Back – Page 3 – Something Beats Nothing Every Time

Day 47-49 Weekends are fun! Program mixups are not!

I don’t want to fall into a pattern of losing touch with the proper schedule during weekends but for some reason last week’s mess with the wrong workout on the wrong day and then an extra day off really messed things up. It sent ripples of disturbance through this weekend causing me to perform a shortened Yoga workout on Sunday in order to set up for the real Yoga of rest week on Monday.

Friday was Day 47, I was already a day off schedule due to last week so it was supposed to be Yoga but actually I did Plyo since I switched them again, something that would come back to bite me. I do love the Plyo workout so it was easy to complete, enjoyable and easy to push myself. I did find that my legs were sore afterwards, something I was surprised at but I put down to the fact that I had pushed very hard during the lunges at the start. Saturday I did legs and back and found that my hamstrings were very tight after doing 30 minutes on the treadmill in the morning. Maybe it was the very hot weather recently but I find myself a little sluggish and with a very heavy feeling in my legs. I mentioned this last week but I thought for sure it would pass quickly enough. Not yet. I am thinking that on the days when I do double workouts that I am not replacing the glycogen well enough and that is causing me to hit the wall prematurely. It also would explain the lack of fullness in my legs and the sluggishness (I think). Saturday we went to the market early and I don’t recall feeling heavy and slow at that point so maybe it is the extra cardio after all. Sunday was supposed to be rest day on a normal week, this week it was supposed to be Yoga since I had skipped Monday and switched the Plyo and Yoga days. I checked the schedule for next week (REST WEEK 2 WOOHOO !!!!) and found that day 1 is supposed to be Yoga. I had really screwed myself. I knew I couldn’t do 2 days of Yoga back to back so I ended up doing about half the Yoga workout and some extra stretching to make sure I was not Yoga’d out by Monday. That workout was fine, the flexibility piece is getting easier, but the moving savasanas at the start are still a challenge, especially the last one with the half moon and twisting half moon.

I guess it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that if you start to change stuff around you are going to run into problems with the schedule. The fact that it was an accident was little comfort when I realized what the changes had done. Anyway, I am going to be on rest week next week so I will have plenty of time to recover from the mix ups.

So there you have it, end of week 7 going on to rest week 2 and with only the last 1/3 of the program left to do. So far so good and I think this rest week I will try to post some measurements and some body part shots.

Don’t hold your breath.

Day 46 – Wedding Gifts and Dancing Queens

Back and Biceps, Ab Rippler

Nice Camera, uses Memory Stick Pro Duo though...

Nicole decided that we should donate our digital camera to her dad for his new business – www.torontolandlordagent.com. That opened the door for us to go to the Bay and use some of our gift certificates from the wedding to get a new digital camera. We chose the Sony CyberShot W230 which not only does 12MP shots but also is capable of HD quality movies. So thanks to all those who gave us Bay Gift Certificates for the wedding, although it has taken us almost 2 years we finally spent the cash!! So if you know of anyone who needs to rent their condo / apartment / house, just give John a call!

The workout was good today, with the basement door open these hot humid days really kick up the sweat factor which is great. My chinup bar is doing well although there is a slight bend in it from the close grip pull ups. I still have way more confidence in it that that flimsy chinup bar we got from some fitness place. Maybe once I get down to the 200 mark I would feel better about it. Don’t hold your breath people!

My progress with Ab Ripper is still moving along. I cheat a little head start as I have previously mentioned but now I am able to do 25’s on at least 8 of the 11 exercises, even bicycles which I frigging HATE!!! I still can’t do leg climbers, in fact if I didn’t see the video I would debate the validity and the mere possibility of that particular move. The Mason Twists at the end are a particular sticking point for me due to the stupid arm size issue. I am not able to touch the floor with my hands clasped together. Not going to happen, biceps too large, chest too large, shoulders ridiculously huge. I still get a really painful stretch through my lower back doing crunchy frog but at least I can make it through. The ones I have the issue with are the full situps and the situp with the Vsnap kicker. My upper body significantly outweighs my legs so even with my legs straight it is a struggle to counterbalance myself to get all the way up.

