Just some basic background...P90X is a series of 12 DVDs which each contain a specific workout. There are three different schedules that you can pick that tell you which discs to use and on what days (see http://www.p90xworkoutschedule.org/ ). I picked "classic" because I don't have time for "doubles" and I don't need to lose weight as in "leans." I also printed up worksheets from http://www.beachbody.com/images/beachbody/en_us/pdf/worksheets/P90X.pdf where you write down the reps and weight you used as you go along. When you watch the DVDs, you are essentially working out with Tony Horton and three other workout models (male and female).
Day 1 for "classic" is an hour of "Chest and back" followed by 15 minutes of "ab ripper x." C&B workout consists of alternating different kinds of pullups and pushups along with some flys. This workout requires a pullup bar, a chair and some dumbbells. There are tons of breaks. And it seemed like I had at least a few seconds between every exercise. You don't do a full hour of exercises either. In addition to the breaks, you have a pretty lengthy warmup and cooldown. The hour goes by very fast.
The first thing you learn is that you will go through the exercises two times. The first time you are told to pace yourself. Since I have never done this before and I have heard all sorts of horror stories, I took the first half very light...too light as I found out. I was only doing 5 reps of some of the pullups and 10 reps of some of the pushups. I wasn't really pushing myself that hard because I was afraid of what was coming up. Once I got to the second half and realized it wasn't going to be that bad, I increased the reps to as much as I could do. Still, I'm kind of bummed that I took the whole workout too lightly and didn't get as much out of it as I would have liked. It has been a couple hours and I'm not feeling any soreness at all.
The other side of this coin is that I think I'm in much better shape that I previously thought. All the cardio and weights I've been doing must have prepared me for this. I think this would be a whole different post if I hadn't already been doing lat pulldowns and curls.
Anyhow, I've learned to push the first half of this routine much harder. I think this will be the story for the first week of all the workouts. I don't know how bad it is going to be, so I'll probably be taking it easy at first.
OK, now onto the ab ripper. I popped that DVD in and it was completely different. They got right into it and there were no breaks and hardly any time between exercises. I also found myself struggling to understand exactly what they were doing and what the form was. By the time I got it right, they were halfway through some of the exercises. However, this one goes 3x/week so I'm sure I'll figure it out quickly. But man, those were HARD. I could not keep up with them at all. I had to take many breaks in the middle of sets. I'm sure I'll get better but this one kicked my butt. The 15 minutes went by very quickly.
A few things I learned
- I need more weights. I wasn't sure what I was going to be doing with these dumbbells, so I got a simple set with 2.5 and 5 lb weights. I have to unscrew the ends to change the weight. I won't have time for that during the workouts so I'm going to have to get more. Plus, I'm going to need much heavier weights for many of the exercises. I wasn't aware of the weightlifting component of the workouts.
- The Ab routine should probably be saved for the evening. It is hard to shift gears and still focus on form and what needs to be done right after I get done with the first workout. Besides, the Ab routine is only 15 minutes...it should be that hard to fit in the evening.
- Before I started, I think I read somewhere that one of the models in the DVD would do a low impact version of the exercises. Not exactly. You see a lower impact version of SOME of them, but very few. Most of the time, everyone is doing the same thing (with the exception of one person using bands).
Tomorrow is Plyometrics. This is where my concern with my knees comes in. We'll see how it goes.
