Chalean Extreme Day 4 – Surprisingly deceptive.
You know… to be totally honest with you, I went into Chalean Extreme thinking this would be a cake walk as I’ve done both P90x and Insanity (the programs Beachbody seems to push as ‘hardcore’). I thought “This is the girls’ routine… piece of cake”. Yet, I find my ass being kicked by Chalene Johnson with light weights no less. Those high rep – low weight sets really set the burn in your arms!
Mind you, I still contend that CE does not break me down as badly as Insanity or P90x usually does.
Today, I did the Burn Intervals and Ab Burner routines. Burn Intervals is an interesting program as it’s the first cardio centric video I’ve seen from Beachbody that makes you use weights as a form of recovery period from the aerobic portion of the dvd (neither Plyo X nor any of the Insanity routines use weights). It’s actually a very thoughtful move on Chalene’s part (if she was the one who planned it that way) as it means you are ALWAYS doing something throughout the video. There is no 30 second breaks to recover.
In many ways, this routine reminds me of my favourite P90x dvd, Core Synergistics as it has a nice blend of both cardio and light weight work… and it feels like you work every part of the body.
Ab Burner is nice in that compared to Cardio Abs and ARX, it’s ONLY 10 MINUTES LONG!! WOOT! Having said that it is still a pretty trying 10 minutes. I like the fact that Chalene has you doing honest-to-God crunches. I haven’t seen those in either ARX or Cardio Abs… and yet they give you a pretty good burn. Almost seemed like crunches were skipped over by Shaun T. and Tony for ‘fancier’ moves or variations thereof. Add in a twist and a chop to the crunches to work the obliques and it felt like my core was on fire.
On top of both routines, I decided to run home tonight. The weather was good. Nice and cool and there was a decent headwind going against me for a little bit of added resistance. Got home in about 40 minutes which is par for the course. Still working on my Chi-Running form to make the pacing of my runs easier.
As for nutrition… eating overall today was good. I did cave into some cravings and had 2 chocolate chip cookies at work that someone baked. Calories for today: 1670 (that’s not including what I burned off via all the exercise).
Alright peace out! Hope you’ve had a great day!
looking forward to see how you do on this new program. Also, thanks for the support you’ve been showing on my blog. I think I am just about back in the groove.