After doing my Legs, Back & Abs workout on Saturday, E. and I packed up our bikes, bathing suits, hiking shoes and appetites for home made junk food and headed to The Mountains, Elk County, PA. I didn't do my Sunday exercise, but I did keep active and burn calories (though I'm sure I ate more than enough). We went hiking, tubing, "swimming" and for a couple short but hard bike rides. the bike rides were especially hard since my muscles were so, you know, confused since I had just worked them out a day or two before.
Anyway, it was great and awesome and relaxing, and then I came home and went to a barbecue and on the way home, E. hit a huge pot hole that had a gruesome lip to it that was apparently like hitting a wall. He made it through okay, thrown off his saddle onto his top tube and stem (ouch!), but it through him to the left, right into my line of traffic. I tried to swerve but I hit him and was thrown. I'm not sure of the order, but I hit the back of my head (good thing I was wearing a helmet!) and landed hard on my butt (there's an imprint of a u-lock on my right butt cheek, 'cause I had it in my back pocket), and my bike got thrown at me. I jumped up yelling, grabbed my bike and ran to the side of the road and dropped to my knees. People came out of their houses and the person driving behind me pulled over and asked if I needed a phone or anything else. I was coaxed to stand, and immediately lost my vision and thought I was going to puke and dropped back to my knees. Weirdly, my head didn't really hurt, just felt wrong. Mainly it was my butt and tailbone I was worried about. I didn't go to the hospital, but iced it when I got home (a friend of mine from the barbecue picked us up and took us back to the house. I couldn't really move and everything hurt with the slightest touch.
This morning I feel a lot better, but promised E. I will take it easy and take the bus to work today instead of riding. I proposed swimming at the gym for the next few days instead of doing P90X, and he reminded me that I only feel "not as broken" because I took four ibuprofen at once and I still feel queezy and disoriented and therefore shouldn't really even be going to work.
So I've passed the first 40 days of P90X. I have another 50 to go. Hopefully after less than a week I'll be prepared to continue. I'll keep y'all posted.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011
What a Week!
I finished Power Yoga at 2 a.m. this morning. I tried my damnedest to do all those stupid extra push-ups thrown into the vinyasas, those awkward second push-ups that make it X, but I really didn't have the energy to do as many as I usually push for (which is all of them because I'm an animal and Tony Horton loves me). The past few days have been a bit wacky. First, I woke up at 7:30 a.m. (after going to bed at around a a.m.) because E. was moving a washer-dryer set with his dad from his dad's wife's house into our house and it woke me up and then the recycling truck came through and that pretty much got me moving and readying the house for the new machines. They got here, we took all the doors and banisters off that we could, and it turns out they measured wrong and couldn't get the washer through the basement door jam. After work I got a call from my sister and then had a celebration party for a friend who just finished his Phd ROBOTICS dissertation (yeah, I know, right? How do I know these geniuses?) and by the time I got home I needed to get the house cleaned up for my Godmother's visit, which was yesterday. (what I'm saying is I missed another workout day).
Woke up early to finish cleaning the house before she and her husband arrived, spent the first half of the day with them, then a few hours preparing for a poetry reading I had organized and was performing in, then had the reading and was heading home for yoga. Bumped into a friend who had been texting E and I about grabbing a drink, and since E. hadn't eaten all day, we went to the bar for food and the slowest service ever (we were in a pretty inconvenient section). Got home around 11:30 p.m., got ready for yoga and by the time it was all said and done, it was 2 a.m. and I was exhausted. I didn't even finish Child's Pose or Savasana. Why do I need to rest when I'm practically asleep and am headed to bed?
The reading went great and I sold two books and I don't think my godparents were too mortified by my reading and anyway everyone else seemed to love it. But now I am so tired and can't seem to get on a good rhythm after the past few days. I even missed this morning's yoga class - I was awake for it, because part of this bad cycle is that I'm still stuck in my moderately early morning cycle.
The reason I'm whining about this is because time management is a big problem for a lot of us and having a good schedule is really important to keep us from going crazy. Creative types like yours truly tend to work better with deadlines than schedules, but that works against us because while some of us may be good at multitasking, we can easily overburden ourselves by not properly utilizing the downtime because we're so exhausted from burning it at both ends, thus perpetuating the bad cycle.
When I've started a new job that has an early morning shift (such as a barista gig), a few days before work I'll just stay up all night and then go to bed at the time I need to, or a bit earlier, the following night. That way I wake up at the time I need to for my new job and can start a new sleep cycle. It hurts but it works. Flying across time-zones is similar. You (lets face it, I) just gotta bite the bullet, feed the monkey, hit the hammer. I'm tired, but need to do Legs Back and Abs. Tomorrow morning, E. and I are driving out to The Mountains where his family has a trailer in the woods, and we're gonna go hiking and swimming and oh yeah a 48 mile bike ride that climbs 1,000 feet in 9 miles (woah!). It's going to be a nice rest from the chaos of life, and hopefully it will get me back on track.
To be honest, I didn't even beat myself up over missing Thursday's workout, and felt good about last night's effort even though I didn't give it the same umph I usually do. It's yoga, though. It's working out at home. It's doing our best and forgetting the rest, even if the rest includes what you can do at 2 p.m. after a good night's sleep and a cup of coffee.
Happy Memorial Weekend everyone!
Woke up early to finish cleaning the house before she and her husband arrived, spent the first half of the day with them, then a few hours preparing for a poetry reading I had organized and was performing in, then had the reading and was heading home for yoga. Bumped into a friend who had been texting E and I about grabbing a drink, and since E. hadn't eaten all day, we went to the bar for food and the slowest service ever (we were in a pretty inconvenient section). Got home around 11:30 p.m., got ready for yoga and by the time it was all said and done, it was 2 a.m. and I was exhausted. I didn't even finish Child's Pose or Savasana. Why do I need to rest when I'm practically asleep and am headed to bed?
The reading went great and I sold two books and I don't think my godparents were too mortified by my reading and anyway everyone else seemed to love it. But now I am so tired and can't seem to get on a good rhythm after the past few days. I even missed this morning's yoga class - I was awake for it, because part of this bad cycle is that I'm still stuck in my moderately early morning cycle.
The reason I'm whining about this is because time management is a big problem for a lot of us and having a good schedule is really important to keep us from going crazy. Creative types like yours truly tend to work better with deadlines than schedules, but that works against us because while some of us may be good at multitasking, we can easily overburden ourselves by not properly utilizing the downtime because we're so exhausted from burning it at both ends, thus perpetuating the bad cycle.
When I've started a new job that has an early morning shift (such as a barista gig), a few days before work I'll just stay up all night and then go to bed at the time I need to, or a bit earlier, the following night. That way I wake up at the time I need to for my new job and can start a new sleep cycle. It hurts but it works. Flying across time-zones is similar. You (lets face it, I) just gotta bite the bullet, feed the monkey, hit the hammer. I'm tired, but need to do Legs Back and Abs. Tomorrow morning, E. and I are driving out to The Mountains where his family has a trailer in the woods, and we're gonna go hiking and swimming and oh yeah a 48 mile bike ride that climbs 1,000 feet in 9 miles (woah!). It's going to be a nice rest from the chaos of life, and hopefully it will get me back on track.
To be honest, I didn't even beat myself up over missing Thursday's workout, and felt good about last night's effort even though I didn't give it the same umph I usually do. It's yoga, though. It's working out at home. It's doing our best and forgetting the rest, even if the rest includes what you can do at 2 p.m. after a good night's sleep and a cup of coffee.
Happy Memorial Weekend everyone!
Thursday, May 26, 2011
I did it, I managed a workout before noon. Small victories be damned.
And actually, I'm not sure if I like working out early in the morning (well, at 11:a.m., so technically late in the morning). I was light-headed most of the time, which is bad news for Plyometrics day which involves a lot of jump squats, turning around, bopping this way and that. Also, time management is clearly an issue for me, and while I may wake up at 9:30 which is early for someone who used to go to bed around 5 a.m., I eat breakfast around 10, and therefore can't start a workout until 11, and need to start getting ready for work at noon. So when there are interruptions like the dog hopped the fence on the lead and is now choking, or not choking but is just barking at deer and annoying me and the neighbors, or I need to use the bathroom because the coffee is starting to hit, or anything else, there's no room for the pause button. Sad to say, I think I like working out at 11 p.m. better than 11 a.m.
Most likely it's that my body is more adjusted to working out at night than in the morning, but I'm also on a bad cycle of working out at night and staying up late to cool off, decompress, eat a rice cake or some other small light snack if the workout is intense like Plyometrics and makes me hungry. So I can't wake up early naturally since I'm pretty set on an 8-hour sleep schedule, and even so, like today, my body isn't accustomed to that much work and I get dizzy right off the back.
I think I put in a good effort, though. There were moments, I admit, like the Double Airborne Heisman, where I thought I was putting in a good effort but then Guru Horton says, "you can do it this way too if you're getting tired" and I realize that I probably look more like his alternative version than what I'm aiming to accomplish. The same thing happened with the Circle Run, which coincidentally is in the same segment of the workout as the D.A.H.s.
