Insanity Day 30: This is Recovery Week?

My first official day of recovery week since I slacked off on Superbowl Sunday and had to make up my last beating, I mean workout, of Phase 1 yesterday. Well, today was a bit easier. All during Recovery Week I will repeat a new workout called Core Cardio & Balance. I burned only 489 calories, but the workout was still 37 minutes long. It was much less cardio, so my heart rate didn't go nearly as high. My heart monitor uses the heart rate (along with my age and weight) to calculate the number of calories burned. Lower heart rate = less calories burned. That's not totally accurate in my opinion, because if I'm lifting weights I'm still burning a lot of calories even if my heart rate isn't that high. But I digress. The toughest part was the last 3 minutes, where you had to stand in a wide-leg squat position and hold your arms straight out. Then you flap them up and down gently, then lift them up all the way and back down to straight out, then round and round in small circles...frontwards then backwards. At first it seemed incredibly easy and I was about to convince myself that because I can play the drums for hours at a time, this would be a piece of cake. But after about a minute, my shoulders burned more than I've ever felt. And I had 2 minutes to go. I needed to take several very short breaks (just a couple of seconds) to make it through. We'll have to see if I improve over the next 4 days (I do this same workout every day through Saturday).

I must admit the timing of this new DVD was perfect. I was just at the point where the previous workouts were getting a bit repetitive, especially the warm-ups. The warm-up today was completely different. It was great not being able to predict everything Shaun T was about to say. New is good.

Next week starts Phase 2 with a completely new set of DVDs, but the workouts are 15-20 minutes longer than Phase 1. That's good because this program has been really easy so far. Ha!