First Two Weeks of 22 Minute Hard Corps | My Review!

First Two Weeks of 22 Minute Hard Corps | My Review!

First off, What is 22 Minute Hard Corps?

This program was created by celebrity trainer Tony Horton who has traveled to dozens of military bases over the years helping troops train to their maximum fitness potential. This lead him to the idea of creating 22 Minute Hard Corps which is based off military boot camp trainings.

22 Minute Hard Corps is an 8-week program at home fitness and nutrition program that can get you in the best shape of your life with just 22 minutes each day, 6 days a week.

Each of 22 Minute Hard Corps’ 3 military-style resistance workouts, 3 cardio workouts, and 2 core workouts are designed to engage every single muscle in your body, from head to toe.
Instead of just working one muscle at a time, each exercise is a compound exercise to engage more muscles at a time and burn way more calories in a much shorter amount of time!

While each workout is only 22 minutes or less, these exercises are designed to be intense to push you to your maximum potential and get the results you want faster. This means you should expect to shaking and dripping with sweat at the end of each one.

So what kind of workouts am I talking about here? I'm talking about a combination of interval training and circuit training.

Interval Training – Interval training involves alternating bursts of intense activity with intervals of lighter activity. For example, you might run in place for 10 seconds, then drop down and do 15 pushups, all for a period of 2-3 minutes. This might be followed by 20 seconds of jogging in place to briefly lower your heart rate. Then, you’ll repeat this several times before moving on to the next exercise.
Circuit Training – Closely related to interval training, circuit training generally involves quickly moving from one exercise to another which often involves both cardiovascular exercise and weight training. In the instance of 22 Minute Hard Corps, this entails the use of resistance band or a pull up bar and dumbbells or a sand bag.

From an ease of use perspective, while circuit training tends to be less intense than interval training, neither would probably be your first choice if you’re overweight, and/or if it’s been a long time since you last exercised. Also, if you have painful joints or a bad back, this might not be the ideal program for you.

What are some exercises to expect with this program?

I don't want to give away too many details but here's a little info just to give you an idea.

So for each workout there is virtually no warm up. With that being said, there is a short Cold Start workout you can do as a warm up if you choose. This means that once you push play, it is game on and you're starting the workout right away.

Some of the exercises in the program are T- Jacks, Bear Crawls, Lateral Shuffles, Forward Lunge Twists, Basic Burpees, Frog Burpees, A-Skips, Run Lunge Squats, Rock The Boats, Gorilla Crawls, Push Ups, Pull Ups, Chopper Lunges, Mountain Climbers, Jimmie Jumps, etc - just to name a few as there are WAY WAY WAY more exercises than just that.

Even though this isn't technically a warm up with these workouts there is always a cool down with the cardio and resistance workouts.

My thoughts so far?

Well Day 1 started just like every other Beachbody program I do. I step on the scale and take my starting weight, BMI, body fat percentage, body water percentage, and bone mass percentage. Then, I use a timer app on my phone to take all of my before pictures from all types of angles. I finish by grabbing my body tape measure and taking all of my body measurements and writing them down so that I can refer to them later. It is so important not to skip these initial steps so that you can fully track your progress along the way and at the end of the program. Do not always just rely on pictures or the scale as some people will lose more pounds than inches and others will lose more inches and pounds.

After I had all that done I had my pre-workout snack, normally a banana, and mentally prepared myself for the next 8 weeks. I am big on self-talk. It does so much more for you than you think. If you keep telling yourself that it's going to be so hard and you don't think you're going to be able to do it, then you will not finish the program and end up quitting early into it. On the other hand, if you keep a positive attitude and tell yourself that even though it is going to be hard, you know you can do it and you will get through it. Once my mind was clear, I got my first workout in.

The cardio workouts in this program were a little harder than I expected from this program mostly because I had just finished up a strength training program before moving on to this program and I hadn't done a lot of cardio based programs in awhile.

The first week I used 5 lb. and 8 lb. weights for the resistance workouts and by week two I was using almost solely the 8 lb. weights for each exercise.

The program didn't arrive in the mail until a few days into my workout so I used Beachbody On Demand to stream my workouts. Anytime you buy a Challenge Pack you get a free 30 day trial of this with your order and you can also sign up for a free 30 day trial at any time too. I love having this feature because I can live stream my workouts any where I am with the app on my phone or my laptop.

I did have to wait a few days to start using the Beachbody Performance Line as that was in my order and clearly I cannot stream workout supplements online haha.

I decided to use just the pre-workout formula first for a week so that I could feel the results from just that one supplement alone. The pre-workout supplement is called Energize. It's lemon flavored and you just mix one scoop of it with 8 ounces of water - it literally just tastes like lemon water. It actually tasted pretty good, I was very impressed. If you are over 160 lbs, you would need to use two scoops and mix it with 16 ounces of water. It is best to drink this within 30 minute before you start your exercise. Energize is designed to "help improve intense exercise performance, increase energy and endurance, and sharpen focus and reaction time". When I first read that I thought it was a little too good to be true but it really does live up to all of that.

The first day I tried Energize I was completely impressed. I sweat just as much but I was able to perform the exercises much quicker and with more power than I normally could and I noticed that I didn't breath as heavy. After trying it for almost a week straight before each exercise I was really happy that I decided to try it. However, I wanted to put it to the test to see that it was really working and it wasn't just me getting stronger so I decided to do my last workout of week 2 without drinking Energize first.

So I started the workout without drinking the pre-workout and about half way throw I felt just as tired as I did at the end of the workout on Day 1. Then, I was down to about 7 minutes left in the workout and I was really out of breath and already getting sore compared to how I was feeling the last few days when I was taking it. At the end of the workout I was whooped. I had to modify a few exercises which I hadn't had to do since starting Energize and my form was not as good as it had been previously.

While I was totally bummed about my performance for the workout, I was so happy that I decided to really put it to the test by not taking the pre-workout for a day. Now, I am a million percent convinced by the stuff! I am hooked on Energize, I highly recommend it and I don't think I will ever do another workout without it again!