Day 5 - Legs & Back (+ Ab Ripper X?)

Wow. I didn't eat nearly enough today. I know better than to do what I did today, but I got sidetracked and neglected my nutrition. I didn't actually eat anything until about 3:30-4:00PM and before that, I had only had two protein shakes - one at 12:30PM and one at 2:30PM. My total caloric intake today was 949 calories, of which, less than 30% was carbs. Add the that the fact that I did take both of my doses of Lipo6 and I started on NoXplod pre-workout today and hour before I did my workout. So, what did I expect?

At the very least, I expected this workout to kick my ass. At the most, I expected to throw up. I think I ended up somewhere in-between. I had done this workout previously as a substitution during BRE and, although I wasn't used to mixing pull-ups with leg exercises, I did pretty well. This time, though, I was getting dizzy at various points and had to pause the video a few times. I knew I was stupid, so I didn't want to exacerbate the problem I'd created for myself. In the end, the 55 minute workout took me 90 minutes, which I regarded as pretty good, considering I probably burned off 600 of the 949 calories I'd consumed today, leaving me with a net of 349.

I had to stop before Ab Ripper X and I'm still considering whether or not I'm going to do it before I go to bed. We'll see. What I do know is that I will be eating one more time.

Day 4 - Yoga X

I've done Yoga once before and I liked it...kinda. I never went back because it was embarrassing to be the one male in the room, the one inflexible person in the room, the one person that can't focus on the exercises in a room full of super-flexible women, etc. Today, I did 92 minutes of Yoga X and it was everything I expected. It was long. It was difficult for someone as flexible as peanut brittle. It was hard to hold the poses for as long as Tony and his assorted cast of freaks. However, all that said, I felt great when I was done. I think over the long haul, this workout may make me - the guy who has never touched his toes with his legs straight - flexible.

Day 3 ( for real) - Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper X

I like this workout because it's very similar to the bodybuilding workout I normally do for arms and shoulders. In the BRE I usually did upright rows, curls, triceps extensions, etc. This workout is very similar. I'm not as fond of the resistance tubes and I can't approach the dumbbell weight I was doing with the bands I have, but it feels pretty effective anyway. When I get my ironmasters I will ditch the tubes and only use them for travel. The tubes are different, though, in that the resistance never lets up. With a dumbbell, you can get a slight rest at the top of your curl because you're using gravity and the weight sits on top of your arm at the top of your motion. With the tubes, you're fighting the elasticity of the tube and doesn't ever let up until you reach the bottom of the motion. It can tire your muscle out a little faster.

I had another day of on-call and work, but I did manage to find an hour to do the workout. It was right about the time the kids got home from school and they were trying to do the exercises with me. It didn't last very long. I felt pretty good after the workout, then threw together a condimentless chicken on wheat bread sandwich with a bowl of raw broccoli florets and ate them in the van on the way to my C# class. Time is the enemy, but sometimes you can beat it.

P.S. - Of course, Ab RipperX was ridiculous again. I did much better this time, but it's just varying levels of pathetic.

One more thing

I want some of these.

Day 3 - It's not what you think

So I've stated my reasons for switching to P90X from my old gym rat routine and I thought I had a pretty solid logic behind it. My goal was to miss zero workouts. I bought resistance bands for travel and I have all of the P90X videos converted to MP4 and copied to my phone and my Zune. What could go wrong?

Leave it to my job to find a way to screw me out of my workout again. I generally start work at 7AM and clock out at 3PM. I eat lunch at my desk. That leaves me plenty of time to workout and then play with the kids in the afternoon before they have to go to bed. Yesterday, which was to be my Day3, I also had a scheduled install of some code that was to go until roughly 7pm or 8pm. I was cool with that because I'm hourly and overtime means extra cash. Work went as expected and and the evening deploy went without a hitch. I logged off and started getting my stuff together for the next round of P90X. Five minutes later, I got my first page. I forgot to mention I'm on call this week.

The first call lasted 4 hours, which took me to midnight. I was still considering doing the workout at that point even though I was sure I wouldn't be able to "bring it" that late at night after not eating for hours. Then I got paged again. And again. The next two pages kept me working until 5:30 AM. I was pissed and tired and I just went to bed. I thought I had it all figured out and I was shown handily, early on, that I didn't. Hell, I didn't even have time to post this blog until today.

Day 2 - Plyometrics

My blog is now caught up with my workout, so no more triple or double posts. Although I'm only on day 2 of P90X, this isn't the first time I've delved into PlyometricsX. I tried out this DVD when I was having trouble getting to the gym for my cardio workouts when I was doing BRE, but my cardio workouts were normally 30 minutes in the morning before food, so I've only ever done half of the DVD until tonight.

