Day 6-Kenpo X

Quick Note: For those of you that reported Comment issues, I think this has been resolved. Additionally, I forgot to mention yesterday how PAINFUL calf lifts are! I was reminded of this fact when I crawled outta bed this morning. OUCH

Now for Day 6.
Well Day 6 was Kenpo X. Went into this having no clue what to expect. Turns out this is a fighting type of exercise that involves a lot of kicking and punching. It seemed to go really fast and I didnt seem to feel like the workout was never going to end. It was very intense and I was dripping in sweat almost immediately. I did, however, feel like a fish outta water floping around like crazy half the time. I am guessing the form will come with time.

I have had some great suggestions about the headaches. I will try a few different things and see if I can get those taken care of.

I am so ready to crawl into bed now and rest these sore muscles.

Day 4 ~ yeah right and Day 5

Sorry it has been a little while since my last blog. Let's discuss Day 4. Day 4 schedule was Yoga. Haha I lasted about 10 minutes and then had to quit. Yoga is extremely hard especially for us fat girls. When we have extra padding it is extremely hard to contort ourselves into the funny little positions. I'm not knocking yoga it really is hard and you have to have a lot of strength to do it. Strength I just don't have yet. Well during the 10 minutes that I actually attempted it, I strained my back a little. I was done after that and just did a little meditation and relaxation on the floor for all of about 5 minutes and then decided I cant do that either because I seem in capable of turning off my head. Apparently I am not one of those people who can just be. I ended up taking Sunday off because I didn't want to over do it and really injure my back.

I am back at it today though and on the agenda was back and legs and ab ripper x. Tons of squats, lunges, pull-ups, and wall holds. If you have been reading my blogs you know my philosophy on pull-ups (if not you should probably go back and read the first posts) so I'm not going to get into that. I was able to keep up relatively with the squats and lunges, but I couldn't go as deep or do quite as many. The wall squats (where you squat against the wall and hold a squat position) were a lot harder. Just like the pretest, I wasn't able to hold the position long at all. I stuck with it as long as I could each time though. Felt relatively as I was working the legs though (and doing the pull ups without actually doing them), especially while I was looking at my now tan legs thinking how great they are going to look when they are lean and muscular. Then came the ab ripper x. I swear that video mocks me. It is so intense and painful I'm not sure if I am ever going to be able to do it like I'm supposed to. I am getting better on some moves and being able to do more reps each time, there are the others that I am not able to do simply because my belly gets in the way of the move. I got tired of just waiting for them to be finished so we could move on to something else that I was actually able to do so I decided to improvise. I decided that when we are doing something I physically cannot complete, that I am going to do regular old crunches. That way the time isn't wasted and I can feel like I am accomplishing something. It feels good to be back into the P90X groove and I look forward to what tomorrow brings.


On a side note though I have been struggling with what I call a P90X headache....meaning every time I complete a session I get a headache that seems to last several hours. If anyone knows whats going on there feel free to let me know.....if you know me and your suggestion is to see a doctor then you don't know me well enough and if you don't know me and your suggestion is to see a doctor the answer is no. Don't have time or the patience for that until something is really wrong.

Day 3: Arms and Shoulders and OMG ABs again.

Well today was Arms and shoulders and it felt great. My family used to call me Sherah because I had such great upper body strength. but the last couple years I have lost quite a bit of muscle. It felt so good to be lifting weight again. It was 50 minutes straight of arm exercises and I did every rep with them (except for the chair assisted arm dips....fat girls have a hard time getting in that position). Of course I used a lower weight. At first I started using 3 lb weights and worked my way up to 6 lbs. I felt very good after this session. BUT..........then came Ab Ripper X and it still HURTS! I was able to do a couple more reps then I did on Tuesday, but it was still very difficult! This is one exercise program I do not look forward to. I look forward to what tomorrow brings.

Day 2 P90X. HOLY CRAP!

Well today was plyometrics.......I woke up put  the video in thinking what the heck is this. Well I was quickly informed. Its exercise that involves jumps. Fat girls cant jump. I wasnt going to give up without trying though so I warmed up with the video and then the fun began. What I noticed was that I could modify the moves by either only coming up onto my toes or doing very tiny jumps. There were a lot of squats and I couldnt go as low or as long as the people on the video, but I was doing it.

