So.. yeah… the Engineer is out of town for the weekend (he’s on his way to Hotlanta to chair Lux’s bachelor party).  I hate when the engineer is gone because I never ever sleep well.   So, I’m going to have to pack my weekend full of busy-ness in order to not focus on the fact that OMG I could be totally kidnapped by mean men and held for ransom or shot to death in my own home bring a botched robbery attempt I’m being left home alone. 

Now.. the title of this post.   So you know that I’m all like ”I know I need  have to lose weight, especially the 15 lbs of post-wedding weight (darn the good food in Belize) and while disc golf is helping get us out of the house, it’s not enough”  right??     And in a bunch of my of my bloggy blog readings, the mention of a single DVD keeps coming up.  It’s like the latest fad.  Did Oprah do a show on this and I somehow missed it??  Because EVERYONE is talking about it.    You bloggers I follow religiously stated it was a great workout.  It was fun, fast, easy, they weren’t too sore afterward, and it was ‘totally’ worth it.    So I bought it from the world wide Amazon last week and it arrived yesterday. 

Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred

 

So the idea is that this is a 20 minutes a day, 7 days a week workout.  It’s based on interval training and follows a 3-2-1 system (3 rotations of  – 3 minutes of strength training, 2 minutes of cardio, and 1 minutes of Ab work). There’s also a 2 minute warm-up and I think some sort of cool down.  There are 3 levels you can choose from as you begin to progress into the program.  All you need are hand weights and a floor mat.  That’s it.   DVD, hand weights, and a floor mat — check. 

When I got home yesterday, the disc was waiting for me and the boy was off at the driving range.. so I thought… “Meh.. why not”.  Now.. I love love love the Yoga Booty Ballet system.  It’s a workout you can do barefoot, which I totally dig.  But I checked the back of this DVD and all the pretty pictures showed the super skinny fitness models in shoes, so I dug out a pair of clean tennies (my new ‘free’ pair that I scored from Lux’s former roommate got trashed after 3 straight days of disc golf.. which reminds me.. those so need to be cleaned) and some socks, grumbled a bit about having to wear shoes and socks and popped the DVD in the player.  

I guess I should mention at this point that I don’t have the best knees.   The ice skating injury of 2005 did horrible things to my knees and the extra weight I carry around daily doesn’t help.    So when the workout is only 20 minutes and 19.5 of those minutes require either jumping (and therefore landing — because I haven’t mastered the ancient technique of hovering), bent-knee standing leg work, and/or remaining in a constant squatted position… well.. those of us with mildly faulty knees get their asses kicked.  Which, by the way, is one of the cardio moves:  Butt Kicks… cause you love to literally kick your own ass while working out.  Yep.. Jillian… nothing encourages my chubby butt to continue to use your masochistic workout program more than a workout that forces me to literally KICK MY OWN ASS!!!

I went into the program with a thought “it’s only 20 minutes… what could I possibly not put up with for 20 minutes?” Oh.. you followers of the “30-day Shred” program…. YOU LIED TO ME!  This was not fun.  This was NOT.FUN.AT.ALL!!

Now nothing the DVD forced me to do was “hard”.   Everyone can do a push up, jumping jacks, and squats.  The whole workout is easy to follow, albeit challenging toward the end.  After 14 minutes of up, down, up, down, squat, stand, kick your own butt….. the last 6 minutes is pretty pressing. The ab section is a nice touch.  But it’s the whole package put together that I really didn’t care for.  The 2 minute warm up was some mild stretching, but definitely not enough to really ‘warm’ you up properly, especially in the knee area (dude.. you spend alot of time bending or on bent knee in this program and the jumping up and down is hard on the knees too!).   “Well, that was Meh”, I think.. “Surely it gets better than this”.   The first round of 3 minute strength training consisted of push ups and squats with a bicep curl.  Effective, but nothing spectacular.  The first 2 minute cardio section was jumping jacks and jumping invisible rope.  On the plus side, my heart rate was up, but … UGH!!  I get the whole “make it easy, make it functional, and make every move count” premise.  As lazy Americans, I understand the idea that if you can only devote 20 minutes to working out, you have to be efficient.   But just because it’s 20 minutes doesn’t mean it has to be boring.   

By the time we were done with the second 3-2-1 rotation, I had an alarmingly high heart rate, my knees were a bit angry with me, but I was bored.  Like… “OMG when is this going to be over.. I can’t do another jumping jack because it’s unbelievably boring and you’re boring, and you yelling about ‘lazy people who only want to work out for 20 minute’ is boring (Off topic:  why did you make a 20 minute video if you’re going to shame people who only want to do 20 minutes of exercising a day?), and my house is boring,  and your stupid fitness models are boring, and I wonder what’s on TV tonight.. oooh.. I think the new CSI comes on .. OMG I’m so bored with this DVD” boring.

I was more than a little bummed that the cardio pieces were so dull.  Jumping jacks don’t interest me like fancy aerobic footwork does.   I get the easy of a jumping jack.. it’s just that there’s no  challenge in it for me.  I, like many 28 year olds who have A.D.D  grew up with Reebok step aerobics, need to move! I don’t want to spend 20 minutes jumping up and down in one spot..it’s boring.  I need creativity!!! 

Now.. I’ve always been told that body shock, especially in the fitness/workout sense, is good for you but can make you sick.  Like “vomit in the trashcan at The Rush fitness center because the personal trainer thought it would be fun to see if you could keep up with the big bad basketball players she was interval training” sick (My coworker and I didn’t go back to see her again. There is something fundamentally wrong with your personal trainer telling you before you even get your shoes laced “be prepared to throw up today”).   JM even mentions toward the end of the DVD “that knot feeling in your midsection.. that’s your body telling you it’s working.. you’re stressing it and training it…..”.   No JM:  Breathing, blinking, swallowing… that’s my body telling me it’s working.  The knot in my stomach?  That’s my body telling me that quite possibly this is not the workout for me and that if I don’t stop ’stressing’ it out, it’s going to cause me great pain in the near future.  

I’m not a watcher of The Biggest Loser and until yesterday, I had no idea who Jillian Michaels was.   What I do know is that I HATE this DVD.  Ohh.. being the semi-nonquiter that I am.. I’ll still try it again.  I’m making myself continue to use it for the next week. I’m hoping that trying it barefoot might make it a bit better.   If I still hate everything about it in a week, it’ll probably go to the ’sell at the used book store’ pile.   If I can tolerate it after a week, it will likely go in the workout rotation.. right after Richard Simmons’ Disco Sweat.    It will never be my go-to DVD for a quick workout.  I guess I’m partly to blame here.  I know that a person needs to work out more than 20 minutes a day, especially those trying to lose weight.   So buying a DVD that promises “Lose 20 lbs in 30 days” for “only 20 minutes a day” and expecting it to be entertaining is really asking too much.