P90x: Day 81 – Stretching Machine

I can’t tell you how much I enjoy stretching.  At first it seemed like an inconvenience to me, but now that my body is transforming into a new person I feel that I need to stretch more and more.  It helps my muscles relax and after I am done I feel sooooo refreshed. I still  have a few of these P90x stretching workouts to catch up on, so I need to start doing them at night in the next couple days.  I am pretty psyched for the next couple days.  Tomorrow I do my last P90x Legs and Back workout routine, so that is cool, Saturday I am hanging out with friends, and then Sunday is my Birthday!!! Party!!  I can’t believe my birthday fell on a rest day, how sweet is that!!  It is going to be crazy because the Superbowl is also on that day, to bad the Superbowl is going to be totally lame, I can’t stand the Steelers or the Cardinals, but I feel like I have to root for someone, so I will probably root for the Cardinals.  I am still bitter about Superbowl XL where the Seahawks got screwed.  It should still be a pretty fun day, later that night I am going into Seattle to celebrate my B-Day.  Oh yeah, today I also went to the gym and ran for 2.5 miles, did not really push myself to beat my 2 mile record, but my friend just beat my time by 45 seconds, so now I have a new goal to shoot for.  It is not really fair though, he ran cross country and he should be beating me my like 2 minutes.

P90x: Day 80 – Only Ten Days Left!!!

Wow, I can’t believe I only have ten days left in my P90x home workout.  It has really been quite a journey, not knowing if I was going to make it or not, but now I feel like I am in the finale stretch, the last leg of the race, the bottom of the ninth, the 2 minute warning…I could go on, but I won’t.  Today I did my P90x Back and Biceps routine, and I have to be honest I kind of did a no no in the world of working out.  Last night I went to the gym with a couple of my friends and did a back routine, we worked on our backs for like an hour and a half.  But I still did the P90x Back and Biceps routine today, and I know your not supposed to workout the same area two days in a row, but I thought doing it once couldn’t hurt.  I did have a great workout at the gym last night and today with P90x back and biceps, I made sure since this was my last workout to go extra hard at it.  So I used the green bands like crazy and made sure to put more resistance to the band by stretching my legs wider.  Tomorrow I have a stretch day, which is going to be great, because with all the workouts I have been doing with p90x, at the gym, racquetball, and running, my body is pretty darn sore.  So I am excited for a good stretch.

P90x: Day 79 – The Bet Is Within My Grasp

So if you have not seen any of my other posts, one of the biggest reasons I am doing this P90x workout routine besides wanting to get in better shape, was because  a couple of my girl friends bet me that I would not finish the 90 days, that I would give up and not complete the P90x Challenge.  If I were not able to finish the 90 days they said I would have to shave my legs for a whole month, but if I did finish the 90 days they would have a nice surprise for me.  Since there were a lot of holidays around the time I was doing the P90x system they decided that I could have 3 months and 14 days to complete it, the extra fourteen days was also for any injury that might have happened through the process.  Well, today I am on Day 79 and I only have 10 more days left in the P90x workout.  So I am pretty sure I am going to make good on the bet and not have to shave my legs.  The great thing about this, is that they are the ones who have noticed the most difference in my definition, they have actually been really surprised with the change that has happened in just 3 months.  In my own mind I still have a ways to go, but there is definitely more definition in my chest arms and abs, and I have even lost weight, around 8 pounds, that was mostly because I have started running a lot lately, mixing it with my p90x routine.

P90x: Day 78 – My Last Upper Body Workout

So obviously you now know by what my title says, this is my last P90x Chest, Shoulders and triceps workout.  I still struggle through this workout, it is pretty tough for me.  I can do the P90x chest and back workout pretty darn well, but starting off with those darn slow motion push ups, I seem to struggle the rest the way through because I have no more energy left after those.  There are also a lot of straight arm weight lifting in this workout.  Tony suggests that you use light weights for the straight arm exercises.  He only uses fifteens, I use tens and everyone has to do sixteen reps!!  I still did not do good on the one arm push ups, but hey, I am not going to stop working out just because P90x is over, this has gotten me into a habit of working out, and I feel lazy if I do not workout.  It was actually hard for me to rest during this last weekend, although it was much needed.  Tomorrow I might be going on a 8 mile hike, so I will probably count that as my workout, if I do not go on the hike I will be doing P90x Plyometrics and probably some racquetball later on.  It has been awhile since I have been on a hike, so I hope it works out and summit Mount Si.  I want to eventually run up that thing.  I can tell you one thing the P90x exercises have definitely gotten my heart and legs in great shape.

