Month End Shred Report

As I promised at the beginning of the month, I'm giving a month-end "Shred" recap.

Cindy and I have been doing Jillian Michael's "30 Day Shred" workout during May. The Shred is incredibly well designed. It's a series of three workouts. Each one is the same length (28 minutes) and consists of the same elements. There's a warm up, then three circuits that consist of 3 minutes of strength training, 2 minutes of cardio, and 1 minute of abs, at the end of the third circuit there's cool down. The total minutes is 27-28 minutes, even though Jillian is telling you the entire time that it's a "20 minute workout".

The concept is to do the level 1 workout for days 1-10, then move to level 2 for days 11-20, then level 3 for days 21-30. I had worked into a good routine and was working out daily for an hour a day before I started using the video. I decided to use the video to get my weight loss going again and hopefully start working on some definition.

I was amazed that after the first day of Shred, I was majorly sore. That continued for the first 5 days or so and by day 8,9,10 I was recovered and feeling really strong... Then level 2 started and I was really sore again... then by day 8,9,10 I was starting to think I can do this... Then a few days ago, I started level 3 ... As I'm writing this I'm sore again and in new places. My upper back is sore, parts of my abs are sore, my hamstrings are sore.

I think it's a really well designed workout and highly effective. It will be something I will return to and have in my toolbox, even after the 30 days are over (we're actually doing it for 45 days, as the end of that 45 days culminates in our 20th wedding anniversary and we're heading to the beach. )

Here's a blog entry I wrote after the first day or two of Shred. http://hayneshealth.blogspot.com/2008/05/sore-again-naturally.html

Cindy and I have both had a love/hate relationship with this workout. It's challenging, varied, effective, fun (in a weird way), and gives us a strong sense of accomplishment when it's over.

I "found" my abs this month and can actually see the beginning of their definition. One thing that I really liked about this workout is that you could see the progress from day 1 to day 5 to day 10 of each level. Your body strengthened amazingly in a short time. It also really helped me get a good kickstart on some specialized abs/back work.

Basically... two thumbs up! Congrats Jillian on an excellent workout!