(My home gym, pictured here, messy but plenty of room)
Since I have issues with some of the movements in the workout, namely the triceps kickbacks which are relatively ineffective in building any kind of triceps strength, I have decided to replace them with variations of laying triceps extensions. I have the bench at home and laying extensions with close grip bench press are great replacements for the kickbacks. I tried it tonight and other than having to adjust the weight a little, it  is going to work out really well. In other news I am up to almost 20 of each of the ab exercises not including the stupid leg climbers which I just hate and can’t seem to do at all. I finished my sets of the regular workout a couple of minutes early and got a head start on the Ab Crippler  and as such was able to accomplish much more over a slightly extended period. I didn’t rest more, I just completed more because I had more time. The other benefit was that I took a couple of minutes rest before I started which made a world of difference. However, my hip flexors are still pitiful when it comes to bicycles. It’s not that they are weak, I can do hanging leg raises no problem even with straight legs, but constant motion like the in-and-outs followed by bicycles just kill me.
At the end of this week, since it will be the end of the 3 week cycle, I will post my actual numbers for the movements to document my improvements. Next week is supposed to be a “rest” week but I see there is Yoga in there so it can’t be much of a rest! It’s interesting to see how my numbers are fluctuating, but also they are not entirely an accurate reflection of my improvement potential since I am restricted to the weights I have available. I don’t want to go out and buy more dumbbells so I think I am going to start using the barbell for some of the heavier curls and shoulder presses. As long as I don’t spend any time changing weights, it should work out OK.
We had to cancel the private class we were supposed to have tonight so I was able to get home early and get to Plyo before it got too late. I learned from last week that when it comes to Plyo or other cardio type workouts that I cannot eat before no matter what. So tonight I had a light snack of fat free jello pudding and set about the workout with a vengeance. One thing I have learned is that I take this quite seriously and once I get in my zone I am quite a focused individual. Some may call it angry, I call it attentive. I have always had a very difficult time working out with people unless I knew I was the best. This is a bit weird considering during the 80’s I spent a lot of my workout time teaching and leading aerobics classes of one kind or another. Anyway, for whatever reason once I get into the gym I leave my sense of humour in my pants and develop a frightening degree of focus. Maybe it is a fear of appearing silly, maybe it is a fear or not being able to perform, whatever it is I think it’s probably a deep seated fear of something and I combat it with a surprising lack of patience.
The workout was hard, harder I think than previous weeks. I think it’s mostly because I am pushing myself harder, squatting deeper, jumping higher etc. but whatever it is my heartrate this evening was up over 150 for a significant portion of the workout. There is a section called run squat jump turns or something where you are supposed to start with your leading hand on your leading shoe and jump 180 degrees. I wasn’t even able to reach my foot last time but I did today! The other significant difference was in the full squat jumps where you have to touch the floor with both hands beside your feet then jump up into a full stretch. For the first time tonight I was able to touch the floor before extending and jumping. These may not seem like earth shattering things but each improvement I make and every improvement I feel is like a major achievement to me especially considering that I thought myself to be in pretty good shape when I started this thing. I am just cooling down after finishing, Nicole is out for a walk since Mr. Angry didn’t want her making fun of me on the treadmill as I sweated my ass off  wearing only my underwear and a heart monitor. I must have looked like an epilleptic pot roast. So I am off to mix a recovery shake, some fruit, some protein powder and some juice and settle in for a couple of hours of telly.
Hint for the day:
Relax, you will live longer. You will also not look like an angry swollen stuffed tenderloin in Haynes.
Today is the start of week 3. This is identical to 1 and 2 but this is the last of that specific rotation. This means this is my last week to try to perfect this sequence of moves. This in itself is a big motivator for me. I know the workout, I know the kind of intensity and the length and I can really push myself to try and perfect the total exhaustion point to be at the very end of the workout. I have not moved Ab Pooper X yet, however I think that I may do that for the next phase. I just think my abs are too tired at the end of the regular workout to get a really solid flex that will provide a good failure point.
L.L.Bean - Great men's outdoor stuff.
