For my inaugural 30 day challenge, I’ve decided to jump on the blogwagon (see what I did there?  I combined the words blog and bandwagon.  Clever, huh?) and try Jillian Michaels’s 30-Day shred workout.  I haven’t liften weights consistently for a while and thought that instead of going back to my previous routine that it might be fun to jump start things a little bit.  And, you know, do what everyone else is doing.  And, finally, see what all the fuss is about.

I also sat down last night and took various measurements of my body.  While I’m hesitant to share them, I figure I might as well because I think the only person who is judging me based on my measurements is me.  And I also think it helps to present some sort of objective factor that can help to evaluate how effective the 30-day shred actually is.  So here are my measurements.  You can imagine me grimacing as I write these out:

• waist: 31 inches (at the level of my navel)
• hips: 40 inches (at widest point)
• thigh: 24.5 inches (at widest)
• arm: 11 inches (at widest)

I had expected the shred to have guidelines, like “do this every day” or “every other day” but there’s no real indication of how often you should be shredding.  So my goal is as follows: to make this a genuine 30-day challenge and progress from one level to the next every 10 days, and, for each 10-day period, to shred more often than not.  Ideally, I would like to aim for a 70-80% shred rate because I think 90-100% is kind out of my reach.  But we’ll see…maybe I’ll surprise myself!

The action is scheduled to begin either this afternoon/evening or tomorrow.

May 19: SHRED RECAP

I know it’s been over 30 days, which means this recap is a bit overdue.  Sorry.  I know you’ve all been waiting with bated breath.  Well, it’s a bit late, but it’s here nonetheless!

First, here is a bit of explanation about how the Shred works.  The program is divided into three levels, which I progressed through every ten days.  Each level is made up of segments in 3-2-1 increments: 3 minutes of strength, 2 minutes of cardio, and 1 minute of abs.  This is Jillian Michaels’s proven (and, one can only assume, patented) workout system.  I’m not sure what it proves, but there you have it.  You do three of these 3-2-1 sets, and there’s your workout.  The strength moves are always compound moves, in which you combine movements (think alternating lunges with a bicep curl) in order to target as many body parts as possible in a short period of time.  The cardio segments were often plyometrics.  The whole video is nice because it takes very little time and requires very little equipment.  I used my yoga mat and a set of light hand weights and never felt lacking.

I went through Levels 1 and 2 with near-religious fervor, completing both 10-day periods with 70%-80% completion rates.  During Level 3, I sort of burned out.  I had to restart the 10-day period because of a long, busy weekend that sort of prevented me from getting any Shred time in, and after that I just found that I’d lost some of my enthusiasm.  This, of course, could have something to do with the fact that I’d been doing the Shred pretty much every single day, with only one day of rest between workouts if I took any rest at all.  More on this fact later on.

So did I get Shredded, as Jillian promised I would?  I gave my measurements before starting the Shred above.  Here are my measurements now:

• waist: 29.5
• hips: 39
• thigh: 25
• arm: 11

As you can see, there is some change (waist and hips).  Based on these measurements, other parts of my body didn’t really change at all.  I’m not too concerned with my thigh and arm measurements.  For one thing, I can tell that my arms are significantly more toned than they were when I started the Shred, and my thighs clearly just hate me and want to spite me in whatever way they can.  To that I say, whatever, thighs.  Just wait until you have to get me through a triathlon.  And then a third marathon.  Then we’ll see who’s laughing.  At any rate, this is hardly the six-pack abs I was told I should be getting by the time I was doing Level 3.  But I’ll take it.

Here are the pros and cons of the Shred, as I see them:

PROS

• I decided to start the Shred in order to jumpstart my weight training routine.  At this point, I feel like I have successfully integrated weight training into my routine, and that if I were to skip it, I would feel like something were missing.  I am definitely motivated to keep a focus on getting strength training into my weekly workouts, at least on two days.
• There is a great variety of movements and exercise that you can incorporate into your own workouts if you don’t feel like keeping up with the Shred.  Moves like walking push-ups and a lot of the ab exercises held my interest and gave me ideas about moves I could use if I were to do a quick circuit training workout of my own.
• Even though I didn’t get “Shredded”, I have seen more tone in my arms, and I know my abs and thighs are stronger and more toned than when I started the Shred.  I have also noticed that my runs have gotten a little faster, which I think could be a result of the plyometrics in Jillian’s routine.

CONS

• Because I wanted maximum results, I tried to do the Shred every day.  The title of the program and the fact that there weren’t really clear guildelines (although maybe there are in the accompanying book) about how often the workout should be done sort of led me to believe this was what I should be doing.  I’m not convinced that I might have felt better if I had done it every other day.  At the same time…
• I felt that with a lot of the movements, it would be really difficult to use anything other than really light weights.  I felt myself frustrated at times because some of the exercises were too easy with the weights I was using, but would have been too hard with heavier weights.  Especially if I wanted to make it through the whole workout.  I felt like I always pushed myself through each workout, but I often ended with the feeling that maybe I should have pushed harder.  I think a different format that would allow for heavier weights would have been great, but probably not entirely in keeping with what this workout was about.

Overall, I would recommend the Shred to someone looking to mix up their weight routine a little bit.  Jillian obviously knows what she’s doing, and is a great motivator throughout each level of the Shred.