I did notice progress in the Hot Foot, though, which is typically my most dreaded segment. It's just hopping on one foot for 30 seconds, then switching and hopping on the other foot, and you do that twice. Each time you hop you are making a cross (so 4 hops per cross), which is much more difficult than it sounds, because not only are you using your basic calf muscles, you're also balancing and using your core, plus using weird outer calf muscles and knee muscles to coordinate where the hop is going to land. I found that using the dormant foot to help guide where the hop was doing helped a lot, but even so, it was the first time I made it through the whole segment both times able to make my foot land where I wanted it and not just in some dead spot beneath me. It also went by considerably quicker than the first or second time I did the exercise, which was awesome.
My knee, which is maintaining a persnickety a cycling injury, was bothering me just a little bit but not enough to become a concern. It was less of an issue than my elbow was last night, so I'm not out of commission just yet! I'm actually pretty excited that it's taken this long for my joints to stop bothering me, since my body has been a pain in the ass for a while now, with everything feeling generally broken down.
Oh, right, the mantra. We can easily become our biggest deterrents in reaching our goals, no matter what the goals are. For me, when I have down time, such as in the shower (which is an especially negative space for me anyway, for reasons I won't get into now), my thoughts easily turn to things I've done poorly, people I've mistreated, ways in which I've misstepped. I am overly critical and force myself to remember compulsively the same bad events in my life that I can never relive. It's the human condition. I try to have a mantra every day, something that I can turn to as a constant thought to keep out the negative ones. They are personal, universal, enlightening, grounding. "I am as good as my effort" is one, "Today I am the best version of myself" is another. These are a couple that are cheesy enough to be at the top of my head, and cheesy enough to share. At the very least, Tony Horton offers a couple in P90X, namely, "Bring it!" and "Do your best and forget the rest." Also, every workout begins with a rule, such as "quality over quantity." In my yoga class, we end with Savasana, Corpse Pose, which I've been told is the most important post in the practice. During Savasana, I feel at my most relaxed, most calm, most at peace with myself. After, yogi Jill reads to us a passage from either Rumi or the Bhagavad Gita. In these moments, I don't need a mantra but it's in these moments when the most true mantras come to me, and I sing them for the rest of the day, sometimes the whole weekend is to the tune of a single mantra.
I mention this because emotional and spiritual health are just as important, if not more important, than physical health, and they are all tied together. We need to nurture our higher being so that it will tell us what our inner being needs.
But now, since I have a whole night free without the worry of workout, I'm off to the movies!
Most likely it's that my body is more adjusted to working out at night than in the morning, but I'm also on a bad cycle of working out at night and staying up late to cool off, decompress, eat a rice cake or some other small light snack if the workout is intense like Plyometrics and makes me hungry. So I can't wake up early naturally since I'm pretty set on an 8-hour sleep schedule, and even so, like today, my body isn't accustomed to that much work and I get dizzy right off the back.
I think I put in a good effort, though. There were moments, I admit, like the Double Airborne Heisman, where I thought I was putting in a good effort but then Guru Horton says, "you can do it this way too if you're getting tired" and I realize that I probably look more like his alternative version than what I'm aiming to accomplish. The same thing happened with the Circle Run, which coincidentally is in the same segment of the workout as the D.A.H.s.
I did notice progress in the Hot Foot, though, which is typically my most dreaded segment. It's just hopping on one foot for 30 seconds, then switching and hopping on the other foot, and you do that twice. Each time you hop you are making a cross (so 4 hops per cross), which is much more difficult than it sounds, because not only are you using your basic calf muscles, you're also balancing and using your core, plus using weird outer calf muscles and knee muscles to coordinate where the hop is going to land. I found that using the dormant foot to help guide where the hop was doing helped a lot, but even so, it was the first time I made it through the whole segment both times able to make my foot land where I wanted it and not just in some dead spot beneath me. It also went by considerably quicker than the first or second time I did the exercise, which was awesome.
My knee, which is maintaining a persnickety a cycling injury, was bothering me just a little bit but not enough to become a concern. It was less of an issue than my elbow was last night, so I'm not out of commission just yet! I'm actually pretty excited that it's taken this long for my joints to stop bothering me, since my body has been a pain in the ass for a while now, with everything feeling generally broken down.
Oh, right, the mantra. We can easily become our biggest deterrents in reaching our goals, no matter what the goals are. For me, when I have down time, such as in the shower (which is an especially negative space for me anyway, for reasons I won't get into now), my thoughts easily turn to things I've done poorly, people I've mistreated, ways in which I've misstepped. I am overly critical and force myself to remember compulsively the same bad events in my life that I can never relive. It's the human condition. I try to have a mantra every day, something that I can turn to as a constant thought to keep out the negative ones. They are personal, universal, enlightening, grounding. "I am as good as my effort" is one, "Today I am the best version of myself" is another. These are a couple that are cheesy enough to be at the top of my head, and cheesy enough to share. At the very least, Tony Horton offers a couple in P90X, namely, "Bring it!" and "Do your best and forget the rest." Also, every workout begins with a rule, such as "quality over quantity." In my yoga class, we end with Savasana, Corpse Pose, which I've been told is the most important post in the practice. During Savasana, I feel at my most relaxed, most calm, most at peace with myself. After, yogi Jill reads to us a passage from either Rumi or the Bhagavad Gita. In these moments, I don't need a mantra but it's in these moments when the most true mantras come to me, and I sing them for the rest of the day, sometimes the whole weekend is to the tune of a single mantra.
I mention this because emotional and spiritual health are just as important, if not more important, than physical health, and they are all tied together. We need to nurture our higher being so that it will tell us what our inner being needs.
But now, since I have a whole night free without the worry of workout, I'm off to the movies!
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Day 36: Chest, Shoulders, Triceps, and Ab Ripper X (oh yeah, and Kenpo)
I swear I did Kenpo last night, but I had to go to E.'s mom's to do laundry until 2:30 in the morning immediately after finishing my workout, and her internet could use some P90X itself if you catch my drift. It was fun, I like that workout more each time I do it. As I've gotten used to the movements and routine, I can get more into the boxing element of it, which I like and appreciate. I'm much snappier in my punches, my kicks are higher, and my coordination is getting better as well. My balance is still a work in progress as the moves get faster or more complicated, but that might get better as my core gets stronger, I don't know. I'm happy to be getting more full-bodied about it, though - more controlled hip rotation, deeper and more consistent horse stance.
Today was a lot less fun and a lot harder. The main difficulty I've been having is that my right elbow has been bothering me. There's a very sharp pain when I do certain movements or begin to strain. The last three reps of every exercise are supposed to be difficult, but that's also when my elbow starts hurting (and sometimes it hurts just a few reps in, depending on the workout) so I am torn between getting a good burn and preventing my arm from exploding into confetti. It's also my weak arm, so it might not be wise to workout just my left side while this joint heals, because I'll just become increasingly off-balance, but I also don't want to stop working my upper body all together. It doesn't hurt on all exercises, and it isn't always on things that involve a lot of elbow usage or extension (though that doesn't feel pretty either), for instance variations of the fly lift hurt, and that's coincidentally perhaps my most difficult weight lifting move in the whole P90X series. It's been hurting for about 4 or more days now, but today's been the first day that has excessively used the arms - it's was perhaps 2/3 push-up variations and 1/3 weight lifting variations focusing on the title muscle groups, or at the very least it was half and half. The whole hour series is quite hard if you Do Your Best and Forget The Rest, and makes Ab Ripper X seem like a good cool down, at least at my fitness level right now. Oh well. I'll figure it out.
On a different note, I've gained weight, but can only assume it's all muscle. I get weighed every three months, and this time, full discretion, I weighed in at 156. Last time, I weighed in at 153, and six months ago I was at 148. However I am leaner looking and feeling. E. and I discussed it, and he felt around my midsection and said that my fat feels a lot softer, and there is a definite wall of rock hard abs not too far beneath the surface. This isn't an issue of all-importance, but it's interesting to think about in the sense that my body is like sucking all the nutrients and blood out of my fat to create more muscle, rather than just a seemingly endless vortex of fat and organ and mush-muscle.
Also, it makes me think about shows like The Biggest Loser, which had it's Season Finale tonight and I actually stayed home and watched it before doing tonight's workout, rather than watching it on Hulu in chunks before and after work like I usually do. On The Biggest Loser, people's fitness success is measured solely on weight loss and not on BMI, or inches, or strength and cardio increase, or digestive health. So many things make up a healthy human besides a number on a scale and what it's doing, and in a fitness regimen that isn't just a diet, it's important to remember that, to remember that your goals are not scale related but more rounded, more reasonable.
I've convinced a few friends who may or may not be reading this to start P90X, some of them athletes, some lapsed athletes, and others not very athletic in the past, and want to end this blog post by giving them a good nod and a high five for challenging oneself physically and mentally, for setting a goal and working towards it. I hope this blog works, if not an inspiration for them, as motivation to stick to it, just like it is motivation for me.
Tomorrow, I hope to remember to talk about Daily Mantras. Feel free to remind me.
