DVD Days P90X to Tapout XT – Page 19 – Something Beats Nothing Every Time

R5D50 – P90X+ Interval X Plus

Well, let’s just say that until P90X:MC2 comes out, I don’t think I will be spending much time with Tony. It’s not that it was too hard, far from it, I found it mildly interesting, pretty easy to do even with keeping up with the guys on set and discovered mostly it is rehashed P90X moves with different names. It was good to have something else to do but in comparison to my usual workouts, it was too long, too boring and too easy. I think that even with the advent of MC2 that I will probably be mixing in Asylum workouts before I use MC2 workouts. I just don’t have much faith in Tony that he can produce something radically different than P90X was. If it is, and I hope it is, then more power to him but I have a feeling it will be more of the same. I realize that this P90X+ was really just a stopgap but if it is any indication of what is to come I would rather go to Crossfit.com every day and do what they tell me. At least that way I don’t have to listen to Tony’s poor and borderline inappropriate sense of humour.

R5D49 – Light Day and The Return Of Tony – P90X+ Style!!

I finished light day and was happy that the workout was, in fact, easy. I think I overdid it a little last week, my back has been feeling off and with the coaching spotting back handsprings I have been overworking myself. So yesterday, Monday, came as a welcome rest. Today has the ring of opportunity and anticipation to it since I managed to score the P90X+ discs. So I am modifying the plan a little. I have 2 variety days that I am going to fill with P90X+ workouts and maybe if I am feeling really good, one of the off days also. The P90X+ workouts are as follows as far as I can tell:

Interval X Plus
Kenpo Cardio Plus
Upper Plus
Total Body Plus
Abs-Core Plus

I am concerned over the Kenpo, it was a dud during P90X and also having a full day of core, but I will give it a shot and tell you what I think. Today will be Interval X Plus if I can remember to take the discs home.

R5D33/34 RKC ROP Week 2 – What Variety Means To Me

Monday is light day and until I get to the 5 ladder stage, each day will continue to look and feel about the same. Other than the fact that on Mondays I have to do snatches which still scare the crap out of me with a 45lb KB, Mondays are pretty easy. I mistakenly thought Tuesday was a day off, forgetting that Friday and Sunday are rest days and so I had to quickly find something to do. Luckily I have a couple of workouts in reserve all the time so I can jump to something if I need to. The following was within my digital reach when it was time to go:

The double under sandwich for time:

50 double-unders
21 wall ball shots (20-pound ball, 10-foot-high target)
21 hang cleans (95-pound barbell)
21 Abmat sit-ups
15 wall ball shots (20-pound ball, 10-foot-high target)
15 hang cleans (95-pound barbell)
15 Abmat sit-ups
9 wall ball shots (20-pound ball, 10-foot-high target)
9 hang cleans (95-pound barbell)
9 Abmat sit-ups
50 double-unders

Since it is not warm enough to go outside and do wall ball and I don’t have a skip rope:

The burpee sandwich for time (yes, sandwiches used to make me burpy!):

25 burpees
21 strict press (95-pound barbell)
21 hang cleans (95-pound barbell)
21 Abmat sit-ups
15 strict press (95-pound barbell)
15 hang cleans (95-pound barbell)
15 Abmat sit-ups
9 strict press (95-pound barbell)
9 hang cleans (95-pound barbell)
9 Abmat sit-ups
25 burpees

Total time 18 Â minutes and if I had a bucket I might have thrown up into it. Doing the reverse system is not for the faint of heart I can tell you and since I was raised on pyramid sets rising to a low rep 70-90% max this was brutal. I was actually quite impressed that I managed to do all 50 burpees since they are something of a challenge for me even with my weight loss, even with my increased flexibility they are still not an easy thing for me to do. In fact, let me just say that if you ever want to feel like your weight loss (if that is what you are going for) isn’t working, try a few burpees, you will feel like Â you are on Day 1 at the Biggest Loser Campus.

