Day 5

Pure Cardio

Oh. My. Goodness.

This workout started out just like the other ones. The 9 minute warm up consisted of several moves (jogs, butt-kicks, heismans, high knees, etc.) repeated and sped up three times. That was followed by a 6 minute stretching routine. The previous workouts follow the warm up model with 30sec water breaks in between each set.

I noticed there was 25 minutes left on the count down timer when the stretch ended. As we went in to the first set of the cardio portion I felt pretty good. As time ticked on and we continued to "Dig Deeper" I kept waiting for the 30sec water break.

There was none.

Even the people *in the video* were taking breaks and unable to finish all of the reps before we switched (immediately) to the next exercise. With 10 minutes left, the only thing that spurned me on was the hope that the cool down was about 5 minutes long. The last move was burpees...I could not make myself *jump* back into plank - but I walked it. I did keep moving the whole time, but modified towards the end.

I know there is a lot of hype around this workout series. It's supposed to be really tough, and they show sweaty people working out. I'm sure you think that some of that is contrived, like TV often is. Well, I'm here to tell you - it's ALL REAL. If you are even considering doing these workouts, I would caution you to seriously access your fitness level beforehand. I ran a half marathon earlier this month and it's kicking MY butt. I'm SO tired today...one more day and then we get a full rest day.