So I’ve been gone for a while. After my injury, I just haven’t gotten back into p90x. Now, I’m in the process of buying and moving into a house. It’s a big step for us, and a big investment. We are planning to setup a “p90x room” where we can both do p90x. What that means is, until we move, I’m probably not going to be doing p90x, but once we move in, I’ll do p90x again, starting again at day one.

Until then, I won’t be posting.

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I know it’s late, and I haven’t been posting lately. It’s been a bit crazy around here, but I promise a proper post later today

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Combined post for days 5 and 6 since I did my day 6 early this morning.

Day 5
So day 5 was legs and shoulders. I’ve done this one before and it was a good workout. I hurt my toe on Wednesday night so I wasn’t able to do the toe-roll lunges because it hurt too much. The rest of the moves I was able to do pretty easily. In general, and it’s a difficult but rewarding workout. Since my legs don’t get nearly as much work as my upper body in my normal life, It’s good to be able to spend some time on them.

Abs were abs, hard, but I finished them all. I’m not as sore today as I was the last time I did ab ripper x, so that’s good.

Day 6
This morning, I woke up and did Kempo X. It was pretty much what I expected. I used to take kempo for my PE credits in High School (long time ago), so I remember alot of the drills we used to do. Also, I knew how to do most of the punches. I did, however, feel VERY uncoordinated when trying to do the hook/upper cut combination. I’d be fine on one side, but when I’d try to switch to the other side, I kept getting mixed up. I’m sure it’ll get easier with time, but wow.

Also, again, since legs aren’t usually a big thing for me, the kicking quickly tired me out. One move that I miss doing from my Kempo class, that, unfortunately, wasn’t in the Kempo X video is a series of 3 side kicks, Low, Middle, and High. I remember doing those and enjoying them.

This is the end of week one! I feel proud that I made it through almost all of them, though I’m a bit annoyed with myself that I skipped one of the ab ripper x workouts. Such is life though and I roll with it.

I’m going to try to take pictures tomorrow, though we are throwing a party so it may not happen until Sunday. Also, it’s measurement and video post time since it’s the end of week 1. Look for those all to be posted no later than Sunday. The new video will also be unscripted so I’m a bit more natural. I’ll just have talking points and then I’ll just ramble. Look for it!

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Yesterday was a Yoga X day. I really enjoy yoga because it’s a very calming workout, even though you do alot of movement. It was enjoyable, despite being in a bad mood.

I had to rush the end of it a little because I had to make it to my aerial class. I was still in a bad mood afterwards, so I ended up leaving my aerial class early, but not before I did something really stupid to my toe.

Now, my toe is swollen and it hurts to walk. I’m going to see if I can do today’s workout when I get home, but I’m not sure. I really hope I can, because I’d hate to have to abort again over something so stupid.

As a side note, very soon my program for displaying and saving charts from my heart rate monitor.

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Last night was day 3. I didn’t get a chance to do my workout until 10:00pm last night, which completely screwed up my ability to sleep later on. Also, I ended up skipping Ab Ripper X because I was really tired by the time I was finished with Shoulders and Arms.

Overall, Shoulders and Arms was a good workout. Since I had done shoulders and arms in the p90x lean, I had some numbers/weights to compare it against. While I didn’t increase my reps any (and in some cases lowered the number of reps I did), I increased which bands I used. Last time, I used green (which is medium) for almost all of the exercises, but this time, I found Green to be too light, so I increased to red (medium-hard), and in one instance blue (hard).

I have a feeling I’m going to need to get the next band size up (black) which is the hardest one they make before I’m don’t with p90x.

Today, I’m planning to do YogaX and Ab Ripper X because I go to my aerial practice from 7p-9p today.

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Didn’t get a chance to post yesterday or today because I was really busy. I did do Plyometrics yesterday, and holy crap it was hard. The high-impact nature of it bothers me a little, but I think I’m going to get a really shock-absorbing yoga mat to help out with that, and it’s one of the few workouts that I’m doing with shoes on. Since it has so much jumping, I had to do it in the garage, which isn’t too bad.

I’m trying to figure out the best way to handle posting information to the website. I don’t particularly like posting all the numbers since it takes so much effort to post that. I’m thinking I’ll just talk about improvements during the posts. Maybe I’ll post my spreadsheet. I’ve been research the “power score” thing that one of the blogs I read has for showing progress. I might implement something similar.

Also, for cardio-type days (Plyo, CardioX, yoga, etc), I think I’m going to just post my heart rate information. I didn’t use my HRM yesterday, but I totally should have.

Since my HRM outputs everything as XML, I’m working on a small C# program that reads the XML file and generates the charts for me. Currently, I’m using a python script, but I think I’d rather make it a more robust, ui based system that allows me to save the file out as a PNG or maybe it even uploads the file to my blog?

Anyway, yes. Plyo was great but hard. My knees don’t hurt too much today.

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Yesterday was my first day of p90x classic. After the come down from my show on Saturday, I was really exhausted, but doing the chest and back workout in the morning actually refreshed me and made me free more energetic. Of course, it still wore me out physically, but mentally I had more energy.

It was a good workout with lots of push ups and pull ups. I think I did a decent job, though I don’t have my numbers with me right now (I will post a follow-up post with the numbers). I know that I increased on a few things since the last time I did chest and back (like a month ago) but only by like 1-2 reps.

