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.
Unfortunately I spent my whole Canada Day in bed with what I can only describe as the stomach flu. The cramping was incredibly painful at times and I felt dizzy and disoriented. The worst thing is not the sickness but knowing that a day in bed means my back is going to be incredibly sore tomorrow and I will probably not be able to do Yoga then either! That means I will have had 2 days off and most likely will have a sore back for a week.
My diet consisted of a handful of shreddies, a pitifully small amount of oatmeal and a banana. Oh, and a shake. All prepared by my wonderful wife as I lay upstairs in bed.
Being sick sucks. Being sick and knowing that you have a few days of excruciating back pain to look forward to is monumentally worse.
I hope everyone else’s Canada Day was better than mine!
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.
I awoke this morning feeling like someone had thrown up in my mouth for me. It was a truly disgusting feeling that I could easily have predicted had I thought about it. I was too busy bidding on Versace and David Beckham cologne to realize that in just a short few hours all the garbage food I put into my body would literally revolt on me. It was my own fault, nobody forced me to eat those wings or the meatballs. I need to work on my foresight because I dreaded the idea of having to work out this afternoon. Part 1 of my recovery was to do a quick couple of miles on the treadmill after which I really did feel better. Drank some juice, had a salad for lunch and the memories of spinach dip and nacho chips was fading fast. We went to Costco in the early afternoon and got rained on in the parking lot and then watched some TV until it was time to work out. Nicole requires naps during the day, so once she was napped out it was time to go.
Week 2 – Just do week 1 again apparently. I have included in my files a copy of the schedule for you to check out for yourselves. It’s over to the right in the links section. As you can see, weeks 1-3 are the same then you take a week off but I may do some short strength training in that week it depends on how I feel my progress is coming along.
Today was tough. After the workout was over I have to admit I felt like a bit of a failure. My strength seemed to leave me so soon, I felt like my Ab Rubber X workout was not up to par and I was not as tired as I was last week. However, once I looked at the sheets, I realized I had done more this time around. My chinups were better, my abs were almost 50% of the total workout which blew me away considering how crappy I felt. Speaking of Ab Ripper, I find that I am just too tired to do it at the end of the workout effectively. I may try to work it in at the start after warm up instead. I am also finding that my affection for Crunchy Frog is diminishing. It is starting to hurt my back doing what are basically horizontal V-Snaps. Besides, I haven’ t ever really noticed frog abs so I am confused as to why we would be doing these! I find that the Fifer Scissors are fine, but doing the bicycles only 2 moves in to the session really taxes my hip flexors and I am at failure very quickly. There are 11 moves, all of which I cannot name off the top of my head and I can do at least a handful of most of them (that sounds like I really suck at abs doesn’t it?). I cannot, for the life of me, do any leg climbers. I am not sure who invented this ridiculous movement or what they were thinking, but I substitute V-Snaps instead since I hold the movement in the highest of contempt and refuse to even attempt to become proficient at it.
I had the same pain in my elbow doing pullups, mostly during bicep involved close grip motion. It doesn’t really hurt doing front grip like we do at gymnastics or doing hammer grip so I can’t really say it is hindering me. It is also in my left arm only which is not the bicep that I tore so it’s a bit of a mystery to me why so painful. As far as numbers of reps go I am almost able to keep up with Tony in the video except of course on the 25 chinups per set. Part of it is because I am using the door hanging chinup bar that I fell off the first time I put it up so I am a little nervous. I do weigh significantly less than I did back when I did that and I have fixed the door frame myself so it should be OK. It just looks a little flimsy. Maybe I should install a solid metal bar instead. However I am past 12 reps on the chinups for some sets, mostly even the second round I am doing 10 per set. That equates to a minimum of 60 unassisted chinups per session. Not bad considering I have never been able to do chinups until this year (until I really tried). They were never a part of my workout routine, mostly because being a young, egomaniacal gym rat you just don’t do bodyweight exercises, they are for girls and the kind of guy who shops at Lululemon, works out in spandex shorts and a cycling top and has a wardrobe full of Abercrombie and Aeropostal shirts. Anyhoo… after the workout I was conmpletely wiped. I lay on the floor of the gym for a good 10 minutes listening to the DVD intro music and wishing I was on the couch. I finally managed to get enough strength back into my arms to get up and head upstairs. Week 2 – Just like week 1 but more painful…
Not what you would call a day off really however I did toy with the idea of skipping the stretching and going straight back to day 1. The problem is that I took 2 days off last week due to coaching and as eager as I was to get into my stride again, I thought it would be prudent to follow the program as much as I could regardless. So stretching it was. It was not like Yoga, however it was what I had hoped Yoga would be. It was relaxing, calming, the moves were easy to accomplish but with enough difficulty to challenge anyone. I became painfully aware of my interfering waistline on several occasions. I suppose having a 42 inch waist will do that to you. Couple that with my less than flexible back and some of the stretches I am sure looked more like I was sleeping. The workout turned out to be exactly what I needed. The tightness in my shoulders anb back disappeared, for the first time in a long time I actually felt like my hamstrings stretched after years of thinking they were made from piano wire.