I would love to say that I made it all the way though the video, but I didnt. I pushed myself as hard as I could. I pushed myself past wanting to quit many times, but about 30 minutes into the video I started feeling very shaky and faint. I made the decision at that point that I had given my all and that it was time to stop before I hurt myself.

I do not feel like I gave up though. I feel like I did accomplish something today. I am over 100 pounds overweight and I hung in there for 30 minutes. I hung in there longer than I initially thought I would. I will keep plugging away at it and at some day I will get to the point where I can last the entire video!

Day 1: OMG Abs!

So today was my first day with P90X. According to the guide I was supposed to do the Chest and Back and Ab Ripper X. I put in the Chest and Back DVD first and was glad to see that they had a warm up section because I wanted to make sure I was stretching properly for what I was about to do. I was very surprised, however, when I was drenched in sweat immediately following the warm up. It did feel wonderful to stretch everything out though. The warm up lasted only about 10 minutes followed by about 45 minutes of push ups, pull ups and weights then a 5 minute cool down. The nice thing about P90X is that they dont have a set number of reps or a specific weight you are supposed to use. You set your own goal based on your ability. As I previously stated I was NOT going to subject my door frame to the torture of holding my body weight so I decided I was not going to be doing pull ups. I was surprised to see though that the video uses elastic bands as an alternative to normal pull ups. I didnt have elastic bands (yet) so I did the same movements without any resistance and I feel I still benefited from it. I was able to do most of the push up types they did, but I had to be on my knees and I could only do about 10. They did dive bomber pushups and reverse incline pushups that I absolutely COULD NOT do. Hopefully, I can work my way up to them though. The same things with the weight liftings. I was able to do them, but with a lower weight and less reps. Overall I was feeling GREAT after the Chest and Back part of the work out.

Then came Ab Ripper X. OMG!!!! OUCH!!! I couldnt even do half of this video. They were doing ab exercises that I have never even seen before. The men on there demostrating had abs of steel and were drenched in sweat and struggling. I was in way over my head. I tried to keep up and do at least 5 of each type (they were doing 25), but it was really hard and my belly and lack of flexibility got in the way from time to time, but I am hopefully over time it was get easier and I can do more.

It has only been about 20 minutes since I finished the work out and I can already feel the soreness creaping in. Hopefully I can move tomorrow because I AM NOT GIVING UP and look forward to what day 2 has to offer.

Day Before P90X and 293 lbs

Let me introduce myself. My name is Danielle and like many americans I am fat. At this point in my life I am not feeling a need to sugar coat it with words like chubby or overweight. I am fat and that is just what it is. I am less than 2 years from reaching 30 and tired of being fat so I have decided to try P90X. I have been told by many people that I cannot do this because it is such a hard workout and then there are others that try and be nice and tell me that I will be great at it. I know its going to be HARD. I know that I am going to want to quit and I know that I will NOT be able to do it all at once. If it wasnt hard I wouldnt be fat.

I received the P90X package in the mail on Friday, but havent had the chance to look at it yet because I was out of town. Today after work I opened up the package and read the materials, took the dreaded before pictures (which I will not be posting) and took the pre-test. The pre-test was a series of exercises that you should be able to do, at a minimum, before you are able to begin P90X. I did better than I thought.

The first exercise was a warm  up, which was pretty easy. I was a dancer for years, I ceratinly know how to jog in place and stretch for 10 minutes. I never broke a sweat while doing it before now, but at least I didnt pass out either. The second exercise was chin ups. They recommend that as a woman I should be able to do at least one.....I did 0. Actually I didnt even try, because I was not going to subject my doorway to this kind of torture. The third was to test how high i can jump. I had to be able to jump at least 3 inches. Pretty easy, even us fat people can jump 3 inches high once....25 times, maybe not. Then came toe touches and push ups and abdominal exercises...all of which i passed. However when we got to the part where they wanted me to hold a squat against the wall for 1 minute I lasted about 26 seconds. Then they wanted me to do jumping jacks for 2 minutes. Well in addition to being fat I am also very large chested so doing jumping jacks isnt exactly comfortable in any manner so I failed this one too. I only lasted a little over a minute.

Since I wasnt able to complete all of the tasks, the makers of P90X recommend that I do not try this exercise routine. I have never been one to follow directions though and I am going forward. Tomorrow will be my day one. Stay tuned to see how far I am able to push myself and if I actually survive.