Today was a lot less fun and a lot harder. The main difficulty I've been having is that my right elbow has been bothering me. There's a very sharp pain when I do certain movements or begin to strain. The last three reps of every exercise are supposed to be difficult, but that's also when my elbow starts hurting (and sometimes it hurts just a few reps in, depending on the workout) so I am torn between getting a good burn and preventing my arm from exploding into confetti. It's also my weak arm, so it might not be wise to workout just my left side while this joint heals, because I'll just become increasingly off-balance, but I also don't want to stop working my upper body all together. It doesn't hurt on all exercises, and it isn't always on things that involve a lot of elbow usage or extension (though that doesn't feel pretty either), for instance variations of the fly lift hurt, and that's coincidentally perhaps my most difficult weight lifting move in the whole P90X series. It's been hurting for about 4 or more days now, but today's been the first day that has excessively used the arms - it's was perhaps 2/3 push-up variations and 1/3 weight lifting variations focusing on the title muscle groups, or at the very least it was half and half. The whole hour series is quite hard if you Do Your Best and Forget The Rest, and makes Ab Ripper X seem like a good cool down, at least at my fitness level right now. Oh well. I'll figure it out.
On a different note, I've gained weight, but can only assume it's all muscle. I get weighed every three months, and this time, full discretion, I weighed in at 156. Last time, I weighed in at 153, and six months ago I was at 148. However I am leaner looking and feeling. E. and I discussed it, and he felt around my midsection and said that my fat feels a lot softer, and there is a definite wall of rock hard abs not too far beneath the surface. This isn't an issue of all-importance, but it's interesting to think about in the sense that my body is like sucking all the nutrients and blood out of my fat to create more muscle, rather than just a seemingly endless vortex of fat and organ and mush-muscle.
Also, it makes me think about shows like The Biggest Loser, which had it's Season Finale tonight and I actually stayed home and watched it before doing tonight's workout, rather than watching it on Hulu in chunks before and after work like I usually do. On The Biggest Loser, people's fitness success is measured solely on weight loss and not on BMI, or inches, or strength and cardio increase, or digestive health. So many things make up a healthy human besides a number on a scale and what it's doing, and in a fitness regimen that isn't just a diet, it's important to remember that, to remember that your goals are not scale related but more rounded, more reasonable.
I've convinced a few friends who may or may not be reading this to start P90X, some of them athletes, some lapsed athletes, and others not very athletic in the past, and want to end this blog post by giving them a good nod and a high five for challenging oneself physically and mentally, for setting a goal and working towards it. I hope this blog works, if not an inspiration for them, as motivation to stick to it, just like it is motivation for me.
Tomorrow, I hope to remember to talk about Daily Mantras. Feel free to remind me.
Monday, May 23, 2011
breakthrough!
Tony is proud. I am happy to say that tonight I had two breakthroughs during Legs & Back.
Breakthrough No. 1.: Sneaky Lunges. For the past month, I've been doing this exercise thinking, "Man, this is kind of stupid, I don't feel a thing." Yeah, because I was doing it wrong. They're called sneaky lunges because you are supposed to be on your toes the whole time, not just at the beginning. I somehow have missed that for the past month. I also finally really "got" what Tony Horton's been getting at when he says "put your lower ribs on your thigh, but don't rest your whole ribcage on your thing." It's not about not bending down, it's about lowering your hips and keeping your chest up while still in the lung and leaning forward, while on your toes and moving your arms into superman pose. Pretty awesome when it's all put together and suddenly feels more comfortable and more difficult.
Breakthrough No. 2.: I've been using my feet in the doorframe to help with my pull-ups, because I can't really do them (the wide grip pull-ups I am still doing with the bands because they are really hard), but I have also had the understanding that I'm not getting the burn the way I should be, and I'm not getting the burn in all the places I could be. There's always someone (in this case, Dreya, who by the way has a birthday the day after mine and I just found out was born in 1961 - what a babe for 50!) always using a chair for support and I just couldn't figure out how to get the chair utilized without essentially just standing on it and having zero resistance. But today after Ab Ripper X and our great barbecue, but before I started my main workout, E. held my feet with my knees bent and had me do pull-ups. The feeling was much different than what I'd so far achieved with either jumping and slowly lowering myself, or with my feet/foot in the door frame. When I started my exercise, I re-examined the chair and considered how weight is distributed and swung about. When E. had held my feet the first time he was standing too far back and it was near impossible. So I started with the chair a bit in front of me (in back would be too dangerous and also too difficult to get into a comfortable position) and pushed it out further and further, based on how the chair was sliding across the linoleum and the difficulty vs. doability ratio. I found the sweet spot and it made a world of difference. I think I will much more quickly be able to do multiple proper pull-ups and chin-ups now!
Sunday, May 22, 2011
I skipped a day (and I liked it)
I didn't like it, in all honesty, but it had the same sort of catchiness that that Katy Perry song, "I Kissed a Girl" has, so I went for it. Actually, I felt, and feel, pretty bad about myself for skipping a day and am not quite sure what I should do. I missed "Legs & Back and Ab Ripper X" which is a pretty important day. Today is supposed to be Kenpo. I think that I will do yesterday's exercise today and Kenpo tomorrow instead of the Rest Day
In my defense, I was at Steevo and Amy's wedding! It's fascinating to see two people who had long ago been destined for one another and have been together and happy for so many years, throw a huge party to celebrate that love, and during the party seem to fall even more in love with one another. I hope that our wedding is as impassioned and that people have as much fun at our wedding as we had at theirs. I'm not typically a dancer and neither is E., but we certainly did dance at their wedding, for at least half the dancing portion. So at least we burned some calories (and, I should add, looked pretty awesome doing so). There were lots of cakes that all looked delicious and I only tasted one or two of them, and in good Pittsburgh fashion there was a cookie table with seriously fabulous sweets of all sorts.
Tonight we are barbecuing, so I need to get my butt in gear if I want to get my butt in gear before friends come over.
Sorry to let everyone down about skipping yesterday. It was the first day I haven't worked out (besides a designated rest day, when I usually just go for a walk with the dog and nap because I'm lazy) since I started this program 34 days ago. This spring has proven to be very busy! I should have started P90X earlier in the year when things were slower and there were less distractions and obligations (however wonderful and satisfying they may be).
In my defense, I was at Steevo and Amy's wedding! It's fascinating to see two people who had long ago been destined for one another and have been together and happy for so many years, throw a huge party to celebrate that love, and during the party seem to fall even more in love with one another. I hope that our wedding is as impassioned and that people have as much fun at our wedding as we had at theirs. I'm not typically a dancer and neither is E., but we certainly did dance at their wedding, for at least half the dancing portion. So at least we burned some calories (and, I should add, looked pretty awesome doing so). There were lots of cakes that all looked delicious and I only tasted one or two of them, and in good Pittsburgh fashion there was a cookie table with seriously fabulous sweets of all sorts.
Tonight we are barbecuing, so I need to get my butt in gear if I want to get my butt in gear before friends come over.
Sorry to let everyone down about skipping yesterday. It was the first day I haven't worked out (besides a designated rest day, when I usually just go for a walk with the dog and nap because I'm lazy) since I started this program 34 days ago. This spring has proven to be very busy! I should have started P90X earlier in the year when things were slower and there were less distractions and obligations (however wonderful and satisfying they may be).
Friday, May 20, 2011
Power Yoga
The best parts of today were as follows:
1. Cappuccino at Big Dog with my good friend Becca (I also got a coffee, which is the reason I'm updating my blog now instead of taking my intended and needed nap).
2. Finding out that Rodney Yee's Total Body Power Yoga is much easier now than it was a year or so ago when I last did his DVD (this is also sort of a bad thing since I need to BRING IT!).
3. Meeting Steve K for breakfast on the South Side as part of Pittsburgh's Car Free Friday kick-off (which is also international Bike To Work Day, which means maybe you were able to get a free breakfast in your area as well and hopefully no one pretended to run you over because they think it's funny).
10,000. Taking care of Major Tom (my Boston Terrier/Boxer mix, not some old uncle with dementia) all day while he pukes and pukes and pukes and looks really sad and pathetic and dry heaves and pukes up gross stuff and eats it to stop dry heaving and naps and pretends like it never happens and wags his tail and wants to eat as if he's not gonna just puke it up again and now I smell like dog puke and it will probably never wash off and the entire kitchen is covered in puke anyway so I might as well just be buried here when I die of fecal overload because seriously this puke was so gross I swear he just vomited diarrhea.
The yoga was actually pretty great, though. This is a real good dvd if you are doing a yoga routine and want to switch it up but can't leave the house because you're covered in dog vomit or don't have $15 to spend on stretching. It's well rounded, as the title suggests, and moves fairly quickly, and the repetition of sun salutations and little distraction save for the instructions is helpful to get into a focused mind frame. It's only an hour, but I do have a lot of biking to do today (well, not really, but up and down some hills) to get to a "nice to see you for the day you are in town" party and a going away party, so that will make up the half hour difference between P90X yoga and Rodney Yee yoga.
1. Cappuccino at Big Dog with my good friend Becca (I also got a coffee, which is the reason I'm updating my blog now instead of taking my intended and needed nap).
