Round 2, Day 20. Rest Week Begins – Core Cardio and Balance Review

Core Cardio and Balance

This workout is a nice break from the crazy pace of some of the other Insanity workouts but it is cleverly designed that you can really modulate your heart rate to give you the kind of workout you are looking for. Each section is 60 seconds unlike most of the other workouts I have done so far and that in itself makes this a challenge.

Here’s the breakdown:

Warmup

Switch Heel Kicks – Like skipping rope with an imaginary rope. And imaginary hip hop friends
Mummy Kicks – Arms out at eye level, legs kicking straight ahead with knees straight. I’m not a fan of this one.
Side-to-Side Football Shuffles – Hands up in the famous football stance, shuffle 4 times a side
Log Jumps – Rather than jumping across the log, Shaun tells you to imagine is rolling towards you. Avoid it!
8 High Knees / 8 Power Jacks – He tends to twist slightly on the high knees.
8 Fast Feet / 8 Hooks – Fast feet are stationary football shuffles, hooks are same as Kenpo.

Stretch

Very basic stretch, after all, this is not a hardcore workout by any stretch of the imagination.

The Workout

Each move is done for 60 seconds if you can make it. If you are watching, there are times when several of the participants in the background give up and rest. That makes me feel better and is a surprise motivation to me. This may have been done on purpose, if it was, Shaun T is my hero. Likely it wasn’t, it’s just they think he can’t see them!

Moving Ski Jumps – Same as regular, just move 4x to the left and then back.
Hit the Floor – This is a single floor touch on each side with a high reach in between.
Level 1 Drills – 4 push-ups, 8 plank runs, stand up, drop down, repeat. A modified burpee.
Heismans
8 Switch Kicks & 8 Hop Squats – Switch kicks are just front high kicks with no rest. Hop squats are like stationary Groucho’s. Get into a plie squat and jump slightly, staying in your squat.
High Jumps – Jump. High. Higher is better.
Moving Plank Walk – This is hard since it’s the only real work your shoulders and chest do. No pushups, just walk side to side in plank position.
8 Elbows & 4 Suicides – Kenpo elbows with suicides*
4 Hops Switch – Hop on one leg 4x then switch. Other knee should be at hip height.
8 Jabs & Jumps – Jabs from Kenpo in a horse stance then jump half turn to face the opposite way and jab there.

* Suicides are hard to explain, easy to do. I tried explaining it to my gym kids and they were completely lost. It is basically a floor touch with your left hand, 3 steps to the right, floor touch with your right hand. Sounds simple, but apparently not. You have to be quick with your steps, they are suicides so you are supposed to be running the same way you would if you were running suicide drills across a floor.

Next comes Hip Flexor Burners.

Be warned, the problem with this exercise is that you can’t really tell how long you are going to be doing each part. It is in fact 30 seconds, I think it would have been slightly easier had I known that. It’s also 3 sections after each other.

Start with arms up in fighting stance. Lift your back knee until it is above hip level, lower and tap the floor and repeat for 30 seconds. This is the easy part.
The second part requires you to pulse your knee up for another 30 seconds, while keeping your foot off the ground and your knee above hip level. That part starts to hurt.
Finally keep the knee at hip level and kick your foot out to horizontal and back. For 30 seconds.

At this point there are only 2 moves left. Oblique Knee Lifts and Plie Shoulder Complex.

Oblique Knee Lifts - Reach your right arm up to the sky, while bringing it down to the side like a lat pulldown (or chin up I suppose) raise the same side knee to the side until your elbow meets the knee. This is a good exercise if you really squeeze the obliques. If not, it’s easy for this to be a time waster.

Plie Shoulder Complex

This is a five-part exercise, each part being 30 seconds.

Start in a deep plie squat, with your thighs parallel to the floor (the deeper, the harder it is). Extend your arms to the side, palms down and pulse them up and down like you are gently flapping your wings.

Next, arms start at the side and clap in front of your face, arms straight. Stay in plie squat.

Next, instead of clapping to the front, clap overhead, arms straight, still in plie squat.

Next do arm circles forward just like the P90X version only you are still in your squat.

Finally, circle the opposite way and after about 20 seconds Shaun T calls it quits. If you look at the timer, as they are all high fiving and laughing it up, your timer is still running. Don’t be lazy, fill the time.

I liked this workout. It was as hard as I needed it to be and it was really easy to dial it up when my heart rate started to fall.

