Formosa Fitness

Programs like P90X and Insanity get ripped apart on trainer forums, probably out of professional jealousy. These programs have been used by tens of thousands of people who positively RAVE about them, and that makes trainers green with envy. When that many people say a fitness program is good, I consider it my job to get a hold of them and try them out. I want to know WHY people consider them that good. It's just good market research. IMO other trainers ignore that at their peril.

Another reason for me to try this stuff out is that I want to try something new occasionally. Imagine you're a chef and you cook something pretty well. You cook it all day long and people say they enjoy it a lot. Great. But when you go home at night, do you want to cook that exact same thing for yourself every day? Probably not. You want to eat something made by someone else because you're tired and want some variety. Training is the same way. I eat my own "cooking" all the time. Sometimes I want to eat what someone else cooks. So I pop one of these DVDs in and turn myself over to them for a while.

Beachbody Insanity gives a great, hardcore workout. It's not a beginner or IMO even an intermediate workout. It's in the advanced category. The pace is way up there. LOTS of jumping and fast tempo work. No equipment needed. I like the no equipment format, although I did get the version that has a weight workout in it.

The exercises are a bit more atheltic/plyometric and a bit less aerobics-class type as compared to P90X. Tony Horton is too much an aerobics teacher for me with all that "look at the hands" stuff. The Insanity guy is a bit less goofy and I can see myself not getting so tired of him.

I haven't done even half the discs yet. There are a LOT of them. This program might get a bit redundant doing it six days a week as the program calls for. But if you did it, I can see people dropping a ton of fat along the way.

The nutrition guide is surprisingly good and mostly in alignment with the Precision Nutrition guidelines that I follow. The recipes are very simple and use mostly common ingredients. Combined with the program, I can see folks making a lot of progress with it.

If you're looking for an at-home workout that pushes the limits, Insanity is for you.