Just like all of the other exercises, it’s damn good and gets results. I can’t say this enough, but in three P90X strength workouts per week, without a single dumbbell or barbell, I am bigger and stronger than I was slaving away under the iron. Add in the two cardio sessions and a yoga session and I’m stronger and more ripped.

I’ll still go back to lifting, but I’ll do with a more total body focus rather than falling in love with things I do well, like benching.

At the request of the dudes in the class, Doug put together a chest/tri focused strength circuit for the first half of class (including 180 pushups) and we were lab rats for a new experimental workout during the second half.

The experimental circuit was a series of 6 exercises done for 30 seconds of high intensity workout with a 15 second rest before going 30 more seconds of high intensity. After four 30 second intervals, we did plank and side plank at 30 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 15 seconds and then switched to the next exercise. So, four intervals of each exercise and one plank session between each exercise. All in all, it took us a little more than 30 minutes to complete the 5 exercises.

Interval training isn’t experimental, but Doug’s concoction of exercises and timing were his own and plugging in the ab work in between kept us working at a high level, but also resting the right parts of our body:

1. One arm kettlebell swings (I found out last night that when you do them right, there’s nothing better for glutes)
2. One arm kettlebell clean and press (I look slightly disabled when I do this with my left hand, but I’m slowly getting the technique)
3. Two arm kettlebell swings
4. Jump rope
5. Hit the tire with the sledge hammer (Enter Sandman made the absolute perfect soundtrack for this one and I was sorta sad when I had to stop hitting the tire – pent up aggression maybe)

Not sure if you noticed all of those kettlebell exercising involving squatting and thrusting, but I pretty much couldn’t feel any muscles in my butt after the circuit was over. It was like it fell off.

Get Fit in 6 Minutes/Week? Don’t Bet on It

This circuit is based on similar principles to this NY Times article Can You Get Fit in 6 Minutes a Week? The article states that you build the same amount of mitochondria in your muscles with ultra intense circuit training six minutes per week as you do with 90-120 minutes a week of cardio. I’m not a fan of this article because mitochondria allow your muscles to process energy, but 6 minutes per week will not get the fitness results that most people are looking for: losing weight, gaining muscle, lowering cholesterol, keeping connective tissue strong, etc. 6 minutes per week gets you more mitochondria, maybe an injury because your body isn’t ready for the type of intensity required, and a little demoralized because you’re still fat. That’s it.

An idea like this has so much appeal to our busy, fattening American lifestyles, though,  that we really want to believe it. The provocative article title is an effective hook, but it also gives a lot of people fodder for convincing themselves they can work out for 6 minutes a week and be fit. In the study, they used healthy college students, not middle class, mid-life Americans and they didn’t measure bodyfat or other health indicators. Doug’s circuit takes those principles that lead to mitochondria and adds in the other areas of fitness as well. For those of us training with Doug, our mitochondria kicks your 6 minute/week workout mitochondria’s ass.

That’s why, though there have been plenty of celebrity deaths recently, the only one that makes it on my blog is Billy Mays, the unnaturally black-bearded, blue shirted yelling dynamo. If you’re like me and you tend not to get to bed until midnight or later, you’ve seen plenty of infomercials. Most of them have functions so marginally useful or claims so outrageous that they never warrant serious consideration. But I noticed something about the products that Billy Mays hocked.

I never watched a whole infomercial, of course. That would be ridiculous. But I did find thoughts beginning to creep into my head when the bright black beard showed up on my screen. Like, “hey that looks like it works” and “what’s so bad about buying stuff from an infomercial?” The more I saw him and the more he cleaned stuff, whirred stuff, sliced stuff and zipped stuff the more he changed my view on infomercials as a  marketing medium.

So, Tony Horton and BeachBody. You guys put together a great product and a great infomercial, but the reason I bought P90X late that night when I couldn’t sleep was because Billy Mays had already tenderized my infomercial defenses by drilling my skull with his Awesome Auger of personality.

