Day 51: Kitten photos

I figured I'd let everyone see my new kitty. I know it's not fitness or P90X related, but who cares! A little background story... I offered to accept this cat from a co-worker whose parents were deathly alergic to him. But between the time I offered to take him in, and the day he arrived at my house... my childhood cat (cuddles) passed away at the age of 21. Thus making the arrival of this kitten that much more special to me. Also, I didn't know this when I accepted him, he LOOKS a lot like my old cat, granted about 20 years younger. Enjoy the pics! I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot more about him in the future.

Currently he is without name:

Day 50+ Took a few days off - Kitten has arrived

Sorry for anyone who reads my blog on a daily basis, I missed a couple days (Mainly Thursday through Sunday). I was pre-occupied, lazy, and just not motivated to write anything. But now that I'm back I figure I should let you know what happened over the weekend.

1. I took a well deserved 4 days off working out! I'm not upset or proud about this, I just needed some non-workout days. I'm on week 8 of P90X+ and I haven't had any real rest days since the new program started.

2. I went out and purchased some new clothes. I didn't buy any pants, which are the worst fitting clothing items I have, but I did buy some new dress shirts and such.

3.The kitten is here! He came over the weekend. From the picture I posted, I thought he was going to be grey. It turns out he's an orangy/white mix. I didn't see that one coming. He's very cute and friendly.

4. Continuing the kitchen renovations. The cabinets and trim were finished quite a while ago. But we started taking down wallpaper and plan to soon paint the walls/doors, completing the project.

5. Back on the chemicals for another 28-30 days.

I'll try to target some posts around the new kitten in the near future. I've got some photos and stories alraedy, just need to get them online...

Legs and back today.

Day 49+ And we're back

Yesterday's TND was delicious. I had never cooked ribs before, but they were wonderful. Unfortunately, no opportunities to workout yesterday, so we'll just forget about that today and press forward like nothing happened.

At work I have been consuming more coffee than normal, perhaps I should blame Starcraft 2 for being up a little later than normal each night, or perhaps I'm just getting "cravings" regularly, but I have discovered it's not crappy coffee at work (although it still isn't great), it's actually crappy creamer. So I've axed that portion of my coffee and switched over to just plain sweetner (sucralose/splenda). Even though it's not water, I guess you could argue it's not BAD for you... I'm at one or two cups a day. Perhaps I should kick the habit before I go back on creatine - which suggests not consuming many diuretics.

Next week will be kitten week. I hope to still be able to hit the gym, but I think I'll be excited to head home early to check on him and play. I'll play it by ear.

Day 49+ Going to have to skip :-(

I have a lot of housework that needs to get done prior to the arrival of my Tuesday Night Dinner (TND) friends. On a normal basis, I would be going to the gym for about 1hour then heading home to start cooking, today I have at least an hour's worth of organizing/cleaning to do. Which means I will have to put today's CST (chest/shoulder/tri) workout off til another day - or just scrap it all together.

Yesterday's photo of Tobias did not come out very well, so I will try it again here:


I weighed in at 151lbs this morning. Down a few lbs, but I think I've actually lost a bit of muscle mass in the past few days, since I haven't been hitting the weights as rigorously as normal. Hopefully when I get back on the supplements I'll get back up to speed and this funk that I'm in will end.

Day 48+ Legs and Back

It turns out that 30% of Americans have a blog, and 20 years ago nobody did... it's a random factoid. I heard it in the radio as I was coming to work. I haven't verified it but I have no reason to dispute the claim.

My weekends remain lazy. Granted one of the days is a rest-day anyway, I just always feel that my weekend activities and eating don't really conform to the exercise/nutrition P90X suggests. It's not really a bad thing, but I just feel a bit guilty.

This will be my 2nd week off the chemicals. I plan on getting back on them either late this week or early next week. I look forward to it, I think they really do help me get in those extra reps.

**There is a bundle of joy on the way** No I'm not having a child, but I will be adopting a 5mo. old cat from a friend whose parents are deathly allergic to cat-dander. So I'm sure you'll be reading about the mayhem and the mischief my new friend will be getting into. I hope he behaves.

Day 46+ Kenpo Cardio X

Today I get to do one of my favorite workouts - KENPO. I don't know why I like it so much, but it's just fun and easy to do and the next thing you know, it's over and you're all gross and sweaty. The only downside is I never get to do it at home, since I'm always moving around on the weekends. But throw in a couple 3lb weights and you got yourself one fun, yet serious workouts.

I mentioned this before, but the creatine monohydrate and JACK3d have really motivated me to keep up the workload. I'm finding this week has been rather lazy (both at the gym and getting to the gym) which makes me wonder if these chemicals actually HELP in motivating me to workout.