This morning, although my weight does not seem to be moving much, I put on my pants that I bought 2 years ago during our honeymoon. We went to the L.L.Bean outlet in Portland Maine as part of one of our excursions from the cruise. They had the greatest outdoorsy type stuff for men. I would say it is like Roots a little, just more rugged and a little less poserish. I was also very happy to find that you can actually buy online and they will ship to Canada, something they only started last year! The point of buying them was as a reward for losing the 45lbs I lost for the wedding. They fit pretty well and they were the smallest pants I had bought in years. Since then they haven’t seen much action. I gained about 20lbs in the couple of months after the wedding while basically not caring what I ate. As time progressed I was out of the gym basically being a lazy ass and not eating well and of course, as you would have predicted, gained most of the weight back. Not to be too hard on myself at my highest weight which was very, and I mean VERY close to 295lbs I was not working out at all so I was just pudding. After I gained some of the weight back I was 15lbs less and I was working out 5 days a week so the body composition was significantly different. I am currently sitting around 255-260 at about 22% fat according to the scale at home.
Chest and Back.
The only flaw I can find with the back routines here is that there is no work up to the pullups. Since I don’t use a support, a chair or whatever, I find that going straight in to full bodyweight pullups is difficult and is causing me some elbow pain. I think the resolution is to have some kind of support for the first sets and then work up to the full weight. It’s a little frustrating but as my bodyweight reduces I suppose I will get better. I can’t imagine trying to do chin ups with a 45lb plate around my waist, or even a 25 for that matter. So being 20 lbs lighter will no doubt help.
The pushups are cake, all except the diamond pushups which I find hard on my wrists. It is a good tricep workout but I think since I have a bench with weights in the basement that maybe I will substitute some heavy close grip bench presses for the diamond pushups. I am still really struggling with doing Abs after the main workout and I don’t seem to be improving in that area as much as others. What to do…
I can’t think of a better way to end my first 2 weeks in P90Xland than to do stretch X. My body does feel a little beaten up I have to admit and I am sore in a bevy of places. However, I know that an easy day today will put me in a great frame of mind for tomorrow and my last week before rest week. I have been thinking about taking my P90X routine to the gym. I have the movements, I have the equipment and at least at the gym I would also have a proper place to do pullups. I wouldn’t risk doing the switch grip pullups on a door frame pullup bar and I have not had time yet to drill a new bar through the door frame to give me a really steady bar I could do anything on. I did however finish putting up all the mirrors yesterday and the gym is looking great! Hopefully I can get a picture of it and post it here just to show what you can do with a small space and a touch of  creativity!
So the stretch went well. I am fond of the workout rather than a rest day becasue I know I need to work on my flexibility. Regardless of what some of the idiots in the HIT community believe it really is possible to lengthen your muscle body and increase your flexibility with a little work. Point in case, my flexibility is improving already. I have about 2-3 inches increase in my two leg hamstring stretch and while my hamstrings are epically tight, this gain is still significant. Most of my movements are moving now as I breathe. Last week I was able to do some of the streches but my start and finish points were basically the same. This week as I breathe into the stretch each movement does stretch further with each exhale. The only problem really is the candle to plow or shoulder stand to plow. I can get the shoulder stand OK, but my back is so sore that when I attempt to go over into plow not much happens. I am not expecting my knees to hit the floor or anything but reaching my face would be nice. In time, I suppose.
Moolatte - The best drink IN THE WORLD!!!!!!!! Ya, no more of those
It’s taken me 17 days to do 13 days workouts with the sickness and the coaching time off. Tomorrow will be Monday and that will mark 14 days, or 1/6th of the P90X program. It feels like so much longer than that in some ways and in others, like in the physical appearance department it feels like not much has happened. Although I feel like my belt is looser and I know I have dropped a few pounds I am at the 2 week frustration point. This point is the watershed of the workout world. After 2 weeks either your body will win or your determination will win. It is the breaking point where suddenly your body realizes that the changes are most likely long term and so it starts to adjust. It lets go of some bodyfat, boosts its metabolism to catch up and generally starts to adjust to the new regime. Of course, it is also the day that your brain will tell you that nothing is happening and you should probably get a Moolatte and forget the whole thing. It really comes down to that, Moolatte or move on. If you Moolatte, you can expect at least another week of the same battle. If you decide to move on and keep up with the work you will start to see the changes you have been looking for.
