DVD Days P90X to Tapout XT – Page 24 – Something Beats Nothing Every Time

Round 2, Phase 2. Day “29”. The Next 3 Weeks

I am posting this again only because I had a hard time finding it the other day. Today is day 1 of Phase 2 which means technically it would fall on day 29. I am currently on day 26 having skipped the rest days and probably employed some horrible math.

Day 1: Chest, Shoulders & Triceps, Ab Ripper X
Day 2: Plyometric Cardio Circuit
Day 3: Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper X
Day 4:Â Pure Cardio with or without Cardio Abs
Day 5: Legs & Back, Ab Ripper X
Day 6: Cardio Power and Resistance
Day 7: Cardio Recovery

I will most likely kill Cardio Recovery in order to ensure that the 2 days coaching are my days off. In light of Tony’s rant that I posted yesterday I am going to stop being “a bitch” and taking that additional day off. It’s time to man up, Tony style!

Today saw the return to Chest Shoulders and Triceps and that also meant a return to using the bench in the gym. Some of the tricep stuff that Tony does is what we in the weightlifting community would refer to as “finishing” moves. In other words, they don’t do much but give you a pump but really aren’t useful in any muscle building way. Any tricep extension that you are only using 10lbs for isn’t worth anything. Not even the time to hit next on the remote. You see, the triceps are a vastly underutilized and underestimated muscle group and in order to get any kind of response from them they need to be worked very hard. Dips and close grip bench are terrific exercises for triceps. Overhead extensions, not so much. If you really want to see your bench press (or in P90X terms, your push ups) improve, blast your triceps with heavy weights for a few weeks, you will be amazed at the results. Of course, this would require you knowing just how powerful your triceps are… Let me just say that in gym terms, you should be able to do about 75% or more of your heaviest bench in a close grip bench grip. If you rely on push ups as your benchmark, you should be able to do 75% of your max regular push ups in military and at the very least 50% in diamond. If not, it could be that your triceps are lagging and need heavy work. Doing anything with a 10 or 15lb dumbell just won’t cut it I am afraid.

That being said, the workout is good, if you substitute enough tricep work to make it worthwhile you will definitely be sore the days following.

Tony Goes Off

OK I admit, Tony is a certain way on his videos that some of us find a little hard to take. However, it’s about getting the message across and in case any of you were in any doubt as to Tony’s true feelings towards you and all those P90X users out there then check out the Tony Rant from the chat room some time ago. It’s a good read and puts Tony right back at the top of the respect list where he belongs. Just until the next time he does the bait and switch with the 40lb dumbbells and hangs his participants out to dry.

TONY GOES OFF – AND USES CAPITALS THE WHOLE WAY!!!!

Round 2 Rest Week 1 Ends – Quit the gym, build your own.

I am not claiming to be the best handyman, you won’t see me on the next season of Handyman Superstar Challenge but I was impressed with myself at getting the chin up bar installed in the garage. It is nailed to the rafters and is high enough so that a) my feet can’t touch the ground and b) it is above the garage door when it opens. This also keeps my ego in check and will prevent me from doing workouts in the garage with the door open. Not that I would dream of doing that now… but who knows about the summer. I am also going to build some crossfit boxes that you use to jump up onto in order to increase leg power and in addition, I am thinking of building some dumbell holders that I can then install in the basement to get the dumbells off the floor.

I also quit the gym this weekend. I have put the membership on hold indefinitely so that I can spend the next few months on my DVD based fitness and taking full advantage of the gym I faithfully built in the basement. It will also save us $70 a month which will, I assume, go towards a cloth diaper service and not towards a new exhaust or HID headlights for the Jeep or Tony Horton’s 1 on 1 fitness.

The buildup was pretty simple, I suspended 2×4’s from the ceiling joists using 4 large nails each. I will eventually put a lag bolt through each one but for now they are OK. I had bought a hollow metal bar, 48″ long and drilled a similar sized hole through each 2×4 as you can see. I simply threaded the bar through the holes and as you can see, the last support is a little off in alignment. That was due to the fact that when I drilled the holes, at least one of them was at a slight angle. I am not sure how you would combat this without the use of a drill press but it doesn’t seem to have affected it in any way.

The bar was around $25, the wood I had laying around as spare pieces as I did with the nails. I will have to buy the lag bolts / carriage bolts.