No ab-ripper tonight. I've been doing it pretty much daily during the work week up til today. I think I need to start adding resistance, because I'm no longer getting skinnier (I don't know how much more I can lose), but the abdominal muscles aren't getting any more defined. Perhaps a medicine ball or some additional moves are in order.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Day 44+ and 45+ Half Way - Day of Caring and Platelets

Yesterday was the anual Day of Caring, where companies all over Western NY get volunteers together and go work on community projects throughout the region and help clean things up or accompany kids to the park or train unemployeed people how to act in an interview. Depending what your skill set is, and what you sign up for, it's a great opportunity to reach out to the community. It's also a great way to take a day off work! So yesterday I spent my whole morning cleaning up Gallagher Beach, picking out trash from the rocks and raking up sea weed (interesting side note: what are the rules with sea-weed? If it's from a lake... is it still SEA weed? or is it LAKE weed?) It was physically demanding, it wasn't P90X, but I'm going to consider it as a workout day, only because I would have otherwise been sitting on my butt for 8hrs at work, not getting any exercise.

Immediately following my Day of Caring activities, I went to the red cross to donate platelets - I racked up some big points on the charity scale yesterday. So workout out really wasn't an option anyway. They're offering "A netbook-a-day" for platelet donors. The staff at the clinic already told me "Enter on a Sunday... that way you have the best chances of winning." Hopefully they haven't been telling everyone else that... it would be neat to win something!

Today will be another P90X at the gym day. My schedule is a little messed up since I did the trainer's exercises so perhaps today I'll take it easy and do shoulders/arms. Who knows, I guess I'll do whatever feels good when I arrive at the gym.

My weight has been around 151 recently. This morning I was 152.5lbs, but yesterday I was 150.0lbs. Being off the chemicals, I've noticed that I'm less EXCITED about going to the gym. But that's probably all plaecebo effets, I can't imagine creatine making me want to work out, more than the fact I'm taking creatine so in my mind I SHOULD work out... or maybe it's the Hulk Drink, who knows. Either way, it's a difference.

Day 43+ Was that a train or a bus that hit me?

Does it matter? I was hit by a trainer, a far worse scenario. So 1 hour with the trainer, and this is after I made him do about 120 pullups/lunges/pushups. He knows I can take a beating, and he came back with a vengeance.

(I wrote down all the moves we did... but I left it in my gym bag)

For starters we did about 5minutes of stretching and quick chatting. Then he reached into his bag'o tricks and pulled out a 20ft long (what looked like sailing rope) but was actually a bungee. He had me first go through a series of Judo moves "Grab'n throw" style stuff 15 times over each shoulder. Then into swimming, skiing, curls, extensions, flies, press with no rest in between and each exercise he kept taking a step back making the bungee even more taught.

Then, he throws me the heaviest medicine ball in the gym and says "Squat-jump-shoot" and when I shoot, he'll pass me a smaller medicine ball and catch the heavy one. Making this an alternating weight squat-jump-press. 20 reps. I was already dead. But we went straight into lunge-twists, holding the medicine ball. 20 each side. How I survived, I'll never know.

Without a stop we went down to the floor, pushup-tear downs (here comes the revenge for the large amounts of pushups I made him go through), except these tear downs were 5 second rest between sets of 25, 20, 15, 10, and 5. The 15's and 10's were my worst. But it totalled 75 pushups straight.

I think I at this point I grabbed some water. I was pretty sweaty. But then we hit the floor for some abs. We did jack-knifes 4 ways, but the one that I remember most vividly was the medicine ball in my hands (heavy) and the smaller one between my ankles. Then going full extension and then curling up to the ceiling. But I also did 1 leg jack-knife, side jack-knife, and alternating 1hand-1leg jack-knife.

Balance lunge on ball - yeah finally something I'm familiar with. This one was actually okay. He had me hold + curl 15lb weights, which I was okay with. Following that I did super-skaters holding a 12.5lb weight then doing a knee-lift press during the up-swing of the super skater. I actually took this time to catch up with myself, because I am pretty toasty at this point.

Then we hopped back to abs. Plank/sphinx/knee-tuck on the ball for 90 seconds. Then to plank 60 seconds. 1 leg plank 30sec each side. to mountain climber (alternating fast-feet in from a pike-position).

Then we rounded it all off with some super-sets on the exercise ball 15lbs(heavy) 10lbs(light) 20reps each time for each exercise... Arnold-Press (shoulder press with a twist at the bottom) 20x15lbs + 20x10lbs, to bicep curls 20x15lbs + 20x10lbs, to alternating shoulder press 20x15lbs + 20x10lbs, to alternating bicep curls 20x15lbs + 20x10lbs, to peck-flies 20x15lbs + 10x15lbs, to triceps extensions 20x15lbs + 20x10lbs, to finally close-grip press 20x15lbs + 20x10lbs. Please let it be over...

