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.