I am around 260lbs right now and the bar I set up in the basement (which I will discuss at a later time) has a very slight bow to it now after some vigorous use. However, that one is across a 36″ door frame. I don’t expect this one will bend at all given the 3 support points.

My plan is not to hang from between the 2x4s since I would bang my head on the central support, but rather to use one hand on the outside of one end support and the other between the two far supports to give my head room to clear the bar.

Round 2. Rest Week Review.

So I have been at this a month already and pitifully I find myself unable to crush the workouts like I did during round one. I know I am still some distance from the weight I was during round 1 and that may be enough to explain however I find myself disappointed at my effort level. This week, being rest week, does nothing to assuage that feeling. In fact, I find that I am angering myself by not pushing harder during the workouts. However, this being a week “off” I am not really supposed to push that hard. So I opted for 3 sessions of Core Synergistics from P90X and 3 sessions of the Core, Cardio and Balance from Insanity. With the delay in scheduling due to coaching I am taking approximately 10 days to get through a rest week which is, lets admit it, sub-optimal. So much so that I am thinking that tonight I should bust through into Phase II with a Chest, Shoulders and Triceps workout. I guess I will have to see how I feel however since I will be able to leave work at 330, maybe the planets are aligned in my favour. The two rest week workouts I have been doing have been pretty good, enough of a rest from weights, enough of a boost from cardio. However, the test will be getting back to Phase 2 and seeing if I am really rested enough or not.

So it is time to plan for Phase 2. I am uncertain as to whether to add the Max line of workouts to the mix yet. I think that is going to have to happen at least 2 weeks from now, maybe even into Phase 3. I still have Cardio Power and Resistance, Pure Cardio (with and without Cardio Abs) and Cardio Recovery to add to my current schedule. So here is the plan for the next 3 weeks.

Day 1: Chest, Shoulders & Triceps, Ab Ripper X

Day 2: Plyometrics

Day 3: Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper X

Day 4: Yoga X

Day 5: Legs & Back, Ab Ripper X

Day 6: Kenpo X

Day 7: Rest or X Stretch

I am modifying slightly to go back to a 7 day workout, given that I will still be off 2 days with coaching at least this will give me an opportunity to fit all the workouts in. Once I have tried Cardio Recovery, I may scrap day 7.

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 -Â 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

Round 2. Days 12-16, Insanity Hybrid is here

Human DNA removal. One way or another…

I couldn’t wait. Reading other blogs about people abandoning Kenpo and Yoga to do Insanity workouts drove me to aÂ jealousÂ rage. I ripped open my Insanity package and on day 13 instead of doing Kenpo I decided I would bust out the easiest of the Insanity DVDs. I decided upon the rest week workout. Mostly because frankly the write ups about the rest ofÂ theÂ program scared me and the fact that at this time I am still a similar shape to my pregnant wife. However, I thought if I don’t start this now, I will end up waiting for the perfect time and I will never get stuck in. Besides, how hard can the recovery workout be?

I quickly realized that Shaun T, with hisÂ friendlyÂ demeanor and charm is not the type of guy to take it easy on you. He is also not the kind of leader who wants to chit chat and joke around. He is my kind of instructor. Upon starting the rest week workout I found out one thing right away, in Shaun T’s world, warmup means follow his lead until your lungs hurt and then stretch. Anyone who has done an Insanity workout knows what I am talking about. His warmup, the part before the stretch just to get you started was more difficult than an entire Kenpo workout. Granted they have different goals in mind but this was a rude awakening. The rest of the workout was full of surprises. Not the good kind that make you smile, but the kind where you are lulled into a false sense of security and then kicked in the pancreas with a steel toed shoe. For example, after wheezing through the “warmup” you are allowed to stretch for a few minutes and you can’t help but notice that as the stretching is going on that you are speeding toward the end of the video. In fact, once the stretch is done and Shaun T brings his evil little face to the front of class to start you can see that there is only about 20 minutes left. That, my friend, is the first punch to the throat. You see, if you have never set fire to yourself or jumped into a frozen lake, to you, 20 minutes is no time at all. But to Shaun T, 20 minutes is enough time to destroy your physique, break your spirit, make you simultaneously cry and throw up in your mouth a bit and make you wish you had put down a tarp before you started.

