Jon Thysell

So today marks the official ninetieth day of of my P90X journey, so I’m done right? Well, not quite…

I’ll say first and foremost that I expect that if you follow the system completely and don’t waver, you’ll probably get better results than I did. Not that I’m complaining; I may have cut some corners here and there, but I’m still pretty happy with how I turned out. It’s no surprise to me that I didn’t end up looking like Tony Horton at the end of 90 days.

So what didn’t I do, and why? First off, I would say a major factor was that I started this trek while I was still looking for work, and took advantage of the fact that if I woke up and didn’t feel like working out right away, I could almost always find the motivation in the middle of the day. Midway I started my new job at Xbox, which meant, as I mentioned on Day 60, there were some weeks where I missed a workout or two. Sometimes it was because I was too exhausted from work, but a lot of the time it was because I couldn’t dedicate that 1-1.5 hours in the morning before work to exercising.

I would get distracted, usually doing the things I was too tired to do the night before, and then I’d look at the clock, calculate that I didn’t have the time, and resolve myself that I would do it when I got home. Then after work, usually I’d be too busy or tired to do follow up. It’s a vicious cycle.

The other thing I didn’t follow at all (didn’t even read the material) was the diet / nutrition guide. That wasn’t such big deal when I was unemployed, because I rarely keep any junk food around the house, and I was good at drinking protein shakes all the time. But now that the big chunk of my day is spent at work, I find myself visiting the vending machine for a chip fix.

Overall, I skipped the workouts that were less in line with my goals, but due to my OCD at having empty chart entries, I did every workout that had spots for recording weights/reps. To that end, I can see (counting today) precisely 14 workouts that I missed, almost all of them in Phase III.

So what’s next? At this point I think the hour plus workouts a day are too demanding on my schedule, as my overall priorities are shifting a lot toward my other goals, such as my career growth. But I don’t want to drop it all completely, and while I may have missed more of the “cardio” options in those 14 skipped sessions, on many occasions during those three months I felt the desire to just go on a run. I had just done another round of Couch to 5k (which I also highly recommend) before starting P90X, and I missed the sheer simplicity of just running for a half-hour (instead of jumping up and down like a madman).

I’m exploring several potential options at the moment, but right now I have a few possibilities:

1. Go to the gym . (I get a free membership from work to a nice gym, it’s just that I’m not too big on exercising around a bunch of other people)
2. Do P90X again, but this time follow the “lean” option and actually follow the diet plan. (Least likely to happen, but it’s crossed my mind more than once)
3. Do a custom routine of my own, probably using Beachbody’s 10 Minute Trainer series (the copies I have are interesting) along with regular runs.

For the immediate future, I’m considering “making up” those 14 workouts I missed, and then take a week or so break, explore my options, then kick things back into high gear.

/jon

P.S. It may be a bit of a biased judgment, but my girlfriend is appreciative of the end results.

Coming in on the final stretch, only a month left! I’m still trying to bring it every day, but I’ve been experiementing with moving my workouts around, doing some out of order or moving them from the morning to the afternoon.

It’s not been entirely successful, as I have gottena  little out of sync, but I’m focusing on the workouts that I really care about, aka the chest, back, arms and shoulders for that upper body strength. I’m a little more lenient about missing workouts, though I keep track of them so I can make them up later.

/jon

Another phase down! It’s been a long and hard eight weeks, but I’ve finally finished Phase II of the classic P90X exercise plan. Much like the end of Phase I, the last week of Phase II was a “recovery week”, with a focus on stretching and less intense workouts.

That said, I was still a little zonked out from my cold from the previous week, where I even (gasp) missed a couple workouts. I decided to make up those workouts last week, skipping instead the “Core Synergistics” video. I’m just not a fan of it. It feels too grab bag, and at the end of the video, I’m not satisfied.

Well, it’s on to week 9, and in a couple of days I’ll be taking my Day 60 photos, almost two thirds of the way done!

Bring it!

