This is part one of my Insanity Asylum review, as part of ATB’s P90x3 vs Insanity Asylum series. Below will be my recounting of how Insanity Asylum’s going (hint: miserable), while Joseph will be covering P90x 3 over here. Stay tuned every week for our progress reports as we fitness blog the hello out of and simultaneously review these two very rigorous, very different programs.

Week 1 – Foolish Foolery

The story of insanity asylum begins and ends with me being a foolish fool.

First off, let me establish something – I’m a three-time original Insanity veteran, a one-time P90X alum, and have even created my own hybrid between the two. So I’m not new to this whole “home DVD fitness thing.” But that didn’t stop me from making foolish mistakes only a foolish fool would make.

Straight out of the box, it seems like regular old insanity again. The presentation is solid. It comes with meal plans, and calendars, and even hybrid calendars to combine other programs when it’s over.

It seems so similar to Insanity, actually, that I actually began to wonder if I was making a bad choice. “Maybe I should just stick with the proven results,” I thought. “Maybe Asylum will be too easy…”

That’s right, America – at one point, I was actually nervous about Asylum because I was afraid it would be too easy. That was my first mistake.

But how hard is it?

Insanity Asylum is hard. It’s balls hard. It’s a lot of different movements, and the movements are making you move in ways you’re not used to moving. You’re taxed before you even really start. Just like in the original Insanity, I thought “Wow, this is actually a great work out!” And then Shaun T tells me that we just finished the warm-up, and the real workout is about to begin. FML.

By the time I finished, I looked like I did the ice bucket challenge in my kitchen. But with sweat water. So…just sweat, I guess. We filled a bucket with sweat and poured it all over my head. That’s Insanity Asylum.

What’s great about Asylum is that you get the cardio of Insanity, but it also mixes in the pull-ups, push-ups, resistance band moves, and general strength conditioning found in P90X. What all this means is you’re going to be sore, and frequently.

So far so g…no, it’s actually terrible

The other thing to note is that, unlike the original Insanity, rest days are fewer and further between. Whereas you never went more than three days of rigor in the original, Asylum has you going as many as four days with intense workouts.

So, I’m only one week in, but the workouts have been crazy so far…but also less fun. I know it’s going to sound stupid, but once I got in the groove with the regular Insanity, I actually enjoyed the workouts. I thought they were fun. This isn’t fun. This is self-mutilation.

It’s going to be a long month….