So, today was day 100 of what I guess now is my P180X Adventure... :-P
Day 1
Day 99
This week, so far, has been pretty awesome with the workouts. On this week's Chest & Back, I blasted out 30 standard pushups like it was nothing. It's the goal everybody in the video mentions when Tony goes around room before starting...
Wow, I'm really catching up to these people now. In today's Shoulder's & Arms, I think I beat them all in chair dips and side tri rises. I think next week I might try raising a leg with the chair dips.
I suppose I am writing this pretty late... (3:30am) so I'll probably keep this relatively short. Tomorrow well, later today, is Thanksgiving. I'm definitely thankful for a lot this year. I have a whole new life and never felt this good that's for sure. Last year, I was thankful for juicing, biking, and losing 47lbs. This year, however, I'm really thankful for the discipline. I've never been able to stick with things like this. It's all too easy to just start something. I think honestly giving myself back my mobility and ability to even attempt this stuff gave me the appreciation and the drive to not ever want to lose it again. I think that's what keeps me going. Well, that and Muscles :-D
So, since it's thanksgiving and I've really been digging on it myself. Here's a smoothie I got from the Reboot Your Life site. The Pumkin Pie Smoothie
1 cup almond milk 1/4 cup rolled whole oats 1 Tbsp. chia seeds 1/4 cup organic pureed canned pumpkin OR *homemade pureed sugar pumpkin 1/2 – 1 Tbsp. maple syrup 1/2 frozen ripe banana 1-2 tsp cinnamon 1 medjool date, pitted 3 ice cubes 1/2 Tsp nutmeg (My own addition) Okay, I should probably get some sleep. Later folks!
It's been getting harder and harder to keep up with the blog. It's been a struggle enough just trying to keep up with P90X. I figure between the two, the blog can slide here and there. Not so much on the P90X front though.
I'm nearing the end of my first week in my 2nd round of P90X. This time around, I'm determined to get to the point where I'm not really modifying anything. I can say that I'm certainly on my way. I'm not expecting that I'll be able to pull off pull-ups without a chair, but I'm certainly gonna push for it toward the end of these 3 months.
One remarkable improvement in Round 2's week 1 vs Round 1's week 1 is, simply put, FINISHING... I don't think I made it through a single routine my first week doing P90X. Thankfully, I stuck with it. I worked through the pain and it's paid off a lot. The other big thing this time around is the addition of Ab Ripper X. Now, I was supposed to be doing Ab Ripper X during every resistance day which is at least 3 times a week during each phase. I think I can count on one hand maybe the number of times I did Ab Ripper X during round 1. It's just as well, I was in no way really prepared for it mentally.
I just finished my 3rd Ab Ripper X this week. It's 4am. I went clubbing tonight and I'm supposed to be up at 5:30 to help Zu volunteer at this Running event. I figure I'll just stay up and since I hadn't yet done the abs, I'd go ahead and take care of them while I'm killing time.
My schedule got shifted over because I have to help yet another friend move out of their house and get it prepped for sale. That took up the portion of my Tues that I should've been doing Plyometrics so I went ahead and marked it as my "rest" day and I've made up the rest of this week a day late. Yesterday, I was doing Yoga X. I felt super sapped and had to quit out halfway through. I was a bit bummed but I couldn't understand why I was feeling so crappy. I decided to check my blood sugar and it was down to 76. I was literally on E so I just decided to call it there. No sense in killing myself right? Aside from that, things have been pretty rock solid.
I've come to the determination that the resistance bands I picked up are kinda useless to me at the moment. They don't equal the tension I need to be working on. They're all essentially less resistance than the weights I'd been using but out grown. This basically means, I need to go out and buy new weights. We'll see if I can get them in the near future.
I think that's all I have for now. Until next time...
Well... let me tell you about what happened to that "Victory lap"...
...it didn't happen...
Tuesday I got done with Core Synergistics and I was feeling pretty good, but also kinda not so good. As it turned out, a cold was coming on. Wednesday came and I was done. I was stuck doing recording all day and had to come back and frantically work on editing a radio show the rest of the afternoon. Add to it, I my body was wrecked from this cold. I was pissed. Thursday came and went, then friday and the weekend. Before I really knew it, It was late Sunday and I hadn't really done anything else from my recovery week. I felt pretty sad about it, but then again I was fairly sick and it was a better idea to let it rest and not go crazy on P90X.
The one thing that really helped out was juicing. I made versions of my immunity juice each morning and I could feel the cold lifting a little more each day as it progressed. By the time friday rolled around, I was nearly cleared up.
I tried not to feel so down about not finishing strong since I'm really not finishing yet. I've got no plans on letting this be the only time through the program. I definitely want to get to the point where I'm performing as good or better than the guys on screen that's for sure.
So I started again. It felt so great going into standard pushups and just blasting out 25 like it was nothing. They're all perfect form. It's just insane how much difference 90 days can make. I'm so grateful for starting this program and I'm glad that I've been able to stick with it like I have. Minor setbacks like these aren't even really setbacks for me anymore because I know where I want to be with this thing. This time around, I'm vowing to not miss a single Ab Ripper X routine either. I'm still struggling through it. My little 17 minutes of hell, but man if Tony didn't hit the nail on the head with his words... "I Hate it... but I Love it."
