Jack's P90x Voyage

Day 05 - Ab-ripper

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:11:09 -0500

Wasn’t feeling so good this morning when i woke up so opted for an extra hour sleep then just did ‘ab-ripper x’. Which by the way get easier every time i do it. Might do the Legs and back tonight.

Day 04 - Kenpo X

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:08:00 -0500

I generally do kenpo on the thursday instead of yoga. I find that early in the morning my muscles are way to tight to do yoga. I can’t even touch the floor or bend properly so just do kenpo instead.

Though it’s not much of a hardcore workout compared to the other muscle workout days i find it pretty cool for working on my form for punches etc and doing drills in both left and right stance. And as i’m moving house soon so will be able to start doing this with my punch bag for a better workout.

Did some tabata sprints in the evening down my local running track. More on tabata later.

Day 03 - Shoulders, Biceps, Triceps

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:22:00 -0500

For some reason the deep swimmer press causes me some trouble. Not sure why but this is the only one that is really hard and causes me to loose form and struggle at about 6 reps (with 10kg). Gonna work on these over the weekends to see if i can improve them.

Day 02 - Plyo

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:28:00 -0500

Still love my plyo x. In a nostalgic mood as i’m starting again. I remember my first plyo session well and a whole week of not being able to walk without a limp and the look of a man with rickets :). Now i’m busting out the session with maximum intensity, following along Tony and the crew no problem.

Feels good to improve.

Day 1 - Chest & Back

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:22:00 -0500

Really starting to like this workout now. In the beginning i dreaded this everytime because i knew i couldn’t even do one pull-up and could only do about 5 push-ups. At the time i was 3/4 stone heavier and out of shape. Now i am doing 10 pull-ups each round and around 20+ push-ups.

What i do now is to do as many as physically possible until i literally can’t push or pull out another rep. This ensures that i get some nice aching shoulder and chest muscles the next day. Which seems to make me stronger each week..

"Day 01 Stats Age : 26 Height : 5’ 10 Weight : 73.7kg (11.6 Stone,..."

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:49:27 -0500

“Day 01 Stats
Age : 26
Height : 5’ 10
Weight : 73.7kg (11.6 Stone, 162.5lbs)
Waist : 35 inches
Chest : 34 inches
Bicep : 13 inches”

Ketosis

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:27:00 -0400

Not sure what i was reading but today i came across something called Ketosis. Basically it’s where you reduce your carb intake so much that your body has to use fat to fuel your body and power your brain, but yet leaves your protein and muscle alone. This seems to be the perfect diet for loosing fat and building muscle (also known as a ketogenic diet).

So i’m now feeling pretty confident that this high protein low carb diet is ‘the one’. I’ve been on it for 2 days now so don’t think i’ve reached ketosis yet. I’ll update my progress over the following days.

High Protein Diet

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:36:08 -0400

After doing this already for 80 days i’ve discovered a load about food and nutrition that i thought i’d never know. You know when you see a nutritionist or trainer on tv and they talk about food and exercise - slowly i’m understanding that. Everyday it seems that i have another Eureka moment. I obviously don’t know too much though otherwise i’d be having better results but anyhow i’m gonna add some of my finding to this here blog.

What my latest realisation is - is that i’ve been eating too many carbs for my fitness level to burn off the last bit of fat (guessing so we shall see). So what i’m gonna do is basically what the P90X guide said in the very beginning (doh!) and go high protein, low carb.

So my new diet and fitness regime is basically this:

7:00 - Wake up
7:15 - P90X
8:45 - Recovery Drink (for goodness shakes : 350Kcal, 16g Protein, 60g Carbs, 8g Fat)
8:50 - Drink Protein shake (EAS : 120Kcal, 23g Protein, 1g Carb, 2g Fat)
9:15 - Cycle to work (4.5 miles)
10:00 - Work at desk
11:00 - Smoothy (innocent - yumm)
12:00 - Eat protein bar + yogurt (20g+ protein)
15:00 - Eat protein bar + soup of some kind
17:30 - Cycle home (4.5 miles)
18:00 - Eat some porrage with added whey protein (20g+ protein, some carbs and fibre)
19:00 - Go running, HIIT or Tabata sprints (Depending on whether a resistance day or cardio)
21:00 - Protein shake
12:00/01:00 - Go sleep

Not entirely sure if this is gonna be enough though, think it works out to 500Kcals of protein (125g) and the rest made up from carbs and fat, not sure the total yet. Will try it out for a while see whether i need to adjust it at all. It’s gonna be hard since it’s mainly a liquid diet. We’ll see how it goes, i’m thinking that i may need to add some meat and veg with the 21:00 shake.

2nd November

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:58:00 -0400

Gonna start this up next monday instead of this one just past. Somehow managed to injure my right calf on sunday pushing a broken down car, so was out of action for plyo on tuesday. It’s better now but just gonna wait till monday so i can have a nice easy start date.

Equipment & Supplements

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:03:00 -0400

I just setup an amazon store where you can find all the equipment and supplement i’m using for my P90X - http://astore.amazon.co.uk/jasp9vo-21

This is what i have equipment wise :

p90x pullup bar - though doesn’t fit my door :(
Everlast pullup bar
2x10kg (22lb) Hex Dumbells
Gold’s Pushup bars
Bodylastics Resistance Bands
Stability Ball

And this is what i eat in addition to my diet

Allsport Whey (unflavoured so can add to other food + drink)
For Goodness Shakes (recovery drink)
Boots Protein Bar (uk shop - nice for a snack)

The (Re-)Start

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:17:00 -0400

After 80 days of P90X i’ve decided to restart the whole thing, this time documenting my process as i go.

Basically i realised that i’ve been doing it wrong. For a start when i began i wasn’t fit enough to do it, i couldn’t pass the fit test (10+ years of inactivety will do that to you) but i continued anyway. Now over the 80 days i’ve definetely improved and gained alot of strength and energy so it’s sure worked. But now i would say that i have a good base fitness to P90X it properly. The other thing is that i’ve done the diet thing wrong, i dropped too much calories out from my food intake usually eating below 1500 calories a day with most of that being carbs. I’ve lost about 0.5 a stone and 3 jean sizes but have somewhat slowed to a halt in the fatloss stakes.

Now my new regime is this :

Push the P90X hard each day, if i’m not aching the next day then i know i haven’t been working hard enough.
Eat lots more protein than carbs.