Pushing Play

Day 15 – So I spent nearly 5 days incapacitated by this stupid headcold. The idea that I had fallen behind by a full week was not appealing to me at all. Especially since we have so few precious weeks left before our marathon basketball tourney in Brandon.

I had made up my mind that I was gonna try P90X today, but after a full day of wheezing and sneezing I decided to just rest up.

Day 16 – I woke up yesterday feeling better than I had all week. The headaches, joint pains, sweating and eye sensitivity were gone. The only things I had left were sinus congestion and light headedness. But I felt good enough to go. SO I did my scheduled Legs & Back routine.

Aside from a severe lack of oxygen and burning lungs from physical activity, I did well enough. Half way through my routine, I began to get dizzy and light headed again. All I did was to breathe harder and make my lungs work more. I suppose it worked well enough as I was able to do the entire routine with the exception of One Leg Wall Squats, which I had to stop in the final 5 seconds because my legs were shaking so hard. Overall, my numbers were MUCH better than last week, even though I am sick.

Ab Ripper brought forth some more personal triumphs. The above picture is the cross leg/wide leg situps. The last few times I have done ARX, I decided to sit out these and the V-Up Roll Ups because of the strain they place on my back. Well, last night, I was able to fight through the back pain to do 15 of these and 5 of the V Ups. It’s not great, but compared to where I was last week, I consider it a sign of forward progress. Every other exercise, including the Mason Twists were done alongside the P90X people (with a few pauses in between for rest). After the first few Mason Twists, the fear and pain went away and I was left with nothing but my core and my mind to do the whole thing!

Imagine that! Last week I did 15 of all the exercises and this week I did the full 25 reps! More than that, I grinded out (very painfully) 30 of 40 Twists and last night I did 40 and could have done more!

My legs feel sore today, but nowhere near as exhausted as they felt last week. Last week they felt like rubber and today they feel like I could push them once warm!

So good to be on P90X ….

MY guns are water pistols

Tonight I willed myself to do Shoulders and Arms after an initial bout of procrastination. The results of tonight were well worth the effort.

ALL of my totals in Shoulders & Arms are better than what they have ever been. It seems to me like the strength and endurance of my upper body has not suffered too much over the last 6 months as in both my arm workouts this week I experienced higher than usual numbers.

Where I would start my cycle using 10′s and 15′s, this time I’m using 20′s to start and matching the output from the 10′s and 15′s. It definitely gives me hope.

And then Ab Ripper comes along. I still am struggling through a few of the exercises. Of note is that my back has started tingling when I do the bicycles and crunchy frogs. That is quickly followed by excruciating pain during the Wide Leg sit ups and V-up Roll Ups. The tingling that I spoke of reminded me of what it felt like to have my pinched nerve. Not to say that that is what I have, in fact, only that my back is so weak right now that additional strain is being put on my joints.

So I skipped V-Up Roll Ups and the Cross/Wide Leg Sit Ups just based on the fact that it hurts too much right now. BUT, where I skipped those first exercises tonight, I DID do the Fifer Scissors (about 18 of them anyway), and the Hip Rock and Raise (20 of them). So I have faith that I will be able to do the entire Ab Ripper X routine soon enough …. I figure maybe in a week or so …

Of personal note here is the fact that I was able to do ALL 40 of the Mason Twists this time around, whereas I only did 25 last time. So there is DEFINITELY something happening in my body right now.

Pain wise, I am feeling it today. That Shoulder & Arm workout was a bear – especially the Bonus Round. And combining that with the Chest & Back from Wednesday … my arms are pretty worn out right now. My abs are also pretty sore. Bending over is a chore BUT I find that if I engage the abs BEFORE I do something ab related, that the pain in my abs and back is greatly decreased … not to mention the positive effect that stretching my quads has had on my back pain – but that is a story for a different day.

With Yoga coming back around tomorrow, I am positive that I am gonna have a nice, pain managing, flexibility building day tomorrow.

And this is a good thing as I have my final basketball game of the season on Sunday – though I still intend on doing Legs & Back ………….. maybe ….

I’d be lying if I said that I am eager to workout right now. Really, I’m not. I just feel discouraged a lot of the time with the state that my body is in and how quickly 2 years of work were simply erased (4 months).

Tonight it was back to the lab, so to speak, for my proper P90X routine – Chest & Back.

