P90X, Days 36 — 42, Week 6

Things have been hec­tic lately, so for right now I’m going to move to weekly updates on my progress instead of the daily posts I’ve been mak­ing. Also, I’ve noticed that lately the major­ity of my posts cen­ter around my progress with P90X. I also want to write other con­tent that you’ll find inter­est­ing as well. Don’t worry, I’m still here, I’m still doing P90X, I’m still dis­cussing my progress, and I’m still Bring­ing It.

It seems like Phase II of P90X for me is about mak­ing gains. That means mak­ing gains with indi­vid­ual exer­cises and entire rou­tines. Here’s what week 6 looked like.

Day 36 — Chest, Shoul­ders & Tri­ceps. This work­out comes at your tri­ceps and the mus­cles in your chest and shoul­ders very hard. The slow speed pushups that make up two exer­cises in the rou­tine are a killer, but after com­plet­ing those exer­cises, I actu­ally felt a sense of accom­plish­ment. I can’t think of a bet­ter way to start the week.

Day 37 — Ply­o­met­rics. If you told me last year at this time, when I tried P90X for the first time, that I would be able to last more than 25 min­utes with this rou­tine I wouldn’t have believed you. I may not be able to com­plete the entire work­out yet, but I keep get­ting closer. I also don’t feel as if it is kick­ing my ass like it used to. It’s still a stren­u­ous work­out and it still pushes me to my lim­its, but I don’t feel as wiped as I used to.

Day 38 — Back & Biceps. My goal with doing P90X is to gain lean mus­cle. Since I’m look­ing to lose weight, I really don’t want to be any bulkier than I am now. So with that goal in mind, I con­cen­trate on doing more reps. So far I feel I’ve been pretty suc­cess­ful at it since I’ve noticed my arms are get­ting stronger and gain­ing def­i­n­i­tion with­out putting on sub­stan­tial size.

Day 39 — Rest Day. Lately it seems that by Thurs­day, my body feels tired and fatigued. It’s prob­a­bly a com­bi­na­tion of the long work week and the stren­u­ous nature of P90X.

Day 40 — Legs & Back. Last week was the first time that I was able to com­plete this work­out from start to fin­ish and I was able to repeat that this week. It was a big win for me, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to take it easy. I still have a love — hate rela­tion­ship with this work­out and is still a chal­lenge. This week was about push­ing myself on the num­ber of reps per exercise.

Day 41 — Kenpo X. Last week I decided to swap out Kenpo X with Core Syn­er­gis­tics since I felt really good after doing it twice the week prior. This week I decided to go with Kenpo X for a calorie-burning, fast paced work­out. I hit my stride about mid-routine with this work­out, but feel fan­tas­tic when I’m fin­ished. While I enjoy Kenpo X, I think I may swap it out with Core Syn­er­gis­tics next week to do more work on my mid-section. We’ll see.

Day 42 — Yoga X. I’ve talked many times about the ben­e­fits I’ve seen with Yoga X, so there’s no point in repeat­ing them. Tony Horton’s pre­sen­ta­tion style is markedly dif­fer­ent with Yoga X than that of the other work­outs. Tony is usu­ally loose, upbeat and crack­ing jokes. I enjoy that style since it keeps the mood light with a very dif­fi­cult work­out. With Yoga X, Tony is much more sub­dued and there’s no jok­ing around. I find this style keeps me relaxed and focused on what I’m doing and the dif­fi­cult poses I’m try­ing to hold.

Related Posts:

• P90X, Days 64 – 70, Week 10
• P90X, Days 43 – 49, Week 7
• P90X, Days 57 – 63, Week 9
• P90X, Days 31, 32, & 33 – Back & Biceps, X Stretch, Legs & Back
• P90X, Day 22 – Recov­ery and Yoga X
• P90X, Days 15 – 21, Week 3
• P90X, Day 11 – Rest Day
• Fin­ished Recov­er­ing From The First Week Of P90X