Switch Heel Kicks
Mummy Kicks
Side-to-Side Football Shuffles
Log Jumps
8 High Knees / 8 Power Jacks (and repeat)
8 Fast Feet / 8 Hooks (and repeat)
After five minutes of stretching, the workout begins in earnest. Ten moves are done in sequence. As in Pure Cardio) each are about a minute long, and none are repeated:
Moving Ski Jumps (just like regular Ski Jumps, but you jump 4 times to the right before jumping 4 times to the right — and repeat)
Hit the Floors (nothing new)
Level 1 Drills (nothing new — do four push-ups, eight plank runs, stand up, drop down into plank position and repeat)
Heismans
8 Switch Kicks & 8 Hop Squats (exactly what it sounds like)
High Jumps (from a standing position, jump as high as possible and repeat)
Moving Plank Walk (similar to Moving Push-Ups, but without any actual push-ups; also, you move 4 to the right and 4 to the left)
8 Elbows & 4 Suicides (throw alternating elbows while in a horse stance, and then drop down for suicide drills)
4 & 4 Hops (hop on your right leg four times with your left leg knee above your hip, and then swuitch legs and repeat)
8 Jabs & Jumps (jab the air with alternating fists, and then jump and spin 180 degrees, land and repeat)
With only a few minutes left in the session, I was feeling pretty damn good about myself.
But then came the Hip Flexor Burner

Round 2 – Day 19. Rest Week Is Here – Or I Can’t Count!

I was going through the days I have already done, trying to keep track of what days I have done and which I have replaced. Apart from being appalled at the amount of days off I have given myself I find that the numbering is getting confusing. This is partly due to the fact I am doing 5 days out of the week instead of 6 due to coaching but also because I am counting in 6 day weeks. Something is not right.

The solution would have been to plan the workouts ahead of time however there are a couple of reasons that didn’t happen. First, I was just supposed to be doing P90X with the guys at work. Then I started getting distracted and bored with the monotony and got hold of Insanity. Second, even after I got the Insanity package, my plan was to wait until at least phase 2 before I started but just like a kid on Christmas morning I couldn’t help myself and opened the package. If there is something I can’t resist it’s a challenge and seeing the Insanity DVDs opened a whole world of stuff I assumed I couldn’t do.

So here I am, after a mish mash of workouts at rest week. The plan is outlined below and what is more, I plan to figure out what to do for the rest of the P90X days to incorporate my new friend Shaun T. But I will reiterate that if you are going to try this, especially if you can’t do it EVERY DAY then set out a schedule and stick to it. Keeping track of your workouts is hard enough at the best of times, but once you start adding different packages together you risk losing touch of the balance of the workout system. So for the time being, for phase 2 I will be substituting the cardio workouts for variations of Insanity as planned. I have 13 DVDs to go through so variety shouldn’t be an issue.

Yoga X 3/1/2010 Monday COACHING 3/2/2010 Tuesday Core Cardio and Balance 3/3/2010 Wednesday COACHING 3/4/2010 Thursday Core Synergistics 3/5/2010 Friday Core Cardio and Balance 3/6/2010 Saturday Core Synergistics 3/7/2010 Sunday Core Cardio and Balance 3/8/2010 Monday

Day 88 – The whole rest week problem

yogahulkSo I have figured out why I am hating P90X all of a sudden. It is this lingering painful last rest week. I have always been the type who like to finish practice with a sprint. When I played rugby throughout all my youth either in England for my school or County, here in Canada for my High School, Town, University or Province it was ALWAYS the case that conditioning was last thing at practice. That way you left everything you had on the field and left with a real sense of achievement and pride. Finishing the P90X program with a rest week is like Friday practice before the game. It’s just lame. I wanted to be shredded and beaten down, to be chiseled and have abs like granite and after the last week of resistance training I did. It’s now almost 2 weeks later and I still haven’t got through the rest week because I am not achieving anything. That lack of final punch has left me unmotivated and listless. If the program had been P83X it would have been almost perfect. The only thing that would have made it better would be a week of stress testing workouts. Some way of really pushing you past your boundaries to see what you and your new body can do. Sadly, I think that they have taken that theory and instead of making a kick-ass, bust your balls, show me what a frigging hero I have become week, they have made a “new” program called P90X Plus out of it to wring more cash out of their bloated cash cow that is Beachbody.com.

Colour me disappointed.