In other news, Jeanine won So You Think You Can Dance last night, something we are very happy about. Our favourite, Kayla, who is a dead ringer for our private class dancer and star of the stage Laura, came 4th which I think was very strange especially since that useless weasel idiot who came 3rd beat her. Anyway, congrats to Jeanine on a job well done and to Brandon who is a stellar performer in his own right but who was just too similar to last season’s winner.

Days 40-43 Major Malfunction, Long Weekend

So I kind of messed up this week. I did Kenpo on Thursday because I was sure that was the right thing to do. I realized once I checked the schedule that I was supposed to do Yoga on Thursday and Kenpo on Saturday. I actually ended up taking Saturday off (well, I did 45 minutes on the treadmill instead) instead of Sunday and then doing Yoga on Sunday. Then on Monday I built a large TV shelf to sit on top of the fireplace in the living room that would accommodate the tuner, the Satellite box, the DVDRW and both the Wii and the PS3. However, between fixing that up and installing it which took around an hour with the ridiculous amount of cabling involved and the small but significant amount of gardening that I did I managed to miss out my workout all together. So I now find myself on Tuesday without having done my Monday workout which means that I will now have to go without a day off this week.

So here is the plan.

Tuesday: Chest Tri Shoulders
Wednesday: Plyo
Thursday: Back and Biceps
Friday: Yoga
Saturday: Legs and Back
Sunday: Kenpo

This will get me back on track for next week which coincidentally is a rest week which fits perfectly.

So what did I do with my 4 days off? Well, I completely finished revamping the garage so that I actually have room to work and room to park the Jeep again. I built the shelf I just mentioned and installed it however if it works out fine and we like it, I will have to take it down and paint it black so it fits in. I did a good job with it too, routed the edges and everything to make it look professional! I also bought and installed a new stereo head unit for the Jeep, one with a USB port on front so you can use a flash drive for your music instead of CDs. That means I can get an 8GB memory stick and put every song I have ever heard on it! Nicole thinks we need a road trip now so we can listen to all that tuneage!

pioneerp3100 I did manage to fix the broken fence on the walkout deck and do some gardening, attempting to rescue our front yard flower bed that I built last year from the grass that has overtaken it. Weird how I still have stupid holes in the actual lawn but the grass grows like crazy everywhere I don’t want it to. I also “fixed” the mirrors in the basement, ever since I installed them I have been meaning to glue them to the wall instead of having them rest on the rail I built for them. I had assumed that if I glued them to the wall they would all be aligned properly and would look perfect. Not the case. In fact, the wall is so messed up that the mirrors are even worse than they were. Oh well, lesson learned that if you want a mirror wall, get a large mirror, don’t try to make one from small mirrors. Actually, it would probably have worked OK if I had stuck the mirrors to a surface I knew was flat and then against the wall. Maybe I will try that if I can get them off the wall now. Stick them to a piece of MDF and then attach that to the wall… hmmm…

So there you have it, a few days of major achievements around the house but not the greatest outcome on the P90X front. Although, even though I missed 2 workouts I added 2 days of cardio. Maybe that will all even out in the long run.

Day 38 – 1 Week To The Top

Back, Biceps

I always imagine the half way point of any venture as the top of the mountain, once you are past half way, things always seem to go more quickly towards the finish line. One week from today I will be half way through the P90X program and although my “transformation” is not significant, that was not my goal. In fact, as I stated at the outset my goal for doing this was only for the challenge and the variety. The fact that I have lost a few pounds and made some significant fitness gains is a bonus.

