P90X and Search Engine Hits
I’ve been watching the search engine hits over the last few weeks and more and more traffic is coming to my site because of my P90X progress posts. I love that 🙂
I’ve been seeing things like:
– P90X Week 3 Yoga Still Hard
– Is it Ok to be tired in week 3 of P90X
– Deaf and P90X
-body stiff after p90x
P90X Week 3 Yoga Still Hard
Yoga is hard. I’m in week 6 and guess what, Yoga is STILL hard. I’m far from the most flexible guy around, so some of those moves leave me toppling over, shaking and at the end of the 90 minute workout I look like I’ve been hosed down. Yoga, for anyone that hasn’t done it before is in for one hell of a surprise, and even for those that have done it ( but are not proficient at it ), will find this challenging. Yoga experts may find this relatively standard fare or even easy. For me, when I hear Tony Horton say “Last vinyasa of the day” I am sooooo very thankful. Yoga is getting easier all the time for me, but it is still FAR from easy. Maybe by day 90 I’ll say that Yoga is “easy”.
Is it Ok to be tired in week 3 of P90X
Week is interesting for a few reasons. You should be hitting your plateau in terms of phase 1 and your muscles should be getting used to the workouts you’ve been throwing at it. By no means am I saying things are “easy” now, but they are somewhat easier than when you first started 2 weeks ago. Assuming you’ve been following the P90X diet or portion control plan, you’ve been REALLY restricting your carb intake over the last 3 weeks. This alone will leave you a little down in terms of energy. Depending on the amount of body fat to lose, you may be even more run down if you don’t have that much to lose and are instead focusing on building muscle. The other option here is perhaps you’re not taking in enough calories for the pressures you’ve been putting on your body.
Go back and make sure that you properly calculated what “Level” you are at in terms of your caloric intake, and make sure you’re taking in enough calories. Too few and you will be run down, you won’t see or really feel your body changing at all. You’ll have put your body into a starvation mode, and instead of building up the muscle you have been trying so hard to build up, it will break it down for the energy it needs to get through the day.
A number of friends have told me that “consuming that many calories, while doing it healthy is hard”. It’s not trivial, but it’s not “hard” either. There are a number of supplements from the protein shakes & meal replacement bars that beachbody sells, to things you can get at GNC or Vitaminshoppe or any local health food store. You want to aim for eating every 2.5 – 3 hours. You’ll have your breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner and if need be a protein shake after dinner. You don’t want to go to bed with a full stomach but if you are really hungry and just can’t imagine going until morning without something to eat, a protein shake is EASILY digested by the body and the extra protein will help your body recover from the workout earlier in the day. I like a protein shake or a full meal within 30-45 minutes of my workout.
Deaf and P90X
As I am not deaf, I don’t know how to answer this. The P90X DVDs give you a number of sound/visual options but the “visual cues” are not real flashy. You basically have to watch the timeline to know when the time is up and to know what exercise is coming up. You could read ahead in the P90X workbook to understand the exercises ahead of time, but the part you miss out on is the “motivational speaking” that Tony Horton does during the workout. The general mantra is “Do your best, and forget the rest”, but he often gives little tid bits of information during the routine, specifically where you cannot see his face and he’s showing right vs wrong ways to do things. I don’t know what kind of sub-titling P90X has, I’ve never looked into that.
Body Stiff After P90x
This is going to happen, especially the less in shape you are to start off. There are a number of ways to reduce the soreness and stiffness you feel the next day. First, make sure you are properly stretching BEFORE and AFTER the workout. A good cool down from a difficult workout is NECESSARY. Don’t just eject the DVD, take a shower and plop down on the couch. If you’re still feeling really amped, or maybe your pulse is still too high, extend your cooldown an extra few minutes. You will thank yourself the following day when you are able to walk up the stairs without wimpering. Secondly, make sure you are getting enough protein in your diet. I like a light protein shake after a particularly strenuous workout. The extra protein seems to really reduce the soreness I feel the next day. I take this even if it’s only an hour before bed. The protein is from a water mixed shake is easily digested and won’t just sit in your stomach through the night.