What a perfect way to end the week and a perfect way to stay motivated for the coming week where I will have no days off to ease my way into the workout.
Saturday night was a problem diet-wise. We went to Sonia and Darren’s before going to an Oshawa pub (fingers crossed we might see Kid Rock!) and had a silent auction and fundraiser for the soccer team. Unfortunately I had too many corn chips at Sonia’s and too many meatballs and wings at the pub. I felt sick to my stomach when I woke up on Sunday not only because of the food but mostly because they didn’t serve any of it until 10pm!!!!! We ate our last bite at around 11pm, no wonder I felt like a tub of lard on Sunday. Of course, there is a cure for that… Chest and Back!!
No Kid Rock, just plenty of imitators. Long live the mullet!
Every kid I knew growing up either had this poster or desperately wanted it.
DOMS – Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. This is why when you work out hard you are not sore the next day but rather 2 days later. It is one of those things in the fitness and medical field that is still up for debate as to the cause. You would think that in this age we would pretty much know why the body does certain things. Apparently all that money we pay to the doctors really does go on BMW’s and country clubs! Regardless of the reason, the facts are simple. 2 days ago we did a difficult leg and back workout, and yesterday I was in some discomfort. Today I feel like I have a large hunting knife stuck in my left butt cheek. The pain is excruciating, it is a significant hindrance to my ability to walk and my whole hip/back/pelvic girdle area is seized up like an old Chevy that has been sitting in the rain and the snow since Charlie’s Angels was on the telly. Speaking of which, it is with great sadness that we note the passing of one of the greatest sex symbols of my youth, Farrah Fawcett. I watched Charlie’s Angels in England as a kid with fascination not only at the wonder that was American TV but also because every kid I knew thought that Farrah Fawcett was without a doubt the most beautiful woman in the world. There was no debate, she just was, and she will be missed greatly and remembered fondly.
Back to day 6 though, which means at some point I have to stop bitching and do Kenpo X. The saving grace is that a few years ago I took Kempo Karate (Kempo is the Americanized version of the original Kenpo) classes for a summer and also the P90 program (the beginner Beachbody program) had some karate type components to it when we did that a few years ago. I am not going to say I know what to expect beacause to be honest this program has already given me enough curve balls to prove that they have obviously done their homework in preparing a system to throw you off balance. It’s going to be difficult, it is going to be extremely painful, but in the end that is what I signed up for and I am not going to be beaten by a DVD, I just won’t!!!
So it was just as difficult as I imagined however it was a lot more fun than I imagined and the hour just flew by. Probably knowing I didn’t have to do Ab killer afterwards helped. The workout itself it fairly predicatble, some strking, kicking and blocking along with some complex multiple movements that I wasn’t quite able to master right away. My heart rate was over 130 the whole hour, peaking at almost 150. So far, it was the easiest day of the program simply because the movements didn’t really require advanced balance or strength just endurance and an amount of coordination that anyone should posess. It was easy to do well, in so much as you are able to push yourself hard even if you can’t do the movements exacltly as you are supposed to. Of course, there are enough of each repetition that at the end of the workout you are left with the infamous jelly legs but the workout is enjoyable enough that you don’t really notice. It is the perfect way to end the week especially after such a gruelling start.
Hard to believe it was a week ago that I started this. Although I did have to take the 2 days off, I will make up by not taking the rest day and doing a double on Sunday with a morning run while Nicole is at work at the gym.
Week one done! I would pat myself on the back but my shoulders are too sore to reach back there…
Happy Canada Day!
