Month: June 2009

Day 10 – P80X!

Shoulders and arms

10% may not sound like a lot but when I started this thing I was doubtful that I would be able to make the first week!

I haven’t been feeling very well today, my stomach is very sore for some reason, I have cramping and bloating. I am trying to think if it was something I ate over the last few days or maybe it is some kind of stomach bug. Either way, today has not been fun at all. I was having serious doubts about my ability to do shoulders and arms but as usual I thought I would start and see how I felt.

How I felt was like throwing up. My stomach was incredibly painful at times, but I managed to make it through the workout, even managed to add some weight to the reps from last week. I tried to settle my stomach with some antacids but nothing seemed to work. It feels like food poisoning however I haven’t thrown up like I do when that happens. I am wondering if this is what an ulcer feels like…

I can’t really say much more, the workout was difficult enough with the extra weight never mind battling a sore stomach. I also did not do the Ab Ripper today, it was simply not going to happen!

Day 9 – World’s Biggest Headache

P90X - Chews on your fitness and spits you out
P90X - Chews on your fitness and spits you out

I don’t want this to turn into a blog about how much pain I am in or what hurts day to day but I think it is valuable to know that this is not a walk in the park. I know my motivation for reading P90X blogs is to find out how that person managed the process, if they skipped workouts and of course, to hear them complain about how they are in so much pain it hurts to blink. It does however seem unavoidable. Today was Plyometrics part 2 so of course I am going to complain. Satan, or Tony as he likes to call himself, says Plyo is the mother of all workouts. Well, I agree in part, it’s a mother alright. All day today I have had a massive headache, and for some reason my stomach has been really upset. Maybe it was the bar food I ate on Saturday catching up with me but for me to have a headache is actually quite unusual. Needless to say I have been in  a foul mood and my prediction up until the end of the work day was that I would likely skip the workout. On the way home I decided that no matter how bad I felt, I would at least try to get through and see what happened. What’s the worst that could happen? I would do a sub par workout and fell like garbage? Even that is better than not doing anything, right? Like I always say, Something beats nothing every time!

I got home, had a quick bite to eat and decided to try and sleep off my headache. I woke at about 630 and was amazed to find I felt much better. So, water in hand I decided to go to the basement and get the work done. After all, I know it is only an hour and you can do anything for an hour can’t you? It is week 2 and I am trying hard not to dwell on the fact that I feel like a rottweilers chew toy. I am hoping that tomorrow after a good night’s sleep I will feel better and ready to continue. I am having a hard time believing that I will make it through the week but one day at a time I’ll do my best.

The warmup for Plyo is a good workout in itself. Once you start getting into the different elements the time really starts to fly. Each section is divided into 4 exercises which you repeat twice making it varied and challenging and not at all boring. It also gives you the opportunity to try harder the second time around, so if you only managed to get to 20 seconds of one move or if it was maybe too difficult the first time, you have a second shot at it not only to improve your form but also to fill out that last few seconds. Those last few seconds are where the money is!

I mentioned I think that my hip flexors are completely screwed. I can do a few minutes of movements but the fatigue comes so quickly and the weakness is so debilitating that it is making some of the work a real challenge. There is a movement called swing kicks where you have to lift your feet over the back of a chair and back almost like a crescent kick. At first I was easily able to do the 30 seconds, but now I am really struggling with the height of my kicks. I think it is because so much of the P90X program relies on strong hip flexors, from the Ab Ripper to the Kenpo and the Plyo there is just so much strain placed on them. I also have to agree that strong hip flexors are a staple of a strong core and are very much overlooked by most training programs and even most personal trainers. Kids at gym with strong hip flexors are able to perform at a significantly higher level than those who don’t and we see it all the time.

The workout was tough, I was struggling throughout and even though my headache was gone I felt like a giant bag of crap. I am managing to do the full time on most of the exercises and although that sounds like a real underachiever you have to understand the difficulty level involved. Some of the jump turns I find hard because they hurt my back, I have a difficult time switching from a full lunge one direction to a full lunge the other way in a single jump. I do have to say though when you get to the end of the workout to the sport bonus section is it fun since you know there are only a few minutes left and you can have a bit of fun with it. Faking shooting basketballs may sound a little idiotic but when you have just spent the last 45 minutes setting your quads on fire ANYTHING is a welcome break. I made it through, although I am not sure how much pain I am in for tomorrow. I just hope this stomach ache goes away and I can settle back into my diet regime again. I think that is why I am so tired, my body isn’t getting what it needs to develop the kind of energy level I require.

