Asylum versus Insanity - The Final Analysis

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been doing Asylum instead of Insanity as the lead up to our West Virginia mudder, and I just finished, so I thought I would give a few of my final thoughts.

1.  I am worried about my cardio, but I feel great about my strength.  There is some cardio in Asylum, but nowhere near as much as in Insanity.  Since I haven't really been able to run due to my travel schedule, I am a little worried about how that will impact me next weekend.
2.  The Gameday video of Asylum is NO JOKE.  That is a very hard 60 minutes of working out, and the last two times you have to do the Overtime video as well.  Those were, by far, the two most grueling days of the entire 30.  For me, the hardest part of that workout was the Mountain Climbing sections, but the swimming and speed skating were pretty tough too.
3.  You need more room to do Asylum, and I felt cramped at times.  I feel like I would have done better with this outdoors since I would have been able to do all of the jump rope work and I wouldn't have had to worry about accidentally bumping my head on the wall by over-jumping and falling.

4.  I'm still not a huge fan of all of the equipment that you need.  As a bit of a minimalist, I really liked that I could do Insanity without anything other than a comfortable pair of shoes and a space for jumping up and down.  Asylum requires ladders, weights, resistance bands, pull-up bars, and jump ropes if you do everything.  Luckily, Shawn T offers alternatives if you don't have some of these things or space to use them, but you don't get as good a workout without them.
5.  I guess the "proof is in the pudding" (as they say).  I'll know for sure how effective Asylum is if I get to WV and can't get my wind.  There's a 30-day, hybrid Asylum/Insanity workout calendar that is absolutely bonkers.  In essence, you're doing an Insanity workout each day on top of an Asylum workout each day.  I may try that next, if I need to improve my cardio, but I'm not sure I have it in me to do Insanity and Asylum at the same time.

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Asylum Versus Insanity

I'm ten days into the Asylum workout, and I thought I would put together a quick post about my perceptions so far.

1.  There's much less aerobic workout in Asylum, and much more strength training.  This means that I may have to kick up my running a notch to keep my wind during Mid-Atlantic.
2.  There's nowhere near as much structure to the workouts.  With Insanity, it was very structured.  The warmup was pretty much always the same.  The stretch was pretty much always the same.  Then you went into 3 sets of 4 different exercises, with each exercise lasting 45 seconds and a 30 second break between sets.  Once you were done with that 10 minutes of work, you went on to another round of 4 different exercises.  The only real difference between Phase One and Phase Two was that another round of exercises was added in.  Once that was done, you went into a cool-down stretch and you were done.  Asylum doesn't have anywhere near that structure.  Predominantly it's a series of minute-long exercises that aren't repeated again.  The only workout (so far) that has been structured is the strength one.
3.  There's also much less explanation of the different workout positions in Asylum.  In the Insanity workouts, Shawn T would spend a little while demonstrating proper form and technique before starting a new exercise, which, quite honest got a little old after watching the video for the 6th or 7th time.  In Asylum, he doesn't do much of that.  He may demonstrate it once, but that's not done for every exercise.
4.  There's nowhere near as many breaks in Asylum.  The workouts start, and you'd better be ready.  You may get two or three 30-second break during an entire 45 minutes.
5.  One of the things I like best about Insanity is that it doesn't depend on any equipment.  As long as you have a space to jump around, you don't really need anything else.  In fact, I did most of my Insanity workouts in a space about 6 feet X 6 feet, and never really felt all that cramped.  Asylum, on the other hand requires several pieces of equipment.  A jump-rope (which is useless indoors unless you have 10 foot ceilings) and an exercise ladder come with it, but you also need hand-weights (or exercise bands) and a chin-up bar to really get the full effect.  I use pretty much everything except for the jump rope, but find the equipment cluttering up my house most other times.  I really need to find a place to keep all this stuff out of the way.