Two fist bumps to the chest and a Sammy Sosa peace sign to you Billy Mays.

The most important lesson I’ve learned, that I probably wouldn’t have learned without P90X is that my body isn’t deteriorating…my habits and routine were what had deteriorated.

I’m on the road to being better than before, but more changes and commitment are needed to get the results you see on the infomercial.

Even though I have committed to getting into better shape and I’m achieving what I set out to do, I’ve become painfully aware of the difference between “in better shape” and “superfit”. By the time I finish the 90 days, I’ll be light years ahead of where I was, but I’m going to have to make a more serious commitment if I want to be superfit. Saturday was a perfect example of what an athletic “average joe” does that a superfit guy wouldn’t.

Superfit Dude Wouldn’t Approve

I woke up at 8:30 on Saturday and hit up a rigorous legs and back workout where I squeezed out 2 extra pullups on most sets over my last back workout. After chugging a recovery drink, I headed out into the already sweltering heat to meet a buddy on University Ave in Palo Alto. His wife was at my sister’s bridal shower, so he had a couple of hours of man-time to kill. Man-time isn’t exactly the healthiest time of the day.

We grabbed huevos rancheros for breakfast, and, since it was too hot to do anything but sit around, we moved down the avenue to sit outside Joya and sip down a spicy bloody mary. Now, huevos rancheros has black beans instead of potatoes, but Superfit Dude looking over my shoulder would have pointed out that he wouldn’t be caught dead with all that cheese, sour cream and tortilla on his plate. I also like to tell myself that the vegetable juice repairs the damage that the vodka does, but Superfit Dude would take a cane to my knuckles when I reached for the first sip.

I didn’t even have a good excuse for Superfit Dude for the two beers at the sports bar so I didn’t bother trying to rationalize it. Going home for a nap, some core work and eating a light dinner couldn’t erase the knowledge that days like that don’t lead to jobs in fitness modeling. And, um, the light dinner out with a beautiful young lady also included *cough* sake and beer *cough*.

You might say I’m entitled to a day of indulgence now and then, and I might tend to agree with you if I could find a way to forget following up Yoga with wine and cheese the previous Thursday. This 30 something professional lifestyle with it’s wine, women and tasty artery clogging morsels isn’t what Superfit Dude had in mind, but, dammit, it’s fun.

The Next Step

I’m content to finish out this session of P90X, with Doug’s Wednesday Night Workouts, basketball and making a sincere effort on the nutrtition end, while allowing myself the little white lies about bloody maries and black beans now and then. I’m happy with the noticeable progress and building much better habits than the last 5 years of my life. When I get through this first cycle, it’ll be time to turn it up a notch, and take another step toward Superfitness. Bye bye bloodies and huevos rancheros.

The shoulders and tris take a pounding while working Chest, Shoulders and Tris.

Both shoulders and tris are working when the chest is working and tris are working when shoulders are working, so chest is the only body part that gets any real rest during the Chest/Shoulder/Tri workout. I felt a nice deep burn in my shoulders and tris for most of the workout and I’m sore now, a couple of days later. I can already feel that this Phase is going to bring some real strength gains. Even though these workouts don’t have me on a bench with 3 plates on each side, I think my bench will improve as weaknesses in supporting muscle groups is eliminated.

I haven’t been a fan of the bands, but they work well for this workout. They really force you to finish strong on the overhead exercises and don’t reduce tension on the muscles when your elbows locked out like a dumbbell. I’m still thinking about getting a set of adjustable dumbells for some of the floor exercises that just don’t work with bands.

P90X Phase 1 pics coming soon…

1) Nearly impaled on the corner of my coffee table when I crashed down doing one of those crazy one-leg Warrior 3 yoga poses. I was concentrating so hard on flat back, reach up, look up, open chest that I didn’t even put my hands down to catch myself. Just crashed into a steaming pile of frustration.