I had some huge reservations about this one simply based on the amount of push ups we have to do. But it appears like all my worries were for naught – mostly.

See, I keep track of every workout I do and have done so since my first cycle of P90X. I’m now on Cycle #3 and I decided to go back to my last cycle (I did 3 weeks before I fractured my ankle) to study the numbers and kind of reference as far as something to shoot for.

Well, despite the fact that I have not done a solid P90X routine in over 6 months and that my last cycle of P90X kind of featured me in my prime, I am very proud to say that I kept up (and sometimes even matched and beat!) the numbers I wrote down previous. Of note were 9 Dive Bomber pushups for my second round and 8 Diamond Pushups in both Round 1 and 2. Those are all highs.

So there were definitely triumphs there.

Unfortunately, Ab Ripper X came down on me and brought me back to reality. Due to the weakness in my back muscles, I skipped both the wide leg situps and the V-Up Roll Ups – just too stressful on my back right now. So while it was disappointing to not be able to even get ONE rep done on either of those exercises, it just gives me added fuel and something to shoot for.

I also noticed that a few times, during my exercises, I was getting a snap and a jarring motion in my back as I tried to do a rep. I think I’m gonna visit my Chiropractor tomorrow for an adjustment just so that things are clicking properly.

P90X is sadistic. I think people don’t really get how insane it is. You tell people you’re on P90X and the response is usually “Oh good for you, yeah, I go to the gym too.”

No, No. I’m not talking about doing a few dozen half assed calf and bicep exercises, I’m talking about P90 frickin X. Anyone who does that deserves some street cred – maybe a few bonus air miles or something …. And if ChaLEAN Extreme and Insanity are as billed then I shudder to think what those workouts are like …. but let’s worry about this cycle of P90x first, okay?

Day 5 down.

flexin my dinky little calves!

The Workout

My wife joined me again for the second day of P90X just cuz I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that I am back in it. She’s nice like that. Or so I thought.

Legs and Back was on the menu tonight and it was as tough as I had remembered it being. The fact that my hamstrings have been sore for a few weeks to the point of cramping on me regularly made this workout harder than it needed to be. Things started out well enough. The warm up was good – that is to say I did it all at once without pausing, hahahaha.

Seriously though, I was good until the first exercise – the balance lunges? Yeah. That’s when the struggle began. Then the Super Skaters, Wall Squats, Single Leg Wall Squats, Sneaky Lunges, Chair Pose, and 80-20 Siebers proceeded to provide me with a view of a parallel universe where I did nothing but kick my own ass in unimaginable ways. But you know what? The only thing I had to stop early was the single leg wall squats. Those were just too much on my back.

The Ab Ripper was even more brutal than the last few times I had done it because my abs are completely gone again and my back is very weak. As it stood, I managed to do 15 reps of all the exercises – to exhaustion – while holding off the back pain. The Mason Twists were my personal triumph over the whole thing as, when I started, I did 3 before my back pain stopped me. I went to get up and stop the DVD and call it a night. But I stopped half way and thought “no, I CAN do this” and then I proceeded to grind out 30 of 40.

I mean, compared to where I was last year, and compared to other folk who are more fit, it’s not much of a victory. But I am satisfied with it as I know it’s only improvement from here.

Right now, climbing stairs is like a tightrope walk as I try to gather my muscles to stabilize me and keep me standing as I limp up and down the stairs. But I know that in a few weeks it’ll be like I never had any trouble.

P90X-ident

For the back exercises, there were all those pull ups. See, I have 2 medium bands that I use at once for extra resistance. What I had been doing before is doubling up my bands and pausing and waiting while me and my workout buddy each did our reps. At the very first exercise, my wife had the idea of splitting my pull up bands into 2, so she could do one with me at the same time. Alright cool. I decided to try it out. She took one of my bands and put it on the jamb of my bathroom door, which opens into the main area we are at.

So I grab my band and begin to pull. I look at the door and see it flex. And I think “hm, that doesn’t look right”. But I keep going carefully and finish up my first set of pulls. When it was time for my second set, I figured that since I had done the first set with no issues, that it would be like this again.

Wrong.

