P90x Round 2, Day 29 - Chest, Shoulders, Triceps

P90x Round 2, Day 29 - Chest, Shoulders, Triceps
Diet :
Breakfast: Raisin Bran
Lunch: Salad with Turkey, Cottage Cheese, Carrots
Snack: Granola Bar, Jello Pudding, Fruit Cup
Dinner: Healthy Vegetable and Chicken soup
Unplanned Snack: None

Summary:
Not the best workout today, but I did give it a decent effort I suppose. For some reason I seem to have lost some strength or at least some motivation over the last week. I definitely do not enjoy this workout as much as the other workouts in the first week.

Tomorrow is the weigh-in day for Day 30. I'm actually not going to be surprised to find out that I'm down a bit from last Friday. I just don't feel like I've done enough to take any backwards steps.

Plyo tomorrow. I have to run as well, so we'll see how that goes. Might cut Plyo short for running, maybe not. Running is the focus now but don't want to use that as an excuse.

P90x Round 2, Day 15 - Chest and Back, Ab-Ripper X

P90x Round 2, Day 15 - Chest and Back, Ab-Ripper X
Diet :
Breakfast: Raisin Bran
Lunch: Turkey Sandwich
Snack: 2 Mexi-Melts
Dinner: Chili Mac Soup and Tortilla Chips
Unplanned Snack: None

Summary:
Today was a day off from work but I didn't let that keep me from getting a good work out. I did slip a bit on the diet eating the leftovers from yesterday's cheat meal instead of throwing them into the trash. I should have just gone ahead and chucked them, but I didn't and there I am.

Chest and Back was today. I didn't miss an opportunity and gave it 100% today improving in a few repetitions on a few of the workouts. I will really miss this workout for the next 6 weeks.

Diet pitfalls are done for this week. I'm going to tighten the belt and get back in the saddle running and we'll see where we end up Saturday. I know the diet has skipped a few beats, but my energy is amazingly high.

Don't want to go back to work tomorrow, but can't wait to get back to the routine.

P90x Round 2, Day 8 - Chest and Back, Ab-Ripper X

P90x Round 2, Day 8 - Chest and Back, Ab-Ripper X
Diet :
Breakfast: Oatmeal, Apple Juice
Lunch: Salad with Turkey,Cottage Cheese, Carrots and Celery
Snack: Granola bar, Jello Pudding, Oranges Fruit Cup
Dinner: Chicken, Rice, and Green Bean Casserole
Unplanned Snack: None

Summary:
Today was the start of week 2. The challenging part of the second week is matching or surpassing the results and the intensity that you put forward in week 1. I'm feeling rested and ready for the week so Bring It On!

Today was Chest and Back. This workout is always good to see how well you're doing because it's actually an extremely basic workout. Pushups and Pullups. And none of the fancy variety that they use in the later weeks, these are the straight forward push and pull variety. I did much better this week than last week in regards to consistency. I matched all the numbers that I put up in week 1. And I matched all the numbers in round 2 of the workout that I did in round 1 which I didn't do in Week 1, so I've got that to build on.

Eating today was good. I found that my starving tendencies from last week are subsiding slightly from last week which I'm hoping is a trend going forward. I am well aware that the diet is where the progress comes from, but when you're hungry all the time that sucks. It's not surprising that the first week I was pretty hungry considering how much I used to eat. I had to get my stomach to shrink down to what normal people are used to eating.

Overall week 2 is going well. Plyo tomorrow and running. I have a feeling that will be the suck.

P90x Round 2 - Day 1 - Chest and Back, Ab-Ripper X

P90x Round 2, Day 1 - Chest and Back, Ab-Ripper X
Diet :
Breakfast: Oatmeal, Juice
Lunch: Salad with Turkey, Cottage Cheese, Carrots and Celery
Snack: Granola Bar, Fruit Cup, Jello Pudding Cup
Dinner: Chicken, Rice, Dinner Roll

Summary:
Round 2 of P90x has begun. I know that there is alot ahead of me having gone through this before but I'm optimistic that this time I can achieve what I wanted to during the first round. My weight during the first round got got down to as low as 242.5 and I started today at 246. I have overhauled my eating habits and I really hope that I stay motivated enough to keep eating healthy and workout out at 100% for the next 90 days.