So today marks the start of my final recovery week for P90X. It kinda feels like a victory lap. This is now the 2nd time I've gone all the way through Yoga X non-stop. It's incredible. It's just so astonishing how much more flexible I've become in 3 months. I'm still not able to do a number of the moves with great form, but I can at least get into all of them which is crazy.
At this point, the toughest still are the Yoga Belly Seven moves. They're crazy. They're essentially like longer held versions of some of the Ab Ripper X moves. They're murderous, but at this point, I'm feeling the burn and all I can think of is how awesome it's gonna be to see the eventual payoff from this stuff. It's basically taken me about 70-80 of the 90 days to finally get to the point where I can start working on my abs and as I figured, I'm gaining muscle but that's just kinda pushing the belly fat out. This definitely presents a bit of a discouraging feeling because it looks as if my gut is expanding rather than contracting, but I have to remind myself that there's friggin' muscles under those layers. It's still the typical head games we all face and when I really look at things, my waist is still moving down.
I've been thinking for the last week or so about what I plan to do once I'm actually finished with my 90 days. ..
Do I take a couple weeks off?
Do I move on to my new Rev Abs workout?
I've definitely come too far to go back on my momentum that's for sure. Also, since I've gotten to where I can perform P90X fairly well, I'm still not as awesome with every routine. So I plan on just continuing straight into another round of P90X next week. There's really no point in taking a break. I know that keeping on this path will get me to where I wanna be. It's still hardcore but it's getting easier to perform well and if I keep it going my shit is gonna get ripped son!
That said, I'm excited to see how I do on Core Synergistics tomorrow!
A lot was happening this week so far which lead to me not being able to actually write about much of it until today. This week is essentially wrapping up my last week of main resistance training P90X exercises and so far, they've all been awesome. It's been amazing to see how far I've come on these in particular in 7 weeks.
I'll start with Tuesday's Plyometrics... I blasted through it and I had quite a bit of energy for a good portion of it. The sweat was just pouring. I'd say this is probably literally the most I've sweat the entire time doing P90X, and I'd had some pretty damn crazy sweats between Plyo and Kenpo X...
I look like someone dropped me in the damn river!
I actually wrung out what maybe amounted to about 12-16oz of sweat from that shirt into the sink... it was not pretty >_<.
Then Halloween was my final Back & Biceps. What I found particularly remarkable about my sheet for this was that my numbers all stayed relatively tight. The big changes between way back in week 5 to now was that I was using less and less of the chair for pullups. That definitely made a sigificant change in my numbers for pull-ups but that's great because I'm lifting more and more of myself with less and less assistance. I also started hitting a plateau with the weights so switching to bands made the last couple versions of this really sing for me.
Then there was Halloween night. Now, I felt especially happy to try out Left 4 Dead characters. The years past, the only character I could've really portrayed from L4D was Coach. I probably would've made a pretty good coach all things considered. Coach loved to talk about eating... I loved to talk about eating. I guess we were more kindred spirits for sure, but I know I probably wasn't going to survive the zombie apocalypse because I was just too slow to keep up.
Now, however I got to try out Louis from the first Left 4 Dead game! It definitely felt good. Now I actually feel like I could survive in the zombie apocalypse.
Grabbin' Peelz!!
Then yesterday came Yoga X. This was literally the first time this entire 81 days so far that I've gone through the ENTIRE Yoga X routine!!! Hoooly Shit man!! I did it, and I'm so damn proud of myself. I'm so amazed at how far I've come with some of this flexibility. I'm still not very flexible by a long shot but I decided to do a time-lapse of the routine this week and a couple of the shots really amazed me. Of course, I'm not showing the ones where I was like falling over haha :-P
This makes me look like I know what I'm doing!! :D
For the last couple days for breakfast, I'd been making various juices and smoothies. I'd intended on sharing each but kept running out of time each day to actually write a friggin post so I guess I'll just share a couple now! Tues I made a video featuring a juice since I hadn't done a juice in a while. So here's that:
This is my "Immunity Boost" juice which came as a request from a good friend of mine. She wanted to know what types of juice would be good to help fend off colds and flu and all sorts of nasty bugs that start going around about now.
Then yesterday, I made a pretty awesome green smoothie. This guy was pretty cool. It basically followed my green smoothie formula of a bunch of kale and some fruit and other boosters to make it tasty. This time it's a bit more hardcore with Lacinato Kale which is basically the darkest leafy green I've ever really seen aside from maybe purple kale. Really, Really good stuff.
Super Green Smoothie:
1/2 bunch of Lacinato Kale (5-6 leaves)
1 cup of strawberries
1 cup of blackberries
1 cup of blueberries
1 carrot
1 banana
1-2 tbsp of Chia Seeds
Yumm!!
So that's what we got. Today I made another juice which I'll hopefully be sharing either later today or tomorrow when I go over my final Legs & Back which I'm probably about to jump into here pretty soon.