So what's the conclusion so far?  I've been impressed with Asylum, but I'm still a fan of Insanity.  There's something about my personality that works best with the structure of Insanity.  Also, I've had to do the Overtime workout in Asylum about 1/3 of the time to feel like I've really worked out, but I've definitely pushed myself in the workouts.  I feel stronger even though it's only been 10 days, and I may regret not having the cardio work that Insanity offers, but, in general, I like what I've seen so far.  After Mid-Atlantic, I may do one of the Insanity/Asylum Hybrid workout schedules that's available online.

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T-Minus 2 Days: Mohawk Madness

2.  What type of crazy mohawk will DC and I attempt to pull off in Miami?

 

I'm not sure how this became a pre-race tradition but nevertheless it is now part of our ritual.  The day before we travel  we typically convince someone to give us a crazy Mudder haircut.  This usually involves some version of a mohawk, reverse mohawk, sidehawk, etc.  Yes, we are fully grown educators who decide to do this for fun.  The borderline creative/insane behavior is becoming well documented in this blog.  We have to wait until the day before because it is tough to show up to work with a reverse Mohawk without getting some crazy looks.  It should make for interesting travel through the airports and security.  Patrick does not participate in this foolishness as we are pretty sure his locks give him strength.  You will certainly see flashes of our clipper creativity in photos and videos soon.

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How Much Planning Is Really Necessary

I'll start this post by saying that I wish I could be as organized as Brian and Danny in their approach to their workout regiments. Reading their posts reminds me that I had great plans to tailor a mix of Insanity, P90X and running, but just never seemed to get organized for that.  I ended up doing Insanity by default.  I'd gone through it before.  I enjoyed it before.  It definitely gave me the cardio to run a mudder, but, in some ways I feel like I just fell into it again because I didn't get organized to do anything more extensive or different.  I'm on day 46 of 63.  I'll finish one week before the Miami Mudder, and have only really modified it by including a 10.5 mile run on the "off" days and a 5.5 mile run on the "recovery" days.  During previous training routines, I've tried to build to running longer distances (I think my longest was 14 or 15 miles), but I thought I would stick with the same length runs and go for speed this time.

Of course, as the mythical "they" say, the best laid plans end up going haywire.  I've had to deal with various injuries over the months since South Carolina.  Some are of the "nagging" variety (for example, a case of turf toe from SC that just won't seem to go all the way away), but others are of the "hey...that's new...I wonder what caused that to happen" variety (for example, a new arch injury on my left foot that has kept me from running since last Tuesday). None of the injuries have caused me to take extensive time off, and they all seem to be improving without having to resort to "shut it down" kind of rest, but they do raise a question as to whether a more rigorous planning phase would have saved me some of these aches and pains. I guess I could have been more alert to the "off" and "recovery" day concepts in Insanity.  I would guess that there's a reason why people who design these kinds of training regiments actually build in slower days and days off, but I've always thought of the "off" or "slow" days as opportunities to do something else - not necessarily an opportunity to rest.

Of course, these are all hypotheticals, but I'm not sure that greater planning would have done much to improve my situation.  I've come to the conclusion that I naturally "fly by the seat of my pants" to a certain extent.  This has made me adaptable to changing situations and circumstances, but can also mean that I've been disorganized at times as well.  At nearly 41 years old, though, I'm not quite sure how much I'll be able to change to become more organized.

I used to think my life would be better if I was just a little bit more organized.  I always wanted to be a list-maker.  I always wanted to be the guy who had his calendar scheduled out months in advance.  I wanted to be the detail-oriented guy who knew every step of a process before I took the first.  And, I was always disappointed with myself when I didn't meet those self-imposed, and completely arbitrary, goals. Perhaps hitting my 40s has brought perspective that I didn't have as a younger man, but I've come to realize that I should be placing more value on the benefits that my strengths offer than focusing on the weaknesses.  I may not have my calendar arranged for the next six months (except for knowing which Mudders we'll be participating in, of course), but I have been able to build my life around the flexibility that I desire.  I've been able to recognize and seize opportunities that I may not have been able to accept if I'd been more rigid in my planning.  I've been pretty adaptable about my life, and if I have to give up my list-making dreams, then I think that's a more than fair trade-off.  I still envy list-makers. I still wish I could have that mindset. Detail-oriented people will always fascinate me, but I have come to realize that's not a skill set I'm likely to master anytime soon - and I'm okay with that.

