Plyometrics really gets my heart pumping. The first couple of weeks I really dreaded this P90X workout, now I’m getting a little more accustomed to the high impact jumping. I say a little more because I have a better pair of shoes, but my knees are still taking a beating. When I make it through this program, I may have to really modify the stress my knees are enduring jumping up and down. The crackand creak throughout the workout and they are sore for most of the day. I’m afraid that if I modify it too much, I’ll diminish the aeorobic benefits of the exercises. I wouldn’t be able keep my heart rate in the zone. What does Tony mean by “are you in the zone?” He’s referring to the heart rate zone. Here’s a graphic I borrowed frrom the Beachbody message board to help you figure out the right heart zone for P90X Plyometrics. I like to keep it in the 70-80% of my Maximum Heart Rate. The easiest way to calculate your maximum heart rate is with the following formula:
217 - (your age × 0.85) = MHR
What zone (%) does everyone else shoot for?
I guess I was too rested on Tuesday since I overslept instead of getting up at the crack of dawn for P90X Chest and Back. That was a first for me, I haven’t slept through the alarm and missed a workout yet. Over course that meant I had to come home after work and complete the workout.
On the way home I stopped by Sears and bought a new pair of New Balance running shoes for my workouts. The shoes I have been using, I am ashamed to admit, were about six or seven years old. I’m sure you’re imagining some really ratty looking shoes. They really look pretty good. I rarely wore them outside so they look new. However, most of the articles I have been reading about how to cure shin splints suggest replacing your gym shoes. I found a pair with great heel padding so I’m ready to bring it with my new kicks.
I hate working with spectators around and my wife found great amusement in watching me do Dive Bomber Push-Ups. She really exercised great self control and didn’t critique my form at all during the work-out. She did show me that some of the Ab Ripper X exercises that I said were really hard, didn’t seem so hard for her. She’s been doing the Hip Hop Abs workout while I’m at work and the kids at school and she’s getting great results.
Speaking of results, Tuesdays are weigh-in nights. My wife and son are fans of the show Biggest Loser and they get a kick out of seeing dad stepping on the scale to check his progress. I often have a hard time seeing the scale’s display because they want to see the numbers first. A cheer went out when we saw that I had dropped 3.5 lbs since last week. That has been the largest one week weight loss since I started P90X. It was a great way to end the day. Really got me motivated to keep pushing play!
Well Sunday was supposed to be Kenpo X, but with thought of another day with shin splints after doing this P90X workout, I decided to substitute another form of exercise for today. I bike a lot in the summer, in fact I often bike my 14 mile commute on the nice days. When I was getting ready to take on P90X, I would often spend an hour on the stationary bike and the next day free weights, alternating between the two. I’d keep my MHR in the 70-80% zone for a great aerobic workout. I’ve been missing that ride, and I just don’t have time in the day to do both, so the bike won on Sunday.
Kenpo X will have to wait for another day.
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!
Did my Yoga X routine on Friday and was glad I did. The previous workouts this week have been difficult to really put forth the effort and focus on the task at hand. I complete the P90X workouts, but my mind has been stressed out about work-related stuff.
Yoga X was different. I tend to hyper focus on getting all the poses executed as well as the P90Xers on the video. I really “bring it” and I’m rewarded by having a good workout and for an hour and a half any thoughts of the projects and deadlines at work are gone.
I’ve read some other P90X bloggers celebrating personal victory when they’ve mastered the Crane pose. That one is impossible for me right now, I’d love to master that one.
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!
