Are the workouts we find from Pinterest worth pinning?

There’s no doubt about it; I love Pinterest. I love how organizational it is, and the interface gives me that feeling you get when you receive a surprise bouquet of flowers- utter joy. I mean, look at it. Aren’t my Pinterest boards beautiful?

I have found a great many wonderful things from Pinterest. With the new year ringing in, I’ve noticed a lot of the people I follow have been pinning to their “workout boards.” I, personally, have never had the desire to pin workouts because I have my regimen and it works for me. I’m a huge fan of Zuzana, originally from Bodyrock.tv. When she quit Bodyrock, I followed her to when she started posting her own videos on YouTube. Those videos she calls Zuzana’s Workout of the Week – ZWOW. They’re free and quite honestly, most of them are REALLY HARD. I started doing them about twice a week a few months ago and noticed my body becoming more tone and cut. I had my first fitness revelation when Matt, Zach, our roommate, and I decided to go for a night hike into the inner basin of the San Francisco Peaks. It’s not a particularly rigorous hike, but it isn’t a walk in the park kind of hike either. The entire time I was about 20 feet ahead of Matt and Zach and felt like we were going too slow. On the way back down, I decided to run it which was crazy for me because I haven’t done something like that since I injured my knee almost 3 years ago. So I ran down the mountain in the pitch black, just Bowie and I.

Had I been running prior to that? Nope. The only thing I had been doing workout-wise was a ZWOW on Tuesday and Thursday and lifting on Monday and Wednesday every week. That’s when I realized the full potential of high intensity interval training which is what Zuzana’s workouts are. Since then, I haven’t gone back to running or spinning. To be quite frank, all these workouts that pop up in my Pinterest feed actually look pathetic compared to the ZWOWs I’ve been doing.

But my curiosity continued, with each workout pinned, to the point of me asking the people who pin them, “Have you been doing these workouts?”

I came to find out that the majority hadn’t even tried one of them. They were “saving them for later.”

This sparked something in me when the new year started. Since we’re all pinning most of the same things anyway, why don’t we do these workouts together? This way, you’re not just pinning them to save for later. You’re actually getting up off your butt, doing them and deciding if they’re worth keeping or not. If you don’t want to join me and would rather keep them pinned in a board you’ll, let’s be honest, probably never come back to, that’s fine. But I challenge you in 2013 to find time to do these workouts with me and compare times and/or how we feel.

So let’s get started! I’m like Monica when she’s trying to help Chandler lose weight for all you Friends fans out there. “I am the energy train and you are on board! Woo Woo!”

Here’s a workout I’ve been seeing on Pinterest a lot lately, so I figured we would start with this one from Back on Pointe.

My time: 06:48 (I took the water breaks because I’m Type A and must follow instructions! Your choice to skip them or not.)
Amount of Burpees I did at the end: 10 and honestly, who would ever want to do more than 10 burpees at a time?
Difficulty: Easy
Will I do this again? No.
Notes: This workout is great if you’re just starting out or if you have limited time and need to squeeze something quick in. I would rename this as Light Cardio (with a C).

Now it’s your turn! Make sure you beat my time and then tell me what it is in the comments! Let’s motivate each other! Woo Woo!