P90 Monday #2
So, start of Week 2 of P90 (after 4 weeks of P90X and a one week "break" while assessing other systems). This is a big ol' update on exercise, food, sleep &etc., so if you've been thinking I'm awfully behind on such updates, you're in luck! If you hate them, though, this is not your day. ;)
P90 itself: So far, so good. I like:
- how it only takes up about half an hour's time - an hour, once you count shower etc., but still that makes it not much more time-intensive than my morning nap;
- how it makes me break a sweat, but not be all GRRRRRAAAAAAARGH! to make it to the end. Don't get me wrong, I like being all GRRRRAAAAARGH! sometimes, but not every morning. It's an energy-expenditure thing. Sure, I can do an hour of plyo, just like I can shore-dive for half a day and swim home basically on my lips and sheer willpower, and sometimes those things are fun. When I do climb those mountains, though, I have a valley on the other side to deal with: I'll need extra sleep, and extra food, and to generally not move much for the 12-24 hours after a GRRRAAARGH!. (Why yes, I have nounified that sound. Take that, onomatopoeia police!) What I want for a daily morning workout is one that burns some calories to offset my sedentarycomputerness, stretches and strengthens all the bits I need for kungfu/taiji, gets me warmed up so I don't feel like I'm dragging in the morning, and leaves me with all the energy I need for a whole day and to do it all again tomorrow (assuming that either today or tomorrow also includes swimming or taiji, and that both include a few miles of walking) on 5 or less hours of total sleep.
(IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK, haha.) But as with most things, now that I know what I want more precisely, it's easier to get - and so far P90 seems to fit the bill.
ONE CAVEAT this experience has taught me about: The "fitness tests" for programs like P90 / X / Insanity / etc. only tell you if you can do that level of workout, not whether you will want to. I haven't failed a "fitness test" yet, but P90X was too much for me, not because I couldn't physically do it (well, it wasn't kind to my knees, but that was probably surmountable by itself) but because it was more workout than I was looking for. Be aware of this if you're looking similarly.
- I like how the pace is not too fast, so that if you know the instructions and whatnot already, you can get a little bit ahead. This is useful for Real Life Considerations like needing to pee, stretch your neck, chase a cat out of somewhere it shouldn't be, etc., and it's nice not to have to pause the video for that.
- Takes less equipment than P90X, though to be fair neither of them are horrible on the I-need-equipment front.
And my dislikes are pretty much par for workout stuff in general:
- It's cheeeeeeeesy, made worse (or better, depending on your tastes in Cheese) by lower production values than P90X. Tony himself is also considerably less "smooth" and comfortable with his banter, though personally I find better banter even cheesier than bad banter, so again, it's about which flavors of cheese make you wince, and which make you vomit. ;)
- Horrible background Muzak, but thankfully at low volume
- Hilariously unrealistic "students" (note: P90X actually didn't have this problem; those were real graduates of the program and nicely non-model-looking for the most part - maybe Tony put his foot down after he got some corporate traction? But in P90 they're pretty much what you'd expect from this type of thing…)
- Generally not fun to watch at all…but really, how much does this matter, since the goal is to not really have to watch it? At least with P90, putting it on mute and keeping half an eye on it while you blaze through it is much easier to attain than with X, which is 2-3x as long and goes twice as fast!
…Being me, I'm already wishing I could combine this activity with, I dunno, memory exercises or learning a language or something. And maybe I can eventually, but it's not wise to stretch too far too fast. Last thing I need is to hurt myself because I was conjugating instead of watching my form!
OH, you probably care about results too. ;) Well, with uneven application and fairly miserable adherence to the diet (more on that in a second), I still feel good and look noticeably more awesome than before…my leg-muscles (which have always been prominent) are approaching "oo wow" status, and my arms (which usually just look biggish when I exercise) are getting tricep cuts, which is cool. Best of all, I've lost just enough padding-in-general that my stomach is, while not something I'd show off for money or prizes, officially technically "flat". I'm starting to see the musculature there, too. And this is awesome - one of the (several) reasons I work out is that I'm built short and muscle-y anyway, and I knew from long ago that if I got a more regular routine set up, it would be relatively easy for me (relative compared to naturally skinny people) to show muscle and look badass. Stomach cuts are a sort of the meat and potatoes of that, yeah?
DIET ADHERENCE: I did it for the first 3 weeks of P90X, mostly because I was afraid of hurting myself otherwise. I ate 1600-1800 cal a day (1800 was supposed to be my goal, but in the end I could hardly ever hit that), with a heavy tilt towards protein and away from carbs. I learned that a looooooot of my normal diet is carbs! I'm still trying to keep the carbs lower and the protein higher, even though once I stopped P90X I (gratefully) stopped worrying about the exact ratio and frantically trying to get 18 million calories in me before bedtime…whew. I'm back to my usual 1400 or so now, and I feel fine, but I do want to eventually - when I have the brainspace probably - work more on getting better food, and in better proportions. I know my current habits, which evolved from an allergy to cooking for myself, aren't keepable in the long-term; I can do better.
And of course: SLEEP! Oh, the wonderfulness of having my schedule back…even when it gets thrown off (which it did once this week, majorly enough that I slept 8 hours once to compensate), that only serves to remind me how much better Everyman is than monophasic. Possibly the only thing better than a morning workout is a morning workout followed by a nap - *awesome*. (Slight downside: I definitely get ANGRY if I can't have my afternoon nap; the workout in the morning makes it feel quite mandatory. But that's just motivation for me to get it, which I need, since breaking up my workday goes against my natural workaholism. ;)
OK, I think that counts as a real, full-size update…Oh, for people who care, I'm also finally reading The Four-Hour Body; I'm sure I'll have opinions on it as time goes on.
Thanks for reading, everyone! Have a great week if I don't talk to you before the weekend.
PD
Originally published at *Transcendental *Logic. Please leave any comments there.