RushFit Review

The following is an honest account of my experiences using the RushFit Training Series by Georges St Pierre and Erik Owings.

Note: If you have any questions about RushFit please leave me a comment at the bottom of the page and I will do my best to answer them.

Contents

About Me
What is Rushfit?
Who Is Georges St-Pierre?
Who is Erik Owings?
What you get
The Fitness Test
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
My Diet
My Workout Space
What I Thought Of It
Testimonials
Pros
Cons
And Lastly…

About Me

Hi I’m Brendan a 26 year old living just outside of Manchester, England. I have been training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for two years at the time of writing and recently started training MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) about six months ago when my gym invested in a full sized cage and accompanying boxing ring.

I train because I enjoy it more than going to a regular gym and working out because I enjoy learning something new while I exercise but I also train to try and get fit. When I graduated from The University of Bolton in 2007 at the age of 21 I weighed in at 12 stones 12 lbs (180 pounds) and I consider that looks wise to be the best shape I’ve been in my life and I wasn’t even exercising regularly, I put that down to being 21 and having the ridiculously fast metabolism like most pre 21 year olds have.

To cut a very long story short I had a go-karting accident on holiday in Teneriffe when I was 22 and subsequently had to spend a month in bed when I returned home. During this time my weight jumped up to 13 stones 7 lbs. I tried to loose this weight for three years to no avail. Then I was ill for two weeks over Christmas 2010 and my weight swelled to 14 stones (196 lbs) from doing nothing and eating a lot of fatty and sugary foods, as everyone does over the festive period. So when I realised how big I’d gotten I vowed to get back down to 13 stones.

The mere fact that I’d started training and walking to work again once I felt better helped my weight just about get back down to 13 stones 7 lbs again (191 lbs) in about 2 months but I was still struggling to loose that elusive 7 lbs that I had put on from my accident on holiday. No matter what I did it wouldn’t budge and stayed where it was. It was then I saw a trailer for RushFit on YouTube.

Even though it looked really good I resisted purchasing it for 5 months thinking I would grin and bare it and loose the weight somehow. It was only when the Strength and Conditioning class at my gym was cancelled due to me being one of only four people turning up for it that I decided to give Rushfit a try.

What is RushFit?

According to the website RushFit is The ultimate home fitness program: 8 short weeks of training with Georges St-Pierre and his trainer Erik Owings. Georges brings his training camp right into your home – workout with GSP and find out what intensity really means. You’ll gain strength and lean out in less time and be in the best shape of your life. The total package of training, nutrition, and guidance provided direct by Georges St-Pierre. All the plans and support to help you achieve your training goals.

Who is Georges St. Pierre?

Georges St. Pierre is often referred to as GSP, is a Canadian mixed martial artist and the current Welterweight Champion of the UFC. GSP is ranked as the number one Welterweight in the world by numerous publications. He has been named Canadian Athlete of the year in 2008, 2009, and 2010 by Sportsnet. He has been described by many including UFC president Dana White as the most athletic man in Mixed Martial Arts.

Who is Erik Owings?

Erik Owings is one of GSP’s trainers and owner of Mushin Martial Arts Academy in New York.

He spent two years training in Brazil when he decided he wanted to learn Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu so he upped sticks and went off to train with some of the best grappler’s in the world. When you do some of the workouts you notice that a lot of them are applicable for BJJ as well as Mixed Martial Arts and general fitness such as the Kimura sit up.

He then turned his attention to Mixed Martial Arts acting as a personal trainer to fund his own professional MMA career from what I’ve managed to find on by searching on the internet. Here is his first professional MMA fight from the now defunct International Fight League fighting for Renzo Gracie’s New York Pitbulls and winning by Guillotine Choke at around the 2:50 mark in the video. He now focuses on personal training full time (including MMA fighters).

What You Get

I ordered the set on a Sunday and it had arrived at my house the following Monday morning which I thought was very impressive as it was dispatched from Canada and was delivered in my house in 6 working days. I quickly opening the box and was presented with six dvd’s (containing seven workouts in total), a nutrition guide, 3 workout calenders – beginner + intermediate + advanced, and finally a getting started guide.

The Fitness Test

I wanted to do the fit test as soon as possible so I popped in the DVD and away I went. The fit test has you do as many squats, press-ups, sit ups and burpees as you can for 60 seconds each and record your totals. Now I should point out that before I did this test I considered myself to be in reasonable shape, not so according to the test as I barely managed half of what St Pierre did on some of the exercises.

My results – Air Squats 58 Push-Ups 30 Sit-Ups 25 Burpees 12

St Pierres – Air Squats 75 Push-Ups 57 Sit-Ups 55 Burpees 22

I tried to then do the first workout DVD on the beginners program The Strength and Endurance Workout. I tried to keep up with Georges and others as best I could but I was too tired to do them both that day.

