Project Exercise

As far as my workouts go there isn’t much to report.  Yesterday I did my scheduled plyometrics workout and today I did the prescribed P90X back and biceps workout.  Both workouts were done just as per the program outline.  However, instead of ARX I substituted a few rounds of plyo tabata and abs/core tabata.

Ok, so I ran into one to the guys that was in the gym when I had that run-in with the woman who put her workout gear in my way.  He told me that she belongs to a group of women that work in the office building where the gym is located.  The gym is in a huge sub-level floor of a high rise.  He said that they come down during a break and set up their stuff an hour and a half prior to the fitness class then go back to their offices.  They return during their lunch break for the class.  He told me that he was still in the gym when the woman came back and she was furious that I had chucked all her stuff in the storage room.  She actually lost the space she was trying to reserve.  He said he enjoyed listening to her gripe to her friends and said that she was going to read me the riot act if she ever sees me at the gym.  Anyway, I discussed the situation with the manager of the gym and she said that if they pull that nonsense again, just let her know.

I can’t wait until the next Monday fitness class!

Where does it say in the P90X manual anything about running and swimming.  Quite frankly, it doesn’t say anything about those activities.  However, anyone who has done P90X knows that there are cardio components to the program.  There is also a variation in the book called “doubles” where you add extra cardio (of your choice) to the program.  Ok, that said, I ran 5k yesterday.  Although I have a knee injury, I just don’t want to completely cut running from my fitness lifestyle.  So instead, I have been slowly trying to bring running back into my regiment.  The runs are short and slow, but for now, that is what my knee can tolerate.  Who knows, maybe I can strengthen the muscles around my knee to hold the knee cap on track long enough to get 10k someday.

This morning I did legs, back and ARX.  I substituted some of the P90X leg routines with those that my physical therapist had me do while rehabbing my knee.  The PT exercises are actually pretty intense.  For abs, I did a plain vanilla ARX (Ab Ripper X) workout.  I didn’t sub out any of those exercises this time around.

After work I headed to a beach near my home that is located just east of Diamond Head.  It’s a good place to do training swims because there is a good amount of chop.  It defines a “rough water swim”.  I am considering doing the Waikiki Rough Water Swim this September so I may as well train in similar conditions.

According to the P90X schedule, I am supposed to be on recovery week.  However, meat heads think recovery weeks are over-rated!  So as a bonafide lifetime member of the “Meat Head Club for Men” I have continued doing my regular workouts.  If you need information about joining the Meat Head Club (yes, there is a women’s chapter too), please contact our club president Jeff of Dangle the Carrot.  Please be warned that you must pass the hundred pushup challenge to apply.

Seriously, though, the reason I am not doing the recovery week is because I simply lost track of the schedule.  During my first round of P90X I was counting the days until recovery week.  Now, these workouts are just a normal day at the office.  However, all serious athletes and fitness enthusiasts know the value of recovery week.  This is the time that we actually get stronger.  So I am just going to continue with the workouts for the rest of the week and do recovery week next week.  I don’t really feel that bad that I over ran recovery week because I feel pretty energized this week and, besides, as you P90Xers already know, there are some P90X workouts during the so-called recovery week that are butt kickers… can you say core synergistics?

Yesterday I wanted to do a session on my bike so I hooked it up to my indoor trainer and did tabata intervals.  Man, that is a humbling workout.  I was trashed after the first round of tabata.  I thought my lungs were going to burst.  20 seconds felt like 20 minutes.  I ended up doing a total of 3 rounds of 8 sets of 20/10 tabata intervals.  I needed to rest a couple minutes between each round.  After the tabata intervals I rode for an additional 40 minutes.  When I woke up this morning, I could still feel the tightness in my quads.  I was supposed to do P90X Plyo X, but I decided to substitue the workout with cycling

Today I stayed on schedule with P90X Shoulders and Arms.  I used the Tower 200 minimally for this workout because I wanted to go heavy for a change.  I loaded up my curling bar and the dumbbells and went to work.  Even though I haven’t been doing heavy lifts for quite a while, I somehow still maintained my strength.  I did a lot of the curling with 45 llb dumbbells and I loaded the curling bar with 95 lbs for the first set and 115 lbs for the last set.  Obviously, I substituted some of the dumbbell movements with the curling bar.

