Shaun T.’s Insanity Overall Review
Like a lot of people, I was introduced to Beachbody via P90x. However, last year they released Shaun T.’s Insanity which they billed “as the hardest workout series” ever put on dvd (Shaun T. BTW is the same guy who did Hip Hop Abs). That kind of advertising seemed like a challenge and so I decided after completing round 1 of P90x I would give Insanity a go (looking around the interwebs and blogging community, this seems to be a very logical progression for a lot of people: P90x –> Insanity). However, structurally and thematically, Insanity is a very different beast from P90x.
Here's the package in all its glory!
What is it?
Insanity is a 60 day cardio-intensive fitness bootcamp. The program is broken up into 2 four week phases divided by a recovery week. Since the bulk of the workouts in both months are cardio-centric, what differentiates them is primarily duration and intensity. Phase 1 workouts are approximately 35-45 minutes in length while phase 2 varies from 45-60 minutes. As well, during phase 2, it seemed to me that there were more push up variations and plyometric / ‘explosive’ movements (thereby resulting in greater ‘intensity’). As such, phase 1 workouts are the ‘regular’ workouts while titles in phase 2 are preceded by the “MAX” moniker.
The addition of an extra 10-15 minutes may not seem like a lot but in the world of Insanity, this is plenty of hurt. See, while P90x marketed the concept of ‘muscle confusion’, Shaun T.’s product pushes the notion of ‘max interval training’. A basic definition of interval training would simply be a period of intense physical exertion (say 90% -100 % effort) followed by a period of recovery (say maybe 20% effort or less or just complete rest altogether [0%]). In more traditional settings, the duration of the rest is often near equal to or greater than the period of exertion. So, you might sprint for 1 minute then rest for 1 minute. In tabata intervals, the ratio is 20 seconds of hard work versus 10 seconds of rest. Insanity turns this concept on its head by asking you to exert yourself for far longer than usual and rest for a much shorter period of time. The common ratio for most routines is 3 minutes of hard exercise followed by 30 seconds of rest (and in the both the regular and Max Cardio conditioning series, there’s no real rest at all… it’s 30 minutes of solid exercise interspersed with low impact moves maybe every 10 minutes or so).
All the workouts also follow the same general formula. Everything, including the 9 minute warm up, is laid out in circuit fashion. You bust your butt for 3 minutes on approximately 4-5 exercises, rest for 30 seconds, then repeat twice more thereby completing the circuit 3 times total. Once done, you move on to another circuit which is again repeated 3 times. This continues until the cool down stretch found in the last 3-4 minutes of each video.
An Insanity week, like a P90x week, is divided into 6 days of exercise followed by a day of rest. During the week, there is one day in Phase 1 dedicated to low intensity exercise or stretch work (dubbed a ‘recovery’ or ‘Max recovery workout’). This doubles in Phase 2 as most weeks have a recovery workout and a Core Cardio & Balance workout (stressing, you guessed it, core exercises and balance work). However, unlike P90x where you could expect to do Yoga X every day 4 and Kenpo X every day 6, in Insanity the order of the workouts change from week to week. As well, where P90x had you doing Ab Ripper X 3 days a week, in Insanity core work is emphasized in EVERY workout as Shaun T. is constantly reminding you to “keep your core tight” or “lift with your core” when doing running / jumping motions. There is a dedicated 15 minute video emphasizing pure abdominal work but this done only once per week, usually after a cardio endurance routine.
Lastly, unlike P90x where Tony’s always reminding you to write down your progress with regards to weights / reps, Insanity instead has a ‘Fit Test’ that you take every 2 weeks (by program’s end, you will have done the fit test 5 times). The fit test itself is 25 minutes long and you are given 1 minute to complete as many reps of a given exercise as possible. You write down reps accomplished for each and, as you progress through Insanity, the hope is that these numbers go up with each test completed. There are 8 exercises during the test and each is followed by a minute of rest.
