P90X Review Chest, Shoulders & Triceps, Ab Ripper X (Day 29 - Phase 1)

Started Phase 2 on Tuesday.  It was great to start some new exercises.  After the rest day I’m usually anxious to start my day with Tony and the P90X gang.  So many new moves, there are 24 different exercises on this day’s P90X DVD.  They move through it at a pretty fast pace, so I had to hit the pause button so I could record my stats.  Love the way they go from chest,  to shoulders, to triceps and then repeat for an hour.

Wow, that’s pretty sneaky saving the one-arm push-ups after your arms are fried from the previous 21 exercises.   Talking about feeling the burn…yow!

Continued to improve on the Ab Ripper X.  I worked up more of a sweat on the Ab Ripper X workout than the C, S, and T workout.

Tuesday night was weigh-in night and was bummed to see only a .5 pond weight loss this week.  At least I was moving the needle in the right direction.

P90X Review Legs and Back (Day 19 - Phase 1)

I don’t know if it was because I stayed up too late the night before, or it was the fact that I was going to go into work on my day off, but I was zapped of strength throughout this P90X workout.  The leg portion went well, the pull-ups were a struggle.  When I got Ab Ripper X,  it was like the first day I’ve ever done the workout. I can’t wait until I get caught up at work and relieve this stress.  Can’t be good for the cortisol level in my body right now.  One of the effects of high levels of cortisol is increased abdominal fat, so the sooner I get the stress level down the better.

Went to work and designed marketing materials including Adobe Acrobat interactive forms with fields that performed calculations.  Struggled with some of the Javascript code totake care of some divide by zero errors I was getting in some of the fields.  This is the first time I’ve ever created these fill in forms with Adobe Acrobat so it was a learning experience.  The results were some good sales tools our company can use to show the ROI of our products.

I left work at about 3:00 and stopped by Walmart to see what they had for fitness equipment.  It was really cold on Saturday and I had to park quite a way from the doors, so I jogged to the store.  Before P90X, I would have been a little winded, after almost three weeks of P90X I reached the door with very little effort.  It was great to feel the benefits of my hard work every day.

I’ve mentioned in some of my past posts on the arms and shoulders P90X workouts that I could really use another pair of dumbbells. Some of the exercises called for heavier weights, but I didn’t want to stop the DVD to swap the plates on my dumbbells so I’ve been using weight that hasn’t been heavy enough.  I didn’t want to buy the fixed weight kind since I already have a bunch of steel plates, so I’ve been shopping around for dumbbell handles.  They had a great deal on some dumbbell handles.  They were only $7.70 a piece.  They have heavy rubber padding on the handles and the collars moved smoothly on the handles so the machining was high quality.  After a stressful day it was nice to reward myself with something that will benefit my health in the long run.  These were not shown on the Walmart website and I couldn’t even find them on the manufacturer’s website, so I’m glad I stopped in to look around.

I can’t wait for Shoulders and Arms next Thursday…I’m going to be bringing it!

P90X Review Shoulders & Arms / Ab Ripper X (Day 17 - Phase 1)

Shoulders and arms today, my favorite P90X workout.  I know I’ve commented about this in the past, but the workout seems rushed to me.  No sooner does Tony end the lifting the routine and tell you to record your results, then he’s onto the next exercises with weights in hand.  Even the editing is choppy in parts.  It almost seems like they were trying to put too many exercises into too small of a time frame.  What’s with the “bonus exercises”?  Even that’s different than the other days that I’ve been through so far.

I’ve been under the gun at work to finish a project for a deadline and the added stress is affecting my lifting efforts.  Well, things should be better next week, but this week I’ll be working 11-12 hour days and I’ll probably be at work all day Saturday as well.  By the time I come home I eat a little bit and crash in bed.  I have still been disciplined to drag myself out of bed at 5:00 AM each day.

Eyes on the prize, gotta keep my eyes on the prize!

P90X Review Shoulders & Arms / Ab Ripper X (Day 10 - Phase 1)

Felt better on Thursday so I was ready to work on the “glamour muscles”.  I’m getting the hang of this P90X workout, and was considering putting different plates on my dumbbells.  Then I hit some of those triceps kickbacks and had to lighten the load again.  I was debating getting another pair of dumbell bars and Thursday’s workout has me leaning toward making an investment in another set.  It would be easier and faster to switch the weights during the workout.  I do need to increase the weight since I’m doing 12+ reps on some of the curls and the upright rows.

