P90X Adventures: Back & Biceps... *Now with more Ab Ripper X!!*

There was a lot of awesome happening today in P90X-land.  Back & Biceps is one of my favorite routines.  I've definitely hit the upper limits of my use of my 40lb weight set, and Zu's old 15lb weight set from The Firm.  I've been starting to employ resistance bands so I don't necessarily have to go out and shell out a bunch more money on new dumbells that are just gonna add even more clutter to my already cluttered as hell space.  It was interesting and fun re-learning the moves with bands  this time. I think it also helped me feel the burn a bit more on some of the moves. I kinda dig how I can eek out more resistance by playing around with where I'm stepping on the bands vs just swapping for a band with higher resistance.

I'd been skipping most of the Ab Ripper X routines which fall on the resistance days.  Mainly the reason was because I was so worn out from the resistance routine, but more often than not, it was just because I simply didn't have enough time left to do both.  Well, today I gave it another serious shot.  I got a lot farther this time around.  Oh man it is NO JOKE.  I made it like 3/4th the way through.  I know when I finally gave up, there was about 6 minutes left in the routine.  I just had to stop when they were doing some seriously crazy boat reach, sit up combo move.  I wasn't on point with 25 reps of each, but I'll work my way up.  I'm just trying to do what I can with Ab Ripper to try and finish as strong as i can this last month.

The last triumph for the day, didn't come from P90X, but it was dinner.   We went out to have Indian and I managed to avoid eating any Naan!  I also didn't really touch my rice, I probably had about 3-4 fork-fulls of the rice.  I had a pretty kick ass assortment of  veggie curries and none with cream or yogurt.  I just felt really good about that naan bit.  Then, when leaving, I looked up and got wowed by what looked like a big meteor  and was kinda freaked out when I saw it change directions in the sky.

I just read that the Orionid meteor shower is ramping up right now and will be at it's peak this weekend so now I'm a little backed down off the UFO tip.


I didn't have the time nor the produce to make a juice or smoothie to power up with this morning, however I did get to the store to grab a comparable alternative...   Good alternatives are starting to show up more and more in stores.  The one I grabbed today was a Genesis Organic Green Smoothie.  The ones I've notices that are pretty awesome are Genesis Organic and Evolution Fresh.  The big thing is that these don't use a heat pasteurization technique.  When going for these kind of juices, it's best to look for their method.  Typically if it says "Flash pasteurized" or "Pasteurized" then it's been introduced to heat.  Enough to likely kill off most or all of the nutrients.  Genesis and Evolution Fresh juices are cold-pressed and they employ a more recently developed high pressure pasteurization that doesn't generate heat but actually uses intense pressure that can kill all the microbes, but leave most the nutrients intact.  In fact, Joe Cross of Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead fame just developed a line of Reboot Your Life Juices that employ this new technique.  We're hoping to see those start showing up on our shores here within the next year.

Anyway, that's it for today...
Yoga X tomorrow!