?