P90x: Day 76, 77 – I am taking the weekend off

So this post really is not going to be about P90x, except that I am going to be be taking a break from it this weekend and that I will be making up the  P90x Legs and Back workout, probably at the gym with my buddy again.  I am pretty much caught up with all the exercises that I have missed in the past, the only thing I need to catch up on are the stretching videos, and i think there is about 3 of them that I need to make up, I will try to fit them all in before the 90 days is up.  On Saturday I woke up early and went my church’s Men’s Breakfast…at 7 in the morning!!!  I have no idea why we have to have breakfast that early on a Saturday, but it was fun and the man who spoke did really well.  After the breakfast I came back to my house and slept till noon, it was a much needed nap.  Later on that night I had a small group that I went too at my friend’s house, her grandparents brought some really good white chocolate popcorn, so I did not exactly stick to my P90x nutrition plan.  Today, I had church, a Softball meeting and then church again.  It was a pretty busy weekend, but at the same time it was nice for my body to relax, before I start one of my last weeks.  Tomorrow I will do P90x Chest, shoulders, and Triceps.

P90x: Day 75 – Switching my exercises

So, my hamstrings are still pretty sore and stiff, I was thankful for the stretching yesterday, but it still seems that my legs need a little more time to recover, so instead of doing P90x legs and back, I am going to to do my cardio workout instead.  And to remind anyone who has actually been reading this weird P90x Blog, I have substituted the P90x Kenpo x routine to just going to the gym with my friends and running a whole lot and doing other cadio workouts, because I feel like I can get my heart rate up more by running 3 miles rather than kicking and punching.  I went to the gym today, and since my legs were feeling pretty tight, I did not want to just start running right away, so I went on the bike for about 10 minutes to see if I could loosen up my hamstrings a little before I run, and it seemed to work.  After the Bike and watching a little bit of basketball, I went over to the Treadmill and started to run.  Now running for me is like a love / hate relationship.  I like running around 2.5 to 3 miles, but if I do it to slow it feels like it takes forever, but if I do it to fast I get worn out pretty soon.  But I have gotten a lot better, I ran 2 miles in 15 minutes and 55 seconds, so I finally got under  an 8 minute a mile.  I then lower the speed to about 3.5 mph, to lower my heart rate down to around 155, this takes a little bit of time.  But once my heart rate gets low, I bump back up the speed and do whatever is left on my 3 mile, so far I have been doing 3 miles in about 25 minutes, which is not to bad.  It used to take me a lot longer, and If I didn’t try to lower my heart rate than I could probably do it in around 23 minutes, I think, that is a guess. Tomorrow I will see how I am doing if I am going to workout my legs or not.  But I am going into the final two weeks of my P90x extreme workout routine.

P90x: Day 73 – Biceps! Awww yeah

This is not me

So I woke up this morning and I was pretty darn sore from my workout last night, I did a ton of legs workouts and then I played racquetball, and trust me we did not go easy on ourselves, we were diving and slamming into walls, total disregard for our bodies, it was a lot of fun.  But I definitely paid the price for it this morning, my whole body feels like it got beat up my a gang of  12 angry men, but I still had to do my P90x extreme fitness routine today.  And that extreme routine was P90x Back and Biceps.  It is fun to watch the progress that you make in this section, because with me I have never been able to see my veins pop out or see any real definition, but I have been seeing a lot of it lately.  It helps you a lot when you know you are making progress, and even though the workouts hurt and sometimes you just want to take it a little easier, you continue to push on because you have seen results and you want more of them.  But i had a great workout with p90x today, especially the hammers in and out routine.  Even you have done the P90x workout you know what I am talking about, I love that exercise, especially with the P90x green resistance band.

P90x: Day 72 – I swear I still love P90x

I know it might seem that I am doing less and less p90x workouts, and I had every intention on doing the P90x plyometrics routine, but one of my buddies asked me if I wanted to go to the gym to do a leg workout and then play racquetball, and I just could not pass up the opportunity.  It is probably frustrating for people who probably read this blog trying to figure out if they want to do P90x,  all I can say is”yes, do it!!”  It is has been life changing for me, and even though I have been going to the gym more, it is only because I get to workout with friends.  So I guess I will tell the workout I did at the gym.  With all our workouts we did 5 reps of ten and upping the weight almost each time, sometimes by the last rep we would just try to do the most we could do.  We started off with leg presses, and since it was the first workout we started off kind of low just to get warmed up, but by the fifth rep we were doing around 275.  We then moved on to Quads, and we bumped it up to over 200 lbs.  Then we did calves, I can’t even remember the weight, and then after that we did hamstrings.  Now hamstrings are probably the weakest part of my legs, but I am pretty sure we did around 150 pounds.  After that we did some stomach exercises, and then we played racquetball for about 30- 45 minutes, overall we were at the gym for an hour and a half.  It was a great workout, I got my jumping exercises with the racquetball playing and worked up a great sweat playing it too.  I will continue to do my P90x workout tomorrow with Back and Biceps, and there is no way I am missing that one.