Wow, that took much longer to explain than my P90x summary. Whew…
Equipment Needed:
None. Insanity is pure body work. No weights, no push up stands, no pull up bars, no wall or chair needed. You don’t even need shoes. I did the entire program barefoot in my carpeted basement (I did, however, do all my running and jumping on a yoga mat).
Now onto the “Likes vs Dislikes” (Everything here is, of course, in my own humble opinion).
The Likes
Liked: Instructor and crew. This one is contentious as I wasn’t a big fan of Tony Horton’s personality in P90x but I know that there are a lot of people who really dig his cornball sense of humor (it’s ok in small doses I guess… just not daily over the course of 3 months). Shaun T., on the other hand, I like very much. He’s all business in the sense that he doesn’t ham it up for the camera or tell side stories about his life or do bad impersonations of actors. He’s also very ‘minimalist’ in what he says. Rather than telling you how to do the moves, he sets up almost every exercise by doing a rep or two himself then counting down “3…2…1” for the start of the interval. The rest of the time he’s usually just yelling at you several catch phrases like:
“FOCUS!!!” “Dig deep.” “Dig deeper!” “C’mon people!!” “Use the core!” “Lift with your core!” “Land softly, people.” “Get to your spots!” “C’mon and get there!” (These last two occur after water breaks and he wants you and his crew not to dawdle).
On a related note, I also like the crew that Insanity presents especially since I DON’T GET TO KNOW THEM! I think the most insightful pieces of information you get is that one of the participants is a Beachbody coach, another is a former marine, one is a b-boy, there’s a guy who does marathons while another was a spin class instructor. There’s no weird extended interviews with people about their lives and the people with him are pretty much silent throughout the workouts (yeah they yell incoherent stuff in the background, give each other plenty of high-fives or say one or two things when Shaun T. goes beside them to showcase form… but you won’t see the same nattering types like Katie or Dreya here [thank God]).
Liked: Format. The Insanity set looks to be a simple community basketball court. Unlike P90x’s dungeon gym, this is a nice bright airy space. I don’t have anything bad to say about it. I really like that you see more than the Instructor and 2 participants at a time when the camera pans out. Why? Well, because it’s a regular thing to see people doubled over in exhaustion throughout the videos (especially Phase 2). I found this ‘communal’ sense of pain comforting as there were many times I found myself doubled over heaving. Even Shaun T. gets wiped which is nice… he doesn’t attempt to keep up the same façade Tony maintains of being a “machine”.
Added to this, I really dug the timer format they superimposed on the screen. Throughout the video, there is an animated bar with demarcations that move slowly to the left alongside a timer counting down at the bottom of the screen. Both visual cues indicate when an exercise ends and another begins. This was nice as I often found myself thinking while looking at the screen, “Ok, I just need to make it until this yellow bar is gone… just a little further… *collapse*”. Occasionally, helpful hints / reminders pop up such as “Go at your own pace” or “Land softly”. It’s a format I hope they use in future Beachbody products. (Pic courtesy of Fitbomb).
What I mean by 'bar' and 'timer' format.
Liked: Difficulty / Intensity. This is probably the best thing about Insanity. As I said earlier, Beachbody has billed Insanity as the hardest workout put to DVD. I wouldn’t know how to even start testing a claim like that but I do know one thing: Insanity will kick your butt! The very nature of interval work asks you to give an exercise a 100% in controlled bursts. As such, I don’t think it’s possible to get through a video without feeling totally burned down. I remember feeling the same way about Plyo X when I first started doing that workout but by the end of P90x I actually found it quite manageable. I never once felt that way about any of the workouts in Insanity. Moreover, there was this level of fatigue and exhaustion I encountered throughout Insanity that was really only present for me at the start of P90x. In short, I love the intensity of this program. Although, as a caveat, because of its intensity I could not see myself doing this program over and over again the same way you could P90x. The high-impact nature of the moves (there is a tonne of jumping, running, squatting and lunging going on) will kill your legs (knees especially).