Plyometrics. I hate it, but I love it.

Day 8 – Week 2 already!!!

Crunchy Frog will take you there
Crunchy Frog will take you there

Chest and Back.

Week 2 here we go! Only 82 more days to go!

I awoke this morning feeling like someone had thrown up in my mouth for me. It was a truly disgusting feeling that I could easily have predicted had I thought about it. I was too busy bidding on Versace and David Beckham cologne to realize that in just a short few hours all the garbage food I put into my body would literally revolt on me. It was my own fault, nobody forced me to eat those wings or the meatballs. I need to work on my foresight because I dreaded the idea of having to work out this afternoon. Part 1 of my recovery was to do a quick couple of miles on the treadmill after which I really did feel better. Drank some juice, had a salad for lunch and the memories of spinach dip and nacho chips was fading fast. We went to Costco in the early afternoon and got rained on in the parking lot and then watched some TV until it was time to work out. Nicole requires naps during the day, so once she was napped out it was time to go.

Week 2 – Just do week 1 again apparently. I have included in my files a copy of the schedule for you to check out for yourselves. It’s over to the right in the links section. As you can see, weeks 1-3 are the same then you take a week off but I may do some short strength training in that week it depends on how I feel my progress is coming along.

Today was tough. After the workout was over I have to admit I felt like a bit of a failure. My strength seemed to leave me so soon, I felt like my Ab Rubber X workout was not up to par and I was not as tired as I was last week. However, once I looked at the sheets, I realized I had done more this time around. My chinups were better, my abs were almost 50% of the total workout which blew me away considering how crappy I felt. Speaking of Ab Ripper, I find that I am just too tired to do it at the end of the workout effectively. I may try to work it in at the start after warm up  instead. I am also finding that my affection for Crunchy Frog is diminishing. It is starting to hurt my back doing what are basically horizontal V-Snaps. Besides, I haven’ t ever really noticed frog abs so I am confused as to why we would be doing these! I find that the Fifer Scissors are fine, but doing the bicycles only 2 moves in to the session really taxes my hip flexors and I am at failure very quickly. There are 11 moves, all of which I cannot name off the top of my head and I can do at least a handful of most of them (that sounds like I really suck at abs doesn’t it?). I cannot, for the life of me, do any leg climbers. I am not sure who invented this ridiculous movement or what they were thinking, but I substitute V-Snaps instead since I hold the movement in the highest of contempt and refuse to even attempt to become proficient at it.

I had the same pain in my elbow doing pullups, mostly during bicep involved close grip motion. It doesn’t really hurt doing front grip like we do at gymnastics or doing hammer grip so I can’t really say it is hindering me. It is also in my left arm only which is not the bicep that I tore so it’s a bit of a mystery to me why so painful. As far as numbers of reps go I am almost able to keep up with Tony in the video except of course on the 25 chinups per set. Part of it is because I am using the door hanging chinup bar that I fell off the first time I put it up so I am a little nervous. I do weigh significantly less than I did back when I did that and I have fixed the door frame myself so it should be OK. It just looks a little flimsy. Maybe I should install a solid metal bar instead. However I am past 12 reps on the chinups for some sets, mostly even the second round I am doing 10 per set. That equates to a minimum of 60 unassisted chinups per session. Not bad considering I have never been able to do chinups until this year (until I really tried). They were never a part of my workout routine, mostly because being a young, egomaniacal gym rat you just don’t do bodyweight exercises, they are for girls and the kind of guy who shops at Lululemon, works out in spandex shorts and a cycling top and has a wardrobe full of Abercrombie and Aeropostal shirts. Anyhoo… after the workout I was conmpletely wiped. I lay on the floor of the gym for a good 10 minutes listening to the DVD intro music and wishing I was on the couch. I finally managed to get enough strength back into my arms to get up and head upstairs. Week 2 – Just like week 1 but more painful…

