As the day wore on yesterday, my body grew tighter and tighter. Not so much sore, though I could feel aches in a few spots, just 'tight.' After I picked up Hayden from school and worked with him on his homework, I decided on a great way to loosen up. I put in the Cardio X disc and had another round.
In addition to the cat and the dog helping (stretching to downward dog with a cat's fluffy tail in your sweaty face is a real treat), I had the assistance of an almost 10-year old helping me along the way by informing me how easy each move was by demonstrating the exact worst posture for each position. However, after I showed Hayden the proper form (or at least better form) and he realized how much Yoga sucks, he soon found respite on the couch with the dog.
All the stretching moves were a bit easier than hours before, though the aches grew worse. I was sweating just as much as previously and acknowledged that was just weakness leaving the body. Along with the weakness leaving the body were roughly 550 calories, according to the P90X Calories Burned Calculator. Being that I did that twice yesterday, that's 1100 calories that had their asses handed to them. But I was spent. I yawned most of the night before heading off to bed a bit earlier than normal.
My intent was to do something this morning before heading into the office as working out once in the morning and again later in the day has historically provided me with the best results. Instead, my body was dead and getting out of bed sucked ass. My legs were shot. My left foot hurt. Even my arms were sore from throwing punches during the Kenpo portion of the Cardio X workout.
I'm sitting in my office right now, and my legs and arms are still slightly sore, but only when I move. Being a warrior has its drawbacks and not listening to your body is one of them. While a sore body isn't any fun, it's nice to know I'm making progress, even if it is early and I have no tangible results to show for it (I still look like shit).
Hayden is off school tomorrow and I'm staying home to watch him, so my four day weekend starts in a couple hours. I'm eager to see what kind of pain I can cause myself when I get home.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Not sure where to start
I can sum up yesterday in two words...it sucked. My back, shoulders and neck hurt until late evening. I popped pills all day long so I could still move. And the anxiety of what the next day brought didn't inspire me much.
This morning started with tired quads, sore hammies, and tight calves. Fortunately, the upper body aches were only barely noticeable. Getting out of bed proved easier than I expected, but the trip down the stairs showed things weren't as peachy as I thought. With each step down, I felt fire in my hamstrings and fatigue in my quads. I realized there was no way I could do another round of Plyometrics without a day or two of rest in between. Instead, I opted for the Cardio X workout.
Cardio X is just what it sounds like. You warm up with some Yoga exercises to stretch, move on to Kenpo (a basic form of Karate with mild kicks and punches) to get the body warmed up, then really start to burn calories with a combination of Plyometrics and other cardio and core exercises.
It's been a while since I'd done this disc and I forgot some of the exercises, and one other thing. At the start of the disc it tells you to have a heart rate monitor, water and towel, yoga mat, etc. Seeing 'water and towel' I expected there to be short water breaks in between some of the exercises. Not so much.
Starting off with the yoga showed just how tired my quads were. My body shook during runners pose and the 2-3 warrior poses. I continually lost my balance, but had both a cat and a dog right at my feet to catch any falls. The yoga in P90X is different than any of the yoga I've seen on TV. The poses I've seen on TV usually require you to hold the position for 10-15 seconds. In Yoga X, you're looking at holding poses for 45-90 seconds. It's brutal, and that's just the stretching part of the Cardio X routine.
By the time the yoga portion was done, I was covered in sweat and dying for that first break. Don't hold your breath because it's not there.
The Kenpo is kind of cheesy, but does warm your body and during this series of exercises, the sweat was flowing freely. Like I said, kind of cheesy, but sort of neat at the same time.
I could have done without the Plyometrics moves today, but they were fairly low impact, so I went with it. Actually, after yesterday, it was a blessing to only perform a handful of these moves. I breezed through them, sweating profusely the whole way til we got to the more cardio-based moves, at which point I really expected a water break. Still didn't happen.
So, I paused the damned disc and made my own water break. The Citrus Cooler Gatorade never tasted so good. I toweled off and headed into the home stretch of exercises aimed at seeing if I could induce a heart attack with some cardio/core exercises.
There are two in particular that are kind of fun, but simply shred your body, especially if you're in shitty shape like me. The first is called Steam Engines. If I remember right, you do this for something like a minute and twenty seconds. It starts off fun, then it just hurts.