What does this mean for education?  Well, for me, one of the themes that's emerging from this blog is the need to prepare for what confronts us.  Whether it be standardized testing, a new technological innovation, or the various obstacles found in a Tough Mudder, we have to go in with our eyes open and a sense of what we hope to accomplish.  But how do we make it work if we are naturally "fly by the seat of your pants" kind of folks?  Do we have to change?  Can we succeed without changing?  I'm not sure that I know the answer to these questions, though. I have actively disliked most of my jobs that required a rigid structure.  I would like to think that we can succeed through some level of self-modification merged with some level of environmental-modification, but sometimes that's a tall order to ask of otherwise busy people.  And, more importantly, it's naive to think that everyone can "make it work" regardless of their external situations. If we're lucky, we each work things out in our own ways and to whatever extent we can manage.

In my thinking, this is an important lesson for educators to learn.  We each have to learn how to work with our own strengths and weaknesses.  We shouldn't avoid trying to improve, but we don't have to become completely different people to succeed either.  I've found a system that has worked for me, and - perhaps most importantly - has kept me motivated to stay in shape. Of course, having said all this, I still plan to modify my workout regime after the Miami Mudder to include more P90X...

Postscript: I would like to say that I don't think my shoes are at fault for all of my foot-related injuries. It's not like I went to Walmart and bought the cheapest cross-trainers I could find.  I spent quite a while researching my last shoe purchase, and ended up buying a pair of Merrell Trail Gloves.  These have been very nice shoes - lightweight, comfortable, durable.  All of the things that you could ask from a running shoe when putting 16 miles of trail runs a week on them.  In my experience, though, a pair of shoes is really only good for two Mudders, and the Vibrams have been with me for the training up to South Carolina, two laps of that course, and two months of training since South Carolina.  All together, I've probably put about 200 miles on them since July of last year (assuming Runkeeper.com can be trusted to keep accurate records). I'll keep them around, but may end up donating them at the end of the Miami event. I recently went and bought a pair of Saucony Kinvara TRs that feel great so far, so I can't fully put the blame on my equipment.  Both pairs have worked well for me.  I think that it really just comes down to working on my form as I run.

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How Are You Preparing? (Update and a Look Ahead)

The first month of the year has passed by quickly and I wanted to provide a quick update to a previous post "How Are You Preparing?" .  I also wanted to publish the training schedule I have mapped out for February.  The combination of publishing January's training plan and writing down the results of all the workouts has yielded some pretty amazing results.  I have been able to set personal bests (PB) in all facets of the workouts.  I can do more crazy pull ups and push ups while running farther and faster than I could at the beginning of the month.  I've also almost reached my fighting weight with just under a month to go.  I'm excited to see how all of this plays out in Miami but I still have work to do in February.

February's plan picks up where January left off and also takes me in a slightly different direction.  January was mostly about building strength while February will focus on improving performance through explosive, obstacle specific exercises.

The intent is still to run on back to back days with an additional short (5-7) mile run on Wednesdays.  I never thought 5 miles and short would be in the same sentence one year ago.  Well, I could see me being short of breath just thinking about traveling 5 miles a year ago.  This plan incorporates a higher volume of running into the routine and honestly the running has become a bit monotonous.  DC and I have plans to change that up a bit.  Yesterday we completed a 6 + mile run on a mountain bike course which ended up being a lot of fun.  My plan will remain the same in terms of writing down the results of each workout.  This simple strategy easily demonstrates progress on a daily basis.  There is no better feeling in a workout than to establish a PB and realize that you've just completed something you couldn't do before.