Day 7 – Stretch X

kidrock
The 'Shwa: Bringing Rednecks to The North

Not what you would call a day off really however I did toy with the idea of skipping the stretching and going straight back to day 1. The problem is that I took 2 days off last week due to coaching and as eager as I was to get into my stride again, I thought it would be prudent to follow the program as much as I could regardless. So stretching it was. It was not like Yoga, however it was what I had hoped Yoga would be. It was relaxing, calming, the moves were easy to accomplish but with enough difficulty to challenge anyone. I became painfully aware of my interfering waistline on several occasions. I suppose having a 42 inch waist will do that to you. Couple that with my less than flexible back and some of the stretches I am sure looked more like I was sleeping. The workout turned out to be exactly what I needed. The tightness in my shoulders anb back disappeared, for the first time in a long time I actually felt like my hamstrings stretched after years of thinking they were made from piano wire.

What a perfect way to end the week and a perfect way to stay motivated for the coming week where I will have no days off to ease my way into the workout.

Saturday night was a problem diet-wise. We went to Sonia and Darren’s before going to an Oshawa pub (fingers crossed we might see Kid Rock!) and had a silent auction and fundraiser for the soccer team. Unfortunately I had too many corn chips at Sonia’s and too many meatballs and wings at the pub. I felt sick to my stomach when I woke up on Sunday not only because of the food but mostly because they didn’t serve any of it until 10pm!!!!! We ate our last bite at around 11pm, no wonder I felt like a tub of lard on Sunday. Of course, there is a cure for that… Chest and Back!!

No Kid Rock, just plenty of imitators. Long live the mullet!

Day 6 – DOMS strikes with a vengeance

Every kid I knew growing up either had this poster or desperately wanted it.
Every kid I knew growing up either had this poster or desperately wanted it.

DOMS – Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. This is why when you work out hard you are not sore the next day but rather 2 days later. It is one of those things in the fitness and medical field that is still up for debate as to the cause. You would think that in this age we would pretty much know why the body does certain things. Apparently all that money we pay to the doctors really does go on BMW’s and country clubs! Regardless of the reason, the facts are simple. 2 days ago we did a difficult leg and back workout, and yesterday I was in some discomfort. Today I feel like I have a large hunting knife stuck in my left butt cheek. The pain is excruciating, it is a significant hindrance to my ability to walk and my whole hip/back/pelvic girdle area is seized up like an old Chevy that has been sitting in the rain and the snow since Charlie’s Angels was on the telly. Speaking of which, it is with great sadness that we note the passing of one of the greatest sex symbols of my youth, Farrah Fawcett. I watched Charlie’s Angels in England as a kid with fascination not only at the wonder that was American TV but also because every kid I knew thought that Farrah Fawcett was without a doubt the most beautiful woman in the world. There was no debate, she just was, and she will be missed greatly and remembered fondly.

Back to day 6 though, which means at some point I have to stop bitching and do Kenpo X. The saving grace is that a few years ago I took Kempo Karate (Kempo is the Americanized version of the original Kenpo) classes for a summer and also the P90 program (the beginner Beachbody program) had some karate type components to it when we did that a few years ago. I am not going to say I know what to expect beacause to be honest this program has already given me enough curve balls to prove that they have obviously done their homework in preparing a system to throw you off balance. It’s going to be difficult, it is going to be extremely painful, but in the end that is what I signed up for and I am not going to be beaten by a DVD, I just won’t!!!

So it was just as difficult as I imagined however it was a lot more fun than I imagined and the hour just flew by. Probably knowing I didn’t have to do Ab killer afterwards helped. The workout itself it fairly predicatble, some strking, kicking and blocking along with some complex multiple movements that I wasn’t quite able to master right away. My heart rate was over 130 the whole hour, peaking at almost 150. So far, it was the easiest day of the program simply because the movements didn’t really require advanced balance or strength just endurance and an amount of coordination that anyone should posess. It was easy to do well, in so much as you are able to push yourself hard even if you can’t do the movements exacltly as you are supposed to. Of course, there are enough of each repetition that at the end of the workout you are left with the infamous jelly legs but the workout is enjoyable enough that you don’t really notice. It is the perfect way to end the week especially after such a gruelling start.

Hard to believe it was a week ago that I started this. Although I did have to take the 2 days off, I will make up by not taking the rest day and doing a double on Sunday with a morning run while Nicole is at work at the gym.

