Weigh-In Day June 17, 2011: P90X Week 1

This marked the first week of my new P90X workout routine. Tony Horton has officially become my new trainer!



The P90X schedule is broken down into three separate phases. The first phase (the one I'm in right now) includes an initial "work super duper hard" period for the first three weeks, and then a one week "let your muscles take a breather" period.

My workout schedule this week looked like this:

Day 1: Core Synergistics
Day 2: Cardio X
Day 3: Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper X
Day 4: Yoga X
Day 5: Legs & Back, Ab Ripper X
Day 6: Kenpo X
Day 7: Rest or X Stretch

Here's a video of me talking about how my first week went. For those that aren't into videos, feel free to skip it and keep reading - although you will miss seeing Nemo try to headbutt me.



I have to admit: Week one wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. Of course it wasn't easy, but I was anticipating buckets of sweat and "OMG I want to kill Tony Horton!" reactions. That didn't really happen. I think there are a couple reasons for this:

(1) I'm actually in better shape than I give myself credit for. I'm still not in good shape. There's no doubt about that, but all that running I was doing definitely paid off. I have pretty good endurance now and I found a lot of the cardio to not be very challenging. A few times I found self thinking "stop the chit-chat Tony and start!"

(2) I don't push myself hard enough. I'm sure this is related to number 1, but I really don't think I worked as hard I could have. I probably need to increase my weights and stop modifying so many exercises. Some things I have to modify (I don't have a pull up bar for example), but I was letting myself get scared and intimidated by some of the moves so I didn't even try them. There's a lot of jumping and high intensity stuff in P90X and I need to go for it more often (even especially when I think I can't do it).

Just like I did with running, I'm discovering that my mind can limit my progress more even more than my physical abilities can. If I think can't do something, I won't try it, and I'll never know if I can do it. Anyone else find that they encounter more mental roadblocks than physical ones when working out?

All that's not to say that the workouts didn't work. I haven't done much strength training, and I really felt it after doing those DVDs. My triceps and gluteus maximus (heh heh... that's my butt) were definitely sore for a day or two. I just know that next week I need to step it up.

After after all of that my weigh-in results were:

Weight Loss This Week: -1.0
Total Loss To Date: -18.0

I had honestly hoped for a bigger loss, but as usual I'm going to focus on the fact that down is down, and I'm heading in the right direction.

Plus it's Friday, so that's always good. Maybe that's why my weigh-ins have been working out so well... even if I have a bad weigh-in I still have the weekend to look forward to.