After shoulders and arms, I did a quick abs workout and some kettlebell swings.

Thanks for stopping by.

From time to time I bring up the problem I have with my left knee.  I would like to give new visitors to my blog some background information regarding the issue with my knee.  Last August I began training for the Honolulu Marathon.  Things were going pretty well and I was training a bit ahead of schedule.  Although I knew that increasing mileage more than 10% week can lead to injuries, I ignored the advice because, well… that’s the way I roll.  My Neanderthal-like, over achieving ways finally caught up with me.  The same Neanderthal, “take no prisoners” approach served me well at sports when I was a youngster. It allowed me to push through and qualify to serve with a special unit in the military.  That “gut busting” attitude allowed me to return to base after tough missions.   Jeff, calls this the “meat head” syndrome.  Yes, it has served me well through the years, but alas… this high mileage body finally gave in.

By the time my long runs were at 15 miles, my left knee started giving me a bit of a problem.  I hung at 15-16 mile long runs for a couple of weeks, but my knee was getting progressively worse.  Instead of throttling back, meat head syndrome set in and, of course, I added mileage.  When I was doing 18 mile long runs, my knee would collapse and I would actually fall.  I was able to stand the steady state pain, but I was getting extremely sharp pains as a precursor to my knee collapsing.  I saw a sports medicine doctor and the diagnosis was chondromalacia (runner’s knee).  You can look up chondromalicia on the internet, but the short story is that it is a break down of the cartilage under my knee cap.  It can also cause the knee cap not to track properly… hence, “fall down”.  I can actually “click” my knee back onto the track.  For some, the injury can be minimized almost to the point of normalcy.  However, the cartilage under my knee cap has suffered extensive damage and, unfortunately, for me it is a permanent injury.  She prescribed physical therapy.  So what do you think I asked her?  Yep, you guessed it… I asked if I could still train.  (Insert long pause here so you can shake your head).  She told me that her experience with athletes is that you can’t tell them they can’t train so she said, “do it as long as you can stand the pain”.  My physical therapist said that if I strengthen my leg muscles, it would help keep my knee cap on its track.  Well, I tried to continue training, but during an 18 mile run I actually fell on the pavement around 3 times.  Well, that was the end of my serious running.

Ok, now that I got the background information out of the way, I will post today’s workout.  I’ve used too much of your time already so I will try to keep it short.

I did a 5k run treadmill run at the gym today.  The good news is that my knee did not collapse nor did I get that sharp pain that I often get on runs.  However, the steady state pain was still there.  My knee still hurts a bit this evening.  That is pretty normal though.  I hope I can continue these short runs.

After my run I did P90X chest and back.  Since I just finished my run, I didn’t have to warm up.  I went right into the exercises.  I did the routine in the gym.

When I got home, I wanted to work on my core.  I also wanted to do a few rounds of tabata training.  So I did a mix of kettlebells, body weight and abs/core circuits.  I love these tabata intervals.

It’s Friday… YES!

Well, I’ve had a couple of workout days since my last post.  Yesterday I did Yoga X.  It is supposed to be a 1.5 hour session, however, I cut it down to 45 minutes and modified it using Quentin’s suggestions.  Yesterday afternoon I did 7 rounds of Tabata (about 30 minutes) using kettlebells, plyometrics, wood choppers, burpees, jump knee tucks and other various exercises.  I used my iPhone interval timer app for the sessions.  It is a big improvement over my Gym Boss.  I have to admit that I love doing Tabata Training.  Steve, thanks for introducing me to it.  For those of you who are not familiar with the Tabata Protocol here is a excerpt from Wikipedia…

“A popular regimen based on a 1996 study uses 20 seconds of ultra-intense exercise (at 170% of VO2max) followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated continuously for 4 minutes (8 cycles). In the original study, athletes using this method trained 4 times per week, plus another day of steady-state training, and obtained gains similar to a group of athletes who did steady state (70% VO2max) training 5 times per week. The steady state group had a higher VO2max at the end (from 52 to 57 ml/kg/min), but the tabata group had started lower and gained more overall (from 48 to 55 ml/kg/min). Also, only the Tabata group had gained anaerobic capacity benefits.”