I have a few goals for the second round of P90x. I want to eat healthy every week, with only having 1 cheat meal every week. I want to do all my Ab-Ripper workouts to the best of my ability. I want to not skip a single Yoga workout. I want to do X Stretch every Sunday and not just "rest".

I believe if I can stick to the goals above, I'll get everything I want and more out of the next 90 days.

During this phase I will also be running and training for a marathon later this fall. I hopefully will be able to balance both of these out. I don't want to burn out or run out of energy so we'll play it by ear.

We'll see where it goes from here. Day 1 was a success so far.

P90x Day 79 - Cardio X, 2 mile run

The last 30 days has been a very strange roller coaster in regards to my workouts. There are weeks that I start out feeling like a million bucks and by Thursday I'm done with it all and having to start over on Monday. Other weeks I get the entire workout week finished and feel like a million bucks. It's strange how things go from good to back from week to week. But regardless this last 30 days has been a significant struggle in relation to the other 60 days.

Today I got a good workout in. The schedule says Plyometrics, but I did Cardio X instead. It's a little Yoga, a little Plyo, a little of this and a little of that. I actually like this workout. It's a good quick workout that hits a bit of everything and leaves you feeling pretty good.

Today was back to running. I did a 2 mile run in just under 20 minutes. First mile was way to fast and I finished it in about 9:10 the second mile was not as fast but I had to back it down to keep from giving into the "this sucks, give up" voice in my head.

My legs are still a bit sore from Saturday's race, but hopefully this will help them out. I need to continue to stretch my calves, because I've got some every so slight heel pain in my left foot that I need to make sure it doesn't turn into something else. Overall I'm still feeling pretty good though and I'm going to try to run 2 miles Wed and Thurs of this week and get in a 3-4 mile run on Saturday.

Back and biceps tomorrow. Should be a good workout hopefully.

P90x Day 71 - Chest and Back

I can't believe I'm less than 3 weeks away from completing my first round of P90x. I can seriously remember a time when 90 days seemed like an eternity, and here we are almost finished with it.

Another good workout today. Chest and back. It's still amazing to me the improvement I've made in doing push-ups over the last 2 months. When I started I could do more than 1 good set of push-ups and today's workout I was able to do almost all of them without issue.

I'm still babying my back some so I didn't do bent-over flys today. I don't regret this decision though because my back actually feels really good today and did for most of last week.

I hope that I'm able to keep up my lifting and my running over the next few weeks and my back only gets stronger. I'm just going to be aware of the exercises that put more strain on my back and be diligent about doing them with proper form.

This coming Saturday my work has a 5k that I signed up for a while back. I'll run it, but I'm not sure how my time will be. But I really don't think I care. My goal will be to finish and feel good about it on Saturday and Sunday. This will be a real test of my running and if it's causing my back pain.

Anyways, feeling good for a Monday. Plyometrics tomorrow. We'll see if that or Cardio-X gets done.

P90x Day 64 - Chest, Shoulders, Triceps

Starting over. It look 60 days but I hit the wall. I didn't work out the last few days of last week and on top of that I didn't blog either. But I'm past that.

I've looked up some marathon training plans and I think I'm going to an additional day to my running plan. I'm going to do 1 mile T,W,Th with 2 miles on Saturday or Sunday. I'm going to try and slow it down some by only going up .5 miles every other week. That'll put me around where I need to be by the first of June hopefully. I'm hoping this will be slow enough to get me to where I need to get. I honestly can't get any slower if I need to be running 3-4 miles by the first of June. If this doesn't work out I'm going to have to rethink my marathon.

I've decided to overhaul my diet for a short-term sprint. I can't "live" on a diet where I eat the same thing every meal for weeks and weeks but I can lose alot of weight on that and I think that's the best think for me. I'm going to target somewhere around 2000 calories per day and stamp that meal out over and over again till the first of June. Hopefully if I can lose a chunk of weight before June it'll help my overall running effort. I've done a strict diet like this before and had good results, but 3 months in I crashed. I'm hoping to get about 2 months out of this diet before I ease off it somewhat in order to train for my marathon and get some more energy.