Next time I need to grab something quick I am thinking of this. However, since I do so much KB work, I may sub the KB swings for hang cleans or strict presses:

For time:

20 burpees
30 overhead kettlebell swings (53 pounds)
40 Abmat sit-ups
50 squats
60 double-unders
50 squats
40 Abmat sit-ups
30 overhead kettlebell swings (53 pounds)
20 burpees

It’s Not Just NFL Players… It’s Anyone Who Was “Big” Into Sports

This article puts profound impact into the message that what you do after you are done playing will dictate if you live or die. It sounds like common sense but as the article states: “My doctor asked me, ‘How many 320-pound men who are 80 years old do you see walking around?’ That’s when the lightbulb came on over my head,” Mandarich said.

Lots of these guys are massive, mostly due to huge amounts of steroids, but also massive amounts of hard work in the gym. But I would say that the article applies not only to NFL players, but anyone who tips the scale at over 275lbs while playing in their chosen sport. It doesn’t matter who you are, Tony Mandarich weighed in at 325+ lbs, The Fridge was up to 370lbs but they are no different than the kid in college who is put in at nose tackle, or prop, or any position of brute power in order to take advantage of their bulk. I am sensitive to this because when I played rugby I was up around the 220lb mark. Once I left my rugby career behind I gained more weight in the gym, eventually rubbing up against 300lbs because I couldn’t drop “the armour” that men carry with themselves while they play sports. I still to this day consider my strength as my armour, something which I need to change if I intend to live a long and healthy life. There needs to be an understanding that strength, not weight, is a true measure of armour and that in order to be strong, you have to be at a weight that your skeleton, heart, lungs and organs can support comfortably.

In the next few years, we will say goodbye to a great many good men who will die before age 50 because they couldn’t face life outside their chosen sport and as a way of maintaining their persona, they maintained their weight. It’s very sad, but it’s one hell of a wake up call if you are over 40 and over 275lbs because for you, death is right around the next bend.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2313476

It’s not only American news outlets who are in the spotlight. Today the Star in Toronto let everyone down with a study of mice, extrapolating that the treadmill is the fountain of youth… *sigh* Don’t they know cardio on a treadmill is no use?

R5D27 – The Return Of P90X Plyometrics.

plyo I started my rest week yesterday with a return to the Plyometrics DVD from the P90X series. I had expected that I would experience it the way I did when I went through the program “properly” the first and second times.

I was mistaken.

If there was ever a time when I needed validation, this was it. I have complained incessantly about not doing enough work, feeling like I am not as fit as I was or bitching about only having to work out 20 minutes a day. Well, I was wrong. I apologize unreservedly and I will cease and desist immediately. Plyometrics was a walk in the park. It is a good thing I decided to call this rest week because as Tony related his story about hiring “Hot Shots” to do the video who were unable to keep up, little did I know I would be thinking the same of him a few minutes later. In fact, I got annoyed at the length of rest he was taking, irritated by the breaks and amazed at how little work he seemed to be doing. Not only him, but his cronies as well. When the video first started, rather than silence Tony I chose “NORMAL” from the choice screen. Normal indeed, it’s amazing that I seem to have exceeded the X in P90X! I finished the workout feeling like a thoroughbred that had been loaned to a six year old for a birthday party and forced to trot around a corral instead of being allowed to gallop through the fields. It was, in a word, frustrating. It was also exhilarating to know that my fitness level is higher than it was when I finished P90X even without the hour long workouts. Maybe HIT works after all?!

I am not going to lie, it was refreshing to follow along and not think about the workout. It brought back lots of memories from the early days and the times when I crushed the workouts and felt so proud of myself. I never did rock star hops, they were always too hard and I could never keep up with Dom during the tuck jumps. Not so today, I crushed them both.

Colour me proud.

R5D25-6 RKC, Breakfast Of Champions, Partial Rest Week.

eat_more_fish Friday I was still recovering from the swings and so I decided to bust out a lighter KB and do some TGU. I did 5 a side with the 25lb KB and then, since I was feeling adventurous, I did another 3 a side with the 45. I remembered I had weaseled out of the cleans and C&P the day before so again I set my sights on doing something extra. I did 5 Clean, 5 Clean and Press and 5 snatches with each arm with both the 25lb and 45lb KB. The snatch with the 45 was, if I am honest, borderline dangerous but I think with the 25 I am getting the hang of it.