Week one done! I would pat myself on the back but my shoulders are too sore to reach back there…

Forced Rest day .. Part Deux

nogymnast

Last day of coaching! WOOHOO!!! A couple of months off to ourselves this should be great!

However, this means no workout tonight which may be a good thing since after yesterday’s Legs and Back (with Ab Killer) both Nicole and I are very sore below the waist. As exciting as that sounds, don’t get all giggly, the fact is that I have had the following conversation several times today:

Why are you limping?
My butt hurts
Why?
I did P90X legs last night
Is that the infomercial one?
Unfortunately, yes.
Why would you do that to yourself?
Honestly? I am starting to wonder…

Just as day 2 taught me, as the day wears on you do not feel better… In fact you get a quite significant increase in pain towards the end of the day. I am expecting that when I stand up to leave  today my butt may very well catch on fire.

I think this would be a good time to demonstrate what my back surgery did to my legs. The only picture I have of my legs prior to the surgery is below. I will take a picture of my legs as they are now today if possible. The upshot of the surgery was that once I was recovered, I had lost approximately 50% of my strength in my right leg. The size difference at the time was shocking, I had lost about 30% of the mass from my quad and I looked just plain bizarre. I can’t even think of an analogy for it, it was just weird. After what is now 8 years of rehab and constant work on the leg, I still have issues with it. I can’t run up steep hills for example, after a few steps my leg gives out. The other really messed up thing with it is that my body has compensated my giving me a strong butt muscle which makes it feel like I am sitting on an enourmous wallet in my back pocket. Anyway, it’s been 8 years now and I haven’t had a single picture taken where you can see my legs. I think it is about time.

By the way, my back injury was caused by a collapsing rugby scrum which I was caught under as a 14 year old. It resurfaced in the gym when I tried to do too much weight on the incline leg press and the stack came down on me. The motto of my story is do what you can, not what your ego tells you to do.

What my legs were like in 2000, pre-surgery.
What my legs were like in 2000, pre-surgery.

Day 5 – Struggling

Weak, nauseous, vomiting? Could be P90X...
Weak, nauseous, vomiting? Could be P90X…

Legs and Back.

It’s a weird thing but I am more tired now after taking a day off than I was yesterday. Less sore, which is a good thing, but just exhausted. I am actually more scared of next week now that I know the movements I can increase my weights and of course my stupid male ego will force me to push myself even further. Today is Legs, Back and Ab Ripper X, a big day to say the least. Tomorrow is the last day of coaching for the year so hopefully even if I am too sore to walk I will still be able to say goodbye to my girls. I am heading home now to do the workout, eat some dinner and head out to a dance recital. I will hopefully get a chance to post before we go out, if not, once we return home. Damn, I was going to put up the rest of the gym mirrors tonight.

I haven’t felt this shaky since the expired meat episode when I had to take 2 days off work with what I thought was Botulism. Or Swine Flu. Turns out I just don’t know how to cook and I had given myself food poisoning.

The workout was fairly vicious. If I had managed to do 25 chin-ups each time I would have done 200!! However, since there are 4 types to do and you repeat them twice I managed only 80. Still, doing 80 mostly unassisted chin-ups is nothing to sneeze at when you are my weight. I did get some fairly significant pain in my left elbow whenever I did them with a supinated palm but it seems better this morning. However, I am sitting here at 5am after getting up at 4am to work on an upgrade to one of the computer systems at work and not being fully awake means I am also not fully aware of exactly how much pain I am going to be in today. My biggest worry is that historically when I have worked on my legs, it has tightened up my back and occasionally thrown it out. I will have to be careful today.

So the workout was back and legs with Ab Groper X. The leg workout was far more single leg work than I imagined it would be. It was also mostly lunge based. I suppose I had imagined it would be more traditionally squat based, however the variation, as with everything “X” was well thought out and difficult, but possible and challenging to execute. Less cardio intense than Plyometrics and less of a balance challenge than Yoga, it fit right in and allowed for some really good isolation of the quads. It was a little lacking in the hamstring department, but that is why you do so many lunge based movements, to increase the hamstring involvement. I managed to pull off most of the movements and was fairly close to the demonstrators reps however there are a couple of movements with which I really struggled. I am very fortunate never to have had knee problems, but I could see how this workout would be difficult if you did suffer from an old knee injury.

