So. Insanity. For those of you unlucky enough not to have caught the infomercial on TV recently, Insanity is an exercise programme designed to deliver amazing results in 2 months. 6-pack, toned musculature, the works. Aye, right. And the other one makes a jingling sound if you pull it.

Anyway, feeling the need to get a lot fitter than we currently feel, my wife and I have embarked on the Insanity journey. We’ve a history of making similar snap decisions on things to do based on people suffering on TV. We climbed Kilimanjaro having watched a TV travel show presenter try the same and get carried down the mountain with altitude sickness. “That looked like fun, shall we do it?” and a fantastic time was had by all. Great crowd, amazing trip. Must regale you with the story one of these days.

But Insanity. That’s what I’m talking about today. It starts of simply enough. You open your pack of DVDs, pin up the wall chart, load up the “Fit Test” DVD and find out just how much pain you’ve let yourself in for! The Fit Test establishes a baseline and introduces you to the “Max Interval” pattern of training – intense exercise followed by short recovery periods.

The pack you get contains a lot of different DVDs, each one with a different exercise routine. Over the 2 months, you’ll repeat each disc several times but not usually in the same week unless it’s the rest week where you do the same routine each night. Each week you do 3 nights of hard exercise, 40 minutes or so including warm up and cool down, then a recovery night, then 2 nights hard and either a night off or a repeat of the Thursday recovery routine. There’s nothing scheduled for the Sunday night, reckon it’s an American thing.

Over the programme you work yourself as hard as you want to. Take breaks as you need them, have water when you need to. The refreshing thing is watching the people on the DVD taking their breaks and collapsing through exhaustion – and these are the uberfit who’ve been doing this for some time. The first fit test you do sets the baseline, you’re looking for improvement with each one you do from there on. Because you work at your own pace, you find you can do more each time you repeat a disc. Or at least that’s the theory… I’ll find out tomorrow.

I’m right at the start of the Insanity programme. So far, so good. I can already feel muscles tightening where they weren’t before. I’ve not lost an ounce of weight, that can only be through fat converting to muscle – I hope!

Is Insanity for everyone? Probably not. You need about an hour a day plus the space to exercise – I’m in the garage for this as I’d hit hit her ceiling with the jumps and stretches, thank goodness it’s both warm this time of year but cool enough not to expire. It’s also easier if you’ve got an exercise partner, someone to inspire you, keep you digging deeper rather than calling it a night.

I’m looking forward to tonight’s routine – I’m also dreading it. They’re all hard work but Shaun T does an excellent job getting you to push yourself. I don’t hate him. Yet…