I have done Ripped in 30 a couple times now and after taking about a week and a half off around the holidays I was definitely ready to get back into something with the new year. Believe it or not I actually missed working out. But I wanted something that was too crazy intense and I would want to almost immediately quit but I also wanted something that would push me and help me get a good solid start into the year. So I picked this one that I hadn't done in years.
Basically Ripped in 30, which is another Jillian Michaels workout, has four workouts and you do one level a week. You never repeat a move and each week the moves get harder until you get to level four (which is the last week of it). I continued on with my 6 days a week workouts and got my butt out of bed 6 days a week at 5am to get it done.
Week One
Week one is meant to be the easiest week in the bunch, although there are plenty of moves that are a bit challenging. I find that holding plank for 30 seconds to not be the easiest task but I did it without having to take a break at any point doing the six days. However two moves I think even trump holding plank. I hate hallow man and I struggled through that because apparently I have no core strength and no idea how to go about getting more core strength - I'll work on. And the other one I struggled with was side lunges with arm raises. Normally it would be the arm raises that would cause me to struggle but in this case it was actually the side lunges. I have had an ongoing struggle with my legs - more on that in another post - so side lunges aren't the easiest move for me in general. So I definitely moved slower than the speed the DVD was going but I kept with it and I'm glad for it. In general I got through this level pretty easily though. It was a lot of building form for the coming levels but I enjoyed the fast pace of the levels and not feeling like the workout as a whole was dragging.
Week Two
I really really really hate this week. It is just awful. I remember it being awful the first two times I did this workout and it was no exception this time around. I really hated it. There was nothing good about it. There was even two minutes of cardio in plank. I couldn't get through it at all in the beginning but by the end of the week I could at least get through the two minutes only taking a break off my arms in-between each 30 second move. All the core moves were much harder than week one. The entire workout was definitely a huge struggle. I'm not sad to be done with this level at all!
Week Three
Week three seriously seemed like a walk in the park compared to week two. There were any mega cardio in plank which was a bonus. I just couldn't handle that two minutes in cardio plank in the last week. But this week overall wasn't bad. There were moves that got all my muscles twitching but it wasn't anything that was so hard and I couldn't handle it. This week was hard in the sense that I was ready to be over but I knew I still had another week left before I was to that over point. I did miss one day during this week because Connor had woken up crying at about 3am and I couldn't fall back to sleep after that. I was awake for a really long time. And when I did finally fall back to sleep I must have turned off my watch alarm in my sleep because when I did wake up next it was an hour later than I normally get up and I didn't have time to get my workout in. I decided not to make it up later that day (because when would I do that?!) nor was I going to make it up on Sunday. I still work out five days a week which I'm good with.
Week Four
This week four really wasn't bad at all. I think the worst part of it is truly Jillian Michaels. She gets all giddy about "hurting" us and working us so hard. And I'm not going to say that it was easy but it certainly wasn't the hardest workout I had ever done. And I'm going to be honest, I stopped working out with still three days left. I just couldn't finish it out with being so achy due to the weather. So I finished this workout with three days shy and although I thought I would regret not finishing this. I actually really didn't. I'm okay with my choice to just stop.
Overall Ripped in 30 isn't my least favorite workout but it also isn't my favorite. I think more than the workout itself, it really is Jillian Michaels who is super annoying during this workout. I definitely like her later stuff better. But this was a good workout and I did mostly enjoy working out during these four weeks and having the workouts change every week so that if at least you hated it, you weren't stuck with it for longer than five or six days.
I'm actually really excited because I need a change of pace so I'm moving back to Moms Into Fitness for awhile and I'm looking forward to that change a lot!
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