I tried. I really did.
It’s been a while since my wife and I have been able to work out together. We’ve had mostly the same schedule for a few years but we each keep adding additional things to it. It’s difficult to find a time every day when we are both home and awake for more than an hour together to eat before one of us leaves again.
When she woke up on New Years Day she came out of the bedroom and was talking to me about a program she had found and was interested in trying. Morning Meltdown 100 sounded familiar but I couldn’t think of where. When she said Jericho McMatthews I realized I had seen it on Twitter when it first came out.
It didn’t look like anything I would be interested in but it was a reason to work out with my wife again. So we got ready and tried day one that day since neither of us had to work. And we decided we would both get up early every day to workout together so we both got through.
The first big difference from other workout programs we’ve done through Beachbody is the way the calendar works. Instead of having a few videos that get replayed depending on the day, each day has its own video.
It’s easy to do that now that everything is digital instead of VHS tapes. And then it isn’t exactly the same video each time you get to a certain workout. The program builds and develops as you do.
That seemed like it was a good idea but as we went through the videos I found reasons to not like it. One of the things I liked most about doing the same video multiple times is that I could figure out the order of things and know what was coming to be able to prepare.
With the “Real Time” workouts, as they called this type of program, I couldn’t catch on to the flow of things because it didn’t have as much consistency. We would do the moves for different amounts of time or there would be a slight difference on the order of things or the actual moves we were doing.
I have to admit though, it was pretty fun at first. The music is great in every video and during the first few workouts the moves went along with the beats like it did with PiYo. There are other things my wife and I noticed showing evidence that Beachbody brought Jericho on to replace Chalene when they decided she was too old and overweight for them.
Though Chalene ended up getting the better end of that deal with the things she’s been able to do since leaving, just like Tony Horton, I suppose all that is best left for another time. Or maybe it might be safer to leave it right there and suggest that people look into the stories themselves.
But getting back to the music, DJ Jesse Blake was possibly the best part of the entire program. There were some syncopation issues in the first couple of videos that made it difficult to time the moves but i think he noticed because he stopped putting it in.
The big issues I had with the music had nothing to do with him. Most of the videos had the music too quiet to be able to hear it without Jericho being too loud. The tempi seemed to be too fast for many of the things, but Jericho kept telling Jesse to go faster. This made it difficult to establish and use good form for many of the moves without doing the entire program ahead of time to know what’s going to happen before it happens.
Most of the workouts there wasn’t enough time to switch from one move to the other. Jericho would do the first couple of reps then start talking about things. Then when she decided she wanted to switch to the next thing she would just start it. The rest of the cast wasn’t even able to keep up with her switches and they would all change at different times.
She also seems to love saying “one more” then doing a few more reps before switching. Having done marching band and drum corps for so long it isn’t a new concept to me. But when I hear it being said in those settings I can at least see what is going on around me to know if it is the last time.
Another one is when she says “alright” then keeps going then keeps going. When I’m on the floor doing something and she says that, making it sound like it’s time to switch, it’s very frustrating because those are lost reps I could have used.
Most of the warm-ups had “around the world” jumping jacks which just meant we did four facing one direction then turned 90 degrees and kept repeating until we were facing front again. I didn’t understand how this was helpful in any way so neither of us did them for any of the videos.
Day 16 was when I first really considered not continuing. It was really bad. It was like “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” because the tempo was made up and the beat didn’t matter. Jericho said at the beginning that it would start together then go your own tempo so I expected the music to be a bit off. But nothing started at the correct time with the music. There were times the first reps would start on beat two or four and I ended up not doing half the video because I came to work out to music. I think maybe the music was added in post and that’s why it was so far off from what was actually happening.
Then a couple of days later I was doing one of the moves and my bad knee gave out on me completely. I tried getting back into it halfway through the video but couldn’t even stand up. Luckily I started the Journey To Splits around that time so my knee is doing fine now.
I wish I could say the same for my back. I had written a couple times in the past month referencing to my back not responding well to this program and it’s at the point where my back is hurting more now than it has in years.
My wife broke her foot a couple of weeks ago so she isn’t able to work out with me for a few more weeks still. Even before that the inconsistent video lengths made us miss some morning workouts together. It’s easier to plan ahead when we each need to wake up when all the videos are the same length. Now that I’m working out by myself it’s difficult to want to do this program.
The entire program consists of 5 phases of 20 days each. From what I can tell that’s just to be able to tell yourself you’re making progress. Today is day 41, the first day of the third phase, and I am officially tapping out. I feel like if anything I’ve taken a step backwards by doing it up to this point so I want to go back to moving forward.
A Life, Ensnared 