Boot Camp Day 1

I went to my first day of bootcamp today!  Thanks to my super-awesome friend who gave me a free month.  I'm doing this one: Fit Body Boot Camp - Unstoppable Fitness Formula.

They are a chain (franchise), and I'm going to my local chapter.

They are open 6 days a week, and run anywhere from 3 (Saturday) to 10 (Mon-Thurs) workouts a day.  Each day is a specific workout - Monday is legs and Abs, Tuesday is Biceps and Triceps, Wednesday is Back, Shoulders and Core, etc.  And they introduce new exercises each week, so the workouts are constantly changing and challenging the muscles in new ways.

Today I went to a morning "Biceps and Triceps" class.  It was a blast.  They have 10 different exercises, 3 sets of each, with cardio intervals in between.  The exercises include fun things like ropes and TRX training. 
(If you're wondering what TRX training is, it's this:

 

It's one of the things I miss most with my home workouts - there's just something so playground-fun about TRX training.)

There were 2 trainers rotating around to keep us on track, yell at us if we were slacking, check our form, etc. They were totally doing a good cop/bad cop thing - one yelled at us and the other cheered us on.

Here's my take:

• The number of people and self-selection of weights means that the workout is as hard as you make it.  I saw a couple of people who were taking way more breaks than they should have been to get a really good workout.  (Near the end, we were doing sprints across the parking lot outside and had to pause to let a car go by.  I was the *only* one who ran in place while waiting, until bad cop yelled at everyone else to do the same.)
• The workouts are 45 minutes long, and you're really going that whole time (assuming you don't give yourself extra breaks!).  The "warmup" is really pretty intense - you really jump right in, and there is no cooldown or stretching.
• The soft/bouncy mat surface is excellent.  There is a lot of jumping, but it felt pretty easy on my knees.  Of course, we'll see how I feel after 6 days in a row, but this is a good start.  
• BUT, 45 minutes to work biceps and triceps?  I have never worked a single body part so thoroughly, so it'll be interesting to see what that does, but it also doesn't seem that efficient to me.  SO, we'll see how I end up feeling about that after doing a full week (and my whole body).

Overall, this workout is different enough from what I've been doing that I'm going to take a good set of before pics.  I'm curious if the super-thorough working of each muscle group will give me different muscle tone than I have now.  I'm also excited to be doing this just because it's going to be with a friend - that part will be fun.  At this point I think this is probably not for me long-term - it just takes too much time - basically an hour including drive time and a little extra stretching - vs. my 1/2 hour workouts at home (yay Beachbody! and especially 21 Day Fix Extreme).  But we'll see.  30 days is a long time, and I just finished day 1.