There’s a place here in town called Better Bodies, that is offering 30 days of boot camp for $30. Plus, you can avail yourself of their yoga, power yoga, Pilates, and spin classes for free while you’re in the boot camp. Plus, you can even try it all for free for the first two weeks! One of my best friends has been doing a different boot camp for almost a month, and she looks great and really likes it. But hers costs more, and is held at the park- outside in Tucson, in the summer!- so I was reluctant to join her there. I want to get fit, not die of heatstroke.
Have any of you ever joined an exercise program like this? If so, how horrible was it? Do you have to already be kind of fit just to get through it? Did you throw up every time? That is one of my worst fears- my friend says lots of people throw up in hers- ugh. Please share.
Find out if they have different camps for varied fitness levels.
If they’re throwing beginners in with the advanced and just expecting people to “do or die”, stay away.
Working out hard enough to vomit is counter-productive. You’re not working out, you’re competing which can actually tear down fitness.
A friend of mine has just done a 12-session bootcamp over 6 weeks (two sessions a week).
She was already fit, going to the gym on a daily basis and hiking in the hills on weekends. And it’s the middle of winter over here so she was doing it in the cold and the rain and all sorts of weather.
She loved it to bits. Says it’s the best thing she’s ever done, she’s got muscles she couldn’t feel before. But she says she’s puked so many times while doing it, but while she says she feels brilliant after the session is done, that really puts me off. I’m almost phobic of puking.
Preach it, sister. I would think that prolonged puking would be bad for you, too. I will definitely have to pre-investigate the puking part previous to partaking.
The throwing up is a concern. I did a 10 week extreme bodyshaping course involving kickboxing, and I was really in no kind of shape (maybe going to the gym once a week and walking a treadmill). Basically, 6 workouts a week, half high-intensity cardio, half resistance raining. It was quite tough but I got through it and it was a good experience. There were a few times I got to the point of being so exhausted I had to sit in my car awhile before driving home, that sort of thing. Still, that was rare and for the most part the worst thing was some general soreness and a few minor injuries.
Some years later. both my sisters and also my brother-in-law are instructors for this program . They think it’s great and they are pretty serious about it. I’m very confident that their response would be, to a program where people are vomiting on a regular basis, surprise and alarm. Why is that happening? Are the facilities inadequate and hot? Are people being driven past a reasonable point of exertion? Do they mandate a diet that, in combination with the exercise plan, is inadequate? Now, discomfort of various kinds is par for the course in what they do – one runs marathons now – but the idea of taking people brand new to exercise and working them to the point of vomiting on a regular basis tends to indicate unreasonably risky behavior. It’s one thing if people occasionally go a little too far and feel dizzy. That happened to me a few times – the heat of the gloves and wraps probably didn’t help. But this sounds several orders of magnitude worse.
Now, real boot camp is different. I’m guessing instructors are more adequately trained, and further, recruits are medically screened ahead of time. They’re also, you know, training for combat and potentially facing extreme and dire situations. It makes sense to take the risk in that context. I don’t think it passes the sniff test to be exposing people to that sort of risk in a fitness class.
I don’t know what the exact circumstances are that led to puking in my friend’s case, she said a few people in her group puked at various times. But it definitely wasn’t heat stress, because at the times she was going it was dawn/pre dawn in Australia in Winter. So not freezing or icy, but temperatures down around 1-4 degrees C, frequently raining or just drizzling.
I have done two different boot camps. One of them I loved and one of them I ended up quitting about halfway through.
I was in worse shape at the beginning of the one I loved. The main difference between the two was the structure. In the one I loved, we had squadrons with leaders and a team mentality. A lot of the exercises were team related and the others on your squad kept you motivated. I did things I couldn’t imagine before-hand that I was capable of doing. I also gained muscles I never knew I had and was sore in places I didn’t know I had muscles.
The second boot camp I did was more of a ramped up exercise class. It just didn’t motivate me and I lost interest pretty quickly.
I guess what I am saying is, go take a look at a class. See how they run it. Give it a try and if you don’t like it, look for another one. Most boot camps have some kind of entry special.
FWIW, I never threw-up at either boot camp. I do have pretty bad asthma. Both of the camps were understanding of my medical limitations and never asked me to go outside of what was safe for me, personally.
I did one three years ago. Ended up flaring up my tennis elbow with the tricep dips, and another lady snapped her Achilles. I think these kinds of programs work best with people already in pretty good shape, even though that sounds silly. Trying to whip a couch potato body into shape in a few weeks is a sure fire way to get yourself injured.
I’ve done a “boot camp” for the last 3 years. It’s really a very varied exercise class, and you can push as hard or not hard as you are able. The instructor(s) do encourage you to progress, increasing weight or speed or length of time for a particular exercise, but you don’t have to, and puking is NOT the name of the game. There’s loud bouncy music, a fun instructor, and a good group of people. They have classes for women only, and some mixed classes too.
We do a different routine every day, which is great. Some days are aerobic focused, some are weight focused, sometimes legs or upper body or abs, sometimes a little of everything. They use free weights, weight machines, bench press, heavy kick bags, bands, balls (heavy medicine & big exercise), and we work both outdoors and inside. They also have some diet and meal planning help. I FEEL great, though the scale doesn’t show much difference. I also haven’t changed my eating habits much either.
I joined to get fitter for riding (horses) and because I like good food. Alas, as I will be 50 in Nov, eating what I like w/out working harder is not an option anymore, thus the class.
My girly loves her boot camp classes. Of course she was in shape when she started them. It’s not like the instructor has a whip, if you feel overexerted to the point you are going to vomit, you can take a break. She says it’s pretty typical for people to need to take little breaks during the classes. I’d recommend doing it, it’s a great way to get and stay in shape, and it’s a bit less monotonous than lots of exercise routines.
I did Navy Reserve boot camp - not exercise specific but it was pretty intense and three people in my unit flunked. September in New Orleans, so it was hot and humid.
I also did a boot camp thing at a fitness place about nine years ago…not as intense but I was definitely sore between workouts! I am pretty fit and didn’t do it for weight loss so much as giving myself a kick in the arse.
I have a friend who joined Curves, and then ended up working there. She was (and is) very large, and ended up not losing much weight, but gaining a whole lot of flexibility, strength and endurance. I did the Curves circuit and was surprised by how much of a workout it was - I thought it would be sort of wussy. IMHO, something like that is more sustainable in the long run, won’t make you throw up, and is cheap too.