2. Finding out that Rodney Yee's Total Body Power Yoga is much easier now than it was a year or so ago when I last did his DVD (this is also sort of a bad thing since I need to BRING IT!).
3. Meeting Steve K for breakfast on the South Side as part of Pittsburgh's Car Free Friday kick-off (which is also international Bike To Work Day, which means maybe you were able to get a free breakfast in your area as well and hopefully no one pretended to run you over because they think it's funny).
10,000. Taking care of Major Tom (my Boston Terrier/Boxer mix, not some old uncle with dementia) all day while he pukes and pukes and pukes and looks really sad and pathetic and dry heaves and pukes up gross stuff and eats it to stop dry heaving and naps and pretends like it never happens and wags his tail and wants to eat as if he's not gonna just puke it up again and now I smell like dog puke and it will probably never wash off and the entire kitchen is covered in puke anyway so I might as well just be buried here when I die of fecal overload because seriously this puke was so gross I swear he just vomited diarrhea.
The yoga was actually pretty great, though. This is a real good dvd if you are doing a yoga routine and want to switch it up but can't leave the house because you're covered in dog vomit or don't have $15 to spend on stretching. It's well rounded, as the title suggests, and moves fairly quickly, and the repetition of sun salutations and little distraction save for the instructions is helpful to get into a focused mind frame. It's only an hour, but I do have a lot of biking to do today (well, not really, but up and down some hills) to get to a "nice to see you for the day you are in town" party and a going away party, so that will make up the half hour difference between P90X yoga and Rodney Yee yoga.
Time Stamps
The time stamps for all my posts have been wacky and I'm not sure how to change them. It wouldn't matter, except that the name of this blog is Lifting Weights at Midnight, and if something gets published in the mid-afternoon, it doesn't make sense. Rest assured, however, that the past few posts, which are the only ones I can remember, unfortunately, were all published somewhere between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. Which still speaks more, in the big scheme of things, for my lack of time management and probably respect for this program (sorry Tony, you never mentioned schedule in your pre-workout video) than for the shape of Blogspot(tm). Oh well.
Oh yeah, and I just started feeling it, in my back and biceps. Go figure.
Oh yeah, and I just started feeling it, in my back and biceps. Go figure.
Back and Biceps and Abs, oh my!
Today was, as you can probably guess, Back & Biceps and Ab Ripper X. It was my first time doing this DVD and it was a fun workout, though it's always a little hard to follow along exactly during the first time doing a video. Also, I had the tv on so that might have helped in the having to rewind to watch the exercise first and then do it. The only place I still feel it is my forearms, because we ended Backs & Biceps with doing these Hammer lifts or whatever, but since I was using the band (which I will get into in a moment), I did them with a reverse grip instead of the easier hammer grip. I guess now that I just this second stopped slouching over my computer and rolled my shoulders back, I can feel it in my back and shoulders, but if anything that's a negative for these workouts.
The thing about today's workout, and that I've been noticing a lot with these workouts especially the weight-lifting ones, was that things got very difficult during their duration, I would do my reps and really feel the last three, as Tony says, or else would do a few more or make adjustments with my weights. Sometimes I had a hard time lifting the weight I was using (when I wasn't using a band I was using 10 lb weights, which for some exercises isn't a lot but for other moves its a challenge for me), and in these moments the mental workout came in where it's not just about lifting, it's about lifting this thing that feels like it's just not going anywhere at all, all the while keeping the rest of my body still and not swinging my hips to use momentum to lift because that's not really doing much for what I'm trying to accomplish, and my posture good and back flat so I don't injure it, and my breath steady. It's hard! But then I'd put the weight down and shake my arms out and immediately feel like nothing happened.
Then there's the pull-ups, which I still feel insecure about. I have been using my foot/feet in the door frame, because my bar is too low to utilize a chair like the woman in the video does, and I feel (well, know) that that helps me keep up with the people in the video and get more reps in to keep my blood flowing instead of doing one, stepping back, doing another, and sitting for 30 seconds while the badasses in the P90X video keep pumping them out. But I know that when I take my feet out of the doorframe, I essentially just fall slowly to the floor, and I need to work on that. It's not like in life I'm going to have to be doing multiple pull-ups and chin-ups to accomplish something major. Even if I am in a situation where I need to use those muscle groups to get up a wall or whatever, once I'm up there I can use my arms to pull myself up more and really it isn't something that makes too much sense as a life skill but what does. I'm digressing, point is, I want to do these not because I will be embarrassed when the zombie apocalypse comes (or Rapture, which is just 2 days away!) and I can't do the necessary pull-ups needed to get to Level II and Pass GO, it's more about just knowing that I can do it, that I am capable of banging out a couple pull-ups the way I can do push-ups. So I did well today, but that is definitely a goal.
Oh, so, the band thing. Sometimes there are workouts where I need more than 10 or less than 8, or I'm not sure what I need, or I want to putz around with form, or I know that halfway through I'm gonna blow my load and need to ease up, or am not sure how much tension I need and halfway through guess that I'll need more tension. The band is great for this because it's like a lot of weights all in one. The negative is that it doesn't have quite the same feel as a dumbbell, but that's okay. It also can sometimes take a while to find the proper resistance and stick with it, or find the same resistance on both sides, or the same resistance every time you revisit that muscle group or exercise. There's a lot of finesse with the band, and a lot of options for someone who doesn't have a great home gym set-up. I like it a lot.
Tomorrow is Yoga, and it's also Car Free Friday! I don't work Fridays, so I will be taking extra advantage of the free breakfast (yes, those of you not from/in this great city, you are reading that correctly: a free breakfast for bicycle commuters), and then I was thinking of spending all that saved money at Amazing Yoga, a favorite hot power yoga studio in town, to switch it up a little from my usual yoga routine. I'm still feeling it in my legs from Plyometrics yesterday, so it should do me good, so long as I drink enough water well beforehand.
The thing about today's workout, and that I've been noticing a lot with these workouts especially the weight-lifting ones, was that things got very difficult during their duration, I would do my reps and really feel the last three, as Tony says, or else would do a few more or make adjustments with my weights. Sometimes I had a hard time lifting the weight I was using (when I wasn't using a band I was using 10 lb weights, which for some exercises isn't a lot but for other moves its a challenge for me), and in these moments the mental workout came in where it's not just about lifting, it's about lifting this thing that feels like it's just not going anywhere at all, all the while keeping the rest of my body still and not swinging my hips to use momentum to lift because that's not really doing much for what I'm trying to accomplish, and my posture good and back flat so I don't injure it, and my breath steady. It's hard! But then I'd put the weight down and shake my arms out and immediately feel like nothing happened.
Then there's the pull-ups, which I still feel insecure about. I have been using my foot/feet in the door frame, because my bar is too low to utilize a chair like the woman in the video does, and I feel (well, know) that that helps me keep up with the people in the video and get more reps in to keep my blood flowing instead of doing one, stepping back, doing another, and sitting for 30 seconds while the badasses in the P90X video keep pumping them out. But I know that when I take my feet out of the doorframe, I essentially just fall slowly to the floor, and I need to work on that. It's not like in life I'm going to have to be doing multiple pull-ups and chin-ups to accomplish something major. Even if I am in a situation where I need to use those muscle groups to get up a wall or whatever, once I'm up there I can use my arms to pull myself up more and really it isn't something that makes too much sense as a life skill but what does. I'm digressing, point is, I want to do these not because I will be embarrassed when the zombie apocalypse comes (or Rapture, which is just 2 days away!) and I can't do the necessary pull-ups needed to get to Level II and Pass GO, it's more about just knowing that I can do it, that I am capable of banging out a couple pull-ups the way I can do push-ups. So I did well today, but that is definitely a goal.
Oh, so, the band thing. Sometimes there are workouts where I need more than 10 or less than 8, or I'm not sure what I need, or I want to putz around with form, or I know that halfway through I'm gonna blow my load and need to ease up, or am not sure how much tension I need and halfway through guess that I'll need more tension. The band is great for this because it's like a lot of weights all in one. The negative is that it doesn't have quite the same feel as a dumbbell, but that's okay. It also can sometimes take a while to find the proper resistance and stick with it, or find the same resistance on both sides, or the same resistance every time you revisit that muscle group or exercise. There's a lot of finesse with the band, and a lot of options for someone who doesn't have a great home gym set-up. I like it a lot.
Tomorrow is Yoga, and it's also Car Free Friday! I don't work Fridays, so I will be taking extra advantage of the free breakfast (yes, those of you not from/in this great city, you are reading that correctly: a free breakfast for bicycle commuters), and then I was thinking of spending all that saved money at Amazing Yoga, a favorite hot power yoga studio in town, to switch it up a little from my usual yoga routine. I'm still feeling it in my legs from Plyometrics yesterday, so it should do me good, so long as I drink enough water well beforehand.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Day 30 - officially a third done! (also, Plyometrics)
I did it! I am officially a third of the way through P90X. I don't necessarily feel like I have a Beach Body (tm) yet, but maybe a third of a beach body, so I'm technically on track (this is a joke, at least partly). I do feel more fit, and like everything is working better overall. I feel a lot more physically balanced, where it's always seemed like my legs and cardio capacity were great, but my core and upper body were lacking. Maybe my endurance was good and my cardio was bad, I had a hard time differentiating to be honest, which is a sign in itself, probably. My digestion is better, but on the other hand my stomach is hurting after an hour of Plyometrics - it could be the egg whites I've been eating that expired last week, or that I had a turkey burger an hour before exercising and should have waited longer, or it could be the Endurox I've been drinking as a recovery drink which I've heard can cause sensitive stomachs to feel, you know, sensitive.