Needless to say, the rest week of Insanity with 7 days of this workout is a daunting thought. What scared me the most was the fact that if this was the recovery week, how hard was the regular workout going to be? My pancreas aches just thinking about it.

Day 15 was chest and back, and I almost kissed the TV when I saw Tony who now officially is the Good Cop of the pair. I was already into week 3 and frankly not seeing the kind of weight loss I was looking for and so despite my better judgement I decided that I was going to officially Hybrid my workout and instead of doing Tony Kenpo I would do Shaun Kenpo instead. Chest and back went just fine and I was back to the kind of weights and reps I was doing the first time around. Since I already have all the size I could ever want, I am back to doing 15-20 reps of almost everything and upwards of 300 push ups and 50 pull ups every session. My pull ups are lagging behind a bit due to the extra weight I am carrying but I expect to be breaking the 100 barrier before long.

My usual Plyo day was replaced with Shaun T’s Plyometric Cardio Circuit which was not as Plyo-esque as Tony’s was, but was far more cardio oriented, a theme you can expect throughout the Insanity program. I will do a full run down of the workouts later as I become more familiar with them but for now let me say that the feelings I had during the recovery week workout were replicated and amplified during the PCC workout. At one point I looked across the floor, as I lay panting, at the drip trail of sweat arcing across the floor and though to myself how much it looked like someone had slaughtered some large animal in there. Seriously there were pools of liquid, spray trails and large drip marks everywhere. It was like a weekend away with Dexter…

Round 2. Days 9 – 11. Weekends are for working. Buying My Insanity.

I am finding this P90X thing harder the second time around. Not only, as I am repeatedly saying, that I am in worse shape than I was but also because I am skipping bits and pieces and therefore not quite getting the work I once was. It’s fine to say that I want to skip the cool down or the warm ups because I never did warmups in the gym before I worked out and besides it cuts 15 minutes off my workout, however, it means that I am missing 15 minutes of working out, no matter how easy that 15 minutes is. So I am finding that I am not improving at the rate I was the first time around. I am also finding that the one day between coaching where I have places to be during the evening is leading me to skip that day… This means I am ending up with 3 days off and 4 days on. Not conducive to massive results. So, tomorrow is Lent, the poor man’s New Years Resolution day (and by poor man I mean Catholic) and I am committing to 3 things:

1. I will work out 5 days a week, skipping only the 2 days that we coach.
2. I will absolutely not eat anything after 7pm.
3. I will stay off wheat completely again.

I am also committing to changing the P90X routines so that I can keep myself engaged and I will tell you why. This pastÂ SaturdayÂ morning I drove to Square One shopping centre and met a nice Indian lady in the Petro Canada parking lot. She gave me a package that will change my world, just as P90X did. For a while now I have been following FitBomb as I am sure many of you have. We were undertaking our first P90X journey at the same time but unlike me, his transition from P90X back into life went much better than mine did. In fact, the epic failure of G90X as I had called it forced me to look to other P90X grads to see what they had done once the dream was over. What I found was that the thirst for at home, gym free, cost free workout methods really catches you by surprise and you start to realize that maybe spending $70 a month on Â a gym membership is not necessary. Having been enthralled by the relative ease of doing the workout at home, I realized that maybe transitioning back to the gym was not the answer, but in fact that P90X had finally liberated me from that jail. I was finally able to do a workout that challenged me, got me fit and healthy and that I was able to do on my schedule. The logical conclusion was that rather than look back, I should look forward to another challenge. Just as others before me, I decided that the next logical step after Tony was Shaun T. I remember looking at the BeachBody site and thinking that Tony represented the epoch of their system. That if you were fit and wanted to challenge yourself, that P90X was your ticket to the big time. What I had not realized was that Shaun T was busy doing for cardio workouts what Tony had done for weights. Only with more professionalism and less douchy-ness. I then began to make the connection that FitBomb made and realized that a combination of the excellent weight training of Tony and the Insane cardio of Shaun T may in fact be the perfect workout system.

I checked Kijiji and 2 days later was handing over $60 to a nice Indian lady at a gas station on a cold morning in Mississauga.