Saturday I ended up doing around 30 minutes on the treadmill in the morning to try and stop my back from aching which worked out fine. I was supposed to do deadlifts and so I set up the 25, 45 and 70lbÂ behemoth and decided I would do 3 tabata sequences (12 minutes total) deadlifting each KB with a high pull (or upright row) after each DL. The 25 was easy, although seemed longer than 8 sets. The 45 was a challenge and since I was still doing a high pull with each one, it was very taxing and my shoulders were on fire. The 70 just sat there like a fat pug smiling at me struggling with the 45 but out of sheer determination I gave it a shot anyway, it was only 70lbs, right? The High pull didn’t last long, I think I made it through one of the 8 sets. By the time the last set came around I was wheezing like an asthmatic goat and begging for someone to kill Tabata, whoever he is.

Sunday we went out to breakfast with an old friend from work with whom we had worked a few years ago to get her weight down. She brought her charmingÂ fiancÃ©Â and while we caught up on old news the conversation inevitably turned to weight loss. Now I am not a preacher by any means but if someone is asking for advice I am happy to help. I tried in vain to explain my Paleo findings from the last 6 months to them but in the end it all started sounding a little too Conspiracy Theory. I often say that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that people do what I do but I do encourage people to follow a similar path and to do their own research. The conversation was an eye opener for them, and I think a good opportunity for me to sort out in my own head where I am with my diet and exercise. Maintaining this blog has been a way for me to monitor my progress, attempt to safeguard me from being too extreme and to keep up with recent discoveries in the world of fitness and nutrition but also it gives me the opportunity to help other people to start discovering their own potential. By potential, I don’t mean physical potential, I am talking about the potential to take control of their lives by erasing everything they know and starting over from a new place.

Starting over is never easy, in fact, making small adjustments is never easy and with that in mind I am going to shake up my life a little by entering into a 7 day rest week. I am going to maintain my RKC swings and other lifts but I think a sprinkling of P90X and Insanity may do me the world of good as a break. I am already on a fish kick to restart my weight loss, since I discovered the real reason for my plateau this weekend during our breakfast. “I’m happy where I am” I admitted. I am comfortable with my weight and my abilities at this point, but I think I may be even happier further down the road. So I am revamping things a little in order to get the engine started again.

So here goes:

Day 1 – Monday – P90X Â Plyo or Insanity Cardio Plyo
Day 2 – Tuesday – RKC 50 Swings
Day 3 – Wednesday – RKC TGU plus Clean, C&P, Snatch practice
Day 4 – Thursday – P90X Kenpo or Insanity Pure Cardio
Day5 – Friday – RKC 50
Day 6 – Saturday – Same as Wednesday
Day 7 – Sunday – Fountain Of Youth Yoga or Yoga X

Plus… More fish! (But not less bacon…shhhh!)

R5D17-19 RKC And Mounting Frustrations

I can’t be the only one who is frustrated and confused by not having to work out 90 minutes a day. I know I should be over it by now but it is frustrating me to no end to occasionally have to work out for only 20 minutes. Last night I did TGU however even with the warmup it was 15 minutes. So I did some one arm swings as well and then some cleans and clean and presses. But it left me thinking that I was taking it too easy on myself. So, I know what you are thinking, “just do more”. Well, I would but I don’t want toÂ jeopardize my other workouts and not only that, but I am thinking (paradoxically) that I am also being too hard on my back. I seem to be doing KB workouts 2 days in a row and then deadlifts and then back to KB again which seems like a lot of back work. However, it may also be that this is the way it should be, train your functional parts the most so they stay functional!

I took Thursday off, a combination of late home, an extra hour of coaching and some soreness from the single arm swings from yesterday. However, I have to quit doing that since I love to take Fridays off to celebrate the end of the week! So now I face having to work out today with quite a sore back and the whole weekend, putting together 3 heavy back days back to back to back. I am seriously thinking about having a rest week featuring 8 days of P90X and Insanity workouts to both break the monotony a little and make me feel like I am keeping up with the Hortons.