Tonight, I decided to "bring it" as Tony says, but not the way he intended. I had originally planned to do the workout at 3:00 after I clocked out of work, but I ended up staying on until about 4:00. Then I decided to venture up out of my cave ( my office in the basement) to talk to some humans, or near approximations, for a bit before diving into this workout. The kids, of course, wanted me to play with them, so I rode Gabriel's wave board for a bit. Then Colby wanted me to help him through a tough part of Lego Star Wars II, which I found incredibly difficult to say no to. Long story slightly shorter, I ended up playing with the kids until time to put them to bed - actually, a bit past that because Colby peed on himself because he didn't want to stop playing XBOX360 (the pride I felt) so he had to take a bath. It was 8:10 when that happened. So... I ended up starting my workout at about 10:00 pm after farting around online for an hour. I knew this was a bad idea, but I had made my bed and it was time to lie in it.

This first run through the full hour of PlyometricsX wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was bad, but I managed to get all the way through it. I didn't "bring it" every time Tony decided to double-time it, but I made it through all of the exercises with much panting and cursing. By the time we got to the bonus exercises, a little 5-minute run at the end before the cool down and stretch phase, I decided I didn't need the kind of bonuses he was handing out. Here's my impression of the workout:

It was very intense and I know I burned a ton of calories. My heart rate was high throughout the entire workout and I was sweating hard. The hardest things for me to do were the crossover kicks, because I kept losing my balance; the airborne Heisman, because I kept losing my balance; and the things where you jump up and bring your knees to your hand. I forgot the name of them. Those were just bastards. I also couldn't do the hot feet by the time we got there. Calves were destroyed from earlier workouts, so I just did the jumprope motion.

It makes you feel like crap when you see the guy with the prosthetic leg doing everything with no real issues and you're wondering if you can make it through the next exercise without collapsing.

On a positive note, my neck has been sore for a few days and this really loosened the muscles up.

Day 1 - Chest and Back, Ab RipperX

I've been working out for years, doing pull-ups and dumbbell bench presses for most of it. I expected this workout to be kind of easy. There were a lot of pull-ups, many of them wide-grip, which are hard as shit. I recently put a pull-up bar under my deck, so I was able to easily go from doing push-ups in my basement room to pull-ups right outside the door, but I admit I had to resort to the chair help toward the end. Good stuff. Here's a pic of my pull-up bar:

Ab RipperX was ridiculous. I felt like I had never worked my abs before. I've been doing crunches and knee-ups for a long time, but this routine made me look like a noob. I will have to work hard at it to be able to perform competently at some undetermined time. Ouch!

A new beginning

I've been doing a bodybuilding routine now for a few years and I've loved it. It has been fun, educational, and very effective. Lately, however, I've gotten a bit burned out and I let myself slide in the nutrition and workout areas for a couple of months.

Essentially, I was tired of spending a huge chunk of my day going to the gym. It's about a twenty minute drive to get to the gym and another twenty to drive home. Many times, I'm picking up stuff from the store on the way home as well, so it's at least 40 minutes to an hour just in drive time. Once I actually get inside the gym, the workout routines from BRE are roughly 45 minutes to 75 minutes. Many times, I add 30 minutes of elliptical training on to the end of my workouts, so I am looking at 2-3 hours out of every day being burned by this process.

To add to this, my wife is due in July with a baby daughter and I know I won't be able to keep to that schedule after the baby comes - or even slightly before she comes - so I have to find a way to reduce my workout time and, if possible eliminate the need to leave the house. In my researches on the net, I kept reading about a workout called P90x. I read a lot of very positive reviews and the only negatives I saw were

1. It's too expensive. You could come up with this on your own without paying a dime
2. It won't make you huge, just lean and cut

And that's really it. Well, I can deal with the expense - it's really not that bad - and I'm not trying to be a competitive bodybuilder. Lean is what I'm going for, but not wiry and skinny. I've looked at the videos and I can see that Tony Horton, the instructor, is not a small, wiry guy, so I feel confident that I won't be burning away muscle. I also know enough about weight training and nutrition to adjust my eating to the new routine. Another bonus is that I work from home, so I can work out any time I get a potential hour break at work, so no more drive time and a very minimal impact on my free time. I just extend my work day by an hour when I can manage to get the workout done between 7 and 3.

So, essentially, I have decided to give P90x a go and I will post my experiences with it in this blog for anyone who is interested, but mostly for myself.