Kenpo is my favourite workout. Not because I like martial arts or the thought of beating people up but rather because it seems to last about half as long as most P90X workouts. The kicking is difficult to master especially if you haven’t done any martial arts before. The combinations of kicking and punching or the multiple blocking sequences are challenging also. Today my legs were sluggish, my back was aching but I knew that once I had made it through that I would be fine. I also knew in the back of my mind that one more week of this and I get a week of stretching / rest. The workout went quickly, my heartrate was up in the 140s for most of the hour and I felt great afterwards. Tomorrow is rest day but for me it will be a stretch day.
Injuries are a fact of life in any athletic endeavour. I very rarely go to the gym without feeling some kind of pain somewhere. There is always something I am having to work around or be careful with and maybe only a few weeks in each year where I can really go full out in the gym without pain. As I get older, the injuries last longer, they refuse to heal at all without rest and of course once I stop to rest them, something else inevitably gets tweaked. Such has been the case with my elbow / shoulder. Since around August last year when I started lifting heavy at the gym again my shoulder has been problematic. For a while I was unable to bench at all due to the pain and since I was once again getting close to my personal best this was incredibly frustrating. Admitting that my personal best has already happened is a huge pill for me to swallow however setting new personal bests for flexibility and low body fat are where my focus should be. So my shoulder was a pain. Since starting P90X I have had less and less problems with it to the point now where there are days when I don’t feel it at all. However, I have a new issue. My elbows are sore on the inside. I know it is from close grip inwards facing pullups since I have never done them that way; I considered the inward facing grip to be somewhat of a cheat. The easy thing would be to skip that exercise and replace it with something else but my instinct tells me that I should be able to do this, maybe not now, but at some time my arms should be capable of doing the movement. Considering I have gone from maybe 2 or 3 chinup ability a few months ago to being able to do sets of ten I am very happy however the nagging issue of my elbow remains. I will admit that as my weight continues to fall, the chinups become increasingly easier, however I would like to be able to know that I am able to go into any workout, be it P90X or my regular weight training regime without the fear of pain. Maybe given the types of workout that I do, that is an unattainable dream. The intensity I bring to my workouts certainly doesn’t lend itself to a stress free and injury free life but I long for those days of my youth where the soreness went away after a day or two and things didn’t hurt just because you used them.
Maybe it was because I was sick last week and have been feeling under the weather for a few days or maybe it was the fact that I had already done 45 minutes on the treadmill this morning that I was dreading the legs and back workout for the day. So much so that I agreed to go out for an early dinner to The Keg at 4 in the afternoon in the hope that the meal would settle me into the right mindset. I am not sure if it was the lobster or the steak but once I got home I was determined to squeeze the day’s work in.
Legs and back is a tough day for me. I have had some bad experiences in the past with lunges causing my back to go out the following day so I am understandably wary of them. For the most part, today is all lunges of various types. Couple that with the pullups that are still challenging for me and you have a workout that I just don’t like. Sprinkle Ab Rippling X on top and you have an hour and a half of hell. My squats seem to be improving and my lunges, with the exception of my back leg aren’t bad at all. Getting that back leg to stay straight is a real problem though. There are only 4 types of pullups in the workout, 2 rounds of each. That means however that there are 8 rounds of 2 kinds of lunges / squats. I may be wrong but it doesn’t seem like they repeat the leg stuff. I wouldn’t know since I don’t have anywhere on the sheet to record the numbers or types even though Tony keeps telling us to write it all down ON THE SHEET! So imagine then 16 sets of legs, lets say half of them are repeated so you are looking at 12 different leg exercises of which I would bet half are lunges. I do remember that there is a wall sit which is then repeated as a single leg wall sit which I failed spectacularly at today. Do my legs feel stronger? Absolutely! Does my back feel like it is in danger of going out the following day? So far, not really. I will try to turn up the intensity slowly, gradually getting lower with my movements and hope that with time my back will get used to the work. Today my heart rate topped out at almost 150 which means I am still getting the workout I need. Also, where I was burning about 2000 calories a week at the gym (not including 10 hours of coaching) I am now up at around or slightly over 3000 for the week. That is an unexpected surprise!