What I wanted, and what I will therefore invent would be a set of lets say 4 workouts with 3 “recovery” days (Yoga, Core, Stretch). The 4 days would consist of an hour long workout designed not to train you but to test you. A final week long fit test if you like to show you just what you have spent the last 3 months doing. Sure it is great to say I did 88 pullups in a session or that I did 350 pushups during a single workout but wouldn’t it be better to say that I completed the Graduation Week of P90X in all it’s painful gut wrenching muscle screaming lactic acid spewing hell?

Maybe it’s just me.

At least they could give you the option of trying handstand pushups or inverted pullups even if to most people it would be pure insanity. I have all this new muscle and the only thing that is confusing it right now is the fact that I am still putting fake boxes on fake shelves instead of crushing cars with my bare hands. Durable in the real world? Sure, that is nice. How about phenomenal in my own basement? That is what I was looking for from days 83-90.

Now I’m just irritated and I still have to do yoga before I can say it’s over.

Day 87 – Heart Monitors and Stretching

Extreme Relaxing... Bring It (to me on the couch)

Extreme Relaxing… Bring It (to me on the couch)

I was reminded today while watching the Biggest Loser on TV the importance of a good heart rate monitor. Even if you are not particularly concerned with your heart rate per se you should have one that tells you how many calories you have burned in any given workout. This will give you a ballpark idea as to the rate at which you are working. Personally I usually burn between 500-700 calories during an hour long P90X workout. This was overshadowed yesterday by my pathetic count of 200 calories burned during stretch X. It’s not that I am dissing Stretch X, not at all, in fact I actually enjoy the stretching when I do it. The sad thing is that it is usually a choice between Stretch X and Couch X and regardless of the outward appearance that I am a fit healthy and active individual, the couch and I still enjoy a strong and intimate relationship when Tony isn’t looking.

So I opted out of doing Cardio X as a substitute and a dash of adventure and instead went about stretching every muscle known to man. I really enjoyed Stretch X, it’s kid of like a kinder, gentler Yoga X without the leg pain and the Yoga Belly 7. It is a real mind calming workout, and if you choose not to do it on your days off during the phases, make sure you don’t skip it during rest week because I am sure that it is often overlooked like a red-headed stepchild (or the middle child if you are one and just have to throw your $.02 in). It left me at peace, relaxed and feeling much better than I did after a pan full of beans and turkey sausage that I had for dinner.

I have coaching Thursday night and since it is Thanksgiving in Canada this weekend ahead of the big freeze I should be able to squeeze out the last 3 workouts from Friday to Monday. Especially since this is an International Break weekend for Football in England so I know Liverpool won’t be playing and the next Formula 1 Grand Prix isn’t until next weekend so the TV will sit idle on Saturday morning.

Day 84 – Stuck in a time warp

Day 1 of rest week 5. Supposed to be Yoga, may Plyo instead.

The thing about this coaching lark is that it has thrown my workout schedule so far out of whack I can’t keep my days straight. Thankfully I am only 7 days away from completing the program and getting my P90X stripes. That means that the next few days, or couple of weeks more likely are going to be easy to document. I am moving into day 84, day 1 of rest week 4. Today, although the number doesn’t jive, I did Yoga but since I was pulling a double having done 4 miles on the treadmill in the morning I took it easy. I knew that the coming week had two yoga sessions attached to it so I didn’t feel that guilty skipping some of the more demanding poses in order to save my aching legs. It still took over an hour, so I wasn’t dogging it that badly. Last week I also looked at the Beachbody.com website and noticed that they are offering a P90X+ program of 5 DVDs containing some new workouts and different looking moves. One thing I can say for the BeachBody team, they have good marketing because I was hooked instantly. The only question is, do I get right into it now or do what I planned and get into the gym for some workouts for a month or two?

I think it would be good for me both from a physical workout perspective and also from a training/coaching perspective to get myself back to the gym and do some new workouts. I can set a weight goal for the next 3 months and then maybe get P90X+ for Christmas and start in the new year.

I found some more P90X blogs today and this little nugget… Too freaking funny.

On another note: Tony ought to spend less time sexually harassing Dreya Weber, the blonde fitness model/trainer in the video. I haven’t watched many workout videos before, but I’m pretty sure it’s not typical for the lead male trainer to give a sweaty hug to one of his female models after the workout is over. Or to watch her take off a sweatshirt and remark: “Uh-oh! The top is coming off!”

