| | P90X
I'm out of shape. Not in wretched shape, not super-fat or anything, but I've put on some unwelcome pounds and I feel flabby.
So a few weeks ago I was trudging away at the gym and I saw an infomercial for an exercise program called P90X. I pretty much watched the whole thing while I did my elliptical trainer or whatever the hell. And I was sold.
Now, I'm not an infomercial guy, and I've never, before this, purchased an exercise program. But I found the explanation for P90X to be very, very persuasive. Plus, it enables me to work out at home, which--given the hectic nature of life with three kids and their various activities and schedules--is priceless.
P90X is a 90 day exercise program (and diet, but I'm not following the diet so much as trying to wholesale reject junk food, sugar, and such--we eat quite healthfully other than those things that I have a weakness for). The kit comes with twelve different DVDs, each of which is a workout. And the workouts vary wildly--the first one was Chest and Back, with either dumbbells and a pullup bar or resistance bands. Day 2 was Plyometrics, which is basically a shitload of jumping around and lunging and stuff like that. The idea is to spend the first four weeks doing the same six workouts in order, then a rest day, then repeat. Then the next four weeks sub in some workouts, repeat others, and change the order around.
I sound like Tony Horton, the infomercial guy, but whatever. The idea is muscle confusion, which is the notion that your body will plateau if you repeat your same workouts all the time--doing wildly different things will force the muscles to adapt to more variety, and thus shape up continuously. Allegedly, in 90 days I can be TOTALLY RIPPED.
I did quite a bit of reading of reviews of P90X from a ton of websites before taking the plunge, and people universally said the same things--it really, really genuinely works but it's really fucking hard. I can't speak yet to the first, but after only two days I can attest to the second. The first workout, Chest and Back, basically involved an ungodly number of pushups in different styles (regular, wide arm, hands very close together, feet on a chair) and pullups (but I don't have a bar yet so I used reistance bands) and weightlifting (I did the bands, again--they have clear instructions for how to replace weights with bands). The workout obliterated me. You repeat everything, and the second time around I was doing girly pushups with my knees down, and by the very end I was doing like 2 or 3 in every set. Saturday night I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that for all intents and purposes I could not move my arms. Now, two days later, I still have a very difficult time getting my arms up enough to feed myself. Which is somewhat embarrassing now that it's written down like that.
Three times a week you're supposed to do the AB RIPPER workout, in order to get truly ripped abs. It's only twelve minutes long, but in that twelve minutes you do about fifteen or sixteen different kinds of ab exercises, 25 times each. I did about a third of them on Saturday after the Chest and Back thing. It was indescribably difficult. But I did it right--Tony Horton doesn't berate you when you can't finish--just keep on keeping on.
Yesterday, Plyometrics. I jumped up and down, I lunged, I squatted. I found it way easier than the chest thing, but I was REALLY sweating by the end.
Today I'm supposed to do Arms and Shoulders, but my arms hurt too much for that, so I'm switching in tomorrow's workout, which is Yoga, and postponing Arms and Shoulders and AB RIPPER! until tomorrow. This is one thing I like--the inclusion of Yoga. I've never done Yoga, but I'm not very flexible, and it will be good. Plus, this tells me that this isn't some workout that only builds mass--Yoga is a whole different direction and the variety is awesome.
Anyway, I'll keep you posted. If I don't die, I do expect to look very different in a couple of months. And I'll post a picture once I'm TOTALLY RIPPED. Assuming I can, you know, lift my arms up at all.
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| | Posted 1/5/2009 1:22 PM - 509 Views - 10 eProps - 6 comments
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