I’d like to thank Billy Blanks and his Tae Bo routine for introducing me to fitness crazes. I was in middle school, and our gym teacher somehow got away screening the VHS series during gym class for an entire unit. No intro, no explanation, no actual teaching required.

She would set up the projector in the gym, turn off the lights and hit play, barking at a group of twenty-five self-conscious suburban kids to karate-chop-slash-dance around the gym while wearing our itchy, polyester blue and gold gym uniforms. None of us had any idea what we were doing, and I remember wondering why the teacher wasn’t following along with Billy. Doesn’t she want to get those abs? I am getting those abs.

America’s obesity epidemic endured, but my love for over-hyped fitness routines was born.

After college, when I was living in the East Village, my roommate’s girlfriend told me about a new craze aptly called INSANITY, and how her friend had gone from zero to hero by following the program. All I needed to hear was the phrase “washboard abs” and before I knew what was happening, I had ordered the set of DVDs. Three to five business days later, a brown cardboard box arrived with INSANITY stamped on the cover in what can only be described as prison font. Looking at the box, I could feel my defined abs beginning to emerge.

The box containing my new abs.

At dawn the next morning, I attempted to do the first workout in our living room until I discovered our downstairs neighbor had other thoughts on the matter. Turns out, she was not thrilled about me discovering my six-pack, at least not right above her head at 7:00 AM on a Saturday. Fair point.

Plan B? Somehow convincing my roommate to join me in Tompkin’s Square Park for early morning workouts. I would balance my white Macbook on an overturned rusty garbage can and the two of us would pant and sweat and frog jump all over the empty basketball court while pedestrians tried to ignore how ridiculous we looked. Every time the impossibly chiseled host Shaun T would scream “DIG DEEPER!” into the camera, we would yell back we were digging, Shaun. And we did, for a whole week.

Like most people (right? most people? back me up on this), I fall in and out of these crazes. I work out religiously for a while, start to feel amazing, see myself beginning to almost, maybe look in shape…and then I get so proud of all my hard work I promptly take the next six to nine months off to celebrate with pizza and beer. Slowly, I begin to realize I haven’t done anything in way too long, remember how I’m supposed to be working on those abs, hear about the next fitness craze, and jump right back in. Rinse and repeat.

The only wave I’ve missed in the last decade has been Crossfit — and believe me, I’m just as shocked as you are. But I could never justify (ok fine, afford) paying that much money for the privilege of throwing used tires around and darting down a city block dodging unsuspecting commuters. I know it would get me the abs of my dreams, but unless their “Boxes” also doubled as apartments for me to live in the rest of the month, it wasn’t exactly an option.

Which is why when I started seeing a friend post on Facebook about doing something called Freeletics, I was intrigued.

Abs on abs on abs.

If you spend time on the Freeletics website or fall into a YouTube spiral, you’ll find stories of people purporting to follow this program for fifteen weeks, through rain or shine, sweating and grunting and yelling and doing pull-ups on various objects in parks all over the world. From what I can tell, rain seems to be an integral part of the program — there are lots of videos of people working out in parks, in the rain, and somehow filming themselves. And at the end of the fifteen weeks? They come out with — you guessed it — a gleaming, rock hard twelve-pack.

A workout program that looked just as intense as Crossfit and as ridiculously insane as INSANITY? And I’d finally get those abs of steel I’ve been looking for? And I could do it in the park? And it was free? Sold.

Shockingly, I found out Freeletics is technically only free if you want to string together the exercises yourself. And despite my years of attempting to follow workout routines and hours spent reading about various plans I swore I’d begin the following day, I still have no idea what I’m doing. So, true to form, I plugged in my credit card info and paid $30 for the digital coach.

Where you can find me looking like a crazy person most mornings.

Hoping for rain, the first morning I went to the track at the park along the river in Newark, and again looked slightly insane consulting my phone, powering through a series of exercises as quickly as possible and then tapping my phone to record my time for each. The program incentivizes you to strive to beat your previous time for each exercise, and awards you with a blue Personal Best sticker to be displayed on a newsfeed filled with other people’s stats who are probably looking just as insane running and burpee-ing all over their neighborhood park. I had finally found my people.

I’m now on my second week of the workout plan, and despite almost pulling a entire soccer goal down on my head (apparently it will not support my body weight and therefore is not a great place to do pull-ups), and having yet to work out in the rain whilst filming myself, I am mostly nailing it. I feel good. I think I’m starting to see results. I’ve told everyone in my life they should join. Which is about the time I usually bail.

So instead of bailing, I’m writing this post. I’ve comitted to completing fifteen weeks of workouts, which by my calculations means I will be able to wash clothes using only my stomach by March 18. I’m probably not going to write about it again (I want the the unveiling of my Mark Wahlberg-inspired billboard over Times Square to be a surprise), but if you want to check in and hold me accountable over the next three and a half months, I’d appreciate it. (Even better, if you want to join me, do it!)

In the meantime, I’ll be at the park looking like a lunatic and attempting to film myself in the rain.