On the back end came Abs. My hip flexors are about as useful as a chocolate teapot right now. My Ab Ripper X workout seems to be getting worse not better. I am better at the first few exercises, but once we get to Fifer Scissors my flexors give in and my legs feel like pillars of stone. As for Crunchy Frog and his friends, frankly at this point they can all go to hell! I do feel stronger in my core, but I also feel a great deal of pain especially if I laugh. Thanks to Tony though, one of the first things I lost was my sense of humour so I am not worried.

later…

Forced Rest day

Vitamix. The 911 Turbo of kitchen appliances
Vitamix. The 911 Turbo of kitchen appliances

I feel like I fell in a blender yesterday…

Since I am still coaching, at least for this week, I have no choice but to take today off. Even if I wanted to work out after I get home it would mean starting at 9:30 or so, going until 10:30 and then probably not being able to sleep until midnight. Actually it doesn’t sound so bad when I think about it.

Speaking of thinking, I have a feeling I will change how I feel about this experience on a daily basis. I know when Tony and I are alone and I dream about ripping his legs off one by one I feel a lot different than I do once it is high five time and we pack it in for the day. However I also find that I feel different day to day. I have an undercurrent of feeling that I am simply not doing enough. I guess it is because of the nature of lifting weights and the obvious result that I feel like I am underachieving at the moment. I know that when I go to the gym I have a set amount of sets and reps to do and that once I am done I will have achieved my 70,000lbs or whatever that days requirement is. I also know that I will be predictably tired and equally predictably sore. With P90X so far I don’t have that kind of predictability. Some of the things I can do easily but others I am not so proficient with and as such I don’t get the kind of work I would like from it. I have to assume that as I become more familiar I will be able to get full benefit from knowing how to do the skills and how to measure my effort. For now, I remain uncomfortable in my frustration.

That said, the program seems like a well thought out and well put together system. I know that when I plan the conditioning for myself or for the kids during the fall it is with meticulous attention to getting the right work done in the right way and making sure that one workout recovery doesn’t affect the next workout execution. This is a difficult thing to achieve and one which I believe I have never seen in an at home system. That is why I decided to try this as opposed to any other home based system. I was looking for a change of pace from the weights at the gym but wanted something I could trust to give me the kind of challenge I was looking for. I believe, regardless of my previous statment of frustration, that I have found that program. So far, and I know after 4 of the 90 days I am no expert here, I would highly recommend this to anyone.

The real pain in the ass about today and Thursday is that I have no rec class to teach so I have until 6pm to get to Gymnastics. That would give me enough time to do my workout if I was close to home… or if I had remembered to bring a DVD with me. Maybe I can improvise something…

Day 4 – My Nemesis the Crane

Yoga – I feel cyclobenzaprene in my future.

PrescriptionBottleLike Ahabs White Whale, Tom’s Gerry, Wylie Coyote’s Road Runner, Yoga for me is my nemesis. My flexibility resembles someone in a full body cast, my balance, while not bad in itself has never been coupled with said flexibility and I am expecting an unhappy meeting of the two. I am expecting, in fact, to feel like a bad drunk during a sobriety test.

Today, even my eyeballs hurt. However, I think in the past I would have been in bed today with my back out, so the fact that I am heading to work, albeit at a very slow pace, is a great sign. Oh, and my gymnastics girls are going to suffer for this next year when it comes to conditioning in September… Plyometrics comes to town!

It has been a very long time since I had this overall hit-by-a-truck feeling. I remember feeling this way after rugby games in my youth, of course there was always copious amounts of beer to make it go away back then. I am hoping that todays yoga will give me a little focus, a dash of peace to go in my pain stew.

10pm.. So much for that.

Like I have said, I read some P90X blogs as I prepared to start this process and most if not all of them found Yoga the biggest challenge. What they fail to tell you is that Yoga X comes in 3 parts, 30 minutes each. I wasn’t aware of this so by around the 20 minute mark after 864 runner’s poses I was about ready to call it a day. Not to mention the fact that I can’t even get into runners pose from plank without a great deal of effort and a little help from my arms. Somehow my leg gets trapped underneath me and I can’t swing it all the way to my hands. I have every confidence that this will change as time goes on but for now I felt like a hippo playing twister. The first 30 minutes were extraordinarily difficult and the seemingly endless up and down dogs, the thousands of planks and the invitation by Tony (who by the way is in fact Satan himself) to do pushups in between each move was almost enough to make me quit. I believed it couldn’t all be like that so I soldiered on and was rewarded by a ray of sunshine known as the balance flow. Within moments I went from a deep seated hatred of Yoga that seeped from every quivering fiber of each cell of my body, to an awareness that there was going to be something I could actually do! The balance sequences were tough, I admit, but nothing like the first 30 minutes. My heart rate slowed, I was able to focus on breathing and balance and found it quite peaceful. I even managed a 5 second crane although I am sure my wrists will never forgive me.