It has been really weird not going to the gym every day and still getting the quality of workout that I have been. I have always been of the opinion that you need to be in the gym to get the quality of workout that you need to succeed in fitness. This stems from the arrogance of my initial certification as an ACE Personal Trainer. When I got certified, the culture was that the gym was the law not the guideline and the notion of working out without weights was almost non existent. Since then a lot has changed, the improvisation of the fitness industry and their desire for money has generated a whole industry around working out at home. From the very early days of at home aerobics to Billy Blanks and his Tae Bo all the way up to P90X and beyond, the fitness industry now accepts the notion that you can get a great workout anywhere you want to. Ask any Personal Trainer worth their salt and they will now be able to give you a dozen alternatives to replace your gym exercises no matter if you are at home, at a hotel or even at the beach. My experience with P90X has taught me that not only is it possible to get a top class workout at home, but also that the workout that I impose on my kids at gym every year is a reflection of my own insight into that area. Without even knowing it I had developed a workout regime that could very easily have served as an at home workout for anyone willing to put in the time and effort.

Speaking of gym, I am going to start (hopefully) to develop the conditioning for the year before we start, that way I will have lists defined, workout schedules made and a well balanced approach to their fitness ready to go. Much as I enjoy making stuff up as we go, it does make me stressed and can occasionally lead to unbalanced workouts. So this year I hope to incorporate some of the Plyo and other P90X stuff into the conditioning and to have a set of workouts of various lengths I can pick from.

Day 33 – The Fear. The Choice.

Legs and Back.

Note the opposite twist to the natural hip position. Ouch!

I was thinking last night after I finished Yoga that one of the main reasons that people fail at sticking to thing such as diets, a workout plan, a 90 day torture session like P90X is fear. I have heard this a lot in the past and it never really made sense to me until now. I am not habitually fearful. I have a confidence in myself that replaces that fear. I get nervous, sure, and there are times when I think that my bravery may exceed my capabilities but I am usually fine with that. However, as time passes and I get older and wiser that fear has started to creep into my life. It is not unexpected given what I have been through with my back I suppose. If I were someone else I would think it is perfectly reasonable to be fearful given my circumstances. But last night during Yoga I realized that the reason I have stuck with this program so far and the reason that I have made such good progress with my flexibility and Yoga is that I refuse to acknowledge the fear in my head. Since my surgery I have lived in pain, it is not something that I like to talk about because I am sure to most people it just sounds like the complaining of a lazy fat guy. However, living in constant pain teaches you how to avoid any additional pain and the one thing I have mastered is staying on the right side of that extra pain line. However, I realized yesterday that the buffer between me and that line is a lot wider than I imagined. In fact, that line is WAAAAAAAY further than I thought it was. Sure, I have discomfort ( I call it pain, but in reality in comparison to ACTUAL pain it is just an inconvenience) but so far I have not caused myself an additional pain. As I went into Twisting Triangle pose last night I thought to myself that only a few weeks ago there is no way I would have tried something like that. Not only would I have thought it physically impossible but I would have assumed that I would twist my spine and like a bent paperclip it would never return to it’s original shape again. When it comes to my back my fear has ruled the roost and up until now it has served me well but I think it is about time that I realize that I may in fact be capable of more than I ever thought possible. Of course, if I manage to put my back out during this 90 days I will come back here and curse myself for my recklessness however one good thing about that fearlessness I spoke of earlier, it always means you will get back on that horse one more time.

Day 31 – Building a better bar

Back and Biceps -Â Yes, they are real. Greg Valentino – The man whose arms exploded. Bear in mind he is 5’2″.

The other day I found a pretty strong hollow metal bar at Home Depot for under $20. Today before my workout I drilled holes in my basement door frame and slid the bar in. I now have a guaranteed bulletproof, 400+lb holding chinup bar from hell! I just need to get some kind of grips or foam or something to go with it and I will be in chinup heaven.

