Kept a nice heart rate of 140-150 during most of the plyometrics workout.  As always, plyo is tough.  The better you do in the beginning of the workout the harder it seems to be as you work through the rest.  Slowly but surely my endurance and strength continues to improve. Sure signs that P90X works.

Plyometrics hates us all!  What a great workout. What a terrible workout.  At the same time I was able to do more of the initial stuff with great form and intensity, I also suffered down the road.  That wall is pretty hard when you hit it.  What I tried to do was at least hit the initial exercise from each set of 4 with good intensity and effort while letting my heart rate come down during the next 1 or 2.  This worked fairly well.  I kept my heart rate above 135 for most of the workout.  I burned nearly 800 calories according to my monitor.  Believe you me, I felt it. It felt both good and bad.

It’s Back!

The good and the bad of it.  Good: I really got low in the squats and for the first 30 minutes I was pushing it. Bad: really hit a wall later on and was dieing fairly quickly in each exercise.  My heart rate was in the zone for most of the time and supposedly I burned 705 calories (based on time, heart rate and weight.)   I felt good about it over all.   Next time my goal is to really keep myself going for the duration of each set.

What a crazy few days it’s been. Had to move around my rest day because of work, work and more work. Try to get the Body by Vi Challenge going here in Columbus and was up until late Tuesday night/Wednesday morning working on this after my normal freelance website work.  So a busy couple days and little sleep later I’m jumping around doing Plyometrics with Tony Horton.  Man was I feeling it.  Dragging butt the whole time.  Finally got a heart rate monitor into the action and was able to see how I was doing there.  I was in the Aerobic Zone the entire workout, pushing into the Threshold Zone several times even though I felt like I wasn’t able to give it everything.  I also think my calories were fairly low the last 2 days. I’m sure that did not help with my energy level either.  Time to refocus and keep things moving in the right direction.  To easy to get off the tracks by poor nutrition, whether it’s bad choices or low consumption, and lack of sleep.

Week 1 of P90X is in the books.  That’s my new favorite saying by the way: in the books.  Book it. Erh…

Moving on.  This is a few days late.  About 5 of them to be exact.  Better late than never, right?  As I said, moving on.  When you decide to partake in the challenge that is P90X you are looking to make a change in your lifestyle and your fitness.  What you don’t realize is that the first thing you are going to change is the amount of pain you thought you could tolerate.  This ain’t your grandma’s home video workout!

Day 1: Chest & Back + Ab Ripper X

Why start off slow and easy when you can  jump right in with a killer upper body workout! Gravity at it’s finest. All you need is your own weight and the earth to work a ton of muscles.  Chock full of push-ups and pull-ups you’ll know you just had a workout after this one.  I was probably sore for the rest of the week from this workout alone.  I can’t do a pull-up without a chair but what I did do was more than enough to feel it.

After fighting gravity for 50 something minutes it was time for the core.  I though I was doing well with Ab Ripper 200 from Power 90 but that didn’t prepare me for the X.  Really hits the core more than just the abs.  My upper legs, hips and lower back were burning up after the first 3 exercises.  Good stuff.

Day 2 Plyometrics

The mother of all P90X workouts.  It puts the X in P90X as Tony says.  He ain’t kiddin.  This is a very, very tough workout.  Pushes your heart rate up quickly and doesn’t let up until your a sweating, quivering, heaving rag lying on the floor.  Love it.  This is why I’m doing this program for workouts like this.  It’s tough on the lower back condition I have but icing down my back after every workout has helped lesson the pain there.

Day 3 Shoulders & Arms + Ab Ripper X

Keep pushing play.  After day 1 and 2 you’re ready for a nap, followed by bedtime and another nap.  Everything is sore and you just want to sit in front of the tube and veg out.  No can do my friends.  It’s time to hit those glamour muscles as Tony calls em.  Another injury I have is my shoulders so this is a tough workout but pushed through it and hit those Biceps and Triceps good.  The Side Tri-Raises were tough for some reason. Seemed pretty simple but they were hard to execute.  Gotta Bring It!

Day 4 Yoga X

Perfect timing for this one.  Not easy, but the intensity is not the same and getting that stretch on is just what the doctor ordered.  I really think this routine helps with recovery as well. I felt pretty good afterward and much better on Day 5 than I had been feeling.  Couldn’t execute all of the stretches though.  Crane was impossible.  The plough was also a little tough to do.

Day 5 Legs & Back + Ab Ripper X

Felt good after Yoga but my legs were fairly tired already from the week of work and my back and upper body were exhausted.  The pull-ups were tougher than on Day 1 and I felt fairly weak doing these.  Then there were the squats, followed by more squats followed by lunges….you get the point. Those Wall Squats are killer.  I have to admit, I forgot to do Abs afterward.  I quickly hit stop on the DVD player and didn’t do them.

Day 6 Stretch

Real life got in the way here.  On Saturday, my wife who is doing this with me was out of town. We had decided to take Saturday as our day off so I was going to do the Stretch routine instead. I never ended up doing it. The family came home early and we spent the rest of the day hanging out together.

Day 7 Stretch + Kenpo

Once again real life intercedes.  I did do the Stretch routine in the morning.  Nice stretch felt good.

My wife and I have been trying to workout at night after the kids are in bed.  We have a 6 month old, however.  He wasn’t cooperating and after about 30 minutes of trying to get the routine going we gave up and went to bed.

Day 7/8 Kenpo

So Monday morning, officially Day 8 we woke up early and did Kenpo X.  We didn’t skip it or give up but pushed on and made it work.  Kenpo is a great workout. Even fun.  I like the kicking and punching stuff.  Work up a sweat and pretend to be kicking the bill collectors ass while burning calories by the 100’s.  I don’t think I gave this one my 100% though.  I commented aftwards to Val that I thought it could have been harder and it probably was due to my effort.

In Conclusion:

One week down and 12 more to go.  Yes, it’s a total of 13 weeks in P90X.  Surprise!  If you make it through week 1, and should if you are serious about imrpoving your health and fitness, then you can make it.  It only gets easier after this right?  Well, maybe not easier but as you master the moves and you start to see changes you’ll be even more motivated to keep pushing play and Bring It!