Insanity Asylum Review – This Program Hurts…It Just Hurts :-(

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

I am all about workout programs that establish activities that not only train the body but also those that your condition mental strength as well. Many who have been at the elite athlete range or are currently still there for quite some time now, know the importance of building your mental strength moreover than your physical strength.

You hear the phrase often ‘pushing yourself to the limit’ but with a workout program that focuses on peak sports performance, you’ll hear more often phrases like ‘pushing yourself beyond your limits’.

Ever since INSANITY came out into the market, I’ve been a sucker for these types of program, programs that test your mental strength more than anything and that bring to a level of confidence that you never thought was possible.

• Workout: Insanity: The Asylum
• Creator: Shaun Thompson
• URL: InsanityAsylum.com
• Purpose: Intense Sports Training techniques to teach you how to be an athlete.

And here we are, Shaun T’s latest installment, Insanity The Asylum. I would have never anticipated this program if it weren’t of course for Shaun’s previous program INSANITY. Going through Insanity was tough and it introduced me to a whole new way of looking at training. I fell in love with his concept of

. It was new, it was different, and it was real. I found out about Insanity The Asylum months before it launched and having been a raving fan about Insanity for a while then, I was really excited to hear about this new program.

Insanity The Asylum is a 30-Day fitness program that is designed to get you into shape like a professional athlete. I believe it’s the first in-home sports-training program to be designed. It’s built into 3 cross-training cycles where as you progress with each cycle, Shaun challenges you with more difficult moves requiring you to use more muscles and develop sharper skills needed to be an elite athlete. This program should therefore be of interest to anyone who wants to improve both their mental clarity/strength as well as get to peak physical condition.

So a question comes up a lot…

How can I train like an Athlete?

There is something that distinguishes the world of professional athletes and the average American Joe. What is it? Many theories can pop up in conversation such as genetics, hard-work, money, and unprecedented support (top world trainers). Many would argue as I did, that the reason professional athletes are able to perform the way they do is because they were born with a very unique genetic blueprint. Or that they have a stronger ‘will-power’ to be disciplined. Another common one is that they have money to support the training and diet regimens. Or also, they have the world-class trainers to help get to where they need to be without doing the homework themselves.

This new workout program, Insanity the Asylum, claims to bridge that gap between ‘average people’ and professional athletes. Just like P90X did in bridging that gap between people who were able to get insanely ‘Ripped’ than those who couldn’t, Beachbody gives you this opportunity to get in peak physical condition the same way the elite athlete you see in professional sports did.

So here’s how this program works:

There are 6 workout DVDs. They all focus on different aspects of peak performance and you do one of these workouts once a day, 6 days a week, for 30 days. The workouts are: the Fitness Assessment Test (Fit Test), Speed & Agility, Strength, Vertical Plyo, Back to Core, and Game Day.

• Speed & Agility focuses on developing great speed and agility while being able to maintain extreme focus at one time. During the workout, you’re going to feel very tired, fatigued, and pain, with the added component of trying to focus on your coordination. Working hard to improve your endurance is one thing, but if you’re able to provide focus and coordination at the same time, you’ll be able to improve your mental strength, which is equally important to performing well as an athlete as well.

• Strength is a workout I’ll never forget. It’s arguably the hardest workout I’ve done. The purpose of this workout is to develop your muscles’ capacity to perform longer during intense activity, while building strength at the same time. Being able to lift heavy is one thing, but being able to lift heavy for longer periods of time is another and this workout helps you get there. During the workout, you’re doing EVERYTHING, from strength, to power, to speed, to endurance. All the moves are very synergistic in nature, there’s no ‘one-body-part’ move. Every move optimizes multiple muscle groups and pushes them to their max at the same time. Ouch.

• Vertical Plyo develops your ability to jump higher. Pretty straight-forward. But what I think is unique about this DVD is the level to which it helps you to jump higher. You may recall P90X’s infamous ‘Plyo X’ workout, but this one (vertical plyo) pushes way beyond the limits. The intensity of this plyometrics workout is something that I think was missing in Plyo X. Nothing could describe this workout better than Steve Edwards in his thoughts about this particular workout. I can definitely agree that “I [also] had to slow my pace down so that I didn’t puke.” But in the end, if you come through, no doubt will your experience of trying to defy gravity, exceed your expectations.

• Back to Core is my favorite workout of the series. I am a big fan of workouts that workout muscles you never thought you had. That’s one reason I love Yoga, swimming, and gymnastics to name a few. This workout is no different in that respect. Initially, you’d think this workout is your average ‘core’ workout where you’re working your entire mid-section, but Shaun has different plans. He focuses on working your everything from your upper back down into your calves: upper back, middle back, lower back, glutes, hamstrings, calves…all of the muscles that I definitely felt being worked. Out of all of them, I always felt the workout in my lower back of all places, mostly because you’re doing reverse planks, swimmer exercises and so on. As a result, my back is stronger than ever. My pull-up capacity has increased on average by 5-6 reps, something I am very intrinsically proud of. And the best part of that is, in this workout, I did NOT do single pull-up.