Hopefully this helps some people 🙂
P90X 4 Weeks of Progress & Day 29 of Pain
I’ve managed to stick with P90X so far through 4 weeks. Trust me, I’m as surprised as anyone reading this. I haven’t been able to stick with a workout routine for longer than 3 weeks since I got out of college. Something about P90X makes it pretty easy to stick with, even if the workouts are FAR from easy.
I wasn’t really sure what to think of P90X in the beginning, and I didn’t want to spend more money than I had to, I had some weights around from when I worked out a lot, I was able to find a cheap pull-up bar, and a mat. Then I cracked the book and realized I needed a a tape measure too? Damn. Well, shamefully, I skipped that part. I don’t know if it was because I knew I wouldn’t like the measurements, thought I wouldn’t keep up with the routine or what, but I don’t have a pre-P90X to compare to. That’s fine though. Why? The way my clothes fit. Holy crap it’s great. My jeans are loose, so loose in fact that if I don’t have my belt cinched up to the last or next to last notch, they can actually fall down really low on my hips and are in danger or just sliding down completely. My shirts that were kind of tight are definitely not so tight anymore, except around the arms where they are now tighter, which my girlfriend definitely doesn’t mind :). Tonight, while doing the workout for Day 30 ( Plyometrics…oh how I loathe thee) Brooke came over and said “How much weight have you lost? You…wow. You look like you’ve lost a lot.” I told her I’ve lost about 9 or 10 lbs depending on the day and she said “You look like you’ve lost a lot more than that”. That made me feel really good.
As of March 8th:
- Chest: 41.5
- Waist: 40.25
- Hips: 39.5
- R Thigh: 23.75
- L Thigh: 23.625
- R Arm: 16
- L Arm: 15.75
- Weight 196.5 ( Started at 206 loss of 9.5lbs )
- Body Fat: 28% ( from scale ) ( started at 34% loss of 6% )
- Body Fat: 23% ( calculated )
I’ve had to change up my workout times some, doing my workouts in the evening was drawing some girlfriend aggro ( for those non-gamers reading this, my girlfriend got annoyed that my evenings seemed consumed by my workouts: get home, walk dog, workout, make dinner, pass out exhausted ). I’ve moved my workouts to early mornings. I can ( usually ) get up around 5:15am, get changed, get my workout in, eat, shower, walk the dog and be at work by 8:15am. Usually. Yoga is an extra long workout that I have just not been able to get done in a morning yet. I usually then make Thursday my off day and continue my workouts and make up for Yoga on Sunday. This week I’m going to try to do Yoga in the morning again, just in case I’ve gotten just a little bit better to where I can do it, and I think the introduction of a bit more carbs will help my energy levels early in the morning.
Last night was Day 29 and my first introduction to the insane workout that is Chest, Shoulders & Triceps. Wow. There’s so few ways to describe how that routine left me a mere puddle on my living room floor. I went straight into Ab Ripper X afterward, and in the beginning where you can prop yourself up with your arms while doing the ins & outs & the bicycle moves, my arms were shaking so badly from being so destroyed by Chest, Shoulders & Triceps. By the end of that workout my triceps were pretty much refusing to participate in anything my body requested and getting up off the floor from Ab Ripper Ex proved to be more of a challenge than it should have been. I quickly followed the workout with dinner AND a protein shake, and while I was a bit stiff today, I was no where near as sore as I could have or likely SHOULD have been.
Tomorrow morning is my first crack at Biceps & Back. After the workout on Monday I’m wondering if I should really be doing this workout early in the morning, or if I’ll be so pummeled from it that trying to work after it will be an exercise in futility. It would be difficult to program if I couldn’t lift my arms up above my desk.
P90x – Recovery Week
I guess I had fooled myself when I first glanced at the P90x workbook. I expected weeks 1 – 3 to be rough, and they most certainly were. I’d seen the term “recovery week” and pictured a week of stretching and maybe some cardio, but nothing real hard right? Ha! Wrong.