It was good to do the exercise today to remind myself that running really isn't a good substitute for Plyometrics (except during the strange Recovery Week). I felt it immediately in my legs, core, lungs. I can usually do jumping and cardio exercises seemingly endlessly, but after not doing Plyometrics for a week, I could still keep up but at the end of some exercises I had a hard time keeping my knees up in the high jumps, for instance, or felt utterly winded after a particular jaunt. As hard as it was, it was really fun and may be my favorite of all the P90X sessions.
There's a dinner party tonight, and I'm 2/3 tempted to stay home and do some non-P90X specific Rodney Yee power yoga for relaxation. Hopefully it would calm my stomach. But alas, I'll probably take a shower and drag my drained but up to The Hill District for the last sweeps of the party to at least pick up E, if not steal a slice of cake. Like Tony Horton says, I burned an awful lot of carbs today so I need to make sure I've eaten enough!
It was good to do the exercise today to remind myself that running really isn't a good substitute for Plyometrics (except during the strange Recovery Week). I felt it immediately in my legs, core, lungs. I can usually do jumping and cardio exercises seemingly endlessly, but after not doing Plyometrics for a week, I could still keep up but at the end of some exercises I had a hard time keeping my knees up in the high jumps, for instance, or felt utterly winded after a particular jaunt. As hard as it was, it was really fun and may be my favorite of all the P90X sessions.
There's a dinner party tonight, and I'm 2/3 tempted to stay home and do some non-P90X specific Rodney Yee power yoga for relaxation. Hopefully it would calm my stomach. But alas, I'll probably take a shower and drag my drained but up to The Hill District for the last sweeps of the party to at least pick up E, if not steal a slice of cake. Like Tony Horton says, I burned an awful lot of carbs today so I need to make sure I've eaten enough!
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Day 29 - Back in the Saddle!
Today is the first day of Phase II, the first day of week 5 - Oh hai, Week Five, nice to meet you! I feel pretty stoked about this milestone, to be honest. Moreso, I am excited to be done with Week 4: Recover Week, because it was so hard to stay only relatively motivated, or motivated to keep it on a slow burn, or generally be able to keep up with the schedule knowing the general gist of the week and that there were other more fun things to be doing (like that bomb-ass 40-mile bike ride and the 4.5 mile run and the 14 laps in the pool and the bitchin' yoga sesh, brah, woo! Mountain Dew!). For some reason, it's easier for me to work out when I know it's a real workout, and part of the schedule and important to do. I don't know why I got it in my head that Recovery Week meant Whatevs Week, but anyway I'm glad it's over.
Today was Chest, Shoulders & Triceps and Ab Ripper X. A few things I noticed:
1. I'm better at push-ups than I was when I started.
2. After a week of not doing much Ab work, Ab Ripper X was pretty damn difficult compared to a week ago.
3. My chest, shoulders & triceps will probably be pretty pissed at me for the next few Tuesdays. They were definitely not prepared.
This morning, I essentially just did push-ups for an hour, interrupted intermittently with some sort of weight lifting with either a dumbbell or band that was to heavy for exercise. At one point, we (yeah, "we" as if I was able to really do this. I did the wimpy version where I and two of the people on the video clapped our hands in between instead, and I did half on my knees because I was afraid of breaking my jaw even more than it already is) were doing these plyometric push-ups, where everytime at the height of the push-up "we" jumped up in plank pose and clapped our hands and then landed and did another push-up. This is my life now.
Tomorrow is Plyometrics, the thing that's been separating my floor boards in my livingroom. I actually really enjoy Plyometrics, lots of jumping around and pretending to play football. Tonight, friends of mine from Asheville are playing a house show in Garfield, which means I'll be eating Spak! Not on the diet, but I don't care.
Today was Chest, Shoulders & Triceps and Ab Ripper X. A few things I noticed:
1. I'm better at push-ups than I was when I started.
2. After a week of not doing much Ab work, Ab Ripper X was pretty damn difficult compared to a week ago.
3. My chest, shoulders & triceps will probably be pretty pissed at me for the next few Tuesdays. They were definitely not prepared.
This morning, I essentially just did push-ups for an hour, interrupted intermittently with some sort of weight lifting with either a dumbbell or band that was to heavy for exercise. At one point, we (yeah, "we" as if I was able to really do this. I did the wimpy version where I and two of the people on the video clapped our hands in between instead, and I did half on my knees because I was afraid of breaking my jaw even more than it already is) were doing these plyometric push-ups, where everytime at the height of the push-up "we" jumped up in plank pose and clapped our hands and then landed and did another push-up. This is my life now.
Tomorrow is Plyometrics, the thing that's been separating my floor boards in my livingroom. I actually really enjoy Plyometrics, lots of jumping around and pretending to play football. Tonight, friends of mine from Asheville are playing a house show in Garfield, which means I'll be eating Spak! Not on the diet, but I don't care.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
mishap
I was supposed to do Core Synergistics yesterday, but this program is all wacky and I got confused and did Yoga instead. Yoga is TODAY! so I will switch it up and do Core Synergistics today even though I hate it. I did get to my 10:30 yoga class yesterday morning though, which was a delight because I love my yoga instructor, Jill, and there's something about being in a yoga studio practicing with other people. Not to get too hippy dippy or nuthin, but the energy channeled through a room of people working towards a higher concentration is always powerful. Whether you're in a library, lifting weights, playing music, or practicing yoga - when there is a group of people who are focused on something collectively, one can really feel it. With a yoga studio, that energy is often directed towards something positive and beyond the self (at the start of a practice, the typical yoga instructor will ask the yogis to dedicate their practice towards something, whether it is someone who is in need of some good energy, or a situation that needs to be resolved, or even oneself since we can also overlook our own needs) and it's a very positive experience overall.
Jill also works evenings at a different yoga studio that also has massage therapy, and she gave me her email to attend this event they are holding which is integrated yoga and massage which sounds incredible and intense. It's $25 but sounds pretty worth it. If anyone reading this lives in Pittsburgh and would like to attend, drop me a line and I'll hook you up with the necessary information.
Anyway, the focus of yesterday's yoga class was hip openers and arm balances, because the marathon is today and a lot of my classmates are running in it. Hips are very important for runners, power walkers, hockey players, roller derby skaters, cyclists, office workers, and just about everyone else who utilizes their legs and hips. My goal in yoga currently (you know, so I can eventually win yoga) is arm balances. I straight up cannot do them. I can almost do Crow Pose, but in a way that would never make it onto Downward Dog Magazine's cover - and really, if we can't get onto the cover of Downward Dog Magazine, are we even really practicing yoga? (this is a joke, also, I don't think that magazine exists, it's a Tony Horton joke). I guess, that said, what my real goal is in yoga is to be less competitive with yoga, less competitive with myself, less eager to push myself to the outer limits of comfort just so after class Jill says, "hey you are really strong!" or at the very least I feel like I've finished an aerobic workout.
Today I may be going on a 40 mile bike ride with E. Who knows what that will do for my Core Synergistics workout. Recovery Week is hard! Where is the balance? Where are the goals? The structure? Everything is all flimflam right now and I hope that in 2 days when I start phase 2 (damn does Day 1 of Phase 2 look hard!) I will be better at organizing and keeping track of my workouts. Though I can't deny it's been pretty nice being able to just relax all week and do what I want.
Jill also works evenings at a different yoga studio that also has massage therapy, and she gave me her email to attend this event they are holding which is integrated yoga and massage which sounds incredible and intense. It's $25 but sounds pretty worth it. If anyone reading this lives in Pittsburgh and would like to attend, drop me a line and I'll hook you up with the necessary information.
Anyway, the focus of yesterday's yoga class was hip openers and arm balances, because the marathon is today and a lot of my classmates are running in it. Hips are very important for runners, power walkers, hockey players, roller derby skaters, cyclists, office workers, and just about everyone else who utilizes their legs and hips. My goal in yoga currently (you know, so I can eventually win yoga) is arm balances. I straight up cannot do them. I can almost do Crow Pose, but in a way that would never make it onto Downward Dog Magazine's cover - and really, if we can't get onto the cover of Downward Dog Magazine, are we even really practicing yoga? (this is a joke, also, I don't think that magazine exists, it's a Tony Horton joke). I guess, that said, what my real goal is in yoga is to be less competitive with yoga, less competitive with myself, less eager to push myself to the outer limits of comfort just so after class Jill says, "hey you are really strong!" or at the very least I feel like I've finished an aerobic workout.
