12 Tips on How Not to Kill Yourself When Doing the Insanity Workout

6 min readJan 11, 2017

I’m not exactly an avid fitness enthusiast but I do try to put in at least 6 months of continuous exercise every year.

As ‘The Most Interesting Man in the World’ would say… I don’t always workout but when I do, I go hard as a mother Fu@&#R!

Why do the Insanity Workout?

To get lean. Quite frankly I found it to be the best way to shave fat from every part of your body (especially your stomach). I usually do the full Insanity program to get lean and then hit the gym to beef up. I like insanity because you don’t need any equipment to do it and it gets you super fit over a relatively short period of time (2 months).

Build stamina. I’m not gonna lie… if you can get through the entire program, by the end you will be a super human. Watching Shaun T and his team do all these crazy exercises with very little breaks, at lightening speed, for long durations of time… the first thing you will probably say is “Are these people on crack?” LOL Well my friend, I’m here to tell you that if you can stick with it, by the end, you will be one of them.

I don’t exercise, should I do this workout?

YES definitely. I’ve done the full insanity workout from start to finish without taking unscheduled days off more than 4 times. 3/4 of those times I started cold turkey. That means I ate whatever I wanted and I did not work out for a long period of time prior to starting.

Not gonna lie, you may feel like you wanna throw up the first 1 or 2 workouts… LMAO! I’m not joking. I was that unfit when I did insanity.

Is it hard?

HELL YES. I don’t want to burst your bubble but Insanity will kick your butt. I’ve given this workout as a gift to many people that workout or wanted to start working out and I would say 90% of them don’t follow it through to the very end. Most of them just can’t get past the first week of pain!… Seriously. The first week is like a shock to your body and mind. If you can survive the first week, everything starts to become more manageable. The soreness starts to dissipate, your endurance starts increasing dramatically and you start feeling better about yourself.

12 Tips to Survive the Insanity Workout

ALWAYS do the warm up and stretch. This program is so intense and high impact over a long period of time that if you don’t take the warmups and stretching seriously, you could hurt yourself in the future. You’ve been warned!
SIP don’t drink. Have a water bottle on hand and DO NOT drink large gulps because it will not feel good if you drink too much during the exercises. With all the crazy movements you will be doing it will start to feel uncomfortable. Take short quick sips throughout your workout to keep you going.
Wear a headband or wristband. I’m normally not a sweater but you will sweat like crazy. You need it to stop the sweat from getting in your eyes. VERY ANNOYING.
Focus on COMPLETING the workout… At the beginning DO NOT try to do it at the speed shown in the video. Focus on doing the moves RIGHT… and make sure you do each exercise in the workout. Don’t just stop and shut off the video because your tired. See it through. It will take you around 4 weeks to be able to do the entire workout at the pace shown in the video.
You know your doing good if.. you can do the entire warm-up without stopping by the end of the first week. Yes that’s right. The warm-up. You may not be able to do the entire workout but you should be able to do the warm-up fully.
Drink protein shakes after every workout. Eating a lot of meat won’t do it. Doing Insanity 6 days a week is hard on your body so you need to drink protein shakes to help heal your muscles for the next day.
Don’t bend your back… if you do the exercises correctly and use your legs/core to get low… you should not have to bend your back. Your legs will hurt like a mo-fo at the beginning but you’ll become a machine afterwards so suck it up. Your lower back will still probably hurt during the first week but after that it should stop if your doing the exercises correctly.
The quicker you do the exercises, the less they hurt. If you think that your saving energy by going slower… LOL… that’s a very sad mistake you’ve made my friend. Your just pro-longing the pain on each rep. If you do them quick like on the video, it will hurt less. Trust me!
It’s ok to stop and take a breather… as in stop breath 3–4 times and get going again. Eventually you will notice that you can do the exercises without needing to stop.
Wear the proper shoes. Do not wear “running shoes”. I made this mistake on 2 separate occasions. I recommend wearing cross-trainers. Running shoes are designed to move forward not sideways. Cross trainers provide more foot support for performing a large variety of activities that go in all directions. When I wore running shoes, I found my feet began to hurt tremendously after 2–3 workouts which ultimately affected my performance and ability to finish strong.
Take deep breaths. In order to do all these high impact, fast exercises your muscles need a lot of oxygen. The more oxygen you take in, the longer you can go! I noticed that most people are quiet or try to breath normally when they first try to do insanity. BIG MISTAKE. You will get tired quicker and as a result take too many unnecessary breaks.
Track your progress. Doing the bi-weely fit tests really puts things in perspective for yourself. You’lll soon see within a matter of weeks that your preforming 2x, 3x better than your original score. I found it to be very encouraging and it will keep you going.

Advanced Tips

If you made it to the second half of Insanity, congratulations! Your alive. And your one of the very few to do so. Here are some advance tips to keep in mind when doing the last portion of the fitness program.

Keep the core tight. Shaun T says it all the time in the videos but as your trying to survive each workout for the first couple of weeks it tends to quickly become a last priority. By the end of the first month you should be getting use to the workouts and at that point I would recommend you make it a top priority. If you really want to get a flat stomach and nice abs, try to keep your stomach contracted during the entire workout. You start to really feel it no matter what maneuver your doing. It will also start to happen unconsciously in your normal daily activities if you stick with it.
Mind over body. As you start the second half of insanity, you’ll notice Shaun T starts to pick up the intensity even more. At first you might become a bit taken back but at this point you should start to notice that your body will actually be able to keep up. The only thing holding you back at this point will be your mind. This is the next major psychological shift you will need to take in order to preform at your maximum capacity. And once you realize that… Insanity+YOU = Super Human.

If you’ve done Insanity, here are some funny memes you might enjoy!