Day 4 P90X - YOGA - 1/24/12

Day 4 - Today I am extremely sore, my body is tired tired tired. I woke up this moring, having slept like a rock, and felt my body just stiff and tired. I knew i had Yoga, and for some reason I have always had this thing about the Yoga DVD. I really dont like it much. Why? you may ask. Because it is hard, and I am not all that flexible. Seriosuly, you dont move much at all, you stay in the samel ittle area on your matt, and you end up working your ass off. And they ask you to do all these positions, static holds, various stretches, etc and it works your entire body. The DVD is the longest in the entire P90X series, and I think that is another reason why I dont like it much. But let me tell you this, as hard as it is, I pushed through it, and I felt absolutely amazing afterwards. The workout, from start to finish really works out all that soreness that has built up over the first three days of the workout, and allows you to stretch everything out, and gives your body such an amazing release. It is a very relaxing workout. Dont get me wrong, there is intensity there, but toward the second half of the DVD you move into more stretching, and breathing, and it really help to clear your mind and take care of your body. I say I have a love/hate relationship with the Yoga DVD, but I am hoping as I do it more, and get better at it, it will turn into more of a LOVE of the whole thing. I hate starting, but I love the way I feel after I am done.

Day 4 in the bag! Done. YOGA X

Day 3 P90X Arms and Shoulders - 1/23/12

Day 3 - This was my first Monday morning, having to get out of my bed and get to the little gym area at 5am. I set my alarm, it went off, I rolled my sleepy ass out of bed, went and took my pre-workout, grabbed my lap top and water and out hte door i went. Sleepy, and stumbling, I walked down to the gym and got busy. Arms and shoulders didnt do me in like the other two had so far. I was tired, but at the end I wasnt as exhausted as Day 1 and Day 2 had made me.

About the workout - I wrote everything down, including little notes to let myself know whethe the weights were to heavy, if I could do more reps, if I was able to keep my form - all that type of stuff. In doing this, it allows me to look back the next week, and tells me what I need to do, where I need to start, and what I need to be aware of. Another thing I need to keep in mind, is to be careful and not push my shoudlers to hard, to fast. i ahve a history of tweaking my shoulders, so I want to just start slow, and lighter weights and just make sure I build them up slowly.

Ab Ripper - Today I did the Ab Ripper and I went from doing 10x to 12 (or was it 15) reps of the 11 different exercises. The Ab Ripper DVD is hard, and it really kicks your ass, but I know from having done it before that if you can do it consistintly for a few weeks, you really will see a significant difference in your abs. That is the one area I feel like I want to work, and define more than any other, cause I feel like any muscle that I had in my chest/shoulders/ and arms has fallen right around my waist. I am not fat, but I am, as they say on the P90X DVD - loose in the cage. I want to tighten that up. So I fought through the exercieses, and will keep working to get up to doing the entire ab ripper set (16 minutes long) in its entirety.

The great thing that I noticed during this day, was that I was on fire after the workout! I really felt this natural high almost all of the day. They say that working out releases natural endorphins that give you a natural high and I really felt it that day. I was friendlier at work, I was excited, I was talking with everyone, engaging in conversation and it was from the very beginning of the day. I'll be honest, some days I just dont feel like talking to anyone much but today, I felt GREAT.

Day 3 in the books. Day 4 tomorrow is Yoga!

Day 2 - P90X - Plyometrics - 1/22/12

Day 2 everybody, Plyometrics or what they refer to as "jump training" It is Sunday morning, and I am trying to get myself used to waking up early and going to work out first thing in the morning. I am doing this, because i know that getting up at 5am on a Monday morning to go and work out is going to be tough. That is why I started on the weekend, figuring i could give my body a couple of days to get used to working out and doing it first thing out of bed.

When you first start working out, especially if it has been a while since the last time you trained, or if you've never trained at all, your body goes into a bit of shock. It has no idea what you are doing to it, and doesn't know if this working out stuff is something that it is going to need to get used to. Your eating habits get out of wack, your body needs more fuel (food), and you will find yourself hungrier more often. The other I notice almost immediately after I start working out after a long lay off like I had, was that not only does your body get hungrier, but it will not be satisfied with crappy, unhealthy food. It needs nutrition to feed itself, to help rebuild and repair the muscles you've just exhausted so things like donuts, candy, chips, or fast food are not going to cut it. The other thing is that I am soooo thirsty, and I need water often.

