Category: P90X

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How “in shape” do I really need to be?

Yesterday, Day 21 of The Asylum, was “Back to Core” again. Nothing exciting to report there, except that my lower right back pain is a bit more noticeable than usual today. This is a dull pain that is kinda like a bruise, in that it only hurts when I move a certain way, and it’s more annoying than actually painful. That pain has been there for about 18 months now — I first noticed it about 4 weeks into P90X — so I don’t worry too much about it, hoping someday it’ll just disappear.

Today, on Day 22, I have come to only the second (and last) “Rest” day of The Asylum. This day of rest has me thinking seriously about my relationship with this type of training program. Why do I do it? Will I continue with future volumes of The Asylum? (I assume there will be future volumes, because this one is called “Volume 1”.)

Shaun T's AsylumIt was pretty obvious to me from the first few days of The Asylum that this program is made for people who want to be in top shape. Of course, I would have thought the same thing about Insanity — in fact, I did think it, when Month 2 of that program started — but that program was primarily aerobics with a little bit of strength training. The Asylum, on the other hand, is more about sports skill development, and really — once you are already in Insanity shape — pushing the envelope of what your body can endure.

In all honesty, now that I think about it, this program would not be so difficult if there were more rest days. Pushing, pushing, pushing, every day, resting every three or four or five days — that’s rough for a desk jockey. Even an in-shape desk jockey. But, then, I think that is part of the point of The Asylum.

Whatever. That may be what professional athletes need to do. Keep pushing, even in the face of extreme fatigue. It is not, however, what I need to do.

The other side of the coin is that I had entered The Asylum, hoping that it would help melt away those last 10 pounds of gut fat. That is not happening. I am beginning to wonder if anything short of starvation would make that stuff go away. I’m eating right, exercising like a demon, but still it persists.

Having said all that … hell, yeah, I will continue with future volumes of The Asylum!

I just get too much of a sense of accomplishment from going through these programs. When I completed  P90X, I really felt as if I had done something meaningful for myself. Same with completing  Insanity.

When I complete The Asylum, I don’t think it will be the same feeling. It will be more of a sense of having survived something that few can endure, and being better for it. I mean, I’m in the best shape of my life, so I’m going to keep pushing my body to the limit.

When I complete this program, and after a well-deserved week off — actually, it’ll be about a week and a half of yoga and light aerobics — I’ll get into a hybrid of some sort, and start gearing myself up for P90X2, which should arrive in December. I already have a bit of an idea what P90X2 is about, because I subscribed to the One-On-One Volume 3 series, where Tony Horton tested out the routines that would become P90X2, so I’m pretty stoked to get around to using exercise balls, getting more balancing and core work in, and developing strength and more all-around fitness with Tony.

Yeah. This is all good.

I guess the answer to how “in shape” I need to be, is simply as good a shape as I am willing to push my body through. Not done yet!

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Are carbs evil?

Hmmmm…. Are carbs really as evil as many people think they are?

When I first started my quest for fitness, I went on a calorie-restricted diet. I didn’t pay much attention to what the calories were — fat, carb, protein, I didn’t care. I only wanted to stay under a certain number of calories daily. I lost 50 pounds that way.

Of course, once I went off that diet — I don’t know about you, but I can’t keep that up forever — I regained a few pounds. 15, to be exact.

I was doing a whole lot of walking during that time, and I added in some pushups and crunches to try to get more into shape. My weight was staying pretty even, but I wanted to lose excess fat. Problem is, I didn’t really want to diet, because I know that I just can’t stay on diets of any kind. No diet? Lose weight? I figured more exercise is what I needed.

Enter P90X.

When I got my P90X package, I read through all the literature that came with it, including the diet plan, along with a proclamation that reshaping my body was really mostly a matter of diet, not exercise. Exercise helps get a body more fit, adds muscle, and, yes, does burn calories, I read, but it just doesn’t burn as many calories as we think. We need to control our diets to lose fat.

This makes sense, I just had never thought about it that way. I can illustrate with a conversation I had with my neighbor just this morning.

I asked him this morning, when we were discussing his eating and exercise habits (after he complained about not being able to lose his gut), “How many miles do you need to go to run off a bowl of ice cream?” A cup and a half of regular vanilla ice cream is around 400 calories. Premium stuff like Ben & Jerry’s and Godiva raise that to about 700 calories.