Week 1

One thing is apparently from the first time you see one of the workout DVD’s in action, it is actually GSP’s trainer Erik Owings (who is a Renzo Gracie Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Blackbelt and an MMA fighter in his own right for you MMA fans out there) that has designed this training program. You can tell this due to in depth knowledge of why every exercise from the warm ups to the warm down is important and what it helps improve.

I don’t recall ever being so sore after a workout than I felt when I woke up on the fourth day after doing the first two workouts. The Fight Conditioning workout nearly killed me I’ve never been so drenched in sweat in my entire life. The Abdominal Strength & Core Conditioning DVD comes in a close second though, some of those exercises makes my abdomen burns with pain. You know what they say, no pain, no game. Bring on week 2!

Weight Lost 2 lbs

Week 2

It has only been two weeks and I can already see a bit of a physique forming. This is really excites me and has really kept me motivated to keep going. It’s hard to keep doing something that takes up your evenings six days a week when you work full time so anything that can keep you motivated is a very good thing.

I’m starting to get used to working out every day now and I’m really enjoying it, strangely I find myself looking forward to going home from my job so I can workout, I’m not sure what to think of this as it is very odd for me to be excited about keeping fit.

Weight Lost 2 lbs

Week 3

I’m into week three of the program and I’m starting to find the talking in the warm up slightly tedious. I really wish they had made more of an effort to record one warm up for each workout DVD. The warm down doesn’t bother me because they barely talk in it, plus it only lasts about five minutes. I feel I’m well and truly into the grind of doing this workout program now. I keep feeling like I want to have a day off to rest but I’m pushing through. I’m really close to my ideal weight and I can see the end in sight.
Weight Lost 1 lbs

Week 4

I’m now 1lb from my goal of being 13 stones / 182 pounds.
Weight Lost 1 lbs

Week 5

Weight Lost 1 lbs

My Diet

I wasn’t following the diet that is outlined in the nutrition guide, though I did take some handy tips from it. My diet consisted of eating 3 main meals a day, or splitting my lunch up into two smaller meals (such as a bagel with some protein and a salad) and having 4 meals a day with a maximum of 2 pieces of fruit (like apples, bananas, and oranges) as a snack if I felt hungry at work in the afternoons. I also used a handy tip from Tim Ferris’s book The 4 Hour Body and had a cheat day once a week where I could eat anything I wanted to reset my metabolic rate, so I then burnt off more energy during the week as the longer you diet the more your metabolism slows down which is why typically you loose more weight at the beginning of a diet. Personally I don’t like the idea of dieting I’d rather change my eating habits once and for all gradually than crash diet to loose the weight and then put it all back on again once I stop dieting, which happens a lot with a large percentage of dieters.

A typical day would see me have either a bowl of cereal or 3 or 4 scrambled eggs on a bagel for breakfast, a sandwich or a salad for dinner, and a main meal for dinner. Drinking plenty of cold water helped a lot as well, I’ve read your body has to burn energy to heat the water up to your body temperature so it speeds up your metabolic rate but I drank it to help fill me up before and after meals (and in between).

My Workout Space

I have noticed a big concern on forums and messageboards where people are worried that they don’t have enough room to do the workouts for RushFit in their homes. I moved my sofa back against the wall and I had a 2 metre by 1 metre square to work in and that was ample space, even for the Fight Conditioning DVD which requires you step forward, backwards, left and right while performing Boxing combinations and kicking.

Here is a photo of my workout space as proof that you don’t need as much space as you think.

What I Thought of It

Here are what I felt are the pros and cons of using the RushFit training series after I completed it.

Pros

- RushFit got me fitter than anything I’ve ever done before (including an MMA Strength and Conditioning class at my gym)

- I can do the exercises in my house instead of going outside (I live in England and it’s only sunny one day a year)

- The workouts are a lot of fun

- Erik (Owings) explains how the workouts help really well.

- Seeing GSP struggle with some exercises, and cheat sometimes helps keep you motivated when you feel tired.

- Watching GSP get told off by Erik for cheating is quite amusing.

- The cool down stops you from being too sore the day after a workout (after the first week of course).

- It makes working out more entertaining because you aren’t doing the same workout every day.

- My endurance has improved tenfold.

Cons

- All seven workouts have the exact same warm up video so the talking gets really boring after a while, I wished they would have filmed 7 different versions.

- There is 1 exercise that is impossible to do on the Fight Conditioning DVD if you have a carpeted floor. It is the one where you have to pull your body flat along the floor on your stomach and then pop up into a standing position. So I just did the last pop up part of the exercise.

- It’s hard work and will make you sweat more than you ever have before

Testimonials

Here is an independent review of RushFit.

“Overall, GSP Rushfit Strength & Endurance Workout proves to be an exhausting but rewarding routine and I highly recommend it.” – T. Raliben

And Lastly…

If you have any questions about RushFit please let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Good luck with Rushfit if you decide to undertake it – break the program down into weeks and aim to loose 1lb per week which is a very manageable goal – and you’ll be well on your way.

Cheers, and thanks for taking the time to read my review of GSP’s training program!