Liked: Simplicity. Insanity requires no workout equipment. As such, it’s a very portable system. Fly away on a business trip or on vacation, pack the DVDs in your suitcase and you’re still good to go (provided your accomodations have a TV and movie player). It also makes the purchase much cheaper than P90x as you won’t have to invest in weights, resistance bands or a pull up bar. You will probably want a water bottle close by during the workouts as you’ll be drowning in your own sweat once you’re in the thick of it.
The Dreaded Dislikes
Disliked: Similarity of workouts. This point might seem slightly odd considering I said I liked the simplicity of Shaun T.’s program. However, the one thing that will strike anyone doing Insanity after a week is how similar each DVD is to the other. I guess this couldn’t be avoided considering how limited Shaun T.’s reptertoire of exercises must be since he stuck to the no equipment rule (not even a chair or a wall to work against). The routines, as such, seem to blend into one another and you would be hard pressed to clearly point out key differences between Max Interval Plyo and Max Interval Circuit workouts (I think the former is just a bit harder than the latter because of 2 or 3 different moves but other than that they are pretty interchangeable). It doesn’t help that the warm ups and cool downs used for all regular and Max workouts are near carbon copies of each other and recovery week is comprised of the same routine for six days straight. As much as I love this system, there were times when it was slightly monotonous. This ’sameness’ is also the reason I didn’t do separate reviews of each DVD in the manner I did for P90x .
This similarity between workouts actually segways well into the next point…
Disliked: Lopsided development. This is the biggest strike against Insanity. Because it is cardio based, strength development takes a backseat to ramping up your body’s cardiovascular endurance. As a result, if you don’t supplement Insanity with some form of upper body conditioning, you will more than likely feel yourself weakening in the arms and back (at least, this was my experience coming from a total body conditioning program like P90x and some weight training prior to that). What limited upper body work Shaun T. does comes primarily in the form of push ups (and boy does he love push ups… in all shapes and sizes). And while push ups are great for the chest, core and triceps, your back, biceps and shoulders are somewhat neglected. Oh sure he does one or two exercises here and there to strengthen these regions, just not enough I think to make much of a difference. For my part, I supplemented Insanity with a grease-the-groove pull up system that you can learn more about here.
Your quads, hamstrings and calves sure do get a hell of a lot of punishment that’s for sure.
Things other people may dislike: No modification / Slightly exclusive. I had originally intended to do these as two separate points but realized they are interrelated. Unlike P90x where Tony is always showing you how to change a move if your abilities can’t match his, I think I can count on one hand the number of times Shaun T. downgrades an exercise. Granted, I wouldn’t even know how to start offering variations to the moves in the routines as many of them seem ‘unalterable’. Example: How do you do a low impact version of a jump knee tuck or high knee runs? Those two moves [or variations there of] are done ad naseum throughout the 60 days.
This lack of alterability leads to Insanity’s other key shortcoming and that is it can be pretty exclusive. Tony Horton once said that in looking through copious before and after pics of those who had attempted and completed P90x, he was surprised at how out of shape or obese some of the people were. In his opinion, it might have been a more logical progression to have them start off on a less grueling program like Power 90 then move up to P90x when they had reached the recommended fitness level.
I don’t think this same scenario plays out as often with those who attempt Insanity. If you look at all the before and after pics of people on the infomercial, basically all of them are ALREADY slim and somewhat fit. What Insanity did for them was trim back some body fat % thereby allowing muscle definition to show through. The kind of intensity and relentless high-impact movement Shaun T. asks you to do is not, I think, something you can ask of someone who is severely out of shape. It will run them right into the ground if not outright injure them.
I hope I’m not sounding like Insanity is some kind of elitist program. It isn’t (as testimony to this fact *I* was able to complete it and I’m the farthest thing from being ‘elite’… I did, however, take a year to exercise and lose weight before attempting Insanity). I guess all I am saying is that you need a half-decent base of fitness already established in your life before attempting this program because IT IS so strenuous. Geez, I hope this doesn’t come off the wrong way.
In any case, if you have any questions, leave them in the comments section and I’ll do my best to answer them.
If you are interested, I dug up some of the Insanity infomercials listed on YouTube. They might better explain the product than I did.
