CHALEAN EXTREME Day 3: Burn Circuit 2

(Originally posted April 22, 2009)

Wow....Chalene just whooped my butt. For a workout that's about 20 minutes shorter than the average P90x workout, I've definitely just been humbled. And it doesn't help that on one of the exercises I was only able to barely do the weight that Chalene was using. Like I said the other day, that woman is deceptively strong! 

As with Burn Circuit 1 from the first day, Burn Circuit 2 is again a series of synergistic moves that work both the legs and the upper body at the same time (I'm still not a huge fan of these compound exercises...too much going on!). But whereas the upper body moves from Burn Circuit 1 seemed to focus a bit more on the chest and back, these seemed to be more focused on the triceps and biceps with a good bit of back thrown in as well. The main muscle group that got hammered for me though seemed to be my lower back. Dang it burns! Anyway, the Chalean Extreme motif of lifting super heavy and super slow continues to throw me for a loop. It's a little difficult to switch gears to this slower pace, but when I do my muscles are worked to absolute exhaustion in a way that I'm not quite sure I've experienced before. I'm hoping that this might help me to build a little bit of size that seemed to be lacking with the P90x program (*note: for girls interested in doing Chalene Extreme, don't worry about bulking up... you'd likely have to be taking testosterone supplements or something for that to be an issue). 

Anyway, here's the exercises from tonight (again, like Day 1 you do 12 heavy slow reps...heavy enough that you're muscles fail right at the last rep if possible):
1) Sumo Squat with Bicep Curl
2) Lunge with One-Arm Tricep Extension
3) Dead Lift Row
4) Sumo Squat with Overhead Tricep Extension
5) Dead Lift with Reverse-Grip Row
6) Bowler's Lunge with Single-Arm Row (this move nearly put me in a coma)
7) Bicep Curls with Abductor Balance
8) Forward-Lean Lunge with Double-handed Row
9) Triple-Threat Pushups (basically, these are just 3 different hand-positions)

Also, today was my first experience with "Extreme" bonus sets. Basically, every now and then Chalene will let you rest for 10 seconds after you've completed an exercise, but then you have to do 3 extra even slower reps. It's killer!!!