Today I may be going on a 40 mile bike ride with E. Who knows what that will do for my Core Synergistics workout. Recovery Week is hard! Where is the balance? Where are the goals? The structure? Everything is all flimflam right now and I hope that in 2 days when I start phase 2 (damn does Day 1 of Phase 2 look hard!) I will be better at organizing and keeping track of my workouts. Though I can't deny it's been pretty nice being able to just relax all week and do what I want.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Day 24 - Gymboree!
Whew! Blogger has been down until right about now.
It's probably for the better because I cheated yesterday and went to the gym instead of doing my video. The immediate excuse that pops into my head, the worse of 'em, is that seriously the floor boards I installed a year or two ago have been separating since I've started all this bopping around the living room. It's sort of freaking me out. The other excuse is that I was just sick of working out at home and wanted to take advantage of my pre-paid gym membership and get out of the house for a while. Which I think is fair. This is recovery week, after all, and Kenpo is essentially just a cardio workout, so I did cardio. NO APOLOGIES I DON'T CARE! IDOWHATIWANT!!
Anyway, full disclosure since I switched it up a bit. I didn't warm up or cool down properly, but I did drink recovery gloop afterwards so I am not achy. I ran about 4.5 miles at 6.3, slowing down for a minute every mile to drink some water and follow the "break" system that P90X has (I can take a break while working out instead of always assuming I'm in the middle of a marathon and will be trampled if I stop or more importantly, people will notice I'm human!), so it averaged to about a mile per 10 minutes - keeping it in Zone 2. Surprisingly, my arms felt it the most. Since I've been more aware about how my whole body moves and works towards a collective goal, I paid a lot of attention to what my stomach was doing, my posture, my shoulders, how my arms pumped as I moved my legs, my breathing. My legs really feel like I didn't run at all, but it was maybe the first time I felt my core be more muscular just by being in my body - doing certain core exercises I've been noticing are increasingly easy, but just walking around or hanging out I don't think, "man, my core's really strong today." It was pretty cool to feel those muscles at work, to feel like a strong tree, to feel sturdy and alert.
When I was 19 or so, I took this weird yoga class for a few months. It wasn't Hatha Yoga, it was something more obscure, taught by these two Korean women who would never identify their age - my friend Cassidy and I liked to assume they were in their 80s, even though they looked in their 30s or 40s. Anyway, before taking the yoga class, like when you first signed up for the course, they put you in a room alone and you watched this video about how a tiger moves when it runs, how its stomach moves and how it breathes and how it's a perfect machine. The video went on to tell you how fat and pathetic you are and how you really need to take better care of yourself and you're probably completely packed with poop and don't even know it you disgusting human, so sign up for our yoga course and we'll help a girl out. After a few months (sad, I know, that it took me that long, but I was young and considering the things I'm just figuring out NOW about what I did wrong at that age, three months is pretty impressive), I realized that it was a bit too kooky for me and actually didn't make all that much sense and made me feel worse about myself at the end of the day, rather than better, aside from that feeling of superiority one gets upon leaving a yoga studio into a parking lot of a Shur Save and knowing that you and your fellow yogis are, like, so much healthier because you just massaged your spleen for an hour.
A lot of the yoga was essentially hitting parts of our body, to trigger blood flow or whatever. We'd hit our liver over and over with our flat palms and shout, "I love my liver! Thank you my liver!" This was Cassidy and my favorite part because the Korean women couldn't pronounce the V sound. There was also a lot of pinching and such, and laying on the ground essentially wasting time. We also had at-home exercises, where we had to do 100 breaths each in a series of 4 or 5 positions. Not nearly as fun as basically any other yoga.
The video is really what I wanted to focus on in that tangent, but oh well. During my run last night, which was the first run I've gone on since starting P90X, so the first run in about a month, I felt more like that tiger in the video, every part of my body working towards the goal of moving, fast, towards an object I want to kill. In this case, it was an episode of The Office, which is unfortunate but nothing in life is perfect.
After the run, I went for a swim, which also felt so fantastic. The only time I've been swimming in the past few months has been as a cool down after totally blowing myself out, so just a few laps have gotten me spent. Not only am I in better shape now, but I'm learning more about fitness and also learning to not always take it until I break it (so that when I really need to BRING IT, I can), so I swam 14 laps (which, to be fair, is more like 7 because it's a smaller pool) and could have gone longer but still had grocery shopping to do and it was about 10 at night and who can go to the gym without sitting in the sauna afterwards for about a half hour with the recent issue of Poets and Writers.
While I haven't been keeping to the P90X diet lifestyle, I still went shopping with its principles in mind. I think I am actually making a conscious decision NOT to follow the diet. E.'s mother, who can be a bit of an enabler when it comes to food, made the valid point when she was talking us out of dieting last weekend, that we are young and healthy and not really in need of losing weight so why do that to ourselves, and I think she is right. I believe in healthy eating and have a lot of making up to do in regards to putting the nutrients back into my body in a way that they will stay rather than be flushed out, but there's no need to go nuts because that's no way to live unless we are unhealthy and actually in need of a total overhaul for health reasons. I was still pretty proud of our cart though, as we checked out.
It's probably for the better because I cheated yesterday and went to the gym instead of doing my video. The immediate excuse that pops into my head, the worse of 'em, is that seriously the floor boards I installed a year or two ago have been separating since I've started all this bopping around the living room. It's sort of freaking me out. The other excuse is that I was just sick of working out at home and wanted to take advantage of my pre-paid gym membership and get out of the house for a while. Which I think is fair. This is recovery week, after all, and Kenpo is essentially just a cardio workout, so I did cardio. NO APOLOGIES I DON'T CARE! IDOWHATIWANT!!
Anyway, full disclosure since I switched it up a bit. I didn't warm up or cool down properly, but I did drink recovery gloop afterwards so I am not achy. I ran about 4.5 miles at 6.3, slowing down for a minute every mile to drink some water and follow the "break" system that P90X has (I can take a break while working out instead of always assuming I'm in the middle of a marathon and will be trampled if I stop or more importantly, people will notice I'm human!), so it averaged to about a mile per 10 minutes - keeping it in Zone 2. Surprisingly, my arms felt it the most. Since I've been more aware about how my whole body moves and works towards a collective goal, I paid a lot of attention to what my stomach was doing, my posture, my shoulders, how my arms pumped as I moved my legs, my breathing. My legs really feel like I didn't run at all, but it was maybe the first time I felt my core be more muscular just by being in my body - doing certain core exercises I've been noticing are increasingly easy, but just walking around or hanging out I don't think, "man, my core's really strong today." It was pretty cool to feel those muscles at work, to feel like a strong tree, to feel sturdy and alert.
When I was 19 or so, I took this weird yoga class for a few months. It wasn't Hatha Yoga, it was something more obscure, taught by these two Korean women who would never identify their age - my friend Cassidy and I liked to assume they were in their 80s, even though they looked in their 30s or 40s. Anyway, before taking the yoga class, like when you first signed up for the course, they put you in a room alone and you watched this video about how a tiger moves when it runs, how its stomach moves and how it breathes and how it's a perfect machine. The video went on to tell you how fat and pathetic you are and how you really need to take better care of yourself and you're probably completely packed with poop and don't even know it you disgusting human, so sign up for our yoga course and we'll help a girl out. After a few months (sad, I know, that it took me that long, but I was young and considering the things I'm just figuring out NOW about what I did wrong at that age, three months is pretty impressive), I realized that it was a bit too kooky for me and actually didn't make all that much sense and made me feel worse about myself at the end of the day, rather than better, aside from that feeling of superiority one gets upon leaving a yoga studio into a parking lot of a Shur Save and knowing that you and your fellow yogis are, like, so much healthier because you just massaged your spleen for an hour.
A lot of the yoga was essentially hitting parts of our body, to trigger blood flow or whatever. We'd hit our liver over and over with our flat palms and shout, "I love my liver! Thank you my liver!" This was Cassidy and my favorite part because the Korean women couldn't pronounce the V sound. There was also a lot of pinching and such, and laying on the ground essentially wasting time. We also had at-home exercises, where we had to do 100 breaths each in a series of 4 or 5 positions. Not nearly as fun as basically any other yoga.
The video is really what I wanted to focus on in that tangent, but oh well. During my run last night, which was the first run I've gone on since starting P90X, so the first run in about a month, I felt more like that tiger in the video, every part of my body working towards the goal of moving, fast, towards an object I want to kill. In this case, it was an episode of The Office, which is unfortunate but nothing in life is perfect.
After the run, I went for a swim, which also felt so fantastic. The only time I've been swimming in the past few months has been as a cool down after totally blowing myself out, so just a few laps have gotten me spent. Not only am I in better shape now, but I'm learning more about fitness and also learning to not always take it until I break it (so that when I really need to BRING IT, I can), so I swam 14 laps (which, to be fair, is more like 7 because it's a smaller pool) and could have gone longer but still had grocery shopping to do and it was about 10 at night and who can go to the gym without sitting in the sauna afterwards for about a half hour with the recent issue of Poets and Writers.