As I grabbed the bands and began to go, I looked up and saw the door flexing. I got nervous and looked down for a moment. Part of it was that it was preemptive. I have always done that. If the band breaks from too much pressure or the door opens, that thing comes at you like a whip! But the band didn’t break, and the door did not open. Instead, the fabric hinge with the little bulge SOMEHOW managed to flatten enough to fit through the door slit (NO clue how it did that) and it came whipping at me as I looked down for that one, brief moment. All I heard was the snapping whip sound and then searing, intense pain on my head, neck and shoulders.

I screamed out in agony, was overcome with pain and proceeded to cry for like a minute. It was bananas. I have not cried from pain in over 3 years. Not during my ankle fracture, ankle sprains, ligament tears in either of my hands or wrists … the only things that made me cry were my herniated discs and my knee surgeries. But those injuries are severe. This was not, and it made me sob as intensely all the same. It was in-sanity.

After gathering myself and regaining control over my nervous system, I proceeded to finish my workout. All I could think about afterward was “What if I had been looking UP when the thing slipped?” Imagine the whipping my face would have received …

I actually shudder to think about what might have happened to my eyes or my nose, had that rubber band snapped back and hit them instead of my big, fat, bald head ….

And the aftermath was that my chest had enormous welts that looked like I had been whipped like a rented mule. See below.

What isn’t pictured: My head – which has a long, narrow red welt on it that looks like I was whipped with a giant penis.

My wife laughed nervously through it all as she felt badly that she was the one who set the things up. Which brings me to my next point, people …

NEVER, EVER let a spouse (or anyone, for that matter) who is not into P90X and does not use the equipment regularly to set it up for you. You’re just asking for my kind of trouble.

Bright side is that the injury isn’t permanent and that the pain will go away in a day or two.

Thought of the day

I’ve just gone through the entire Legs & Back routine, had my face nearly rearranged by the workout equipment and 3/4 done Ab-Ripper-X.

Tony Horton says “Party’s almost over, makes me sad”

I say out loud “I’m not sad, you sadistic bastard!”

It’s a love hate relationship with Tony, isn’t it? We want to get in shape and enjoy the after-effects of his P90X routine, but damn it if it isn’t agony while we’re doing our one millionth pull up or crunch …

But hey, Day 2 is in the books and I am on to bigger and more difficult things tomorrow.

I decided early this morning that I would totally do my ab workout as scheduled and that I would do another round of Ab Ripper X, as it is supposed to be done every second day.

It took me the entire day to actually get around to doing it, but I finally did it!

My wife joined in this time (to keep me company) and that was fun. She kinda struggled through it, but she hasn’t done any major workouts like P90X in about 6 months so she is gonna be sore tomorrow!

Me? I’m good. Not as sore as I was after the first time, the muscle weakness is fading and I feel less tired as well. I am starting to slow the movements down to get maximum extension / burn on the reps, too! And I capped it all off with 40 continuous Mason Twists! I’m starting to build to 70 again! So that was good to see. I’m still taking too many breaks for my liking but I figure that it’s because I’m not doing P90X daily. So my muscles aren’t as strong as they would be if I did the actually routines.

With Halloween gone and nothing major on the horizon to keep me busy in the evenings, I think I’m gonna be doing my ab workouts daily once again!

It’s good to be back!

The marathon of missed workouts continues!

I was up all night until 8am completing a Halloween costume for my son – he wanted to go as Lightning McQueen this year. Then today, with all the Halloween activities, the workout day was pretty much a wash.

Oh well.

I have some great memories of tonight and my family is, after all, the most important aspect of my life and the reason I do what I do to stay fit.

Tomorrow is a new day, though … and I have a LOT of Halloween chocolate to work off …… maybe I’ll do a double workout tomorrow ….

I took my kids to get their H1N1 vaccine (aka – Swine Flu) today and happened to luck into the option of having one taken myself, simply because I had kids!

I decided to get it.

As a result, I am now immunized (supposedly) against H1N1 … but the after effects of the vaccine, including a headache and muscle soreness made it unappetizing to work out tonight. I am especially sore around my arm. I can barely lift it above shoulder height right now without some pretty severe pain. I took a Motrin and used some ice in order to bring down the swelling.

The way I have it figured, it was a good investment (safety net, insurance) over the long term of this year – especially if I come into contact with peeps who have H1N1.

So as a result, I did not work out tonight.

Oh well. Marathon, not a sprint, right?

So let’s hear from you, on something other than P90X ….. have you gone to get your H1N1 flu vaccine? And was there a reason for your decision?