“The haves and have-nots can often be traced back to the dids and did-nots” D.O. Flynn
It’s time for Yoga X. I feel a thousand times better today and after some research online and following my own instincts I think I have narrowed my ailment down to salmonella poisoning from spinach. The symptoms fit, both Nicole and I were sick with the same type of ailment, mine being worse because I eat a lot more spinach than she does. Whatever it was, it seems to be mostly gone by now, along with the remaining bag of Costco spinach. So back on track. I am annoyed that I had to take the 2 days off however it gave me a chance to catch up on some Wii tennis, bowling and of course some Wii Fit. No Wii X thank God. My Mii is still obese, poor kid, as you would expect for someone my weight but it just goes to show the shortcomings of the BMI system.
They say that a male my age should be around 18-25% body fat. Right now I am around 21% which is OK. However, according to the BMI chart I am right on the brink between Class 1 obese and Class 2 obese. To show how ridiculous the system gets, before I started dieting for the wedding I was right on the brink of morbidly obese. That is the kind of language you only hear on programs like “Half-Ton Tween” or “Four Ton Father-In-Law” and even though at the time I would have admitted that I was a fat bastard I certainly wasn’t having to be wheeled around in a $7000 custom made wheelchair big enough for a pregnant hippo. I digress however, only to heap sympathy on my Mii who has a hard time seeing over his enormous chest and for whom I am certain, seeing his feet is out of the question.
Not, I repeat, NOT normal behaviour!
Yoga X for the second time was, if I can recall the first one clearly enough, a little easier this time around however let me just say up front that even though Yoga is all about peace and tranquility and stuff if I ever find the dude who came up with the revese twist grab back thingy I will personally choke the living daylights out of him. That is not normal, no reasonable person would do that or expect other people to do that. Unless you for some reason are trying to impress the parents of your new contortionist family there is no reason that you would attempt to do something that messed up with your body. Having said that, I was able to do far more this time around including 2 – count them – 2 crane poses of 10 seconds each. The fact that I am happy about that makes me question my sanity but there you have it. I had forgotten (seems like an ongoing trend with me nowadays) that the Yoga was actually a 90 minute session and after the first “section” I was completely bagged. The main reason for this is becasue my recollection was that the really difficult stuff, the runners pose and endless dogs of various types, was about 20 minutes or so. I discovered that it was not until about 47 minutes in that we were allowed off the floor to start on the balance phase. Nicole was at the gym doing her floor hours so I was short on people to whom I could voice my complaints. Regardless, I persevered, which I think in the end is the whole point of this thing. Chalk another one up for me but my feeling that the end of the tunnel is right around the corner is fading fast. There are moments of sheer exhaustion where I can’t even imagine being able to make it through the week, never mind 90 days of this but like so many addicts and dieters before me, I will mutter the famed mantra “one day at a time” under my breath and keep on keeping on. I should have character coming out of my butt by the time this is over!
Well, I woke up just as sick as I went to bed. I thought that maybe if I walked around a while I would feel better but after having staggered to the bathroom I figured I had better get back to the heating pad before I hurt myself. My back is a fickle thing, you would think that a day off my feet would be a welcom relief, that my back would thank me with at the very least a pain free day but NO… a few hours off my feet and I can be debilitated for days on end while my spine attempts to realign itself. After an hour on the heating pad it was time to try again, and I was fully aware that with my coworker off today that I had to get to work somehow so I made a valiant attempt and convinced myself that as I moved more and more I would loosen up. Turns out I was right… I am sitting here at the end of the day almost completely recovered from my stomach upset (although let it be said that my stomach is still tender and cramping) and able to walk mostly upright with only a small degree of pain over and above the usual. However, I am not sure it would be wise to attempt yoga X today. In fact, I am not sure it would be wise to attempt any kind of X today at all unless I want to end up with herniated disc X, barf on the basement floor X or oops I snapped my neck falling out of the crane pose X!
I guess we will see, I may nap for a few minutes now and see how I feel after that. In the grand scheme of things, an extra day isn’t the end of the world.
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!
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.
