Nicholas Pike

So crunch time has hit at work again, and I am seeing 12-16 hour days for the last week.  I will resume with week 4 of P90X once work dies down again.

This post is not without some good news though, I have fallen below 250lbs!  248.8

For those curious, I finished off P90X Week 2 yesterday and started Week 3 today!  Thats 14 days in the bag!

Just finished Week 1 of P90X – and I did not miss a single day!  My weight was up and down all week, which is pretty normal, but ended today with 251,8.

A quick review of the routines in this week:

Chest & Back

This was painful.  Lots and lots of pushups and chin ups.  I have lots of room for improvement here.

Plyometrics

This is even more painful.  Think super high intensity jumping jacks.  Everything was high impact.  I was feeling pain in my legs for another 48 hours… walking around like Frankenstein!

Shoulders & Arms

Again, a ton of chin ups.  Since I am only able to do one unassisted chinup, I do these with a bar stool, with one of my feet on the lowest possible rung.  This offsets enough of my body weight, for my upper body to complete 10-18ish reps.

Yoga X

I never want to do Yoga X again.  I have never done Yoga at all before… so its pretty intense to jump right in to extreme Yoga.  I had “okay” participation with this routine, but am not nearly flexible enough to do the whole thing.  Might look into purchasing some “yoga blocks” for the next time.

Legs & Back

Lots of squats, pullups, and other crazy exercises.  My participation was okay for this as well, except for the crazy wall squats.  Normal wall squats are one thing, but alternating single leg wall squats are just INSANE! (As in, can not do it for more than 10 seconds :( )

Kenpo X

I think this was my favorite the whole week… think Karate Exercise.  Fairly high intensity, kicking, punching, blocking in various positions.  Worked up a GREAT sweet.

X Stretch

The last day of the week you have a choice:  Do X Stretch, or take a day of rest.  A day of rest, really? No thanks!  X Stretch was rather intense as well.  Basically all the warmups you did for each day of the week, but pushing yourself a little further.  For each stretch of each muscle group, you just put yourself a little more outside of your comfort/pain zone.

Well, tomorrow starts the fun all over again!

Intensely hard during this workout… it seems like the hour never ends.  Once the clock reaches 5 minutes left (cool down time!) you feel so good and proud of yourself for sticking with it.

Win for me.

It’s been no secret that I have been working my ass off for over a year to change my physical appearance, and generally how I feel about myself.  Now that I have almost reached my first goal weight of 250lbs (down from 310!) its time to kick things into over-drive: P90X.

For those unaware:

P90X or Power 90 Extreme is a home exercise system developed by Tony Horton in conjunction with Beachbody. The program emphasizes full body fitness through cardiovascular, strength training, and stretching exercises, combined with an optional nutrition and supplementation plan.

P90X stresses the importance of “muscle confusion” (commonly referred to as cross-training) by switching the order of exercises, and incorporating new exercises during each phase. Muscle confusion prevents the body from adapting to the exercises over time and plateauing which has been considered a key factor in the overall success of the program.

(Taken from the Wikipedia article)

Usually someone starting P90X posts all their stats and Day 1 pictures online.. I will spare you the eye burning pictures and stats (You already know my weight from above).

Last night I came home and started Day 1 of P90X, which is Chest & Back.  Basically a crazy crazy amount of pushups, chinups, and some weight work.  There are several types of pushups for this day, and I am only able to do a few… and very low amounts.  For the sake of working on my form, and getting reps at the same time – I am doing “modified” pushups.

Chinups?  Well, I am only capable of doing a chinup once or twice before completely destroying myself, so I am using Very-Heavy resistance bands with a door attachment to simulate doing chinups (as instructed in the videos).  I also have not purchased a new weight set yet (my set is in my LA apartment), so am also using the resistance bands for that.  (they work pretty well, but unfortunately I need more weight).

I had pretty good participation on Day 1.  Following Chest & Arms on Day 1 is Ab Ripper x. Ab Ripper x is an hour (or so) of exercises designed to work your abs.  And boy does it hurt after!

Pretty sore after Day 1… tonight is Day 2: Plyometrics.  Pretty excited to try out this session.

I doubt I will post every single day, or every single week.  I will try to post semi-often assuming that I have the willpower to continue P90X.

Google around… the results for P90x by normal people seems to be pretty fantastic.  This doesn’t seem to be one of those fads, but a very very structured home fitness program similar to having a personal trainer in a gym.

My new goal weight? 210. See you there!

Been really working out a lot in the last few weeks. Purchased a mountain bike awhile ago, I try to ride that a few times a week for ~7 miles.. weather permitting.

I still throw in a hearty 3 mile walk a few times a week..

The weather here in Rochester has been pretty rainy, so I’ve added another in door exercise routine (in addition to my weight lifting): a heavy training bag for boxing!