Some P90X workouts have a long enough pause between exercises that I can write down my results and get back in position, I always have a hard time writing in my reps and getting back in time for this routine.

Oh yeah, I got my car back from the shop.  With the tow and a new starter, I’m $400.00 poorer.  At dinner I was talking to my son about his P90X workout and told him would benefit from the Plyometrics workout.  He plays football (running back or defensive back) and baseball.  When I left to pick up the car he started the workout and by the time I got back he was still at it with about 10 minutes left to go.  He was wiped out (or bored) and stopped the video.  I figured he would keep up with Tony, this kid is constantly moving.  He even plays Playstation standing up or hopping around.

Here’s a Youtube video of highlights of his first year playing football

P90X Review Shoulders & Arms (Day 3 - Phase 1)

This work out has been the easiest so far this week.  Much of that had to do with the fact that the free weight routine I was following for a month and a half before I started P90X had most of the same exercises as the P90X routine.  The area of focus of this session is the shoulders and arms.  Specifically working the biceps and triceps. There are 12 exercises plus a “bonus round” round of 3 more exercises.  It was the only day so far that I performed better on the second time through than the first time.  I guess I’ll need to up the weight a little on this day since many times I had to stop because the time had run out and I had already completed more than a dozen reps.  The Congdon Curls were a little awkward for me.  I have been used to doing this type of concentration curl one arm at a time, so that’s something I’ll have to get used to.  Since I’m using dumbbells, it was hard to swing them up in the small space between my legs.  Working out with the bands would be easier on this one.  I can see that performing it both arms at a time means you can get more exercises in at a time.  Well designed workout, really blasts both sides of the upper arms.

After Shoulders & Arms comes Ab Ripper X.  Love working the abs, but still struggling with that crunchy frog.

Whipped up a protein shake with fresh strawberries to drink on the way to work.

Note: Little late getting this posted, should have been last night, but I worked late last night at work on some multimedia projects and was whipped from the workout in the morning.  Had some oatmeal and went to bed.

P90X Review Day 1 - Phase 1

“Ready boys and girls? OK,  here we go…5,4…3,2″

If you’ve been doing P90X more than a week, you’ll know this is Tony Horton leading a P90X extreme fitness routine.  If you’ve been doing P90X for awhile you probably hear Tony’s voice in your sleep.

Well I had plans on doing my first routine in the early AM, but I overslept and didn’t have time.  I had a busy day at the office and I’m working on two design projects with a pretty tight deadline.  The stress of that and the repetitive movement of my arm scooting the computer mouse around made my shoulder felt like someone was sticking a hot poker in my shoulder.  I was determined to start P90X no matter what, so I took some pain reliever at dinner and waited for my turn with the TV and the DVD player.  With a wife and kids and all the things that come with that, it was later and later.

Finally everyone cleared out and I was ready to “Bring It”.  It’s been awhile since I’ve had a regular workout schedule so I’ve spent the month of January doing some of the routine I used to do when I was in better shape. Free weights and cardio on the stationary bike. I thought I was ready, boy was I was wrong.

The first time through the exercises, I tried to pace myself and not push myself too hard.  Even with the flyes, military presses, and bench presses I had been doing prior to P90X, I was struggling on some of the moves.  I’ve got a long way to go on the pull-ups. It was almost discouraging on how few pull-ups I could do.  I’m focusing on quality this week to get the moves done right.  Throughout Tony does sprinkle in a little encouragement and at the end he gives you a little pep talk.  Telling you it’s OK if you don’t keep up with the students on the screen.  Do your best and forget the rest!

I found the diamond push-ups particularly difficult.  It seemed like the wider my hands are, the easier it is to perform the maximum reps.  I also do push-up with my hands closed in a fist instead of an open hand.  This technique is easier on my rest and duplicates the position your hands would be if you were using push-up stands without the extended range of motion.

On to Ab Ripper X.  I had been doing crunches preparing for P90X and these Ab Ripper X was hitting muscles I wasn’t working on the assorted core exercises I’ve been doing since the beginning of January.  Crunchy frog was the exerise that proved the most challenging on this DVD.  I did my best and forgot the rest.

Overall, the workouts were as challenging as I thought they would be.  It would have been nice if they showed a camera angle from the top down on some of the ab exercises so I could check my form.

I’m going to attempt to get up early tomorrow and get the P90X workout in before the day wears me down.

Day one down, 89 more to go.  Decide…commit…succeed!