Monday was day 1 of my recovery week. I didn’t have the energy or the time to do Yoga in the morning, so I saved it for after work. I got home and busted through it. The first half of the workout with all the plank to chaturanga, to plank to downward dog and all the warrior poses and triangle poses usually kicks my butt pretty good, but last night I wasn’t feeling too bad after them. Then came all the balance moves, tree and crane and plow. Ugh. Apparently I have 0 balance. I was twisting and tumbling and crashing. I did manage to get into crane and was working on my balance there. That was a pretty big step for me.
Tuesday ( today ) I woke up a bit stiff from Yoga but with the energy and determination to do the next workout. I opened up the book and saw “Core Synergistics”. Humm. What’s that entail I wondered. Well, it should be titled “Ass Kicking Squared” because that is exactly what it did.
Sphinx Pushups have to be some sort of torture device invented by some evil mastermind.
The stacked and staggered pushups also left me wanting to confess my greatest sins to whomever it was that was that came up with this horrendous torture device.
The rest of workout wasn’t too bad, I actually enjoyed the workout overall, but it left be bruised and battered and wondering why on earth Tony named this “Recovery Week”.
P90x End of Week 3
I’ve now been on my P90X routine for 3 weeks. The first week I saw barely any progress, though every day after a workout I felt sore and stiff. Week 2 things started to change. My weight started to drop, my body fat too, and best of all, inches. That continued through my third week too. I’ve been feeling amazing, though still stiff the day after workouts but feeling like I’m making great progress through the first phase of P90X.
Last night my girlfriend and I went out with these two friends of hers. I had more or less stayed away from alcohol until last night. I decided to treat myself to a margarita. Unfortunately, after basically 3 months of not drinking, 1 large margarita left me feeling quite a bit buzzed. We were at the restaurant long enough for any feeling of it to go away, but this morning I could feel the effects of the alcohol on me, feeling dehydrated and like things just weren’t quite right. On top of the margarita, I had 3 tacos, 1 with chicken, 1 with steak and one with pork. They were corn tortillas, so not quite as bad as flour, but I think I had a larger caloric intake on that single meal than I had the entire day before. Today that left me feeling guilty, and I pushed myself through Kenpo X as hard as I could, being near the point of falling over gasping on the floor come the end of the workout. I ate very sensibly today, an omelet, veggies with small serving of pasta and chicken, non-fat yogurt with fruit, salad with chicken, and a protein shake for “dessert”. I’m much happier with my intake today, but that still doesn’t leave me not feeling “bad” about Saturday night 😥
After 3 weeks, I’m VERY pleased overall with the changes I’ve seen in my strength, conditioning, general fitness, and inches. Week 4 starts tomorrow and so begins the “recovery” week. No big strength training weeks, but lots of cardio. Then starts week 5 where I, finally, get to boost my carb intake. My body has been craving carbs like crazy lately and it’s been rough to fight it.
Watched 2 movies this weekend, The Invention of Lying & The Box. I thought The Invention of Lying was a GREAT movie. Very funny, well written and original. The Box was horrible. The story never pulled me in, and while I like Sci-Fi to an extent this was just more jumbled than well put together. Meh.
What. The. Fuck
California is in shambles. The budget is a mess and has been running a deficit ever since the “.com” bubble burst 2000ish, and unemployment is probably highest in the nation sitting somewhere around 14%.
Now, what do our State ELECTED leaders feel a good thing to spend their time and OUR money on? Making the first week of March, a no cussing week:
I’ve got one thing to say in response. FUCK THAT. You really feel the need to take time out of your day which could be spent trying to come up with a balanced fucking budget or working on reducing the states ridiculous fucking unemployment rate, to come up with this bullshit? FUCK YOU Assemblyman Anthony Portantino for co-authoring this bill ( can’t find reference to who is the other author), and FUCK YOU state assembly for passing this giant fucking turd. I hope you all find yourselves jobless come election time. If there were ever a time to send a FUCKING message to the State Capitol, it’s now.