Tony offers a “Tip of the Day” in each of his videos, so in the spirit of P90X, here’s mine: If your name is Dreya Weber, you should consider contacting Beachbody’s Human Resources department.

So I ended up doing Kenpo instead of Yoga today. I realize that I will have to do Yoga on Wednesday between coaching nights which works out OK I guess. I added some weight to my Kenpo today, just 5lbs during some of the punching and blocking moves. It made a huge difference in the effort level and I have to agree with one other site I read yesterday in the way that although I do enjoy the Kenpo, it is probably the weakest of the workouts with the least amount of “X”-ness.

Day 56 – Weekend that was. Phase 3 that will be…

melissa

Rest Week comes to a close.

My last few days of rest week were definitely restful. My diet has not been stellar the last couple of weeks and I can feel myself lacking the energy and the drive I had at the start. I need to concentrate more on my intake and balancing my live food. This weekend we went to Penetang to see the family, but I was able to do 35 mins on the treadmill on Saturday and then Yoga Sunday. However, my diet foibles have cause me to feel like I am going backwards. I am sure that with the final 4 weeks ahead of me I will get the motivation mojo back but right now I just feel flabby and lazy. Amazing what just a couple of days will do to you. As a side note, we saw Melissa O’Neil live in “Legends of Country Music” in Penetang. The show was good, she was amazing and I found it really hard to believe that it was 4 years since the Canadian Idol win.

I really should have done more this weekend but it was so damn hot. Almost 40 outside with the humidex so impossible to do anything really. I even got a sunburn on my arm from driving to the highway, at least when we got there the sun was behind us. Stupid untinted windows.

Anyway, not much to report at this point, the end of rest week which in itself is largely uneventful. The main thing is that I get my diet back on track for the next week when Phase 3 kicks in. I need my energy for the pullups and the cardio since it is really time to step up the effort for the final push.

Day 54 – A Long Way From England

Yoga X.

I do have some body shots from day 1 or thereabouts, but for now this will have to do. Last summer we went to England and I can’t believe in a country of 65 million people nobody mentioned that I looked this bad!

Who ate all the pies, who ate all the pies...

My weight went up and down during gymnastics season and I know that when I started P90X I was not that out of shape but let’s be honest, this was only about 12 months ago and if my math is right, about 40lbs ago. The problem is being able to avoid going there again. I had been there before, lost a ton of weight and ended up back there again. I know why, lack of attention and lack of motivation. I am older now, and even if I am not wiser I am certainly closer to death if I continue to eat like I am 25. I am happy that I have found P90X because it has taught me some really valuable lessons, things that have made me look at fitness in a new way. The thing that occurred to me this morning was the big difference between what I was doing in the gym and what I am doing now. That thing is very simply leaving the ground. With all the training that I was doing my feet never really left the ground. Everything was weights, static isolated weights. With the P90X program and with any circuit training program the key is getting off your feet. Whether it is getting down onto the floor to do bodyweight movements or getting airbourne doing jump training or Kenpo the philosophy is the same, get your body used to the impact of jumping and moving up and down and you will discover a whole new plane of exertion.

Look at that guy, you think he was jumping any fences on that holiday?

The “thing” that makes you feel like you are “fit” or “in shape” doesn’t seem to be size or strength for me, it seems to be mobility and feeling light on my feet.

 

Who ate all the pies, who ate all the pies…

Day 53 – Gumby would be proud

Flexible and green. At least 50% of what I need.
Flexible and green. At least 50% of what I need.

One of the best things about rest week is the requirement to do X Stretch. For those who choose to take Sunday (or day 7 whenever that is) off instead of doing X Stretch this will open your eyes to a new kind of workout. It is kind of like Yoga would be if it was really easy! Personally I choose to do X Stretch when I can but having it as part of the regular schedule in the middle of the week is a real refresher. I have to admit that although I am not the most flexible guy in the world I do enjoy X Stretch now. Working on my tendons, ligaments and fascia goes a long way towards my overall comfort and health on a daily basis. In fact, I noticed the other day that my back hasn’t cracked since I started P90X, a certain sign that the compression of my spine is far less than it was previously and that is always a good thing.

Day 52 – The Hamster Dance

Kenpo, my favourite.

I bought the individual packets, not the tub.