Speaking of chinups, even after just a week off my chinups are back down to miserable numbers again. I was doing sets of 10-12 at least during week 3 and today during Back and Biceps I was struggling with 5!! Maybe it was the week off, maybe it was just that I was tired, I am not sure but whatever it was it frustrated the hell out of me! The workout was good again, I am LOVING these non-repeater workouts at this point. I am in the frame of mind where I just want to attack everything and try as much as I can and these week 5 workouts are just the ticket. I am also at peace with Ab-Crippler X, I know I will get there eventually and I am just putting up with the pain for now until I conquer it! I am getting better every time I do it and I find if I cheat a little and start a couple of minutes early once they get to crunchy frog we are at the same point and I seem to do OK from there. It’s the bicycles and Crunchy Frog that are killing me now. My lower back is very painful when I do them and that does not help.

I am disturbed also at the degree of pain from my shoulder, of course I haven’t gone for my ultrasound yet which I got the Rx for months ago. However it is not just chinups that are painful, the more I do bicep curls the more painful it gets. I can work around the pain however it means that each set of different hand grip bicep curls kind of meld into one big hammer curl set. I will try and get to the doctor next week once Bob comes back to work and see what they say. Maybe a cortisone injection will be enough.

It has just occurred to me that I may be saying the same crap over and over again. I haven’t gone back and read any of my old posts, I hate to read my own stuff, so maybe I am boring you with my repetition…

I have been watching some of the Big Brother stuff on YouTube and I have to say what a great summer that would be! Get up early before the other idiots are around, have a coffee in the California morning sun, lay around in the pool for a while or the hot tub, work out outside, do some cardio, have all your groceries bought and paid for… What a blast. Of course you would have to put up with the kind of brainless degenerate narcissists that would choose to go on Big Brother but still I think it would be worth it.

So anyway, today was difficult but enjoyable. The arms were pumped afterwards and I even resisted the temptation to put on a little gun show inthe new mirrors. That will have to wait until the fat show has left town!

Day 19 – The 21 day habit

Legs and Back -Â 80 chinups, not bad for a fat old guy.

Bring it he said. Do your best and forget the rest he said. What he neglected to say is that if you do bring it you may actually lose the ability to walk for short periods of time. He didn’t say “Do your best but be careful that you are still able to stand up after you are done”. By the way, he also didn’t mention how painful that stupid Crunchy Frog is on your lower back. I know it is not supposed to be, but as tight as your back gets after the workout it is almost impossible for it not to feel incredible pressure from doing CF’s or V-Snaps as they are similar to.

I did my Saturday double today which consists of an hour on the treadmill in the morning and then P90X in the evening. My legs were tired enough after the treadmill that I wanted to skip the legs and back workout. However, I am now under the 21 day habit influence given that I have taken 2 days off getting to 19 days. It is widely acknowledged by psychiatrists and so on that it takes 21 days to create a habit and now is that point where that influence is coming to bear. I actually felt like I was compelled to go to the basement and do the workout even though I wasn’t 100% convinced I wanted to. That is the beauty of habits, they automatically point you in the right direction even when you can’t convince yourself to go down that road.

Once I started I felt fine as I usually do. I was going lower in my squats and lunges, forcing my back leg straight which stretches my quad like a beast. The chinups are going OK, I am regularly doing 10 per set, mostly unassisted which on legs and back day comes out to 80 repetitions. My legs were aching after I finished and of course, the Ab Ripper tore my hip flexors apart. It was not a good abs session at all due to the heaviness in my quads but I struggled through at about 15-20 reps of the 25.

Day 15 – Honeymoon pants

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 store in the North East US. Dropped by an outlet during our honeymoon and just loved their stuff. You can order online too! — 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…

Day 12 – Injury prone?

Legs and Back.

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!

Day 8 – Week 2 already!!!

Chest and Back.

Week 2 here we go! Only 82 more days to go!

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.Â 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 afterÂ warm upÂ Â 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 sessionÂ 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,Â works out in spandex shorts and a cycling topÂ 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…