• Game Day is a workout I always look forward to. It’s a workout that condenses multiple sports into a 1-hour period. What’s exciting about this workout is that it simulates what youwould go through when you’re preparing for an actually sport. In football for example, there’s a long period of intense training in order to get ready for ‘game day’. The Insanity Asylum workout ‘Game Day’ has the same concept. All of the workouts prior to this one prepares youfor this one. And that’s what fun about it. In the DVD, Shaun makes it feel like you’re performing at your best and that your actually ‘performing in a game’. It feels good because it has the feeling of putting what you worked hard for to the test and it all shows in this workout.

• Relief is of course, what we all need especially after a couple of weeks of Insanity theAsylum. What would a great fitness program be if it didn’t incorporate an adequate stretching routine. A program like Insanity the Asylum comes with it a very high risk of injury because of its intensity in each of the workouts. The Relief DVD is 25 minutes purely dedicated to stretching and with a focus on flexibility. For obvious reasons, this DVD should be done at least 3 times a week to reduce injury, improve flexibility, and therefore improve performance. And plus, who wouldn’t want a relief from the insanity of The Asylum? This DVD alone helped me greatly in improving my performance.

Think of this program as similar to what football or even basketball players go through as their season approaches. They usually go through what they call ‘Hell Week’ where there’s a period of about two weeks or so of very intense training to get their bodies in peak physical condition before the season starts so that they are ready to perform at their best.

Insanity The Asylum is very similar in this sense. But instead of a period of two or three weeks, the intense training period lasts for about 30-days. This should implicitly state that this program is definitely NOT for everyone. (more on this later)

These are my before and after photos from completing 30 days of Insanity The Asylum.

Periodizational Training

Beachbody has a wonderful line-up of top fitness programs that all evolve around the concept of Periodizational Training. Periodization is an organized approach to training that involves progressive cycling of various aspects of a training program during a specific period of time. You see this in programs like P90X and Turbofire where the training schedule changes over time.

But unlike P90X and Turbofire, Insanity the Asylum is not a 120, a 90, or even a 60-day program. The intensity of the program only allows the mesocycle to last up to 30-days.

So therefore, I wouldn’t rank this program amongst the powerhouses like P90X and Turbofirebecause it’s not quite a comprehensive approach to a fitness, whereas P90X and Turbofire have more of a well-rounded schedule that includes all the important fundamental aspects of fitness like strength, flexibility, balance, endurance, stamina and so on.

Insanity the Asylum is more focused and concentrated on the idea of Sports Performance. Yes, it also has components like strength, flexibility, balance and so on but primarily this program’s main focus is conditioning your body to get into peak shape, where you’re training on sports performance. It’s focused on getting you conditioned to last in those final moments in a game where you think your body is done but still needs to perform. Therefore, this program is ideal for you to incorporate into your overall fitness regimen (or macrocycle, if you have one) because you’ll be able to fulfill that aspect of high intensity, peak performance training that I think almost all fitness programs need.

Your Trainer for 30-days

Shaun Thompson aka Shaun T, is the creator of this program. Shaun is a former track-and-field athlete and has a very impressive resume in the fitness and health industry. He’s worked for the corporate world of fitness and health with companies as well as moving towards commercial fitness and dance. His education background in sports science combined with his experience in track ‘n field and work experience in the fitness industry, I think gives him that credibility allowing you to trust what he as created in Insanity The Asylum to be legitimate. You can read Shaun T’s full bio

If you decide to try out this program, all I can say about Shaun T is that you’ll be in good hands in reaching your fitness goal.

Equipment

Like all of Beachbody’s home-based fitness programs, Insanity the Asylum requires very little equipment relative to what you would use in a gym or any other training facility. I think this is great because you’d think with sports conditioning, there would be lots of equipment involved. The opposite is actually the case. In Shaun’s goal to get you in peak shape, he utilizes only two main pieces of equipment:

• Agility Ladder – he uses this for speed and power drills. It helps you stay focused and to always use perfect form. I think the best feature of this ladder is that you can adjust it so that it fits your current fitness level. You can fold it for your jumps and progression drills when you’re starting out, then as you get stronger and better, you can extend it to further challenge yourself. Of course, the mobility and light-weight component of this tool makes it easy for travel.

• Speed Rope – Shaun included the jump rope to help you improve your speed, agility, and endurance. Just like the ladder, it helps you improve your focus and coordination. And it’s lightweight, which means that it can help you jump faster and faster. I’ve tried jump roping in the past in my high school days, and I never was able to jump rope as good as I do now after doing this program.

I love using these training tools because they provided the best way to improve focus when dealing with moves that require a lot of energy in itself. Adding the element of focus on top of grueling exercise moves makes the workout that much more challenging. That’s exactly what Shaun means when he says that he wants you to get to that athlete range: being able to focus and stay in control when you are at your weakest.