The countdown clock shows that the Miami Mudder in 26 short days away.  The clock serves as a constant reminder that every moment is an opportunity to prepare and improve.

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My Backstory

So, since Danny's posted about his, I guess it's time to say a little bit about my backstory.  It's not all that interesting, but it may be illustrative of the types of events that might lead a relatively dormant, slightly overweight, rapidly approaching middle-age, American male to start to try to reverse some of those trends.

The starting point for me was actually pretty mundane.  I was driving my car in early 2010 and I realized that I was sweating a little bit.  Now, it's never really a good thing to sweat while sitting still, but I also realized that I had a bit of a gut - actually, hell, I'll be honest - it was more than a bit of a gut.  I was nearly 240 lbs and on the slippery slope to being an overweight, middle-aged statistic.  Just another of the faceless guys who populate corporate offices, eat at chain restaurants for lunch and puff their way through mowing the lawn every other weekend.  The kind of comfortable, sedate existence that leads to an early grave.  I was never the best athlete, but I wasn't inactive either.  I played High-School football, basketball and track & field, and I liked to think of myself as capable of so much more than I was demonstrating.  What I needed was something to kick me in the ass.  Something to get me into the gym and away from the pizzas.

Luckily, the answer to my predicament presented itself in the summer of 2010.  I was asked to go to Sri Lanka for three weeks for some consulting.  During my time in the heat near the equator, I ate mostly fish and rice, and came home having lost nearly 15 lbs without even trying.  I've usually had trouble staying motivated to work out because it takes a while to see results, but I could see the results immediately. But, additionally, I also brought back something else...a case of jetlag that allowed me to be up early to go to the gym.  I got into the habit of getting to the gym at 6:30 am and doing 30 minutes of weights and 30 minutes on the elliptical.  This gave me the head start and the opportunity to keep seeing results.  I started to see the weight really come off, and I got down to 180 lbs at my lowest, eventually settling into a maintainable weight of around 185.

At that point, I think I probably could have continued the workout schedule that I had set for myself, but, if I'm honest with myself, I probably would have gotten bored and started to slack off.  This is where the second serendipitous event happened - I read an article in ESPN the Magazine about the Tough Mudder.  I was instantly intrigued, and knew that I wanted to try one.  After all, in my head, I'm still a 16-year old boy, and what 16-year old boy doesn't want to run around in the mud?  The collaborative nature of the event appealed to me (I'm not looking for a competition to push me, but camaraderie does). I just needed to find someone else, or a group of someones else, that would do it with me.  I was lucky enough to talk a friend (Danny) into the madness, and he talked another friend (Brian) into joining the craziness.  I don't think any of us really knew what to expect, but Wintergreen in October of 2011 gave us all a challenge that we loved and became addicted to.  This lead us to Pocono in May of 2012 and then onto South Carolina in October of 2012.  Over time, others have joined us - none of them, though, seem to be as addicted as the three of us are.  We've pushed each other and try to set new challenges for ourselves for each new Mudder we run.  In Wintergreen, the challenge was finishing (that challenge was larger for some than it was for others, although I won't say who - his name rhymes with CRY'N, though). The challenge for Pocono was to finish without being crushed by the event.  And the challenge in South Carolina was to run two laps.  Our next challenge is to run a Saturday Mudder and then follow it up by running the Sunday Mudder.  With each new challenge that we achieve, I realize that there's so much more that we can accomplish.  The challenge now is to aim high, and work our asses off to get to the World's Toughest Mudder next winter.

I'm not sure what the future holds, but I can say, I don't see any regular lunchtime meals at the TGIF right next to my office park in my future. I won't necessarily turn down a pizza, but it will be paired with a 63-day course of Insanity.  Thinking back, I realize that the 240 lb guy in the car in 2010 couldn't have imagined completing anything like a Tough Mudder or actually working his way through the Insanity workout regiment, but the guy who's typing this blog post isn't willing to accept sweating while sitting still anymore either.

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