OK, so I’ve made it through the first four weeks of Insanity and I’m able to ease things off a bit in recovery week. Or at least that’s what I thought…
Insanity recovery week is a bit of a rest break from month one and does allow your body to recover a bit before things go totally bananas in month 2.
As Shaun T says:
“This is your recovery week so I don’t want you to over-pound your body. I want you to focus, keep your core strong, keep your energy up and next week we will start it back up.”
In Insanity recovery week you repeat one single workout session six days in the week – core cardio and balance – with the seventh day set aside for rest. Rather than finding the repetition boring, I enjoyed the way that I was able to make improvements every session and hang in there to squeeze out a bit more from each session. Although this is recovery week, it is still arduous. Shaun T stops between moves to demonstrate proper form, which gives me more recovery time between the sets than I’m used to. But whereas the first month was fast and furious and almost blew my heart and lungs right out of my chest, the slow moves of recovery week are also hard, mainly due to the muscle burn from keeping the form perfect and pushing the muscles to perform slowly.
As I progressed through the six days I definitely improved my form, and my greatest achievement for the week was powering through the shoulder rotations without having to drop my arms. Watch out for them. The final exercise of the session, these burn up your shoulders. To the max!
Another cheeky exercise to watch out for in this session is the hip flexor burners, they berned my legs up big time.
For me, the recovery week was a huge relief. Before Insanity, I hadn’t done any serious exercise for more than ten years and my body was feeling it. My body had been through the wringer for the previous four weeks and it really needed a break. I’m sure this interlude will set me up nicely for a kickass second month. Next week I’ll be back to the max. I’ve broken the barrier between the so-called-easy month 1 and I am ready to hit it up big beast style in the madness that is month 2. Keep with me and keep reading my journey.
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