When I started Insanity in early May, I was concerned about what it might do to my upper body strength. After all, the workouts really emphasized lower body and abs, and while there was some shoulder work, there was not a whole lot of concentration on the chest, arms, and lats.
I had toyed with the idea of adding some pullups to the workouts, but, what the heck, I figured I’d go ahead and experiment on myself yet again, and see just how Insanity affected my upper body.
And let me caveat this for any of you who think I am knocking Insanity — I’m not. I loved Insanity and recommend it to everyone!
Now, as you may know, I completed Insanity a couple weeks ago, took last week off to do only yoga, and started today with my favorite gauge of upper body strength: 30/15 from Tony Horton’s One-On-One workouts.
30/15 is a workout that alternates 12 sets of various pushups with 12 sets of various pullups, so it was measuring what I wanted to measure.
The results?
Pushups were barely affected. Prior to Insanity I was doing 26 pushups per set. Today I cut that back to 25, expecting to have to cut it further as the workout progressed toward the end, but, happily, I didn’t need to drop below 25 at all.
I did have to cheat a bit during the last couple sets, not going down quite all the way, to get to 25, but finish I did. I was pleased with that result. It won’t take long to get back to 26, and, in fact, I expect to be fully back next Monday when I do the 30/15 workout again.
I suppose this was to be expected. After all, Insanity does incorporate quite a few pushups in month two, so the chest and triceps are not totally ignored.
However, let’s talk about the lats.
During the pullup sets of 30/15, I do as many reps as I can do in one minute. Pullups are my weakness, so I try to maximize my workout by putting a time on it, instead of just doing them to simple failure.
My pullups were off 20% to 30%!
Again, this was to be expected. There are no pullups and no real lat work in Insanity, plus, my pullup numbers were not that impressive to begin with. Still….
To anyone who is concerned that Insanity will affect your pullups negatively, I can say that, if my experience is any indicator, then, yes, it does. You should add pullups and chinups to your Insanity workouts, or else expect to lose back strength.
Pushup strength is only mildly affected, so no worries there.
As I read through the literature that came with my freshly delivered copy of The Asylum, I saw that there is a pullup bar incorporated into those workouts, so I’ll be looking forward to that. My current plan is to start The Asylum in about a month, but we’ll see how that schedule holds up.
Right now, I am enjoying developing a Tony Horton’s P90X and Insanity hybrid, because the ones I’ve found online that others have created aren’t floating my boat. I’ll be incorporating Tony Horton’s One-On-One workouts into my hybrid. Look for that program here soon!