Last summer the missus bought Jillian Michaels’
30 Day Shred on the recommendation of a colleague of hers - the same one who sold me the
C9 aloe detox. Equally lauded and feared, the
Shred comprises three short workouts, each “level” more difficult than the last and all of them combining resistance training and cardio in an attempt to make its formerly portly subjects “shredded”. The wife and I intermittently did Level 1 together through last July and August; I was keen to encourage her keep-fit-at-home efforts, having cancelled her infrequently-used gym membership in a fit of thriftiness, but was still fearful that our shared workout was going to be as uninspiring and annoying as her many Davina McCall exercise DVDs. Fortunately I was immediately impressed with Jillian’s intense fusion of strength training; cardio; and abs torture, but unfortunately injury prevented me from going any further with the programme. After recovering, detoxing and then succumbing to the obligatory excesses of Christmas, though, I decided that the time had finally arrived for me to complete the full
30 Day Shred.
I started the
Shred on 2nd January 2016 and finished it at about 7.30am this morning. Keen to “do it properly”, as well as completing a
Shred workout everyday (on top of my usual thrice-weekly weight-lifting, cycling and walking regime), I also reduced my caloric intake to below what
MyFitnessPal reckons I should burn for my size (which is actually well below what I need to eat to maintain my current weight). After all, it’s important to be mindful that the “big results” that the telly’s toughest trainer promises don’t automatically follow just completing her thirty-day regime – if you’re still eating poorly, or even eating well to excess, no number of travelling push-ups or stomach crunches is going to lead to a “shredded” bod.
Level 1 of the
Shred is, as you’d expect, its easiest, but it’s also its most daunting if you’ve never attempted anything like this before. Used to working out solely with heavy weights, I’m accustomed to cracking out a set of anything from eight to sixteen reps, resting for a minute, then cracking out another. But there’s none of this rest nonsense on Jillian’s watch - you don’t even get a chance to swig water. This being the case, it’s important to choose your weights wisely, as I found out to my detriment early on. 10kg in each hand may sound like nowt to seasoned weight-lifters, but for three minutes at a time it might as well be 50kg. After some experimentation I settled on holding 5kg in each hand, with an additional half-kilo fastened to each wrist and ankle. This made Levels 1 and 2 duly torturous for me, but, crucially, still doable with good form. For potential
Shredders, I’d strongly recommend starting low and building up, rather than deterring – and, indeed,
humbling - yourself on day one.
Like the whole
Shred series, Level 1 is built upon Jillian’s patented 3-2-1 Interval System, which, after a warm-up, you have to endure three times before the cool-down. Jillian’s three minutes of “Strength” are broken down into two repeated resistance moves lasting around forty-five seconds apiece, on average (sometimes the harder moves only take about thirty seconds, the easier a minute or so). The moves are generally straightforward – push-ups, squats with hand weights, rows, lunges and the like – but what makes the workout so hard is its incessancy. From “Strength”, you’re straight into your two-minutes of non-stop cardio – jumping jacks (star-jumps to us Brits), butt-kicks (arse-kicks), jump rope etc – and from there, onto a merciless minute of abs agony. There’s an almost imperceptible rest period of about two and a half seconds between each circuit; I didn’t even notice it until the third or fourth day as it’s so short. That’s the only breather you get. That’s not a complaint, mind – it’s why the
Shred is so effective a workout, not just in terms of the results that it yields, but also the little time that it takes to do. No, my one and only gripe with Level 1 is its unevenness. To me, at least, whilst much of it was challenging in the extreme, other parts – the chest flyes, for instance – felt like a complete waste of time. To make this level work as intended for me I’d have had to have a whole rack of hand weights next to the telly, enabling me to increase the resistance as and when required.
