Excellent food for thought. I appreciate your time and feedback, and you’ve definitely posed some great questions.

I’ve decided to cut back on this intense cardio training to 3 times/week for the first 3-6 weeks (seems to be the right amount of time for gains according to some of Lyle’s articles), while mixing in some Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength resistance training on the alternating days for 3 days a week (consisting mostly of squats, bench, pull ups, and the like). Also going to continue doing yoga twice a week.

The goal is to develop excellent over all health. Having read a number of Lyle’s articles, and thought carefully about your questions, I realize that this is a very vague goal, one that cannot be measured or my progress toward it gauged. Thus, I need to define what ‘over all’ health means, and how I can best and most wisely achieve it.

At the moment, I can only best do that by saying I want to increase my energy, stamina, flexibility and strength. I can only hope to refine those terms/goals as I continue to work out and educate myself, such that eventually I can be precise enough so as to gainfully quantify and measure my progress toward them.

But it’s from generous people like you that I am gaining the right sense as to what sort of questions to ask as I start out, so thank you!

Once you`ve done all this you can start asking specific questions and better research methods to achieve those goals.

My goals are quite simple. To boost energy levels, to develop a stronger core, to gain in flexibility and endurance. Hence the appeal of a plyometrics/calisthenics/cardio program such as Insanity; it seems/seemed to promise to deliver what I was after.

Oh, one more thing, all these programs come with a rather hefty pricetag. I watched some of them sometimes and they seemed put together by my 4 year old nephew. So ask yourself whether it`s worth just dishing out the money rather than spend it on learning about training and how to make your own programs.

I’ve now done a couple of these workouts, and can report back with greater accuracy as to what actually takes place. The reason I’m asking you guys about it here is because I’d love to get some unbiased, professional opinions on the program itself before I decide to continue or not, so thanks for comments in advance if you decide to write them.

I’ll try to be as succinct as I can.

60 days, six days a week, with each Thursday being a yoga-like recovery day and Sundays being your rest day.

Each workout is about 40 minutes long in totum. The first six minutes are a ‘Warm Up’, which consists of three circuits of a challenging set of exercises repeated with greater intensity each time, so that the first set is mid-level, the last is all out, followed by a five minute stretch.

The body of the workout consists of the same format: three circuits of a set of four or five exercises (mixing cardio and calisthenics), with the first being performed at medium intensity, building up to your max at the last. The last five minnutes of the core workout are by far the hardest, and are followed by a five minute cool down stretch.

I don’t think this is a diet program. The nutrition guide helps you work out your basal metabolic rate, and then depending on your weight goals (maintain, gain, lose) they tell you how to adjust that figure. It’s stressed that you see your doctor first, and that you only attempt it if you are already in excellent physical condition.

Could this best be classified as Threshold Training? The gimmicky marketing and verbiage aside, do you consider the core of this workout to be sound, or specious?

Again, thanks in advance for any feedback you can send my way. Much appreciated.

“The problem is lag, it takes heart rate 3-5 minutes (on average) to reach a steady state and with intervals shorter than that, heart rate simply isn’t useful. At best, if someone is doing repeats of a certain interval duration, heart rate will eventually climb up to a steady state.”