Watch below in this video:
The brother in this video is holding his head a little low, the P90X guy would want it a little higher, but try this for 80 or 90 seconds and see what it feels like.
Another exercise that starts off wacky and cute is called Wacky Jacks. They take a while to get a feel for and you usually do them wrong the first couple times you do the disc, but you eventually get it...and holy crap does it burn. Watch this chick below:
It was somewhere during the Wacky Jacks where my lungs caught fire and I had not only sweat, but tears rolling down my face. And after this crazy series of moves, did we get a water break??? Hell no, it was time for a 5-minute cool down to end the program.
When I stretched my legs, I heard things pop in three different places. Fortunately, I didn't feel anything pop because I was number by then. Not sure what it was, but I can't imagine it's good. I limped into the kitchen for some more Gatorade, then crawled up the stairs to the shower. In the shower I couldn't distinguish the water from the sweat from the tears.
Now a couple hours later I'm at work and I can't feel anything below my waist. Well, I can feel one thing, but nothing below that. Everything is tight and sore, but nothing hurts...unless I move.
I didn't get on the scale today because I expected it to be higher than yesterday. Anytime you start some sort of cardio program, your body overreacts into thinking you're going to die so it stores up excess water so you don't dehydrate and you end up weighing more than the day you started, so I'll wait til the end of the weekend and see what I weigh.
There's so much sore in my lower body right now, that it won't all fit and it's radiating up into my butt muscles. Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.
This morning started with tired quads, sore hammies, and tight calves. Fortunately, the upper body aches were only barely noticeable. Getting out of bed proved easier than I expected, but the trip down the stairs showed things weren't as peachy as I thought. With each step down, I felt fire in my hamstrings and fatigue in my quads. I realized there was no way I could do another round of Plyometrics without a day or two of rest in between. Instead, I opted for the Cardio X workout.
Cardio X is just what it sounds like. You warm up with some Yoga exercises to stretch, move on to Kenpo (a basic form of Karate with mild kicks and punches) to get the body warmed up, then really start to burn calories with a combination of Plyometrics and other cardio and core exercises.
It's been a while since I'd done this disc and I forgot some of the exercises, and one other thing. At the start of the disc it tells you to have a heart rate monitor, water and towel, yoga mat, etc. Seeing 'water and towel' I expected there to be short water breaks in between some of the exercises. Not so much.
Starting off with the yoga showed just how tired my quads were. My body shook during runners pose and the 2-3 warrior poses. I continually lost my balance, but had both a cat and a dog right at my feet to catch any falls. The yoga in P90X is different than any of the yoga I've seen on TV. The poses I've seen on TV usually require you to hold the position for 10-15 seconds. In Yoga X, you're looking at holding poses for 45-90 seconds. It's brutal, and that's just the stretching part of the Cardio X routine.
By the time the yoga portion was done, I was covered in sweat and dying for that first break. Don't hold your breath because it's not there.
The Kenpo is kind of cheesy, but does warm your body and during this series of exercises, the sweat was flowing freely. Like I said, kind of cheesy, but sort of neat at the same time.
I could have done without the Plyometrics moves today, but they were fairly low impact, so I went with it. Actually, after yesterday, it was a blessing to only perform a handful of these moves. I breezed through them, sweating profusely the whole way til we got to the more cardio-based moves, at which point I really expected a water break. Still didn't happen.
So, I paused the damned disc and made my own water break. The Citrus Cooler Gatorade never tasted so good. I toweled off and headed into the home stretch of exercises aimed at seeing if I could induce a heart attack with some cardio/core exercises.
There are two in particular that are kind of fun, but simply shred your body, especially if you're in shitty shape like me. The first is called Steam Engines. If I remember right, you do this for something like a minute and twenty seconds. It starts off fun, then it just hurts.
Watch below in this video:
The brother in this video is holding his head a little low, the P90X guy would want it a little higher, but try this for 80 or 90 seconds and see what it feels like.
Another exercise that starts off wacky and cute is called Wacky Jacks. They take a while to get a feel for and you usually do them wrong the first couple times you do the disc, but you eventually get it...and holy crap does it burn. Watch this chick below:
It was somewhere during the Wacky Jacks where my lungs caught fire and I had not only sweat, but tears rolling down my face. And after this crazy series of moves, did we get a water break??? Hell no, it was time for a 5-minute cool down to end the program.