Today was legs and back day.  Today’s workout kind of kick my behind.  The leg workout felt challenging, especially the wall squats.  Btw, the kettlebells work great for some of the leg exercises.  After the legs and back I did P90X+ Abs Core Plus and added cable crunches using the Tower 200.

If you’re into cycling, here is a guy using the Tabata Protocol to train for a race…

I did chest and back this morning.  To get more resistance I substituted the pushups with dumbbell bench presses for the second half of the chest workout.  Again, I felt that the workout was moving kind of slow so I hit the next button to quickly go to the next exercise.  I wanted to keep my heart rate up.  Instead of pull ups I used my Tower 200 for a change.  Its good to change things up to keep the workouts interesting.  Immediately after the chest and back workout I did Ab Ripper X.  ARX gave me a bit of challenge this morning.  Whenever I do ARX directly after my main workout it gives me a bad time.  I normally like to do it as a separate workout later in the day.

Later in the day I jumped on my bike for a 20 mile ride.  The ride was right in the middle of the rush hour.  I don’t normally like riding during the commuting hours, but I just needed to do some sort of aerobic workout.  Running would have been a better choice if I could count on my injured knee.  However, I didn’t want to deal with the knee pain.  Fortunately, the ride was uneventful.

I ran 3 miles today.  Well, actually I had to walk a few times because of the pain in my left knee and the run was probably more of a jog.  Anyway, the whole run was completely in the aerobic zone (duh).  It really sucks to have knee problems.  Even though I am doing P90X I need to add cardio workouts to the mix.  I hope to get an open water swim done this weekend.  My son is having his birthday party tomorrow so maybe I will be able to jump in the ocean on Sunday.

Later in the day I did legs and back.  Since I had run earlier, my legs did not feel 100%, however, I got through the workout ok.  I crushed the back workout.

I was supposed to do chest and back yesterday, but I moved the workout up a day to give myself time to recover from doing 103 consecutive pushups.  Why did I do 103 pushups?  Because Jeff wants to kill me.  LOL!!!  Actually, he asked for volunteers to join him in the “hundred pushup challenge“.  However, he “volunteered” myself and Steve (boxcarvibe).  Thanks Jeff!!!

Ok, so I am glad I pushed the workout up a day on the schedule.  I felt pretty good and got through the workout unscathed.  The pushups were relatively easy to do.  I especially liked doing the “heart to heart” pushups (well, that’s what Tony Horton calls them).  They are the ones that you do with your hands placed close to each other.

Since the pushups are getting easy I will probably mix in some dumbbell benches soon.  During my previous rounds of P90X I sub’d out pushups for the bench with good results.

Back also went well.  I used a combination of the Tower 200 and my P90X pull up bar.  Instead of doing “lawn mowers” and “pulling up the pants” (again, Tony’s vernacular), I did cable rows with the Tower 200.

The Tower 200 is a great tool for P90X workouts.  I suspect that they probably workout well for something like Chalean Extreme too.  I know I still owe you folks a review of the Tower 200.  Its coming.

I was supposed to do yoga x today.  Instead, I did legs and back.  Since I will be trying to finish off the hundred pushup challenged this weekend, I was to make sure I had recovery time from strength workouts.  I will do yoga x tomorrow.  I haven’t done a leg workout in a very long time so today’s workout was challenging.  In addition to the P90X leg exercises I also threw in some of the routines from my physical therapy sessions to help rehab my knee.

Ok, so I went to our state Tea Party gathering that was held at our State Capitol.  I was going to get on my soapbox, but I snapped a photo of a woman holding a sign and I figured I would just let the sign do the “talking”.

My wife is a high school teacher and I am a veteran so I really liked this guy’s shirt…

Sometimes I think I should resurrect my old blog, “Right Wing Squadron” so that I don’t get on my soapbox on my fitness blog.  Keeping up two blogs can be very time consuming though.