You burn about 100 calories per mile, so you’ll need to run 4 miles to burn off that cheap ice cream or 7 miles to burn off the good stuff. And that’s just the ice cream. Wasn’t that a quarter-pounder with cheese, a large fries, and a large soft drink for dinner? That’s 1300 more calories.

1700 to 2000 calories. That is all the energy you need for a full day, and that was just one meal. Can you run 17 to 20 miles every day?

Why do we consume that many calories! That stuff tastes good! But why does it taste so good?

Sugar.

If you were to try to eat that ice cream without the sugar in it, how much do you think you’d eat? Have you tried drinking heavy cream straight? Not that tasty.

As for the meal before the ice cream, the large soda is the big offender, so good only because of the sugar. I drink sparkling water, and it’s not that easy to guzzle that stuff. But if you give me Coke? I can go through a few in no time.

There are carbs in the burger’s bun and potatoes the fries are made from, too, of course, but not so much sugar, so let’s focus on not the sugar itself.

Why can I drink so much soda? Sugar.

Why can I eat so much ice cream — and believe me, I never stopped at the 1.5 cups in the example above, unless that’s all I had on hand? Sugar.

Therein, I think, lies the key to controlling our diets. Lose the sugar. Sugar — in whatever form, whether it’s pure cane sugar, or high fructose corn syrup, or whatever — just tastes so good and therefore makes it too easy to consume too many calories.

Fats and proteins, on the other hand, make it much more difficult to overconsume.

When I started P90X, I dedicated myself to the provided diet plan, which required me to get 50% of my calories from protein, 30% from carbs, and 20% from fat. I had never eaten like that before! I’d been on low-carb diets, but not high-protein diets. And you know what? It was hard to get enough protein calories.

Do you know how much white fish I needed to consume to get half of my calories from protein each day? Almost 3 pounds (for 1000 protein calories of a 2000-calorie diet). That’s a lot of fish. Or about the same amount of boneless, skinless chicken breast. Or I could eat 7 turkey burgers (without the bun), although that would put me over my fat limit.

That’s when I started using protein shakes to supplement my meals, just to ensure I’d get enough protein.

Now, you could probably make the same argument about fat that I’m making about sugar. Yes, you can consume a lot of fat in one sitting. A fatty piece of meat usually tastes better than a lean one. Butter sure does make things taste better.

I don’t think it’s quite the same for me. I don’t tend to eat that much fat, anyway, so quitting sweets, removing everything from my diet that is created solely to provide sweetness — things like cakes, cookies, cinnamon rolls — seemed more sensible. You may be different.

Back to the original question: Are carbs evil? No. But for me, sugar may very well be. It just makes foods taste so good. So I avoid it.

How about you? Is sugar pushing your calorie count over the top?

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The difference between P90X and P90X2

Today is a relief day for The Asylum, so I thought I’d pass along a distilled version of this article I read about the difference between P90X and P90X2.

P90X — as the people who’ve completed it (including myself) will attest — is still a viable exercise program. P90X2 does not take its place, P90X2 is more of an extension of the Muscle Confusionâ„¢ (that’s a Beachbody trademark) we started in the original.

By the same token, P90X2 is not necessarily harder than P90X, but, because of the muscle confusion thing, it will seem that way at first. And, I will bet, when I am done with the new one, and go back to do the original, the original will be tough the first few weeks. That’s the essence of muscle confusion and why it is so good for you — you are continually challenging your body in new ways!

One big change with P90X2 is that it is only a 5 days per week program. The official line is that when you are working out so intensely, you need more rest, but my take on it is that most people want the weekends off, and so, to reach a wider audience, they adapted the program to that. No big deal! If you really want to work out 6 days, you can always add a workout, and if you want a kick ass 5-day program — well, now there is one!

The new program, P90X2, now has 3 phases. I’m not sure how that pans out, like how the phases are separated, but Phase One is Balance, Phase Two is Muscles, and Phase Three is Agility. Sounds to me like Shaun T may have had some input here. I like the idea of it, for sure, and I know, from having done many of the One-On-One routines that turned into P90X2, that there are weighted exercise balls involved, including balancing on them to do pushups, as well as a stability ball, also used for adding balance training to otherwise familiar exercises.