PS Ariel is totally hawt.
Shaun T.’s Insanity Overall Review
Like a lot of people, I was introduced to Beachbody exercise routines via P90x. However, last year they released Shaun T.’s Insanity which they billed “as the hardest workout series” ever put on dvd (Shaun T. BTW is the same guy who did Hip Hop Abs). That kind of advertising seemed like a challenge and so I decided after completing round 1 of P90x I would give Insanity a go (looking around the interwebs and blogging community, this seems to be a very logical progression for a lot of people: P90x à Insanity). However, structurally and thematically, Insanity is a very different beast from P90x.
What is it?
Insanity is basically a 60 day cardio-intensive fitness bootcamp produced by Beachbody. The program is broken up into 2 four week phases set apart from one another by a recovery week after the first month. Since the bulk of the workouts in both months are cardio-centric, what differentiates them primarily is in duration and intensity. Phase 1 workouts are generally 35-45 minutes in length while phase 2 varies from 45-60 minutes. As well, during phase 2, it seemed to me that there were many more push up variations and plyometric / ‘explosive’ movements throughout the workouts (thereby resulting in greater ‘intensity’). As such, phase 1 workouts are seen as the ‘regular’ workouts while all the dvd titles in phase 2 are preceded by the “MAX” moniker.
The addition of an extra 10-15 minutes may not seem like a lot but in the world of Insanity, this is plenty of hurt. See, while P90x marketed the concept of ‘muscle confusion’, Shaun T.’s product pushes the notion of ‘max interval training’. A basic definition of interval training would simply be a period of intense physical exertion (say 90% -100 % effort) followed by a low intensity period of recovery (say maybe 20% effort or less or just complete rest altogether [0%]). In more traditional settings, the duration of the rest is often almost equal to or greater than the period of exertion. So, you might sprint for 1 minute then rest for a minute. In tabata intervals, the ratio is 20 seconds of hard work versus 10 seconds of rest. Insanity, as it points out in its infomercial, turns this concept on its head by asking you to exert yourself for far longer than usual intervals and rest for a much shorter period of time. The common ratio for most of the routines is 3 minutes of exercise followed by 30 seconds of rest (and in the both the regular and Max Cardio conditioning series, there’s no real rest at all… it’s 30 minutes of solid exercise interspersed with low impact moves maybe every 10 minutes or so).
All the workouts also follow the same general formula. Everything, including the 9 minute warm ups, is laid out in circuit formation. Meaning you bust your but for 3 minutes on approximately 4-5 exercise moves, rest for 30 seconds, then repeat twice more thereby completing the circuit 3 times in total. Once done, you move on to another circuit which is repeated 3 times. This continues until the cool down stretch found in the last 3-4 minutes of each video.
An Insanity week, like a P90x week is divided into 6 days of exercise followed by a day of rest. During the week, there is one day in Phase 1 dedicated to low intensity exercise or stretch work (dubbed a ‘recovery’ or ‘Max recovery workout’). This doubles in Phase 2 as most weeks have a recovery workout and a Core Cardio & Balance workout (stressing, you guessed it core exercises and balance work). However, unlike P90x where you could expect to do Yoga X every day 4 and Kenpo X every day 6, in Insanity, the order of the workouts change from week to week. As well, P90x had you doing Ab Ripper X to work the core 3 days a week after every weight training session. Well, in Insanity core work is emphasized in EVERY workout as Shaun T. is constantly reminding you to “keep your core tight” or “lift with your core” when doing running / jumping motions. There is a dedicated 15 minute video emphasizing pure core / abdominal work but this done only once per week, usually after a cardio endurance routine.
Lastly, unlike P90x where Tony’s always reminding you to write down your progress with regards to weights / reps, Insanity instead has a ‘Fit Test’ that you take every 2 weeks (by program’s end, you would have done the fit test 5 times). The fit test itself is 25 minutes long and you are given 1 minute to complete as many reps of a given exercise as possible. You write down how many reps you have accomplished for each and, as you progress through Insanity, the hope is that these numbers go up with each test completed. There are 8 exercises during the test and each is followed by a minute of rest.
