Health Kick 2009, Part 1 of 3: Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred

I’ve been on a health kick lately. Okay, Missy and I have been on a health kick lately. I was trying not to be one of those half-couples that always refers to themselves as a “we” and not an “I” but the truth of the matter is we’re working on this together which means we’re both getting much better results. This health kick has three components: Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred, Bikram Yoga, and my holistic healer guy Byron Jacobson.

It started a couple months ago when, on a whim, I picked up Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred on DVD. Coming off the long-lasting Minnesota winter and late-coming spring, we were tired of doing The Firm. I try not to watch stupid tv shows like The Biggest Loser, so I didn’t know anything about Jillian Michaels.

The 30 Day Shred workout is a circuit workout. You do three circuits consisting of three minutes of strength, two minutes of cardio, and one minute of abs. With warm up and cool down, the whole thing takes about 23 minutes. You start at Level 1 and you progress up to Level 3, presumably doing each level for ten days, but you can go on and move up a level or stay where you are depending on how good you feel.

We said what the hell, how hard can this be? We figured we’d start at Level 1 on Day 1 and when we find it’s sooo easy, we’ll skip ahead.

Wrong. Totally wrong. We got our asses kicked.

The Shred is no joke, kids. If you need an efficient, ass-kicker of a work out, this is totally the one.

Frankly, it seems a little silly at first. This preview video is an accurate but totally not comprehensive representation of the workout. When you start warming up by putting your hands on your hips and then on your knees and swinging them around in circles, it doesn’t seem hard core at all. In fact, if I had started to watch that, I’d have made it about 30 seconds, shut it off, and declared the whole thing stupid. Fortunately, that did not happen.

See, it’s that second strength move that gets you. We could make our way through push ups just fine, having done the 100 push up challenge (and periodically practicing since). We got to the second one which is a squat/press combo (after which you return to push ups, and then the combo again) and tried using the weight we usually use for a Firm workout, which is on the order of 8-12 lbs. Shoulders screamed. The rest of that workout is a blur. I just know I collapsed on the floor at the end. I would collapse on the floor at the end of many of the following 29 days.

So as you progress through Level 2 and Level 3, the strength, cardio, and abs become more tightly integrated. While you maintain the circuit format, the exercises are such that you’re doing abs pretty much through out the whole thing, and you’re working so hard through the strength and abs that it’s automatically cardio. Oh, and you should definitely ratchet down the weight you use. We switched off between 3-lb dumbbells and 5-lb dumbbells. You do enough lifting of your own body weight and/or intense shoulder work that it doesn’t take a whole lot of added weight to be challenging.

But it’s only 23 minutes. After 23 minutes you can collapse on the floor. There are whole blogs dedicated to the Shred, so I won’t go on much more about it. Here are my observations.

• 30 straight days with no rest. I know there are champion athletes that do that. I’m not one of them. Doesn’t every running training program have at least one day off every week? However I wasn’t sore at all, which was a little surprising.
• The super-short work out is much easier to fit in and mentally easier to gear up for. I think we skipped one or two days between levels because we were both crazy busy, but that was it. So working out every day can be done, even though I’m not generally inclined to do so.
• I didn’t lose a pound, not that I was expecting to. I didn’t gain any weight, either. My clothes fit the same.
• I did clearly have more defined shoulders and more defined abs (underneath the chub). I started to see a difference about halfway through. I definitely felt like I was stronger at the end of the 30 days.
• We went back at the end of the 30 days and did Level 1 again. It was definitely easier than the first time through.

So even if you don’t do the whole 30 days, I’d highly recommend Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred for a short, intense work out to squeeze in when you don’t have a whole lot of time. I don’t know if I’d do the whole 30 days again, but I definitely got some physical benefits and a sense of accomplishment out of it.

I went for a short run, not long after finishing the 30 days. It totally sucked. Cross-train, kids.