While I haven't been keeping to the P90X diet lifestyle, I still went shopping with its principles in mind. I think I am actually making a conscious decision NOT to follow the diet. E.'s mother, who can be a bit of an enabler when it comes to food, made the valid point when she was talking us out of dieting last weekend, that we are young and healthy and not really in need of losing weight so why do that to ourselves, and I think she is right. I believe in healthy eating and have a lot of making up to do in regards to putting the nutrients back into my body in a way that they will stay rather than be flushed out, but there's no need to go nuts because that's no way to live unless we are unhealthy and actually in need of a total overhaul for health reasons. I was still pretty proud of our cart though, as we checked out.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Day 23 - Core Synergistics (hoo-ah!)
Truth be told, I don't really like Core Synergistics as much as Tony tells me I should. I feel it just about everywhere but my stomach, and holy hell are some of those exercises hard - on the shoulders, arms, legs. I know it's because I don't "engage" my core enough, as much as I try to, but I can't imagine possibly flexing my stomach enough to be able to do a solid minute of plank-to-chaturanga run. It's a nice little semi-cardio workout though for recovery week, and who knows, maybe I'll do an extra Ab Ripper X later tonight (doubt it!). There are definitely some exercises that hurt a lot more than you think they will, and some exercises that I expect to be a bit easier with the band because usually the band is easier with weights, but because of your body positioning, the band gives you a much more dynamic flexing of multiple muscles. What a cool feeling, even if I'm not really good at it yet. But I'm only 3 and a half weeks in, and by the end I'm confident I'll be good enough at Core Synergetics to feel it in all the right ways, and to have a lot of fun doing it. To Tony Horton's credit, it is an incredibly fast hour, compared for instance with the hour of chest and back.
Also, that diet I was talking about a few days ago - whoops! I ate a donut (....and a half...) at work today, but it was just so nice out and I was out running errands at the Office of Court Records and I didn't need any more coffee and man I just really love a donut.
I didn't eat enough food, I don't think, and that was the problem. This morning I had a delicious protein shake, and for lunch I had a small yogurt and my left-overs from my burrito bowl from last night, which turns out was only like a quarter of the meal. I overdid it yesterday and it threw today off balance. Lesson learned I guess. Oh, here comes E. with a frozen yogurt. I need to eat more vegetables.
Also, that diet I was talking about a few days ago - whoops! I ate a donut (....and a half...) at work today, but it was just so nice out and I was out running errands at the Office of Court Records and I didn't need any more coffee and man I just really love a donut.
I didn't eat enough food, I don't think, and that was the problem. This morning I had a delicious protein shake, and for lunch I had a small yogurt and my left-overs from my burrito bowl from last night, which turns out was only like a quarter of the meal. I overdid it yesterday and it threw today off balance. Lesson learned I guess. Oh, here comes E. with a frozen yogurt. I need to eat more vegetables.
BUY MY BOOK
As a quick plug:
I need to sell another, I dunno, 15, 20 copies in order for it to go to print. I really don't want to have to buy them all myself, I mean how depressing, right? So help a sister out and buy my book!
It's been called a "surrealistic ode to heroism and loneliness." Ms. Aebi herself was a bit freaked out by the book, very understandably, and a good friend of hers said I had really captured the experience well, the same way she had relayed it back to him upon her return from sea. You can visit my website's section about the book here: The Glossary of Tania Aebi and read the blurbs and be directed to the press's website.
Okay, I'm done pressuring you dear readers, all four of you (who've probably already purchased the damn thing, ho hum). Back to the blog at hand. Coming up: Core Synergistics.
The Glossary
of Tania Aebi
Carolyne Whelan
$14, paper
Preorder Purchase
ships August 5, 2011
RESERVE YOUR COPY TODAY
I need to sell another, I dunno, 15, 20 copies in order for it to go to print. I really don't want to have to buy them all myself, I mean how depressing, right? So help a sister out and buy my book!
It's been called a "surrealistic ode to heroism and loneliness." Ms. Aebi herself was a bit freaked out by the book, very understandably, and a good friend of hers said I had really captured the experience well, the same way she had relayed it back to him upon her return from sea. You can visit my website's section about the book here: The Glossary of Tania Aebi and read the blurbs and be directed to the press's website.
Okay, I'm done pressuring you dear readers, all four of you (who've probably already purchased the damn thing, ho hum). Back to the blog at hand. Coming up: Core Synergistics.
Day...what day is it? Power Yoga!
I'm tired and have been nursing a headache for about, oh, 16 hours or so, but I'm reclining in bed drinking a protein smoothie while the family snoozes around me. Okay, to be fair, I guzzled that protein smoothie pretty quickly and it's already gone and I'm now sipping some less exhilarating water, but as I was preparing myself here on the internet I was excited about this great life I live and didn't think it should be short-handed by E's smoothie's irresistible taste that goes down so easy. The headache is becoming a bit taxing and hopefully tomorrow will bring with it a less sore cranium, but I will say that during the 1.5 hours of power yoga, I was focused and headache-free. If that tells you anything about the importance of yoga.
I should have done today's exercise in the morning. An hour and a half is an awkward chunk of time, though. I don't need to start it early because it's only an hour and a half and I work only 20 minutes away so I should just enjoy the morning and all it's coffee and egg white delight. Play with the dog. I even read the newspaper this morning - I mean a real paper one, weird! Granted it was from four days ago, but how much could have changed? So E. left for his 50 mile bike ride and I looked at the clock and thought, "well if I start now, I won't have time to shower and make lunch before leaving for work, and might still be late." It's the same excuse I give myself just about every morning. So I took a shower and packed a lame lunch and headed to work and had great plans for the evening to work out by 9 p.m. after The Biggest Loser (I won't say it's my guilty pleasure, I have many guilty pleasures that come before this one, I just consider this one of the less soul-crushing reality shows to come from the screen writer's strike years ago, and honestly it's Great Television in the most classic sense).
Lo and behold, however, at 5:30 I was sitting at Sharp Edge Happy Hour drinking a $2.50 Leffe Blonde and eating some chunks of meat - you know, 'cause I need protein....for the...diet? - with E. and our good friend who'd just moved here from Chicago. At 10 or so we were sitting on The Wall with a friend who'd just finished his first year of law school and I was telling him how great and fun and wonderful P90X was, all the while passing off my own daily duty. What would Tony Horton say about this? WWTHD?
Of all the exercises to finish after midnight, though, power yoga is probably the best. I usually have a hard time winding down at the end of the day and play a round of Sudoku to help settle my mind. It helps with bad dreams too, for whatever reason. Late-night power yoga uses up all that stored energy without shooting out a lot of adrenaline (you can tell I'm a scientist here, right?). I would ultimately love to get up early and do power yoga daily in the morning to bring the energy and calmness I feel I sometimes have a struggle balancing. I'm certain that if I did power yoga in the mornings, my coffee intake would decrease considerably. Baby steps onto the elevator, though. At least I'm finishing daily, regardless of what ridiculous time.
I should have done today's exercise in the morning. An hour and a half is an awkward chunk of time, though. I don't need to start it early because it's only an hour and a half and I work only 20 minutes away so I should just enjoy the morning and all it's coffee and egg white delight. Play with the dog. I even read the newspaper this morning - I mean a real paper one, weird! Granted it was from four days ago, but how much could have changed? So E. left for his 50 mile bike ride and I looked at the clock and thought, "well if I start now, I won't have time to shower and make lunch before leaving for work, and might still be late." It's the same excuse I give myself just about every morning. So I took a shower and packed a lame lunch and headed to work and had great plans for the evening to work out by 9 p.m. after The Biggest Loser (I won't say it's my guilty pleasure, I have many guilty pleasures that come before this one, I just consider this one of the less soul-crushing reality shows to come from the screen writer's strike years ago, and honestly it's Great Television in the most classic sense).
Lo and behold, however, at 5:30 I was sitting at Sharp Edge Happy Hour drinking a $2.50 Leffe Blonde and eating some chunks of meat - you know, 'cause I need protein....for the...diet? - with E. and our good friend who'd just moved here from Chicago. At 10 or so we were sitting on The Wall with a friend who'd just finished his first year of law school and I was telling him how great and fun and wonderful P90X was, all the while passing off my own daily duty. What would Tony Horton say about this? WWTHD?
Of all the exercises to finish after midnight, though, power yoga is probably the best. I usually have a hard time winding down at the end of the day and play a round of Sudoku to help settle my mind. It helps with bad dreams too, for whatever reason. Late-night power yoga uses up all that stored energy without shooting out a lot of adrenaline (you can tell I'm a scientist here, right?). I would ultimately love to get up early and do power yoga daily in the morning to bring the energy and calmness I feel I sometimes have a struggle balancing. I'm certain that if I did power yoga in the mornings, my coffee intake would decrease considerably. Baby steps onto the elevator, though. At least I'm finishing daily, regardless of what ridiculous time.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Day 21 - Rest Day!
