The Average Joe Fitness

Legs and Back work­out today. Bal­ance lunges woohoo.

There’s noth­ing like Yoga X in the morn­ing. It gives me such a huge burst of energy that just seems to last the whole day. Soon after start­ing the work­out the grog­gi­ness and tired­ness is gone. One of the rea­sons I like work­ing out in the morn­ing is the energy that is a result.

Yoga X is a bit dif­fer­ent too. It seems like my mind is clearer as well after I’m fin­ished. Yoga X also has a great spot on the P90X rou­tine lineup com­ing after chest, arm, shoul­der rou­tines and Ply­o­met­rics. If your feel­ing stiff and sore after those this work­out will help get rid of it.

Back and Biceps just blasts my arms and as I’m writ­ing this my arms are still a bit sore.

As I’m near­ing the end of this round of P90X, I’ve been look­ing over my work­out sheet and com­par­ing my reps and weight from the begin­ning with what I’m doing now. I’m look­ing at a great increase in both the reps and the weight. Def­i­nitely a larger improve­ment in reps over weight since my goal is a leaner look and not bulk. I’m keep­ing this work­out sheet and look­ing for­ward to com­par­ing Day 1 and Day 180.

This is prob­a­bly the busiest time of the year where I work, but most days I’m able to get my morn­ing work­out in. How­ever not today. I needed to be in the office pretty early, so I’m tak­ing a rest day today. See you tomorrow.

Ply­o­met­rics today, what more is there to say? Actu­ally I don’t have much to write about today’s work­out. Ply­o­met­rics is still a chal­lenge, but one that I wel­come every week. I don’t cringe when I put the disc in any­more, but that doesn’t mean it’s got­ten any easier.

On a very cool note, P90X blog­ger Fit­bomb actu­ally got to talk with Pam “the Blam” of P90X fame, includ­ing Ploymetrics.

I love push-ups. They are always a chal­lenge and there are sev­eral ways to do them. Since start­ing P90X, I’ve seen a sub­stan­tial increase in the num­ber of reps of decline pushups I can do.

But there are no decline pushups in the Chest, Shoul­ders, and Tri­ceps rou­tine. There are how­ever slow speed pushups. In fact, after the warmup the work­out kicks off with 3 way slow speed pushups. Four reps wide, four reps stan­dard and four reps mil­i­tary style. Doing pushups slower is like adding more weight with other exer­cise. Later in the work­out you have the two twitch pushups. Slow and fast speed reps mixed together.

Just like Chest and Back, the Chest, Shoul­ders and Tri­ceps work­out is one of my favorites.

Out of all of the work­outs in my first week back, I felt Core Syn­er­gis­tics the most. It worked me hard and knocked the wind out of me again. But I think that’s one of the rea­sons why I like this rou­tine over Kenpo X and do it instead. I adjusted to Kenpo X very quickly and after a while it wasn’t a challenge.

Fit­bomb rec­om­mend using light weights with it and I will try Kenpo X with them. But since Core Syn­er­gis­tics is such a chal­lenge I’m dri­ven to put that disc in every week. I enjoy a good chal­lenge and for sure this is one for me.

No mat­ter how many times I do the Legs and Back rou­tine, I know I’m going to keep this love/hate rela­tion­ship with it. Even though I con­tinue to improve with the exer­cises in this work­out, they are more than a chal­lenge. The first exer­cise with Legs and Back is the Bal­ance Lunge. As the name implies, you make just as much an effort keep­ing your bal­ance as you do lunging.

Day 76 was sup­posed to be Core Syn­er­gis­tics but I woke up today feel­ing very stiff after doing the Legs and Back rou­tine for the first time in a short while. So I decided to switch it up and go with X Stretch and move Core Syn­er­gis­tics to tomorrow.

My legs def­i­nitely feel much bet­ter. Now, X Stretch is the one work­out that I’ll skip if I can work­out 7 days a week. But it’s one that I try not to neglect.

Shoul­ders and Arms is a straight­for­ward work­out focus­ing on your shoul­der, biceps and tri­ceps. There’s noth­ing fancy here, just you, a chair and a set of dumb­bells. I’ve gained a great deal of def­i­n­i­tion in my arms, espe­cially the tri­ceps. I opt to go with the more reps/less weight method since I’m more inter­ested in get­ting leaner and not bigger.

When I first started I could barely squeak out 6 or 7 chair dips. Now I can do more than 20. I found this to be one of the more dif­fi­cult exer­cises and depend­ing on what your work­out looked like before start­ing P90X, you may too.

Dur­ing my break, Yoga is one work­out I didn’t touch. When I started out today I was feel­ing very stiff, but about 15 min­utes in, I feel­ing it and back into the rou­tine. Yoga X has a great place in the P90X rou­tine. It’s right after work­outs that blast your chest, shoul­der and arms and after Ply­o­met­rics. It’s a great way to stretch out and get rid of the stiff­ness and soreness.

So in the extended ver­sion of the movie For­get­ting Sarah Mar­shall, there is a yoga scene that was never shown in the the­aters. At one point the class goes into a posi­tion and the main char­ac­ter Peter shouts out “Bring It.” A ref­er­ence to P90X, I won­der? P90X is a work­out that has been known to have celebri­ties and ath­letes unof­fi­cially endorse it.