Rather than try Shaun T at this time, I realized that I would have to be at least 20lbs lighter if I was going to try some of the stuff I had read about. However, the lure of the shiny box was too much and halfway through Kenpo (which I now no longer find fun, but rather boring) decided that I would put the Plyometric Insanity disc in and see what the big deal was. Ten minutes later my heart rate was at around 160 bpm and I thought my heart was going to explode. Shaun T’s warmup had reduced me to a quivering mess and as I lay on the floor soaking in my humility I realized that indeed I was looking at the future.

You see, the problem with P90X as I see it is the cardio workouts. They are not terrifically difficult and you will probably find that even if you like one of them, you will probably not find the others to your liking. So you will need to replace at least 2 days a week, if not 3 with something else. For myself, I don’t mind the Plyo but the Kenpo and the Yoga are not my cup of tea. I would rather do the yoga (albeit a stripped down version) on rest day and replace it with a cardio workout that pushes me during the workout schedule.

So my plan, once I am past phase 1, is to replace Kenpo and Yoga with Shaun T. I haven’t found out which workouts to put in their place but with 13 DVDs I am sure I will find something.

Finally, I am scared to work out again… and I like it.

Round 2. Day 7 and 8. No Rest For The Wicked.

Chest and Back. Week 2 of Round 2 Begins.

Since I am off 2 days a week coaching I have to skip the rest day and carry on without the benefits of Stretch X. Not that I mind really, I remember through Round 1 I would take the rest day off and not bother with the Stretch X anyway.

Now I am the roadrunner of P90X. I find that since I have started turning off the music during the workout and using my own soundtrack, things can go a lot quicker. I also find that now I am in Round 2 my tolerance for Tony’s inane diarreah commentary is running thin. So although I am not at the point where I am muting him completely, I now only have him making the set change announcements. Even that, however, isn’t really working out since I can’t skip the time it takes for him to belittle the others, grab his “weapons” (ugh) and do 2 reps, chicken out and “check on the kids”. Anyone familiar with Tony will know just how irritating this gets after the first few times. At the start you don’t really even notice it, however as you start to get into much better shape you find the breaks a waste of valuable workout time. That said, I am now referencing the sheet and going at my own pace. So much so that I can finish the workout and ARX before they are getting to the warm down section. I do find that I am much more sore after, however, I will put that down to the lack of physical endurance I currently possess rather than the speed with which I am doing the workout. After all, the few days that I did my G90X at the gym, I rested between sets but didn’t have to wait for explanations or excuses in between. Those days I finished the workout, ARX included, in about 45 minutes.

I finished Chest and Back on Monday, it’s now Wednesday and I am still sore. My triceps are killer since I tried to blast them with diamond pushups and military pushups since I have noticed a severe lack of brute strength in my arms. I did the pushups with regular feet but then did an equal amount of extras off my knees, little girl style. My arms took as much of a beating as my ego on that one let me tell you.

Round 2. Day 6. Pain. I has it.

I did Kenpo during the day today because I knew what I was in for. When I got up this morning my legs were like jello. I knew from the familiar feeling of apathy from my muscles that today was going to go down hill in a hurry. I tried to rush to get some of the house sorting done, installing the full size speakers in the basement to facilitate drowning out Tony on demand. I built some Ikea shelves by which time I could feel my legs starting to firm up and bring the surge of pain to the fore. I struggled to crank out Kenpo, my favourite workout and by the end I felt almost optimistic about my chances of being able to survive the night. However, after recovering on the couch for about an hour I tried to get up to head to the washroom and it hit me.

The pain.

The searing, unending tidal wave of masochistic payback from yesterday’s hour of lunges. It was like my veins were filled with molten lava flowing through every fiber of my lower boday scorching the nerve paths and blood vessels as it went.

Everything from the waist down hurt. I couldn’t stand up, I certainly couldn’t walk anywhere and for a brief moment I actually thought I was about to collapse. It was fortunateÂ that I had predicted this outcome however the scale of the problem was immeasurably more immense. I lay back on the couch, cursed Tony and reached for the advil that I had cleverly left on a small table, within reach of my now semi-permanent home.

I’ll get you Tony. Just as soon as I can stand up again.

Tomorrow is Superbowl Sunday and since I will be building Ikea furniture all day and no doubt contorting myself into ridiculous positions, drill in hand, I am assuming I will not be working out. I think after today that may be a good idea. I’ll be back to do Chest and Back on Monday.