2) Junkie shakes while futilely trying to hold my “core” together during core synergistics. I like to think the shaking muscles are due to my high proportion of fast twitch muscle fibers rather than my John Kruk softness. The problem with core is that it keeps moving around. Sometimes it’s my gut, sometimes it’s my lower back or my ass. A couple of times I swore it moved to my shoulders.

3) A laceration, hyperextended elbow and three bruises playing in a rough and tumble playoff game in the basketball league. There’s nothing so intense as a 30+ ex-jock trying to regain the manhood that his wife and kids stole from him. (I am not married and so still have my manhood which someone drove their foot into during the game.)

4) A day of rest. Finally. Tonight, I’m not doing shit. Not even X Stretch.

I’m still firmly on the P90X track, but my battered body just needs a little R&R. Two basketball games a week plus 6 days of P90X for the past three weeks has taken its toll. Plus, I’m starting to realize that Tony recycles the same jokes during many of the workouts and I just need some peace and quiet.

Core Synergistics is, for me, the most difficult workout to perform from a sheer coordination standpoint. I highly recommend keeping your finger on the pause button the first time through and trying out the mechanics of each of the exercises before trying to do them for reps. I also recommend weights. There are a couple of exercises that I couldn’t figure out how to modify for the bands.

I was able to do about 90% of the workout, but probably only about 40% of the workout correctly the first time through. I worked up a great sweat, though – probably because of the extra struggle with form on each exercise.

…I haven’t lost a damn bit of weight!

I can look in the mirror and see the difference, but I actually weigh 1.5 lbs more than when I started.

What I’m going to do about that:

1. Gotta get my bodyfat tested so that I can check again at 60 days and determine if there’s been a change.  I don’t want to weigh 190 lbs, but I also don’t want to give up any muscle.
2. Stick to the P90X nutrition program. I’m eating better than I was before I started, but I’m nowhere near strict. If I’m going to keep all the muscle and strip away more of the fat, I have to be careful that I’m only fueling my body with stuff that does that.

I think that’s it. There aren’t any changes needed in the workouts — just the nutrition.

I was able to push myself further during all of the workouts this week – even the ones where I felt a little tired before I started. My conditioning is coming along and I’m looking forward to this “rest week” (which will be another 2 basketball game week with 6 workouts).

A New Kind of Strength

Apparently, these types of alternative training methods (tire flipping, sledge hammers, the Prowler, chains, etc.) have been in use for quite some time, but I spent the last 5 or 6 years entrenched so deeply in the dumbbell/barbell rut that I never really paid them much attention. I gotta say, I have pretty much shattered all of my previous workout routines and assumptions in the last couple of months. I will go back to the weight room, but I’ll be experiencing it through fresh, new eyes.

Gone are the days of heavy or light workouts. Gone are the days of boring, repetitive cardio. I’ve seen the light and the light is good, hallelujah! With what I’ve learned in the last 30 days, I can probably build 6 months worth of variety into my workouts. My workouts will now be focused more a mixture of different kinds of strength and endurance rather than the limited tunnel vision approach I took before. And this is just the beginning.

Anaerobic Weakness

OK, stepping back down from my evangelical workout pulpit:  in both of my sessions with Doug, there has been one exercise that, by the second time through a circuit, makes me start wondering if someone could actually die from burning muscles. By the third time, I might as well be dead for all the control I have over my limbs. Last time it was 60 seconds of Kettlebell squats after pushing on the Prowler for 60 seconds. This time it was 60 seconds of overhead Kettlebell presses after flipping the tire for 60 seconds. This has taught me one very important lesson: 60 seconds is very long damn time.

Coconut Water Proved Itself to Me

I have to give props to my workout/torture partner, Deb for giving me a bottle of Coconut Water during the workout. I was drinking Gatorade and cramping up during the first circuit jumprope. I chugged some of Deb’s coconut water and the second time around: no cramps.