Berkshire Fitness Scene : Insanity

The workout program known as Insanity has been available on DVD for a few years now and has become pretty popular. Based on high intensity intervals and billed as being able to get you a year's worth of results in 60 days, the workout combines cardio, plyometrics and core exercises in a 45 minute session. Now, for those of us who don't have the inclination or discipline to sweat all over our carpets at home, you can attend a group Insanity class! Insanity Berkshire is lead by the delightful Rob at three locations, once a week in the Berkshire area. I attended the first session in Wokingham to see what all the fuss was about.

Rob was already glowing from teaching a zumba class but was nothing but enthusiastic in welcoming everyone... and there were a LOT of us in this sports hall, men and women. In essence this is really just a glorified HIIT class on a large scale. You can work at different levels, to a degree, but you do only get out what you put in. I really have to admire Rob's ability to remember the sequence of exercises. You change exercise every 30 seconds or so, repeating groups of four in rounds and finishing each round with a "power exercise". It's fast paced and can either be fun or miserable. 

I worked fairly hard and was certainly more than glowing by the end of it. I loved Rob's attitude and enthusiasm. He moved around the class, made eye contact with people, grinned, encouraged and seemed to be having fun himself. When the instructor looks as though he's been sat under a shower at the end of a class, you kinda have faith in them. One memorable moment was when he went over to sit briefly with a lady who was taking a breather on a bench and got her to wave her arms from side to side so for a moment the class had a cheering party.

The only thing that I found a bit off putting was that with so many people getting so hot and sweaty I found the floor started to get a little slippery and I wasn't able to do press ups and planks so well as I started to slide. But overall I liked the pace of the class and Rob's style. I'm not sure that you'd see the benefit of the workouts very quickly unless you were able to do more than one a week and for the money you pay you could easily buy the DVDs but of course the value of each method depends on your preference. Although I enjoyed it, I prefer the more intimate style of some other classes I already attend and so probably won't make this a regular thing.

More than a little hot post-workout