I'm not giving up on P90x either. Today wasn't the best workout but it got done. Tomorrow is suppossed to be Plometrics, but I think I'm going to sub it out for Cardio X. Because I'm going to be running tomorrow I just figured that the extra high impact exercise was something to replace as a precaution.

I took pictures for my 60 day. I haven't looked at them.

Less than 30 days remaining. I think I've turned the corner. Although I thought that last week. If we can make it this week with no missed workouts I think I'll be back on course.

P90x Day 57 - Chest, Back

Maybe, just maybe, I'm clawing my way back onto the bandwagon. I got up this morning and got my workout in and feel alot better this morning as a result.

Today was the return to the first 3 weeks workouts. Over the next 4 weeks you alternate between week 1 and week 5's workouts. I remember how hard this workout was the first few weeks I did it and now coming back to it it's actually amusing at how un-intimidating it was. Maybe it's because I've done the next set of workouts where you do a rediculous amount of pull-ups, maybe it's just that I'm more confident in myself now. Whatever the case I felt really good going into today's workout.

AND IT SHOWED. Today was by FAR the best workout I've had at least in regards to push-ups. I started out with a set of 20 standard pushups (something I'm sure I couldn't do 8 weeks ago) and mixing in back workouts got a set of 15 military push-ups, 10 decline push-ups, 8 diamond pushups, and 6 "dive bomber" push-ups. All perfect form and not going to my knees. I know without a doubt that I couldn't have gotten close to that feat on week one, but add in the fact that I did almost those same numbers on the second pass through the exercises (you do them twice) and I am acutally shocked at how far I've come.

I don't know if it was the morning workout, or the almost week off to rest and recharge, or what. But this was a really great workout and has me really feeling high on myself right now. I only wish I'd made the same progress will pull-ups but I think I'll just keep plugging along and pull-up progress will be my goal for the next 90 days. I still think that losing more weight is the key to pull-up progress for me.

I didn't do Ab-Ripper today in order to give my back a rest. So far it feels pretty good today. I'll play it by ear this week with running and workouts in order to give me the best shot at a full and quick recovery.

Hopefully this new energy will stay here and I'm on the rebound. Tomorrow is plyometrics. I'm a bit concerned about that workout with my back, but we'll see how it goes. I may or may not add in a run as well.

P90x Day 43 - Chest, Triceps, Shoulders, Ab-Ripper

So far so good for this week. With the help of my lovely wife going "Are you going to get out of bed or not" this morning I was able to get up and get a workout in before work. I'm still so tired when I wake up regardless of how much I sleep, but I have to believe that's going to pass shortly. Yesterday was the last day of anti-biotics so I'm declaring myself officially cured. I've still got a bit of a random cough sometimes, but I think that's more clearing out the junk from last week than an actual illness.

Today's workout was Chest,Triceps, Shoulders or "Push day". I can't say that I'll miss this workout too much when I get back to "Push/Pull" but it's a real doozy of a workout. I'm still amazed at how much of a workout you can get in simply doing different types of pushups. It's amazing that the fitness industry has convinced us as a nation that in order to build muscle and get fit you have to have alot of fancy or expensive equipment. But the honest truth about that is that it simply isn't true. Using your own body weight you can get a better workout most people do in the gym. It's all about determination.

Not the best Ab-Ripper workout today. But I can feel it for what little I got done.

Diet this weekend was decent and got this morning started right nutritionally. I'm hoping to ride the wave of new energy for the last two weeks of this phase and hopefully put up some decent results.

Plyometrics tomorrow and running. My legs are still warm from Saturday's Kenpo workout so I'm sure tomorrow will be a great workout. Hopefully my lungs are catching up to the rest of my body as far as conditioning.