When I stretched my legs, I heard things pop in three different places. Fortunately, I didn't feel anything pop because I was number by then. Not sure what it was, but I can't imagine it's good. I limped into the kitchen for some more Gatorade, then crawled up the stairs to the shower. In the shower I couldn't distinguish the water from the sweat from the tears.
Now a couple hours later I'm at work and I can't feel anything below my waist. Well, I can feel one thing, but nothing below that. Everything is tight and sore, but nothing hurts...unless I move.
I didn't get on the scale today because I expected it to be higher than yesterday. Anytime you start some sort of cardio program, your body overreacts into thinking you're going to die so it stores up excess water so you don't dehydrate and you end up weighing more than the day you started, so I'll wait til the end of the weekend and see what I weigh.
There's so much sore in my lower body right now, that it won't all fit and it's radiating up into my butt muscles. Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Operation: Fat Bastard revisited
As I explained on Facebook yesterday, I'm really fat. I've got a nice set of hooters that a 5th grade girl would be proud of and I can barely see my gentlemen's region when I take a whiz. Plus, most of my britches don't fit, except for the ones with an elastic waist band. It's getting to the point that I'm considering asking my wife if she has any of her maternity clothes left over. She had this sweet pair of jeans with the elastic thing in the front.
Yesterday, at my heaviest, I tipped the scales at 194.8. Granted, that was right after breakfast, but still, that's 10-15 pounds (at a minimum) more than I need to be. Sure, the happy pills are supposed to make me gain weight but not like this.
Last night I ate a sensible meal. Instead of treating dinner at home like a buffet (admit it, when you eat at home, it's always "all you can eat" as you eat til you're full), I had a normal sized plate of some crap I had left over and then just a handful of tropical trail mix a couple times before bed. I never was hungry, but I never felt bloated and miserable either.
I don't do diets and I'm not cutting out my weekend of beer tastings. What I can do is cut out things I don't care much about. Going back 6 or 7 years, all I drink is water, beer, or A&W Root Beer. The root beer has 170 calories...that's pound and a half a month right there. So, no dieting, which just leaves exercise as a way to shed lbs.
Riding my bike is very enjoyable for me, but it doesn't develop much muscle. Jogging on the dreadmill is a last resort because it's so boring and running in the neighborhood bores me as well. There's a disc in the P90X series called Plyometrics that I wanted to try again. Plyometrics is simply jump training. It doesn't sound like much and at face value, it's really not.
The chick in this video is doing every exercise in the program in a condensed 90 seconds. You stretch for 10 minutes or so in the beginning and then again for about 5 minutes at the end. The disc is an hour or so long, so you're doing this for 45 minutes. Again, cute little jumps for 45 minutes easy...then you try it.
It's been two years since I've done this. OMG!!!
I worked up a little sweat simply finding the right pair of shoes (you really need a good shoe for this or you'll be crying in no time). By the end of the 10 minute warm up/stretching bit, I was drenched in sweat and ready to call it a day. Then I looked in the mirror on the wall and saw what appeared to be a really ugly lady about 6 months into her pregnancy. I kept going.
You do the first, second and third exercise for 30 seconds each. You do the fourth exercise for 60 seconds. Then you repeat the entire sequence. A 25 second break follows. Then you do the fifth, sixth and seventh exercises for 30 seconds followed by the eighth exercise for 60 seconds and then you repeat the fifth through the eighth exercises again. You continue through the five or six sets of exercises.
Normally I wear a heart rate monitor that beeps when I start to go into cardiac arrest. Because I haven't done Plyometrics in so long, my battery was dead, which I should have taken as a sign. But, I'm a warrior, so I went for it without a warning device for when my heart was about to explode.
After the first couple exercises, I was even more drenched than after the warm up period. With each jump, sweat went flying. It wasn't pretty. I almost fell twice during the program, but fortunately, the fireplace caught me. The dog was laying on the couch trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
It was something else and much harder than I remembered it, though I was carrying about a dozen extra pounds. I started the program this morning at 193.2 pounds and ended it at 191.2. It was a struggle to get upstairs and into the shower because my legs were shot.
