Here I go. Day 1, time to “Bring It”.

June 19th, 2009. D-Day.

So this is an off the cuff decision for me, deciding to jump into P90X without much pre-thought. It’s probably better this way, no trepidation or anxiety leading up to the kickoff. Just a day to think “will I regret this?”. I know Tony, and by ‘know’ I mean we spent some time together last year in my basement while I took on the original P90 program.

From what I can recall, I hate Tony. He represents so many failed attempts and a goal that seems simply unachievable. Simply put, I hate him because at this point, I hate myself for what I have become.

Maybe this will be better, but I think it is what he represents more than him as an individual. I am sure my charity won’t extend past this afternoon so that is all I am going to say for now.

Lunch was a bit of a disaster, I haven’t actually read the nutritional guide yet so blissful in my ignorance I had BBQ for lunch with the work gang. Needless to say I am sitting here in a meat coma thinking of how I am possibly going to “bring it” without “bringing it up” later in the basement. Also, I have not actually set the floor in the basement yet with the extended floor mats. We currently have half the basement as the gym, I will need to extend that to the full room if I am going to have the space to do this P90X thing. So when I get home I have to fix the floor, find a workout book, towel, mat and arrange the dumbells ready for the program. Big day, I can feel it!

Let me just say that I consider myself to be in decent shape. I can do a hundred pushups, a couple hundred crunches and a handful of full extension chinups without much effort. However, I am a static athlete. Most of what I do is with free weights and my strength is very limited to the range of motion. So even though I can bench close to 400lbs and shoulder press over 275lbs I am not necessarily “fit”. I know my cardio can use a little work since I do not run since my back surgery but I consider myself pretty strong. What I really want is what our kids at gymnastics have, all around flexibility and strength. I am at the age now where carrying such a large amount of muscle around is getting to be too much like hard work and I think it may be time to tone it down a bit.

11:10PM

Chest and Back

I sit here having achieved most of my goals for the day. Basement floor, check. Arrange workout stuff, check. Go to Supperworks and make a week of meals even though I forgot we were going, check. Bring it, check and check!

Tony warned us to take our time and pace ourselves and even though Nicole had a miserable attempt at day 1 yesterday I think today we brought what we could. The push ups were easy, I easily matched what the guys in the video were doing. Even the pull ups which I have spent the last year working on at the gym were fine. It was the Ab Ripper X (which I forgot we had to do for day 1) that killed me. I have an ab, just one, but a few minutes in it had admitted defeat and shamelessly abandoned it’s post. By the conclusion, I was unable to achieve a standing position, much less hold the upwards facing dog (which for me resembled a tranquilized chihuahua).

Given the adrenaline of it being day 1 and our unbridled enthusiasm I am not surprised we made it through. I am, however,  surprised that my heartrate monitor stayed above 140 for almost an hour straight and that even though it was 3 hours ago now I am still a little shaken and more than a touch nauseous.

Welcome to day 1, the only thing I can guarantee is that I will feel a whole lot worse before I start to feel any better. But that is why they call it X!