Wow, that took much longer to explain than my P90x summary. Whew…
Equipment Needed:
None. Insanity is pure body work. No weights, no push up stands, no pull bars or chair needed. You don’t even need shoes. I did the entire program barefoot in my carpeted basement (I did, however, do all my running and jumping on a yoga).
Now onto the “Likes vs Dislikes” (Everything here is, of course, in my own humble opinion).
Liked: Instructor and crew. This one is contentious as I wasn’t a big fan of Tony Horton’s personality in P90x but I know that there are a lot of people who really dig his cornball sense of humor (it’s ok in small doses I guess… just not daily over the course of 3 months). Shaun T., on the other hand, I like very much. He’s all business in the sense that he doesn’t ham it up for the camera or tell side stories about his life or do bad impersonations of actors. He’s also very ‘minimalist’ in what he says. Rather than telling you how to do the moves, he sets up almost every exercise by doing a rep or two himself then counting down “3…2…1” for the start of the interval. The rest of the time he’s usually just yelling at you several catch phrases like:
“FOCUS!!!” “Dig deep.” “Dig deeper!” “C’mon people!!” “Use the core!” “Lift with your core!” “Land softly, people.” “Get to your spots!” “C’mon and get there!” (These last two occur after water breaks and his some of his crew seems to be dawdling).
On a related note, I also like the crew that Insanity presents especially since I DON’T REALLY GET TO KNOW THEM! I think the most insightful pieces of information you get is that one of the participants is a Beachbody coach, another is a former marine, one is a b-boy, there’s a guy who does marathons while another was a spin class instructor. There’s no weird extended interviews with people about their lives and the people with him are pretty much silent through out the workouts (yeah they yell incoherent stuff in the background or say one or two things when Shaun T. goes beside them to showcase form… but you won’t see the same nattering types like Katie or Dreya here [thank God]).
Liked: Format. The Insanity looks to be a simple community basket ball court. Unlike P90x’s dungeon gym, this is a nice bright airy space. I don’t really have anything bad to say about it. I really like that you see more than the Instructor and 2 participants at a time when the camera pans out. Why? Well, because it’s a regular thing to see people doubled over in exhaustion throughout the videos (especially in Phase 2). I found this ‘communal’ sense of pain somewhat comforting as there were many times when I too found myself doubled over heaving for breath. Even Shaun T. gets wiped which is nice… he doesn’t attempt to keep up the same façade Tony tries so hard to maintain.
Added to this, I really dug the timer format they superimposed on the screen. Throughout the video, there is an animated bar with demarcations that moves slowly to the left alongside a timer counting down at the bottom of the screen. Both are visual cues that indicate when an exercise will and another begins. This was nice as I often found myself thinking while looking at the screen, “Ok, I just need to make it until this yellow bar is gone… just a little further… *collapse*”. Occasionally, helpful hints / reminders pop up on the bar such as “Go at your own pace” or “Land softly”. It’s a format I hope they use in future Beachbody products.
Liked: Difficulty / Intensity. This is probably the best thing about Insanity. As I said earlier, Beachbody has billed Insanity as the hardest workout put to DVD. I wouldn’t know how to even start testing a claim like that but I do know one thing: Insanity will kick your butt! The very nature of interval work asks you to give an exercise a 100% in controlled bursts. As such, I don’t think it’s possible to get through a video without feeling totally burned down. I remember feeling the same way about Plyo X when I first started doing that workout but by the end of P90x I actually found it quite manageable. I never once felt that way about any of the workouts in Insanity. Moreover, there was this level of fatigue and exhaustion I encountered throughout Insanity that was really only present for me at the start of P90x. In short, I love the intensity of this program (although, as a caveat, because of its intensity, I could not see myself doing this program over and over again the same way you could P90x. The high-impact nature of the moves (there is a tonne of jumping, running, squatting and lunging going on) will kill your legs (knees especially).
