I am exactly at the halfway point of my 4 week membership to Kosama (a boot camp fitness center). Good news is they haven’t killed me yet. Bad news is that I hurt all over.

Let’s back up.

At our old house, I worked out in our basement either doing DVDs, the elliptical machine or workouts that I’d pull out of magazines. Or if the weather was nice, I’d go outside and run/walk with Samson.

Well at the new house, things haven’t exactly been conducive to formal exercising. Our basement is pretty much being used for storage and so the elliptical is shoved in the corner, the DVDs are buried in a box somewhere and right now it’s too cold to go outside. So I needed something else.

I had heard about Kosama and other boot camp programs on the radio and such, and they sounded great, but hadn’t really investigated them seriously. Then one morning I saw that Living Social was having a deal: pay $40 and get 4 weeks of unlimited classes, a t-shirt, pre and post fitness assessment, yoga mat and kickboxing gloves. Seemed pretty good but I wanted to do my research first. Turns out, a normal 8 week session is $350. I’d say $40 was a pretty good deal!

So I jumped on it and enrolled in the November session.

On 10/30, I went for my pre-fitness assessment. They took measurements, weighed us, determined body fat, took before pictures and put us through the paces on various fitness tests (push ups, crunches, wall squats, pull ups, flexibility, and planks). It was all recorded and saved so that when we do the post-fitness assessment, we can see what progress we’ve made.

The very first class was plyometrics. Now, I consider myself to be pretty fit. As previously mentioned, I work out 5 days a week plus play volleyball once a week (twice a week in the summer). But I’m not going to lie to you. After the first 10 minutes of this plyo class I thought I was going to die. It was basically an hour of jumping various ways.

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And the next day I was so incredibly sore. It hurt to walk. To drive. To type. To breathe.

Yet, it felt good because I knew I had done something good for my body (no pain, no gain right?).

Did I mention that I go to the 5 a.m. class? That means I’m up everyday at 4:30 a.m. and getting my ass kicked from 5-6.

What can I say, I’m a glutton for punishment.

How it works is that they rotate amongst 7 different workouts:

• plyometrics
• kickboxing
• kettlebells
• upper body
• lower body
• circuit
• yoga

The middle 5 are mixed up every week so it’s always something different, and then Tuesday is always plyo and Saturday is always yoga. They have mercy and give you Sunday off.

Last week, Mon. – Fri. was circuit, plyo, kickboxing, circuit,  kickboxing. This week was upper body, plyo, kettlebells, kickboxing, circuit. And no two routines are the same.

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What can I say – it’s a great workout. I’ve pretty much accepted the fact that some part of my body will hurt for the entire month on November. I sure as hell better see some results too. And it doesn’t hurt that Jeff, the manager of the location I go to is easy on the eyes. So when I’m halfway through a minute of burpees, I can look at his bulging biceps and feel a tad better. They also have women coaches who walk around and both encourage and correct form. That part has been great because a few exercises I thought I had the form perfect on, they gave me a few tips which made it that much more effective.

The question I’ve been asked over and over is if it’s worth paying full price for. I would honestly say no. While I love being pushed and working my body in new ways everyday, I’m not sure I’d pay $175 a month for it. However, if they ever do another Living Social/Groupon type deal again, jump on it. It was definitely worth the $40.

I’ll give a full report of my before/after results at the end of the month and let you know my final reviews!

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