/jon

I’m proud to say that I’ve made it to the half-way point in my P90X experiment! It’s not an official milestone in the program, but I feel it’s enough of an accomplishment to warrant a status update.

So far, I’ve only missed one workout, yesterday’s in fact, because I’ve been battling a wicked cold for the past few days. Yesterday was Plyometrics, and I didn’t feel up to an hour of jumping around, but this morning, even though the cold is peaking, I couldn’t pass up an upper-body workout.

One thing I’ve started doing is moving the Ab Ripper X workouts to the evening, instead of doing them right after the day’s main workout. I find that if I do them back-to-back, I have trouble keeping up with the ab exercises. But saving the Ab Ripper until the evening means I can do maybe 75-90% of the total reps.

So with the exception of the one workout I missed (and will of course make up), I’m chugging along quite nicely.

/jon

It’s been a long four weeks, but I’m still sticking with it. I’ve just finished my “recovery week”, which was mostly a lot of stretching and yoga, with some “core synergistics”, which is P90X for “random exercises we couldn’t put elsewhere”. Easily my least favorite workout.

I started Phase II this morning, taking it easy as I hadn’t done this new video, and was feeling pretty confident… until I remembered the Ab Ripper X. That video still kills me every time.

Tomorrow I’ll take my Day 30 photos and squirrel those away with the others; I’m making a point of not looking at the photos after I’ve taken them so I can take in the whole progression at the end. Not that I’m not seeing progress, but I really want the full impact of the before and after, without the reminders.

On to Phase II! Bring it!

/jon

I survived the first week of P90X!

I like that there’s some variability in the intensity of the workouts. Cause that means either parts of my body are doing pretty well, or that at the very least, I’m not exhausted everyday.

So far the only workout that seemed disappointing was the Kenpo X. During the Plyometrics, I had to keep taking breaks so my heart rate would go down. But during Kenpo X, I found that I actually had to do all the extra cardio in the “rests” because otherwise my heart was barely in the target zone.

Though, that being said, it wasn’t bad for a Saturday workout, cause afterward I didn’t just pass out and lose my weekend.

The Yoga X workout was the big surprise for me, as I’ve done yoga many times before, but with this it’s not the final positions that are tiring, but all of the prep moves you have to do each time that wear you out.

Today I had the first chance to set goals based on my previous week’s work. And I’m proud to say that I increased both weight and reps and was still nowhere near as tired as I was last week.

Although that Ab Ripper X is still murder.

Bring it!

/jon

I started the P90X exercise program this morning, and I must say, I’m a little tuckered out. An hour of pull-ups and push-ups, followed by fifteen minutes of ab exercises. I’ll admit that I wasn’t able to keep up, that I pushed too hard during the first set, so my second set was a little weaker.

I took breaks, but I did every exercise as hard as I could, I did my best, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the program. Hopefully I’ll be better able to “Bring It!” as the program goes on.

Here’s to making that “before photo” a “goodbye photo”.

/jon

Ever since my own weight loss, I’ve come to recognize how important documenting progress is to maintaining the motivation to reach your goals. To that end I’ve been using my Weight Tracker ODS for over three years now, and so far I’ve kept off that 100 pounds and kept my weight under control.

Now, I’ve finally reached a point in my physical fitness goals where I think I’m ready to begin the P90X program next week. Among other things, I’m able to do full pull-ups for the first time in my life, and I’m now able to pass the P90X fit test. And as with my weight maintenance goals, I’ll want to keep a record of my progress with P90X.

Up until now I’ve been using a simple spreadsheet to track my fitness progress. For the P90X, I plan on using the paper tracking system it comes with. However, I’ve noticed that there’s a particularly nice Excel spreadsheet for P90X, which begs the question, should I make one for OpenOffice.org?

I don’t have the time to start making a new sheet before I start next Monday, but as it progresses, I might find myself itching to make another sheet. I guess, is there any interest in me making an ODS spreadsheet for P90X?