Marathon Me

I’m back in the saddle again. Today was the start of Phase 3 of P90X for me. Last week was incredibly boring for me as it was a recovery week. While I am sure that I needed it, I’m just not as big a fan of the non-plyo or non-weight workouts. I get enough cardio from running, but I do need the stretching (I just don’t really like it). Just to show how boring last week was, this is the schedule: Yoga X, Core Synergistics, Kenpo X, X Stretch, Core Synergistics, Yoga X, X Stretch. So four days of yoga/stretching. Yuck!

But this morning was Chest and Back. This is one of my favorite workouts but I hadn’t done it since week three, I was very happy to have it come back. I’m entering the final phase of P90X and decided it’s time to really start pushing it to get the most out of it. In the words of my old rugby coach “go big or go home”. (Or maybe that was some cheesy t-shirt in 80s-90s).

The first thing up was standard push-ups and I hammered out 65 of them, which was up from 50 in week three. My shoulders were burning at the end, but the first 40 felt like doing nothing, lots of improvement there. Next up was wide-front pull-ups. My arms were still on fire from the pushups but I knocked out 14 of those, up from 11 in week 3. So far so good. The next two exercises stayed with push-ups and pull-ups with different hand positioning. I knocked out 30 military push-ups (up from 20) and 10 reverse grip pull-ups (up from 9). This last one was the one I had the least amount of improvement, although technically it’s more than 10%. I should be able to do more than 10 reverse grip pull-ups, but I was just beat from the first three exercises.

Next we hit Wide Fly Push ups (40 vs. 30), Closed Grip Overhand Pull-ups (6 vs. 5), decline push-ups (30 vs. 20). The decline push-ups was a huge improvement for me, but it was amazing how good the first 20 felt and how hard the last 10 were. It was as if my body used up all its energy and then was done. I struggled to get those last 2-3. The final exercise in this set is called “heavy pants”, which always conjures up very bad images in my mind, but it is really more like a bent over row with both hands. I was able to knock out 18 reps with 35lbs in each hand. Not too bad and up from 15 @25lbs in week three.

The final group of exercises consisted of diamond push-ups where I went from 20 in week 3 to 24 today. A 20% increase, but I’d like to get somewhere in the 30s. We followed up with Lawn Mowers (kind of a single armed row) with 20 reps with @35lbs. I think I need a heavier dumbbell for this exercise as this wasn’t very hard at all, and I could have done more reps, but just ran out of time before they switched to the next exercise. Next was dive-bomber push-ups…these things suck. Think of doing a push-up but under a rope a foot off the ground. You try to be like Catherine Zeta Jones in Entrapment where she does dive bomber push-ups under the lasers:

I managed to squeeze out 13, which was only one more than last time, but my shoulders were screaming the whole time. Last was back-flys which I got 13 reps with 25lbs in each hand.

Once you get through all of that…you do it again. The second time through I had some noticeable drop offs from the first sets, but I increased or stayed the same as compared to the second set of week 3.

When I finished I was super pumped. I felt like someone had hooked up an air compressor to my arms and chest. If my upper body would look like it looked after this workout all the time, I would be very happy (and Shelley probably would also). When I took my shower it was hard to reach up to wash my hair, it was a great feeling I hadn’t had in a while. I don’t think I pushed it hard enough in phase 2 as I didn’t really get very sore. If I look at it honestly, I think I was really only sore the first 7-10 days until my body started figuring it out. But I’m going to push it hard the rest of this phase and try to get the soreness back as often as possible.

So Mr. Tony Horton, I’m trying to bring it. Now hopefully I can bring it on the marathon course this weekend in Georgia. Wish me luck.

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Tags: P90X //