On Ab Ripper X, which I did in the evening, I increased quite a bit. I think it really helps to split the ab exercises out from the rest because then it allows me to recover my energy levels before actually getting to the ab routine.

While I’m not sore today, I can definitely tell that I’ll be sore tomorrow.

Also, I’m not 100% sure, but I’m probably going to delay day 2 until tomorrow. I forgot to reset my alarm to allow me to do the exercises this morning, and I don’t get home until close to 10 today. But, that’s okay. It just means week 1 is 8 days rather than the morning 7. That’s fine.

Day 0 pictures after the jump (I have measurements too, but again, I don’t have that data with me right now)
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I’m definitely starting to understand the benefit of p90x. While each individual workout hasn’t been particularly challenging (except Ab Ripper X, holy cow that kicked my butt), I think the strength lies in the combination of the workouts. Yesterday (which was day 4 since I’m posting this a day late) was the first day so far that I felt sore the day after the workout. I’m sore in places I didn’t even realize I was working out, like my hip flexors.

Day 4 was Yoga X, which was fun, though I really was really tired of doing plank-updog-downdog by about the 20 minute mark, but after about the 30 minute mark, I hit a point where I was just into it. I cleared my mind and just focused on my breathing and where my body was supposed to be. That’s what yoga is about!

As I look forward to day 5, I’m excited but exhausted. It’s probably just my imagination, but I can already see small changes in my body.

As a side note, my trapeze partner has asked me to take it easy the week of the show so that I can bring my a-game to the performance. Since the show is next week, that means, I’m only doing one week of p90x. After the show is over, I’m going to switch over to p90x classic and start again on week 1.

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Today was my postponed Day 3 of p90x Lean. Today was definitely harder than the other days, though I was less sweaty by the end of it than the other days. I can definitely feel the work out that my shoulders got. Here is the information about my shoulders and arms workout. The green and red are the bands that I used for those exercises. Now, the progression from easiest to hardest is yellow, green, red, blue. I’m finding that the red and green are a good choice in places and too light in others. It will be a bit of a learning process over time and eventually I’ll know exactly which bands to use.

• Alternating Shoulder Press - 14 - green
• In & Out Bicep Curl - 16 - green
• Two-Arm Triceps Kickback - 15 - green
• Alternating Shoulder Press - 14 - green
• In & Out Bicep Curl - 16 - red
• Two-Arm Triceps Kickback - 15 - green
• Deep Swimmer’s Press - 17 - green
• Full Supination Concentration Curl - 14 - green
• Chair Dip - 12
• Deep Swimmer’s Press - 16 - red
• Full Supination Concentration Curl - 13 - red
• Chair Dip - 15
• Upright Row - 16 - green
• Static Arm Curl - 20 - green
• Flip-Grip Twist Triceps Kickback - 15 - green
• Upright Row - 17 - red
• Static Arm Curl - 16 - red
• Flip-Grip Twist Triceps Kickback - 15 - green
• Seated Two-Angle Shoulder Fly - 16 - green
• Crouching Cohen Curl - 25 - green
• Lying-Down Triceps Extension - 16 - green
• Seated Two-Angle Shoulder Fly - 16 - green
• Crouching Cohen Curl - 20 - red
• Lying-Down Triceps Extension - 17 - green

And then once that was over, I had to do ab ripper x, which completely kicked my ass. Of course, it’s not surprising given the I had an aerial class last night. Anyway, here is the ab ripper x information:

• In & Out - 25
• Seated Bicycle - 25
• Seated Crunchy Frog - 25
• Crossed Leg/Wide Leg Sit-Up - 25
• Fifer Scissor - 19
• Hip Rock ‘N Raise - 22
• Pulse-Up - 13
• Roll up/v up combo - 19
• Oblique V-Up - Right - 21
• Oblique V-Up - Left - 21
• Leg Climb - Right - 12
• Leg Climb - Left - 12
• Mason Twist - 40

That’s all for today. I’ll try to get a video post done for week one

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This post was delayed because I was really busy yesterday and didn’t get a chance to do the graphs until today.

I do find that the Lean version of p90x isn’t really very intense. Am I supposed to do the lean in addition to the classic? Well either way, I’m going to stick with it like I had planned. Looking ahead to the future, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to do the shoulders, arms, and ab ripper X like planned because I have an aerial class tonight and I need my shoulders to be in fresh for the class, so I’m planning to postpone today’s workout and just do it tomorrow.

However, I did do Cardio X yesterday and it went really well. I worked up a good sweat and while I wasn’t quite ready for it to be over when it ended, I felt like it was a good thing. I kept track of my heart rate using my rad Suunto T6 heart rate monitor. Since it can save the data as XML, I already had a program to generate the heartbeat beats per minute and the “EPOC” which is a suunto thing. Here is the chart:

One thing that was quite out of control this weekend was my eating. I was very conscious the entire time that I wasn’t eating well, but I just didn’t care by the time I got to eat. Mainly because of the hectic schedule this weekend, I didn’t get my usual 5-6 meals a day, but mainly ate 1-2 fairly large meals. I don’t like doing that, but at least during the week, it’s easier to do it.

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