I took off my shoes and threw them into the closet. I took off my left sock and threw it onto the floor while I started to take off the right sock. In the process of removing the right sock, I noticed the left sock get up and run away. After the right sock was off, I had to chase both those little sock bastards around the room with legs that were all but worn out.
Tuesdays are easy mornings for me because I don't go into the office until noon or so. I have plenty of time to do Plyometrics, cry about it afterwards, and limp to work. I'm not sure whether this is something I want to do everyday or if I'm even able or supposed to do something like this everyday.
With all the jumping and lunges and stuff, my back and shoulders are already starting to ache because when 190ish pounds hits the ground on a frame made to carry less than 180 pounds, something has to give and it seems it was my body.
Oh well, I'm still breathing.
Yesterday, at my heaviest, I tipped the scales at 194.8. Granted, that was right after breakfast, but still, that's 10-15 pounds (at a minimum) more than I need to be. Sure, the happy pills are supposed to make me gain weight but not like this.
Last night I ate a sensible meal. Instead of treating dinner at home like a buffet (admit it, when you eat at home, it's always "all you can eat" as you eat til you're full), I had a normal sized plate of some crap I had left over and then just a handful of tropical trail mix a couple times before bed. I never was hungry, but I never felt bloated and miserable either.
I don't do diets and I'm not cutting out my weekend of beer tastings. What I can do is cut out things I don't care much about. Going back 6 or 7 years, all I drink is water, beer, or A&W Root Beer. The root beer has 170 calories...that's pound and a half a month right there. So, no dieting, which just leaves exercise as a way to shed lbs.
Riding my bike is very enjoyable for me, but it doesn't develop much muscle. Jogging on the dreadmill is a last resort because it's so boring and running in the neighborhood bores me as well. There's a disc in the P90X series called Plyometrics that I wanted to try again. Plyometrics is simply jump training. It doesn't sound like much and at face value, it's really not.
The chick in this video is doing every exercise in the program in a condensed 90 seconds. You stretch for 10 minutes or so in the beginning and then again for about 5 minutes at the end. The disc is an hour or so long, so you're doing this for 45 minutes. Again, cute little jumps for 45 minutes easy...then you try it.
It's been two years since I've done this. OMG!!!
I worked up a little sweat simply finding the right pair of shoes (you really need a good shoe for this or you'll be crying in no time). By the end of the 10 minute warm up/stretching bit, I was drenched in sweat and ready to call it a day. Then I looked in the mirror on the wall and saw what appeared to be a really ugly lady about 6 months into her pregnancy. I kept going.
You do the first, second and third exercise for 30 seconds each. You do the fourth exercise for 60 seconds. Then you repeat the entire sequence. A 25 second break follows. Then you do the fifth, sixth and seventh exercises for 30 seconds followed by the eighth exercise for 60 seconds and then you repeat the fifth through the eighth exercises again. You continue through the five or six sets of exercises.
Normally I wear a heart rate monitor that beeps when I start to go into cardiac arrest. Because I haven't done Plyometrics in so long, my battery was dead, which I should have taken as a sign. But, I'm a warrior, so I went for it without a warning device for when my heart was about to explode.
After the first couple exercises, I was even more drenched than after the warm up period. With each jump, sweat went flying. It wasn't pretty. I almost fell twice during the program, but fortunately, the fireplace caught me. The dog was laying on the couch trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
It was something else and much harder than I remembered it, though I was carrying about a dozen extra pounds. I started the program this morning at 193.2 pounds and ended it at 191.2. It was a struggle to get upstairs and into the shower because my legs were shot.
I took off my shoes and threw them into the closet. I took off my left sock and threw it onto the floor while I started to take off the right sock. In the process of removing the right sock, I noticed the left sock get up and run away. After the right sock was off, I had to chase both those little sock bastards around the room with legs that were all but worn out.
Tuesdays are easy mornings for me because I don't go into the office until noon or so. I have plenty of time to do Plyometrics, cry about it afterwards, and limp to work. I'm not sure whether this is something I want to do everyday or if I'm even able or supposed to do something like this everyday.
With all the jumping and lunges and stuff, my back and shoulders are already starting to ache because when 190ish pounds hits the ground on a frame made to carry less than 180 pounds, something has to give and it seems it was my body.
Oh well, I'm still breathing.
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