Liked: Simplicity. Insanity requires no workout equipment. As such, it’s a very portable system. Fly away on a business trip or on vacation, pack the DVDs in your suitcase and you’re still good to go workout in your hotel room (provided it has a TV and movie player). It also makes the initial purchase much cheaper than P90x as you won’t have to invest in weights, resistance bands or a pull up bar. You will probably want a full water bottle close by during the workouts as you’ll find yourself working in your own sweat once you’re into the routine.
Disliked: Lopsided development. This is the biggest strike against Insanity. Because it is cardio based, strength development seems to take a backseat to ramping up your body’s cardiovascular endurance. As a result, if you don’t supplement Insanity with some form of upper body conditioning, you will more than likely feel yourself weakening in the arms and back (at least, this was my experience coming from a total body conditioning program like P90x and some weight training prior to that). What limited upper body work Shaun T. does comes primarily in the form of push ups (and boy does he love push ups… in all shapes and sizes). And while push ups are great for the chest, core and triceps, your back, biceps and shoulders seem to be somewhat neglected. Oh sure he does one or two exercises here and there on a DVD to strengthen these latter regions, just not enough I don’t think to make much of a difference. For my part, I supplemented insanity with a grease-the-groove pull up system that you can learn more about here.
http://humanmachine.wordpress.com/2007/06/22/grease-the-groove-for-strength/
Your quads, hamstrings and calves sure do get a hell of a lot of punishment that’s for sure.
Things other people may dislike: No modification / Slightly exclusive. I had originally intended to do these as two separate points but realized they are interrelated. Unlike P90x where Tony is always showing you how to change a move if your abilities can’t match his, I think I can count on one hand the number of times Shaun T. downgrades an exercise. Granted, I wouldn’t even know how to start offering variations to the moves in the routines as many of them seem ‘unalterable’ (ex. How do you do a low impact version of a jump knee tuck or high knee runs? Those two moves [or variations there of] are done ad nasueum throughout the 60 days).
This lack of alterability leads to Insanity’s other key shortcoming and that is it can be pretty exclusive. Tony Horton once said that in looking through copious before and after pics of those who had attempted and completed P90x, he was surprised at how out of shape or obese some of the people were. In his opinion, it might have been a more logical progression to have them start off on a less grueling program like Power 90 then move up to P90x when they had reached the recommended fitness level.
I don’t think this same scenario plays out as often with those who attempt Insanity. If you look at all the before and after pics of people on the infomercial, basically all of them are ALREADY slim and are somewhat fit. What Insanity did for them was trim back some body fat % thereby allowing muscle and definition to show through. The kind of intensity and relentless high-impact movement Shaun T. asks you to do is not, I think, something you can ask of someone who is severely out of shape. It will run them right into the ground if not outright injure them.
I hope I’m not sounding like Insanity is some kind of elitist program. It isn’t (as testimony to this fact *I* was able to complete it and I’m the farthest thing from being ‘elite’… I did, however, take a year to exercise and lose weight before attempting Insanity). I guess all I am saying is that you need a half-decent base of fitness already established in your life before attempting this program because IT IS so strenuous. Geez, I hope this doesn’t come off the wrong way.
In any case, if you have any questions, leave them in the comments section and I’ll do my best to answer them.
If you are interested, I dug up some of the Insanity infomercials listed on YouTube. They might better explain the product than I did up top.
Awesome review — the most comprehensive I’ve seen! I agree with your take on Insanity 100%. So what’s next for you?
Thanks for the compliments man! I’m going to follow your lead and concoct my own P90x / Insanity hybrid. I’ve already started sketching up a 3 month chart. But first… a well deserverd recovery week of some running and low impact stuff!
This is exactly what I was looking for, a truly honest review of Insanity that shows all of the good along with the ugly. Like you and fitbomb mentioned, I think a hybrid of P90X/Insanity will be down the road for myself as well.
Thanks for the kind words! Yeah, Insanity’s good but it needs to be supplemented to be a ‘complete’ package. Good luck with your health and fitness goals!