P90X Day 5

If there happens to be anyone that is actually reading daily, sorry about not getting the recap of yesterday up yesterday. After work, I wasn't too much motivated to look at a computer screen much more. Well, without any further adieu, lets recap the activities of yesterday.

To my amazement, I was fully mobile from the start today. There wasn't any issues moving to standing from sitting, walking steps were a comfortable go, and I was able to reach around my desk without having to coerce my arms thru the pain of moving above my keyboard tray. There were a couple of instances where Angel was able to see clearly that I was feeling better. I was even able to do small sprints up steps.

Anyway, the completion of another day of exercise has come to a close. Yesterday's focus was on Legs and Back with another round of Ab Ripper X. The special thing about today was that Angel & I did not do our workouts together. Work was swamping me and there was no way I was going to be able to get away before Angel had to go to work. Therefore, she took the initiative to workout when she needed to so that she could cool down and be ready for work on time.

So, about my experience, the opening stretching was adequate to take the minor tweaks out of my muscles and I was ready to rock. Well, today's exercise was pretty brutal. Working on legs does not sound difficult, but if you do enough lunges and duck walks and pull ups, you will certainly begin to feel it.

I had once thought that my legs were strong and this should be pretty easy to complete as instructed. It did start out that way. Doing lunges and toe raises was as easy as I had expected. Physically demanding but pretty do able. However, the cardio workout from doing lunges at a fast pace was the hardest part. Many of the exercises recommended using weights during the completion. I didn't think of this as a problem, I've got bands for resistance. Well, using bands for many of these exercises has proven to be a bad idea.

We were doing three variations of toe raises. We started wide, normal, and then pigeon toed. Wide and normal with bands under the balls of my toes worked out just fine. However, when trying to get the pigeon toed position to work, everything started out ok. However, as I was doing a few repetitions, I didn't notice the band slipping. Well, that was quite unfortunate. The band slipped out and smacked me in 3 places on it way up. Somehow it managed to cut my shin, but it brought me to the ground when it hit me in the balls and also left a red mark on my stomach, but that was serious pain getting hit by a fully extended resistance band. It could have been worse, thankfully it was just superficial. The boys were not involved, but pain was plenty enough without them. Recovery came quick and went back to work.

Peppered in between the leg workouts were pull ups and their different variations. My max pull up count during the fit test was 7. The guys and girls are going sets of 12 - 20 in 30 seconds. Without help, I was only able to do sets of 3 - 5 (depending on hand position and direction). This help to do more reps was in the form of a chair. I'm not certain if I am using the chair properly, but it does assist me in doing more reps. And more reps should yield improvement in time.

Following the legs and back routine was some more Ab Ripper X. This battery of moves is tough. It starts right in and doesn't let up for 15 minutes. Each exercise has variations that will allow for progression as strength and training improve. However, right now we're both doing the "easy" way for each set. For the first time while doing this program, we have both noticed the burn. I don't know if that is because we finally figured out the correct way to do the exercise or what, however, this is extreme. There are several different variations of sit ups and crunches that finishes up with a pivot move. This is going to yield some serious results after the program is complete.

Well, 5 days down and one more to go to finish week one of 3 for phase 1. For the first time in a couple of weeks, we cheated on our diet. We were really not in the mood for cooking and the things I was interested in cooking Angel was not in the mood for. So we compromised and got a pizza. I doubt that this will happen very often, but only time will tell.

The next battery of a workout is Kenpo. Kenpo is a martial arts variation that appears to be full body engaging. I don't know for sure, but I will certainly let you know about it later.