All in all, P90X2 sounds great to me, but, then, I am biased, because Beachbody products have been so great to me. I am in the best shape of my life — and continuing to get even more fit — thanks to Tony Horton and Shaun T. I am really looking forward to continuing my journey with P90X2.

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Muscle soreness and the power of muscle confusion

I am sore today. My inner thighs are feeling the effects of yesterday’s workout.

Why am I sore?

Let’s put aside the fact that no one really knows for sure why muscles get sore from being worked out, and just know that they are sore from being worked out.

“But,” you may ask, “why are your legs sore? Don’t you work your legs out? Insanity is a lot of leg work, isn’t it?”

True enough, but this is why mixing up my routines is so important. Mixing it up confuses my muscles, working them in ways they are not accustomed to, and making them stronger in the process.

I touched on this subject in the post “Cardio: How much do we need?“.

The gist of the concept is that when you want to be really good at one particular activity, you do that activity over and over. If you want to be a good runner, you run. If you want to be a good cycler, you cycle. That trains your muscles to optimize themselves for that particular activity.

But don’t think that a world-class cyclist — a guy you would certainly say is in shape — can jump off his bike and run a marathon. Sure, he’ll be further along the training path than someone who sits on the couch every night, but he will need to train to be able to run that marathon, because his body is maximized for cycling.

And that is the basis of muscle confusion. If you want to be generally fit — and that is my goal — you need to do a variety of exercises to keep your muscles guessing, keep them from establishing a routine.

Tony Horton’s P90X, among many other strength-training programs, are built on that approach.

Anyway, back to my personal muscle soreness.

Yesterday I did for the first time since mid-February Tony Horton’s “Base & Back” from his One-On-One series. (FYI, that particular workout is in Volume 3.) The last time I did that routine was about six months ago, so, even having done a round of Insanity and many other leg workouts in between, I am sore today, because, apparently, “Base & Back” made me use some muscles I haven’t used quite so much recently.

In an effort to keep my muscles confused, I try to only do a particular series of routines for 3 or 4 weeks. I will then take a recovery week and start a new series. That’s how Tony Horton’s P90X works, so I kept that strategy in place after I completed that program.

For what it’s worth, I think the confusion could probably be achieved by just reversing the order of the exercises in each routine, if you want to keep it really simple. But I get a kick out of creating new routines and weekly programs.

So, yeah, my muscles are a bit sore, and I like it. That soreness tells me that my general fitness strategy is working.

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My P90X – One On One – Insanity hybrid

After completing Insanity about a month ago, I felt great and ready to go into a hybrid of that program and Tony Horton’s P90X. However, when I scoured the internet for such a program, they all looked pretty much alike and rather uninspired.

Plus, I knew I wanted to include some of Tony’s One-On-One routines in my hybrid.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 4 weeks, creating my own hybrid. As it happens, I ended up with no P90X routines, so really it’s an Insanity / One-On-One hybrid, but it turned out nice.

It goes like this:

  • Day 1 – Steve’s 30/15 (based on One-On-One 30/15)
  • Day 2 – Plyometric Cardio Circuit + Cardio Abs from Insanity
  • Day 3 – Steve’s Shoulders & Legs (based on One-On-One Diamond Delts & Plyo Legs)
  • Day 4 – Pure Cardio + Cardio Abs from Insanity
  • Day 5 – Base & Back from One-On-One
  • Day 6 – Fountain of Youth Yoga from One-On-One
  • Day 7 – OFF
  • Day 8 – Pure Cardio + Cardio Abs from Insanity
  • Day 9 – Steve’s 30/15 (based on One-On-One 30/15)
  • Day 10 – Plyometric Cardio Circuit from Insanity
  • Day 11 – Steve’s Shoulders & Legs (based on One-On-One Diamond Delts & Plyo Legs)
  • Day 12 – Cardio Power & Resistance + Cardio Abs from Insanity
  • Day 13 – Patience/Hummingbird Yoga from One-On-One
  • Day 14 – OFF

Days 15-28: Repeat the above.

All in all, I am very happy with the program. I’m going to take a week off to recover, doing yoga and Core Cardio & Balance from Insanity, then I’ll do another 4 weeks of the above.

If you want to try it out, you’ll need some of the Insanity and One-On-One DVDs, and you can download my Excel worksheets (in PDF format) for the non-cardio / non-yoga days here: Worksheets For One-On-One-Insanity Hybrid (PDF).

Enjoy and let me know what you think.