P90x Day 36 - Chest, Shoulders, and Triceps / Ab-Ripper X

I can't believe that 5 weeks are behind me already. It's funny because the first 2-3 weeks of this process were so difficult and I was often so worn out or so sore that I couldn't imagine feeling good. That "recovery week" really did alot to stretch everything out and since then my energy has been amazingly high.

I got in a great workout this morning. It's still funny to be at how just with push-ups I can get to the point where I can't even push myself off the ground and how little that still takes to accomplish. But I can say that it took more this week than last week to keep me down. Today's workout was one of the first where I felt "stronger". I made it through the first set of push-ups with perfect form and didn't struggle. I wasn't until the second exercise that I had to break form to finish the workout. My arms are still "wobbly" right now, so I'm sure the DOMS for this workout come Wednesday is going to be the suck.

I FINISHED AN AB-RIPPER X WORKOUT! Now I didn't get all the reps that they did on the screen, but I did my best and did some for everything. That's never happened. Usually I'm so tired that I start the Abs, and when my abs are screaming I just stop rather than put in the 6-8 reps I'm able to get per exercise. But today while they were doing their 25 reps, but gutted out my 6-8 and finished the whole thing. I was pretty stoked about that.

I was very tempted to weigh-in this weekend, but figured after last month's disappointing (to me it wasn't what I had hoped for) weigh-in I'm going to keep the same plan as before and just weigh at the end of phases. So only 3 weeks left to go.

Running again tomorrow. I think I might bump it up a bit to maybe 1.5 miles, but I might do another week of 1 mile runs. I didn't really feel like I was solidly back up to 1 mile being "easy" and with the illness still sticking around it might be good to give me another establishment week.

P90x Day 15 - Chest and Back, Ab-Ripper X

Really tired so I'll have to make this update quick. I was actually headed to bed when I remembered that I didn't make my update for today.

Got a great workout in this morning. I can tell that I've gained some strength already in my chest as I was able to do more pushups today than either of the previous weeks.

I broke down this weekend and bought a high strength resistance band for my back workouts. I know I should keep trying to do pullups, but I can't do any on my own so this seemed better. I got in alot more reps today and I can already tell my back is really feeling the workout. I think short/medium term this will be a better workout for my back until I'm strong and light enough to do pull-ups.

Plus I now own all the pieces I need to take the show on the road so to speak.

Ab-Ripper is still impossible. Didn't do as well this time as the last, but there is always next time.

Exhausted. Going to bed.

Looking forward to pushing play on Plyo tomorrow. Did I just type that?

P90x Day 1 - Chest & Back + Ab Ripper

Day 1:

P90x. The rumors are all true.

I honestly didn't know what to think about starting P90x. I've read alot of blogs about it, watched the infomercial, and thought about starting it for several weeks. I need to make a change and it's alot of work to get into the gym for some reason. Since my daughter is a bit older now I'm trying to get home as a reasonable time after work and spend some quality time. Because of this I'm not really as eager to leave work after a full day and rush to the gym and get home right as she's about to fall asleep.

Anyways, all that and the fact that I'm not happy with either my level of fitness or my current body image so I'm picking up P90x.

Day 1. The rumors are all true. It's hard, it's intense, and most of all it's something you can finish.

This workout was brutal. It's actually deceptively simple. Pushups and pullups. Sounds easy right?

I was actually was surprisingly disappointed with my inability to do pushups. I've never considered myself "weak" but after a pretty simple fitness test and a workout I was acutally very disappointed in where I was physically. But I guess I'm not surprised.

I got into the pushups and got a set done without cheating. I got into the pullups and I had to use the chair to help but put 100% into that too. And that's about the time I felt like I was going to puke. It's funny because I had heard all the things online about how tough it was and for soem reason I just figured that was all B.S. But it's not. It's all true. I can attest that I was about to throw up less than half way through the exercises.

It was pretty demoralizing to find out where rock bottom was, but I did what I could. I did the rest of the pushups on my knees and gave it all I could. I did the pullups with the stool. I did the exercises with the weights I had. I got it done.

The AB Ripper was almost the same if not worse. I couldn't do most of the exercises let alone do them for 25 reps. But I did what I could.

Day 1 was brutal. But I'm still going to push play on Day 2.