The third section of the DVD is stretching, something which I need immensely but have to be extremely careful of due to my back surgery. I made it through, completing most of the moves and experiencing some eye opening degrees of flexibility (at least for me). If you watch the DVD you will see some ridiculous movements, things that I am sure are not even legal in some of the Southern States. I am sure I will always have a secret admiration for people who can do those kinds of things while knowing that it is most likely far from my grasp.

I came to an interesting realization while attempting some of the flexibility / grab moves and that is that I have managed over the years to build my upper body to the point where I can no longer touch parts of my body I should be able to. I’d actually like to touch those parts again some day and it’s kind of creepy that a guy called Tony is going to help me.

Day 3 – Better Late Than Never

Shoulders and Arms plus Ab Ripper

Gluten Free Living - ya it sucks but so does indigestion
Gluten Free Living - ya it sucks but so does indigestion

We had a busy day today driving to Hastings for a family get together and after all was said and done it was 7pm when we got through the door at home. However I am still in the romance phase with P90X and nothing was going to stop me from getting day 3 out of the way and getting to bed. Having said that, I was exhausted as soon as I woke up and managed to get through the day without the use of my right hip flexor which I am fairly sure turned to stone overnight. Everything below the waist hurts. Some things above the waist felt like they hadn’t hurt enough yesterday and so were looking for a little more sympathy today. This rolling, cascading carnival of pain that runs through your body is certainly challenging and makes even the most mundane of daily tasks like getting into the bottom drawer of the refrigerator at work seem insurmountable.

In recent months I have developed a sore shoulder at the gym, so much so that I have an ultrasound appointment to get it checked out so I was understandably concerned about Shoulders and Arms. It was a sore workout. I can’t really supinate much with my left arm so the out and in curls were a challenge. I also am used to doing significantly more weight but in shorter sets so it was difficult to get accustomed to the 15-20 reps I was doing. All things considered, it was a pretty good workout. Usually at the gym I blast my shoulders with military press for almost 30 minutes by themselves so I am not entirely convinced that this workout will get me any results, X or not. However, I am open to a new approach to my physique and I will see what  happens. If I feel like I am losing some strength in any of my workouts I can always substitute some heavy lifting once in a while if I am so inclined. However, I think that as much as this is a workout change, it is also for me a philosophical change in my approach. So for now I will submit to the process and see where it takes me.

As for the workout, the movements were predictable, most of which I have done in the gym myself at some point. I am not a fan of the tricep pushbacks, I feel that you can’t really get a good extension with a significant enough weight to really see a change but maybe that is just me. I also wish I had a dip station I could do hanging dips instead of the bench dips. I was quite proud of myself, I managed to contain my sobbing to a short period during bench dips when I really felt like I was going to come apart like a rotisserie chicken.

Ab Ripper took my by surprise again. This time I was able to do more, I counted at least a 10% improvement over the first time. But my abs feel like they are made from crushed glass that is ripping my internal organs apart as I move. I was unable to get off the floor for a few minutes after we finished. So much so I was still laying there when Nicole had headed upstairs for her recovery drink.

One more note. I am not following the diet. I know, I know, each time I come across a site where someone says that I think “you idiot, diet is the key, THE KEY DAMMIT” but in my case I have a legitimate excuse. I am studying to be a certified nutritionist and I am designing my own program. Now since the P90X program was developed by nutritionists I am going to see if I am anywhere close to the level of knowledge that it took to create the program. I have analysed my requirements and am able to determine exactly what I need given my personal situation. It is more as a lab with a controlled subject (me) doing a controlled exercise program (P90X) so that I can see exactly the effects the nutritional changes are making to my body. The other gotcha in my case is that I don’t eat wheat. So following a program that calls for wheat based products becomes problematic.