By yesterday, I was sick of eating, which is saying a lot for someone who used to get teased by neighborhood adults for liking food so much (which, for the record, I always felt was a bit harsh and exaggerated). Restaurant food is good because it's a treat, but after a few days of it you can start to taste the restaurant funk, and each restaurant develops a spice that permeates all its food whether or not the dish warrants it. E and I had briefly started the P90X diet, but at his mom's suggestion we put it on temporary hiatus while my folks were in town because there would be too much stress - our "official" engagement, my parents checking out what we had done with the wedding thus far, my birthday, mother's day. I was actually looking forward to the diet, to eating well and working towards a goal (I love goals even if I can't reach them), to actually thinking about food and planning meals, to working my body like a necessary machine. The P90X diet is almost like a one of those slide puzzles where there is one empty square spot, and the squares can be slid around spot-by-spot to ultimately create a picture - in this case the picture is a sweet bod that can bench press its weight and climb trees that don't have branches. I guess what I was really referring to was that there are a certain amount of different foods you can eat each day, and the puzzle is to figure out how to eat all of them without eating too much of any of them, and also eat the right amount of calories (which I'm still figuring out how much is enough for me, I tend to get full easily and under-eat, or eat incorrectly, thus the coolness of the diet plan).
So last night, after the punk party, I came home and did Kenpo X and went out with E. for a cup of turkey chili around 11:30 p.m. Today I am sore and happy that I've reached Rest Day #3 and am about to start week #4, Recovery Week. I'm excited to belatedly begin the P90X eating schedule, though truthfully I wonder how well I will stay on track. Like veganism, I feel this diet is something that is a goal to reach, and there may be slip-ups or misunderstandings or temptations. Unlike veganism, however, if I slip up there won't be a hoard of punks and hippies giving me the poo-eye if I'm caught snacking on some gummy-worms.
So last night, after the punk party, I came home and did Kenpo X and went out with E. for a cup of turkey chili around 11:30 p.m. Today I am sore and happy that I've reached Rest Day #3 and am about to start week #4, Recovery Week. I'm excited to belatedly begin the P90X eating schedule, though truthfully I wonder how well I will stay on track. Like veganism, I feel this diet is something that is a goal to reach, and there may be slip-ups or misunderstandings or temptations. Unlike veganism, however, if I slip up there won't be a hoard of punks and hippies giving me the poo-eye if I'm caught snacking on some gummy-worms.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Day 20
The thing that amazes me about my body is that I have no real perception of it, at least none that has any grounding in reality. Even so far as how my clothes are fitting is all based on relativity – jeans can shrink in the drawer if not worn for a while, right? So yesterday after Legs & Back and Ab Ripper X, I put on my new birthday dress and went out like a champion to eat a veggie burger with extra steak fries (Red Robbin doesn't officially offer a free burger on birthdays anymore, but I explained my sob story of how we all used to get the emails about our free birthday burgers and no none of us have gotten them this year and it's my birthday so is there anyway I could still and an overpriced ice cream and a glass of red wine with some awesome friends who love me despite my inability to properly time manage aka answer the phone or generally be available to hang outs like I used to.
This morning, post-birthday, is a different story. my blood feels altogether thinner than usual, my stomach an unhappy bloat of an organ is sitting atop my pelvis in protest to the mixed messages I've been sending it all week with these familial restaurant outings (and today's Mother's Day!), and my legs and back, rather than feeling as strong and tree-sturdy as they did yesterday, are now drained and aching. I put on the same dress I wore yesterday, and while it fit more loosely than the day before, just didn't look right. The mind is a wonderland.
Anyway, the workout. As I may have mentioned, my s/o – let's call him E. – got me some nice exercise equipment for my birthday, including a resistance band and a pull up bar. Funny thing about the legs and back exercise: it's significantly harder if you actually are working out your back. For the past two weeks, I had been either skipping over the back exercises, doing arm presses (same motion, different muscles), or doing a different dvd altogether, opting for the "lean" exercise du jour. Yesterday I realized just how much of a weakling I am, in this awkward space in fitness that is too strong for the band but too weak for more than one pull-p or chin-up at a time luckily the bar is low enough and the doorframe narrow enough that I can cheat and jump up to the bar without letting go, or use my feet to keep me going. Using my legs was the best option, since this was also a Legs day so it wasn't going against the muscle confusion basis of P90X, and my arms never actually stopped working. I've been told by someone who's finished P90X that he could barely do one pull-up when he started, and now he can do 10 pretty good, so I'm not too far off track. I also pushed it extra hard with the leg workouts and could feel it this morning in my butt walking down the stairs to make some much needed coffee.
Today is Kendo. After spending Mother's Day with E's mother and brother, we're now going to see his punk band play at some new venue on the outskirts of town. I think I will be shadow boxing and hi-ya-ing well into the wee hours of tomorrow.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
turning 29
I turned 29 during a Sun Salutation. Time management is hard and I was less than halfway through my hour and a half P90X power yoga session when midnight struck and I sighed long and heavy as I lowered myself into chaturanga, pulled through upward dog, did an extra push up for good luck, and raised back into downward dog.
It was past 1 a.m. when I finally finished, turning off the dvd just before the Ohm's started - the dog hates the ohms and was likely alert upstairs waiting for them anxiously, I could hear his collar jangle restlessly in bed - and I felt good. Not tired, as I'd somewhat hoped I'd still be when I finished, but at least relaxed and ready for some rest. The day had been spent with my parents, who'd driven up from Florida on their way to Boston for my birthday/mother's day/hey it's too hot in Florida-ness, and future mother-in-law. Everyone wanted to see where my s/o and I were getting married, meet the space's event coordinator, meet the caterer, visit the hotel where I'd booked the block of rooms, and generally make sure I wasn't ruining everything. I'll yadda yadda yadda through the rest of it, and ultimately I came home with a to-go box of pizza and a headache around midnight.
This morning around 8 a.m. I called my dad to meet them at the hotel for breakfast before they hit the road for the final 12 hour stretch home.
"Did you do your weight lifting last night?" he asked, a jump in his voice like a joke.
"Last night was power yoga, I finished around 1 a.m. or so."
"Why don't you just do it earlier?" It's a fair question. I'd like to. Somehow I used to be able to squeeze it all in in the mornings, eat a healthy breakfast, take the dog for a walk, go for a run and maybe write or submit a poem before getting ready for work. Now that time's taken up with, hell, who knows. Longer walks? Unexpected phone calls? Day dreams? Certainly not poetry.
After breakfast, I dropped my s/o off at work and went to my Saturday morning yoga class. Today's class was split into two sections, the yin and the yang. There were options towards the end, to stay in yin for those of us who needed to be grounded. Usually, I am the bozo bouncing around in crow pose and scissoring her way through the shoulder stand, but today I stayed in buddha squat, lotus, and just a plain fold with closed eyes while I listened, my mind an absentee ballot, to the thumps and exasperation of my fellow yogis. It was a good class.
In the sauna, because it was my birthday, I went topless ("Let em look!" I thought to myself, "I look pretty good for near 30.") and read a whole book of poetry, Stefanie Wielkopolan's Border Theory, and the binding melted away as I sweated these hard past 2 and a half weeks from my whole body.
Today, whenever I can get around to it, is Legs, Back and Ab Ripper X. I'll do an extra pull up for good luck.
It was past 1 a.m. when I finally finished, turning off the dvd just before the Ohm's started - the dog hates the ohms and was likely alert upstairs waiting for them anxiously, I could hear his collar jangle restlessly in bed - and I felt good. Not tired, as I'd somewhat hoped I'd still be when I finished, but at least relaxed and ready for some rest. The day had been spent with my parents, who'd driven up from Florida on their way to Boston for my birthday/mother's day/hey it's too hot in Florida-ness, and future mother-in-law. Everyone wanted to see where my s/o and I were getting married, meet the space's event coordinator, meet the caterer, visit the hotel where I'd booked the block of rooms, and generally make sure I wasn't ruining everything. I'll yadda yadda yadda through the rest of it, and ultimately I came home with a to-go box of pizza and a headache around midnight.
This morning around 8 a.m. I called my dad to meet them at the hotel for breakfast before they hit the road for the final 12 hour stretch home.
"Did you do your weight lifting last night?" he asked, a jump in his voice like a joke.
"Last night was power yoga, I finished around 1 a.m. or so."
"Why don't you just do it earlier?" It's a fair question. I'd like to. Somehow I used to be able to squeeze it all in in the mornings, eat a healthy breakfast, take the dog for a walk, go for a run and maybe write or submit a poem before getting ready for work. Now that time's taken up with, hell, who knows. Longer walks? Unexpected phone calls? Day dreams? Certainly not poetry.
After breakfast, I dropped my s/o off at work and went to my Saturday morning yoga class. Today's class was split into two sections, the yin and the yang. There were options towards the end, to stay in yin for those of us who needed to be grounded. Usually, I am the bozo bouncing around in crow pose and scissoring her way through the shoulder stand, but today I stayed in buddha squat, lotus, and just a plain fold with closed eyes while I listened, my mind an absentee ballot, to the thumps and exasperation of my fellow yogis. It was a good class.
In the sauna, because it was my birthday, I went topless ("Let em look!" I thought to myself, "I look pretty good for near 30.") and read a whole book of poetry, Stefanie Wielkopolan's Border Theory, and the binding melted away as I sweated these hard past 2 and a half weeks from my whole body.
Today, whenever I can get around to it, is Legs, Back and Ab Ripper X. I'll do an extra pull up for good luck.
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