There are other pieces of equipment that are used during Insanity The Asylum such as a Pull-Up Bar and Dumbbells. However, the program also give you options that cater to you if you don’t have either of those. For example,

• If you don’t have the pull-up bar, Shaun gives you variations of a move that still works your lateral muscles. He calls it the Lat Push-Up. There have been times where I couldn’t use a pull-up bar, and I was really skeptical that I would get the same effect doing these lat push-ups. But once I got the form right, I have to say, it still worked wonders for my back.

• If you don’t have Dumbbells, Shaun recommends that you use a resistance band and he shows you exactly how to use it in the videos during the workout.

I personally cannot be fully satisfied with this program without the pull up bar because there is one particular move that I just love which involves the pull-up bar. But I think I’ll leave it up to you try Asylum out first to see which move I’m talking about.

The Diet

Ah the diet. Diet and Nutrition has always been top priority for me when it comes to fitness. I think that behind all those fitness programs that Beachbody throws at you, lies the holy grail of all results: nutrition. The diet for the Insanity Asylum is unique and is not like any of the other Beachbody programs that I know of. The diet guide for Insanity the Asylum is based more on Shaun T’s philosophy, the guide is filled with really what worked for Shaun, but of course that would be unfair to the public for what works for Shaun most likely won’t work for someone else. But of course, it’s not hard to trust Shaun T given his resume and reputation in the health and fitness industry.

I was very excited when I took a look at the workout DVDs, but I was even more excited to look at the diet guide. And in my opinion, the diet guide for the Asylum is what made me fall in love with the program all together.

I love this meal guide for two main reasons:

• It simplifies what we should know about nutrition into 10 easy-to-understand principles – at the beginning of the guide, Shaun outlines 10 basic principles to good eating in order to succeed with this program. Without giving all of them away, some of them include: Go Light at Night, Don’t Fear Fat, Drink lots of water, and Carbs are good. Those are only 5 out of the ten labeled in the book but you’re gonna have to get the program yourself to see it . So instead of doing the added work of research yourself in figuring out what to avoid and what to consume on a daily basis, you only have to follow these 10 simple principles to succeed. This will allow you to focus your mind on getting through your workouts and not on deciding what to eat.

• It has a ‘Pick and Choose’ method for creating each of your meals – both INSANITYand Insanity The Asylum meal plans have this amazing feature to their meal guides. It’s like a restaurant menu vs. having to eat at home and prepare your meals. They lay out a few simple principles to follow (the directions), and then they lay out a menu of recipes to ‘pick and choose’ from; different and much easier than choosing the ingredients to put in your meals. The ‘pick and choose’ method is different from what you see in the P90X diet guide for example, where you have to do a lot of ‘reading between the lines’ to put it shortly. It’s very complex. There is a lot to comprehend in the P90X diet guide compared to the Insanity the Asylum meal guide where it literally tells you to choose your options out a menu of easy to follow recipes.

Hectic as our world is today, it’s very difficult to at least get some kind of informal training on diet and nutrition. I don’t have the worst case, but when I was in college, I was dealing with very difficult majors in terms of the work load I had to deal with. It wasn’t easy trying to keep up with P90X and the ‘healthy’ eating it required me to do. This was mainly because I didn’t have the time to sit down and read the diet guide or learn about nutrition in general so that I can get optimal results. There was school work I had to take care of, a full-time job that I had to attend to for the other half of my time. I barely had enough time to squeeze a p90x workout in. Therefore, completing P90X on an ideal level was difficult.

I’m sure you would agree, whether it be P90X or any other fitness program that you struggled with keeping up with the nutrition guide.

Now I’m not talking down on P90X’s diet guide, I have massive respect for the meal plan, but honestly, for the person who doesn’t have the time to sit, read and absorb information on a topic like nutrition, a quote on quote ‘quick-fix’ is something more desirable yes?

Enter INSANITY and INSANITY The Asylum.

Now I hope you can see why I chose to favor the meal plan from the INSANITY series. It’s because of its simplicity and ‘to-the-point’ nature. Again the two major points I make above cover all I need to know on a very basic level. Basic enough to get me results.

So if you’re the type who does not like to absorb a lot of information on nutrition and would rather just have the homework done for them, then this program would be nothing short of your expectations. I was the type who wanted to focus more on this program instead of having to read through another ‘text-book’ of a nutrition guide (I learned enough from the P90X guide as it is). I wanted to focus on the workout and getting through it. If this sounds like you too, then this program is more for you.

Is Insanity The Asylum For You?

If you already feel like this program is for you, then there’s no need to read this section, just go and get it!

And of course, if you’ve just read all this great information (I hope you think it was helpful), andyou’re just not sure if this program fits YOU, then here’s something that Beachbody laid out as guideline to give you a general perspective of who this fitness program is intended for:

• People who are already in top physical shape but would like to take their fitness to the next level.
• Graduates of INSANITY or P90X, or any other advanced fitness programs.
• Athletes and former athletes who want to improve or recapture their performance, no matter what game or sport.
• People are tired of traditional cardio and aren’t seeing results anymore.
• Cardio lovers like runners, cyclists, or spinners
• People who want to achieve rapid, dramatic improvement in their fitness.

Who Insanity the Asylum is NOT for