Not only is rest week a great break from the hardcore workouts but it allows you to really enjoy the workouts rather than forcing yourself through them doing as much as you can. This extra enjoyment makes Kenpo an amazing workout. I got my recovery drink in the mail the other day and so I put some in my workout drink today since it was pretty hot in the basement. First let me just say that it really is not just hype about the drink, it has a good balance of nutrients but more importantly it really does taste great. Not since the first time I tried Met-Rx have I been impressed with the taste of a fitness product but I was truly floored by the taste of the recovery drink. I ordered mine direct from BeachBody and although it took longer than expected to arrive (by about 5 days) it was well worth it. Each packet makes 12 ounces which is about 350ml but I found that when I mixed it in my drink bottle (PureHydration bottle) which is 500ml it tasted just as good, not watery at all. By the way, I have a ton of reusable bottles, both composite plastics and stainless steel and I have never found one that keeps hot things hot or cold things cold like the PureHydration bottle does. It is literally mind blowing how good this bottle is. I had cold water from my cooler at home in the bottle which is black sitting in my Jeep. The bottle was in direct sunlight for over an hour and was hot to touch when I got to it. I opened the bottle and the water inside was just as cold as if it had come directly out of the cooler. Nothing much impresses me to be frank, but this really was amazing.

So I am into rest week 2, feeling fine, but starting to get a little apprehensive about what to do after the 90 days are up. I have a gym membership that I want to maintain because I love to bench and the equipment allows me to do lots of variations that I can’t do at home. However, I don’t think that I want to go back to my old weights routine. I have come too far to slip back into that static strength stuff. So now I have to develop a training method that works both weights and the P90X methodology into a single package. Ideally I would like a system where I could do the workout at home or at the gym so if I feel like throwing in a DVD instead of going to the gym one day it would fit with my program. Then I will market the system as a whole revolutionary fitness breakthrough and make millions of dollars. That is one plan anyway. You see, the problem is that people who love the gym almost always love it for the social aspect as much as the workout. I don’t necessarily mean social interaction but rather social exposure. I enjoy the gym for social exposure, seeing people, listening to them, doing that man-nod thing to acknowledge them but I definitely don’t want to interact with them. Ewww. So if you can take the precise approach of the P90X and mix it with the ability to be in the gym with the other gym rats and cardio queens you would surely have a winning combination. Especially since in order to get that type of workout you have to be with a personal trainer. If I can provide a personal trainer quality workout regime that can be done at home or at the gym or even in a hotel room but more importantly can be done in ALL locations I am sure some people would go for it…

THINKING......I’m gonna let the hamster in my head run the wheel on that one for a while…

Area 51 – Bodyparts (Abs, who knew?)

I will put up before pictures but at the moment I can’t stomach them so these will have to do. Just goes to prove that anyone can find some abs, even if it is only one or two! I am having a hard time imagining that I will be significantly different than this at the end but I hope that at the very least my final pictures will be even a slight improvement over today.

Core Synergistics – The wannabe workout.

Core is a weird workout, it’s not difficult enough to be a real challenge which is good for rest week but at the same time you get the feeling that the moves you are doing are just the cast offs that didn’t make the show. They are the red headed stepchild of the other 3 weeks, they are the returning houseguests that didn’t make it in to the house again this season. Although the quality is there and the workout is still a good one, you can’t help but feel a little sorry for the exercises that didn’t quite make it on to the first team.

My weightloss has stalled, I have weighed about the same for 2 weeks running now and although I feel like my body is still changing I would like to see a better reflection on the scale. People say that numbers don’t matter but in fact that only really applies to people who are already at their desired bodyfat level or who are working out with weights for the first time. NOT the first time in a while either, but the first time. Even then, the ability to put on weight as muscle is so incredibly difficult that saying that you are “losing fat and gaining muscle” is completely bogus. In actuality, and any bodybuilder will attest to this, you are always either gaining muscle OR losing fat but to do both at the same time is insanely challenging once you are past the first few months. For this reason I know that my stagnant weight is nothing to do with muscle gain, but is more a reflection of my “alternate” food choices over the last couple of weeks. It may not seem like much to say that I had one bowl of low fat ice cream and fell short on my vegetable intake for 3 or more days but at this level when you are trying to balance your diet carefully those things have a huge impact.

So this is how Rest Week 2 looks on the Classic Program:

YogaX     √Done
Core Synergistics     √Done
KenpoX
X Stretch
Core Synergistics
YogaX
Rest or X Stretch