On the eleventh day, Level 2 begins, and it’s as much of a leap in difficulty as it is going from GCSE to A-level. Push-ups? Forget it – Jillian has you doing “walk-out push-ups”, which are as punishing as they sound. Of course, it’s for a reason – this modified classic works abs; shoulders; triceps; and chest, maximising calorie burn while encouraging muscle growth or retention. This is effectively Jillian’s signature: combination moves designed to burn calories and build/retain muscle in the most time-efficient way possible. Level 2’s cardio is trickier too – the “skaterz” move, for instance, is as much an exercise in balance as it is anything else. And certainly, balance is a recurring theme in this level – which is probably why it’s my least favourite of the three. That, and Jillian’s penchant for deceptive lines like, “A few more,” which at one point I’d swear sees the dictionary definition of “a few” stretched to more than ten.
Level 3, though, is the business. Walk-out push-ups become the altogether more taxing travelling push-ups; lunges segue into full-blown, ankle-crushing plyometrics; pilates moves go nuclear as you go for an elbows-walk in plank position; you even get to graduate from stomach crunches to old-school sit-ups. It’s so taxing that, for the first time since starting the
Shred, I was thankful that Jillian had one of her colleagues performing “modified” versions of the moves for me to emulate for a while, although I’d have preferred it if she’d have had a legitimate beginner on hand to do them instead of an über-lean blonde whose smile doesn’t even break, never mind her breaking a sweat. The cardio is made much more difficult again too as Jillian’s old and now familiar moves must be performed with hand weights – butt-kicks, with weights; shadow boxing squats, with weights… you get the idea. Again, I was wishing I’d got more hand weights ready to go in the living room, but this time for the opposite reason: jumping jacks with 5kg weights is downright dangerous.
Minor grievances aside, an unexpected bonus of completing the
30 Day Shred for me has been that in every single level I’ve discovered some arduous new move to fold into my own strength training repertoire: Level 1’s side-lunge with shoulder raise is a great example of Jillian working multiple body parts at once; it’s great to feel your core tearing as you work your arms and legs. I’d rank it right up there with a deadlift. The same goes for Level 2’s V-squat and Level 3’s travelling push-ups. Efficiently brutal, both.
Inevitably though, what I’m really interested in is the tale of the tape. Over the thirty days, my body fat percentage has dropped significantly - it’s down by 3.7% on 2nd January - and my overall weight has come down by 12.2lbs. Best of all, I’ve lost 3.5” off my waist, and when working out in the gym with heavy weights I don’t any feel weaker. Interestingly, despite the minimal food intake, my biceps have actually grown, which is quite hard to fathom – it certainly stands as a testament to the 3-2-1 Interval System’s capacity to shred fat but not muscle. Its cover slogan isn’t doing the
Shred justice – it should say, “Extreme
Fat Loss!” rather than “Extreme Weight Loss!”
Click to enlarge the table above.
More disappointingly, I haven’t hatched a six-pack yet, though this is perhaps more a reflection on my Christmas food orgies than it is the
30 Day Shred series. I can feel the strong abs lurking underneath, and even see the shadow of the top four like milk teeth poised to burst through a baby’s gums, but the bottom two remain encased in a centimetre or so of apparently ineradicable thirty-something fat. I suspect that were I to persevere for another thirty to sixty days with the
Shred, then the residual podge would be shredded – if I survived, that is.
Only one thing is for sure: this programme is
intense.
Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred
is available on DVD in just about every British supermarket for about £3.00 at the moment, mired as they are in that opportunistic “Get Fit!” window between pedalling Christmas crap and Easter eggs. Alternatively, you can download all three levels from iTunes to watch on your Apple TV or iOS device for £4.99 – there’s no excuse for skipping a day if your workout’s on your iPhone! Levels are otherwise individually priced at £3.99 each, but if you buy Level 1 as a taster, for example, you can later buy the rest of the series for just a pound. The iTunes version also has the benefit of not being emblazoned with the worthless enticement, “Lose up to 20 pounds in 30 days!”, which, as any pedant will tell you, only means that you can’t be expected to lose any more than
20lbs. Dial it in and stuff your face, and you’ll probably lose fuck all without contradicting the tagline.