R5D13 – Deadlift Debacle Solved (Plus a couple of fun links)

Last time I was on deadlift day (previously known as back day) I tried in vain to get a power/ endurance program to work. It didn’t pan out the way I had hoped and I ended up only doing 36 reps of each movement. It was supposed to be:

“Deadlifts with 135# plus chinups as follows:

1 per minute, adding one per minute.

Minute 1 â€“ 1 deadlift, 1 chinup
Minute 2 â€“ 2 deadlift,2 chinup
Minute 3 â€“ 3 deadlift, 3 chinup and so on..

I had hoped to get to 20 but my brain intervened and said I should aim for 15. My body intervened quickly after that and due to my lack of experience in deadlifting I was done after 8 rounds.”

This time I wanted to do 5’s and see how far I could go…

So rather than try to extend myself to the full minute, which was the issue, I decided to get to the point where I did about 40 seconds of work maximum. So I targeted 5 moves max as the target like this:

Minute 1 â€“ 1 deadlift, 1 chinup
Minute 2 â€“ 2 deadlift,2 chinup
Minute 3 â€“ 3 deadlift, 3 chinup and so on up to 5 on the 5th minute.

For the 6th minute I went back to 1 of each, cycled up to 5 again and then repeated the cycle with no rest.

The upshot was a total of 45 reps of deadlifts, 45 pull ups in 15 minutes. The workout was not terribly taxing, not as much as two days ago was. I think next time I will start at 3 and go to 7 instead of 1 going to 5. That would give me a total of 75 reps of each, a decent work total. All I need now is to get over my fear of injury and get up to lifting my bodyweight.

HIIT can be as low as 6 minutes a week… Caveat please, thank you.

Chronic cardio (an hour on the treadmill)? Let’s kick that dead donkey again…

My wife is so smart, she already uses macadamia nut oil.

Insanity 2 Codename Asylum

asylum Apparently there is a new Insanity workoutÂ coming from Shaun T. It is supposedly coming out early 2011 and according to Shaun T himself:

I just finished a program called â€˜Asylumâ€™ because I had to take it a step forward. With â€˜Insanity,â€™ it is based off max integral training and your best. I took all of that and made â€˜Asylumâ€™ really sports-specific. Thereâ€™s a workout called Game Day, where you are doing all these different sports. Youâ€™re using your agility and speed. Itâ€™s really for the person who wants the athletic body and mentality.

Sounds like a step away from the aerobics dropouts and more towards the conditioned athlete. Personally, I can’t wait!

R5D1 – Swinging Back Into Action

January 11, 2011

RKC 1_1

Up there is the Minimum workout for 2 of the days of week 1. The second part is below which will be augmented with the WOD, or should I say, a WOD of my choosing. In order not to get stagnated on doing specific ones, I will try to pick from the previous week WOD only.

RKC 1_2

As you can tell, the second workout is pretty easy, a warmup and 5 minutes of Turkish Get Ups. That’s why I will be adding something in. Since I am also splitting out a day for deadlifts and bench I will try to find a WOD with bodyweight moves and pullups if possible.

So last night was day 1 of the RKC Program Minimum which is basically just two handed swings working to perfect form. I still have a hard time with the form, constantly thinking about my body position, handÂ position, swing height and so on. I have to assume it will get easier once I find a groove for the swing. The active rest is something you can make as easy or hard as you want. I tried to keep my HR below 160 so I ended up doing Jumping Jacks, push ups, chin ups and free squats for my rest along with some light jogging in place. I managed to get through 5 sets of swings and therefore 6 sets of active rest. I’m a little sore today across the lower back and glutes which is a good sign. I don’t think being sore just on the lower back is what I need right now.

My feeling about kettlebells right now? Pretty positive, it seems to be a thorough full body movement and a pretty taxing workout. You have to be careful about the height of your swings, too high is a real danger to your back as you try to slow the weight down at the bottom. But overall, I think I am going to like this.