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!!!

P90X Day 3: Shoulders & Arms

(Originally posted Jan 9, 2009)

I promised myself that I would make P90x a morning activity only so that it wouldn't interfere with my nights, but that wasn't going to happen today! Yesterday I felt rather nauseated for most of the day as a result of the plyometric madness of Day 2...but fortunately, I at least wasn't really all that sore at that point. That didn't last long though!

This morning I woke up at 5:45 to do the Shoulders and Arms routine, but all the awesomeness of 'delayed onset muscle soreness' wouldn't let me even consider it. I couldn't get out of bed. My muscles ached in places that they haven't since wrestling practices back in high school. Not that I couldn't use the extra sleep...I was exhausted anyway! 

That being said, I've committed to doing this thing, so I had to see it through by the end of the day no matter what. And that meant doing it after dinner tonight. Went out to Salsa for eats; came home and rested for a little bit so that I wouldn't throw up again..ha; and then the festivities began. Just finished as a matter of fact.

Well, this was another solid workout routine, and probably the most enjoyable so far. In other words, it was definitely doable. Actually in comparison to the preceding two days, this was a joke! Not really...but still! I had been worried that my sore muscles wouldn't really let me get through it, but the warm-up routine at the beginning worked most of the kinks out in time. There were lots of good shoulder presses and curls, as well some weird "bonus" tricep exercise at the end that I could barely even fake it was so hard. But, well, I feel good. Maybe I can do this program without dying after all! Time will tell :)

Best of all though, the night is still young. Good weekend everybody! 

Tomorrow, Russell will be introduced to Yoga. Uh oh.

P90X2 (Day 3): Recovery & Mobility

So today was essentially our first rest day!  It's interesting though.  So far neither of the first 2 workouts truly obliterated us in the way that I felt after doing P90x or Insanity for the first time.  Still though, the morning-after muscle soreness has been brutal.  The moves in these workouts seem to sneak up on you in terms of their effectiveness!

Overview
Anyway, Recovery & Mobility was good, if unusual addition to the P90X library.  Basically it's P90X2's version of the Stretch X routine (which I only ever did a few times) with 2 main differences: 1) the foam roller gets used throughout, which is a pretty substantial distinction (we still don't have our rollers, so we had to perform our stretches using bands and towels); 2) you are pretty much left to you own devices for 1/3 of the video, meaning you simply stretch the muscles that YOU feel need stretching.  I guess this latter aspect is both a plus and a negative in a way. The positive is that you can spend as much time as you want on the muscles that need the most attention!  The bad part though is that you may be a little less motivated without a prescribed routine to follow, AND you may accidentally hurt yourself by trying out bizarre new stretches.  On the whole though I think I liked the approach.

At 57 minutes, the basic structure of Recovery and Mobility can broken into 3 chunks.  The first third is comprised of some traditional stretches, yoga, and some light squats, etc.  The middle portion is a solid 20 minutes of foam rolling goodness.  The final third is basically the "cool-down" which is somewhat a mix of the first third and a few new, deeper stretches.

Having just finished the workout, I definitely feel that my body has loosened up quite a bit!  I feel mostly refreshed and ready for tomorrow's Total Body and X2 Ab-Ripper!  They promise to be pretty killer, so the Recovery & Mobility focus today will probably end up being even more appreciated :)

Insanity Day 3: Power Cardio & Resistance (aka "death cheated once again")

Today Katie and I were at it again and once more survived the fitness madness that is Insanity...although perhaps not gracefully.  


A few things to note.  Things are still hard (VERY hard), but I think our bodies are at least starting to know what to expect.  And I dare say that today's workout, Power Cardio & Resistance, was even harder than yesterday's if that's even possible!  In all it was about 40+ min long with a bit more focus on resistance-based moves like pushups.


WARM-UP (~10 min)
This essentially was the same as yesterday (3 three-minute cycles of intervals followed by 30 second breaks), although some of the moves were a little different.  

• Jog (running/sprinting in place)
• Power Jacks (a plyo version of a jumping jack; you start off in a deep wide-legged squat before jumping your legs together)
• Log Jumps (these suckers are hard! Jump side to side extremely high like you're jumping over a log)
• 123s (basically, these are heismans with a little bit of pitter-patter footwork in between)
• Butt Kicks (running in place with knees down, kicking your heels to your butt)
• High Knees (running in place while making sure your knees raise up to your waist with each "stride")
• Vertical Jumps (from a moderate squat position, jump as high as you can as if you're shooting a basketball... kills the calves)

Again, at the end of the last cycle was a series of additional moves, that I can't quite remember.  But you finish up hard!

Stretch (10 min)

Today it occurred to me during the stretch sequence that these static stretches go against a lot of what I've heard elsewhere about warming up.  I had been under the impression that any "stretching" after a cardio warm-up should be ballistic stretching (vs static) to keep everything loose for the actual workout.  Especially when the workouts are as plyo crazy as these.  Save the static stuff for post-workout.

Oh well.  We haven't pulled anything yet, but we'll see.  I will say though that having the somewhat subdued stretch break provides a much needed breather!

Workout (~20 min)

• First Interval (3 rounds of following moves)
• Power Jumps (Hard!  Very deep squat into a high jump, tucking your knees in at the top)
• Belt Kicks (basically a squat, come up and kick your leg and then repeat on the other leg)
• Hit the Floor (Don't even know how to describe these, but they sort of resemble a blend between shuttle runs and jumping)
• V push-ups (have your feet up towards your hands as close as possible so that your butt sticks up in the air to make a "v"... have your fingers pointed towards each other, head down, and then perform the pushups so that your shoulders feel the burn!)

The only one of these that didn't seem to be that effective was the belt kicks.  You really need to tighten your core on these to feel them, but I found it too tempting to cheat. 

• Second Interval (3 rounds of the following moves)
• Hurdle Jumps (sprints in place, followed by a mock hurdle jump)
• Globe Jumps (squat jumps: forward, left, back, right..repeat)
• Moving Pushups (with moving push-ups you start in plank, move your right arm and right foot to the right, do a push-up, move to the right again and do another pushup.  Then it’s back to the left twice.  You go back and forth until your minute is up. )
• Floor Sprints (essentially mountain climbers)

Oh yeah, and at the end of this second interval you get to do one last exercise: 8 hop squats/8 pushups...and repeat till your muscles collapse!

Recap

All in all, this workout didn't seem all that different from yesterday, although it was certainly more resistance heavy with all the pushups.  

That said, I do have some early thoughts on the program, and not all of them are positive.  First, unlike P90x, it seems that Shaun T's repertoire of exercise moves is pretty limited.  These workouts are killer AND effective...but they all feel pretty similar, which could make this repetitive and maybe even boring pretty quickly.  Fortunately, Shaun T's a pretty good motivator.  

Second, it's somewhat DE-motivating to see background exercisers  pretty much drop out left and right because the workouts are so stinking hard.  I guess it's comforting to know that I'm not alone in my agony, but it also feels like the bar is almost too high... that this is simply a workout than can never be mastered.  That can be good or bad I suppose.

In any case, another solid/killer workout today.  It will be more of a challenge squeezing these into my schedule going forward since school is starting back up tomorrow, but Katie and are planning to make it happen!  And fortunately, so far, our diets are in tune with all the fitness craziness we're doing.