My energy level is feeling pretty good after day 1, and going into day 2 i was just hoping to keep it up, and give myself a benchmark to build off of. The Plyometrics DVD is very intense and gets your legs absolutely burnt out, and it is very touch cardio wise also because you are constantly moving. The dvd is about an hour long, with 10 mintues of warm up (more or less) Within the first 20 minutes of the workout my legs were already tired and I was wanting to take a break. At around the 40 minute mark, my legs started giving out, and I had to pause the DVD and give myself an additional 30-40 seconds of recovery in order to keep going. I did it though, and walked out of that room on wobbly legs, sweating like crazy, and feeling absolutely GREAT!

I am not seeing any results obviously after 2 days, but I am feeling good that I have started.

Day One - P90X - Chest and Back - 1/21/12

So I am a bit late posting this blog, but it has taken me a lot longer to figure out how to put the videos together with I-movie on my computer than I realized. Anyway - Day 1 - chest and back. I wasnt expecting a whole lot when I went in to it, but I wanted to make sure I wrote everything down, and was able to set a bench mark for myself to build off. I feel like I held up alright in the first round, but by the time I got to the 2nd round I was exhausted, and my muscles were starting to fail a bit. At one point, when I Was doing the 2nd set of military pushups, I only did 5! In my notes, I wrote "are you serious" cause I couldnt believe that I could only do five fricken pushups, no matter what kind they were. Another exercise - the decline push ups I did 6 - which you cna see in my video. What you dont see is that I feel on my face/ chest trying to get up for a 7th one. I made it through the entire DVD though, I wrote everything down, and I knew that I cannot get discouraged. It was only my first day, and the fact that I finished was good enough.

Also, when it coms to the pull up exercises, I dont have a pull up bar, so I use the Lat Pull down machine, nad just use a weight that works, and keep track of it, and make sure I increase the weight if it starts getting to easy. It isnt the same thing, but I am just working with what I have.

Day one also has the Ab Ripper DVD and wiht that you do 11 different AB exercises 25 times each. Now I dont know about you, but I dont know anyone who is TRYING to get in shape that can do 25 times of anything right off the bat. I chose to start off with 10, and I did all 11 exercises with 10 reps, and figred that would be where I'd start. Even that was hard.

So after day one, I was feeling queesy, and was getting all dizzy, and just exhausted. It was a good first day though. You gotta start somewhere.

Getting Started - Making a commitment

It wasn't long ago that I would work out regularly that I was in excellent shape. Whether it was getting up early to go to the gym before work for some (somewhat intense) weight lifting, getting on my bike and going for rides of 20-50 miles, or getting out on the field and playing some competitive full field soccer I was always doing something to keep myself in shape.

Even after moving to a completely new city (Los Angeles) some 400 miles from my old home I was able to stay in shape by starting the P90x Home Workout program and at the same time taking Muay Thai Kickboxing classes and doing some Kettle Bell classes as well. I only did them both for about a month, and never did finish the P90x workout. At that point though, during the time I was doing both, I was in great shape. I averaged around 6-8% bodyfat, and had a visible six pack and was showing some solid lean muscle on my frame, weighing about 177-180 which is ok for a 35 year old guy who is 6 feet tall.

Then comes July 2011, when my daughter is born, and my time and focus shifts considerably. Over the next 6 months I would workout a TOTAL of 6 times. Over the course of those 6 months I told myself and my wife many times, "I am going to start working out, I need to get back in shape" but I never did. Days turned into weeks, turned into months. My six pack turned into a belly, any muscle definition that I had disappeared, and I began to look like a dad who was out of shape.

This brings me to this project. Right around New Years I decided I was going to start and finish P90X. It was something I had said many times, but this time I was going to do something different, to hold myself accountable. I was going to document my progress, and share it wiht others via this blog and my youtube videos, with the thought being that those that read and/or watch the videos will comment, and encourage me to keep going. I also want to be able to see my progress both physically and mentally, and show other people that they can do it to.

I am a 35 year old dad. I work full time. I have a wife and 2 kids at home (8yrs and 6 months) and I am committing myself to getting back in shape. Please follow me as I share with you my experience as I go from being fat to fit. OK, fat may be a stretch, but you'll see from my pics and videos I'm defintiely not rocking a 6 pack.