Even after I’d opened the box and put the first disc into the DVD player, there was still plenty of time to procrastinate. After all, I hadn’t yet hit “play.”

I managed to delay working out for another hour as I rearranged the living room furniture (so as not to break anything during what was sure to be my vigorous routine), figured out what to wear, filling not one but two water bottles (hydration is important!) and finding a towel with which to mop up the copious amounts of sweat I’d no doubt be generating. This last item provided yet another delaying tactic when I decided to check on Amazon to see exactly what varieties might be available to me. While I didn’t actually buy any sweat towels, I did discover that American Mary was available on DVD, my book (Crimes Against Civility) was ranked #357,482 on their best-seller lists and that the price had dropped on two things I’d pre-ordered.

I also discovered that even I can only procrastinate so long, which led to my finally pushing play.

Turns out that the first thing Insanity has you do is a fit test. The theory is that if you do this same test each week, you’ll be able to mark your progress. This is also the first chance you have to meet the instructor, Shaun T.

Not surprisingly, the guy has a rather magnetic personality… although one also gets the sense he’s the kind of person who, in the comfort of his own home, shouts things like, “Shaun is thirsty!” Yes, Shawn occasionally likes talking about himself in the first person. (Later, I would discover that he’s also pretty openly vain. During a particularly grueling session, he looks into the camera and admits to sometimes wondering why he does what he does. “Oh, right,” he smiles cockily, “It’s because I wanna look goooood!”

Unable to argue with that logic, I dove into the fit test, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the exercises we all did in high school when that day rolled around that we were forced to partake in the presidential fitness test. Of course, everything has a scarier name. You aren’t just doing jumping jacks, you’re doing power jacks! Forget the innocuous sounding squat thrusts, we’re doing suicide jumps!

After powering through, doing the best I could and keeping track of my results for future comparisons, I patted myself on the back for a job semi-well done, downed about a gallon of water, put the living room furniture back in place and called it a day

This wasn’t gonna be so bad!

Or so I thought until I woke up the next morning…

Facebook Comments

comments