Thankfully it was. It took about 50minutes and we took some time at the end to stretch and go over all the moves we did. I think we totalled about 25moves. But a lot of them were LONG! But man o man I was pooped at the end.

I think I'll do legs and back today.

Day 42+ Paintball weekend

Saturday, I went paint balling. I even have some welts to prove it. But it was a lot of fun. It's a shame it only lasted for two hours, but if it were to go any longer... I'd need to find a second job because, unbeknownst to me, paint balls are pretty expensive (in the ballpark of $0.10 per ball). I guess they are actually much cheaper - but when you buy them on-site, they raise the prices on you.

Today I get to workout with the trainer again, this time he'll be training me. I look forward to learning some new tricks. Nothing terribly new to report... Except for maybe: Starcraft2 is slowly taking over my life, and I've only thus far played the Terran race. See, now even my fitness blog is talkin' about it! Oh this is bad, I need help.

Day 39+ Kenpo Cardio Plus - au naturale

Yesterday's training went well. The only snag I ran into was the loss of the pullup-bar which weighted heavily on legs for the first 10minutes or so and then weighted heavily for the back in the last 10 minutes. At least the middle was relatively normal. The trainer was very impressed with some of the more coordination oriented moves. He said that he'd likely try to perfect them and teach them to some people, which is cool. He also said that after seeing my workout today, he has Monday's training session already planned out - I think I'm going to be doing a lot of pullups, because I think he got the vibe I'm really into them, which I kinda am.

Paintballing this weekend. First time actually going paintballing with a group of people. I've shot the guns before and played capture the flag, but never together at the same time. Should be pretty exciting.

No More Chemicals:
These next two weeks or so, I am not going to be taking any of my workout enhancement chemicals. No creatine monohydrate, no JACK3D, no protein shakes. This is all because I want to avoid dependency. When you're on a product for a long period of time, your body can 'forget' how to produce those chemicals naturally (or produces it but at a reduced rate, since you have an external source). So the next two weeks will be me doing all the normal workouts without help and my body will have to figure out how to function on its own again. I'm also a bit concerned with the caffeine dependency from JACK3D. Every Friday (when I don't workout immediately following work) I have an afternoon lull that kicks in right around when I would be taking Jack3D, and since it's loaded with caffeine, it's like I'm missing my morning coffee. With that, I'll be shelving my products - also known as: The Hulk Drink, Juice, Roids, etc. I'll keep you updated when I'm about to get back on them - plus if I notice any major differences... next couple posts could be very interesting.

Metal vs Physical?

I've been answering a lot of yahoo answers (top contributor diet/fitness). And I find more often than not I answer people's diet questions with answers that involve mental strength more than physical prowess. Why? Well think about it, pain is in the mind, scheduling, goal setting, ambitions, your ideal physique... are all in the mind. So when you work out, if you're not mentally prepared to change the way you eat/take care of yourself, you'll never make it. So I've decided to share that with some people here. Diet&Fitness - its more than just getting your body in shape, it's getting your mind straightened out too!

Day 38+ Tony Horton wanabee?

Today's the day I get to train somebody! Not just anybody, but somebody who knows a thing or two about fitness. It almost feels like I'm taking an exam or a competency test, but the bright side... I'm prepared. I put together a list of exercises for he and I to do, I did weigh it heavily on pushups/legs. But I've got some random abs and other strange goodies in there. Then I finish off with my modified Ab-ripper-X (which is basically the same thing but with scisor climber instead of leg-climber).

1. Military Pushups (25)
2. Wide-front Pull ups (20)
3. 80-20 Speed Squats (15/15jump)
4. Diamond Pushups (25)
5. Corn-Cob Pullups (10)
6. Super-Skaters (20/side)
7. Dive Bomber Pushups (20)
8. Warrior Bows (20/side)
9. One Leg Deadlift Squats (20/side)
10. Wide-Fly Pushups (30)
11. Close-Grip Chinups (25)
12. Balance Lunges (25/side)
13. Spiderman Pushups (20)
14. Switch-Grip Chinups (14)
15. Sneaky Lunges (20)
16. 1-arm balance pushup (20)
17. Max-Rep Pullups (your choice)
18. Plyometric Pushup (12)
19. Calf Raises (15slow/10fastx3ways)
20. Heavy-Pants (40lbs/16 times)

**AB WORKOUT EXTRA**

1. In-and-Outs (25)
2. Bicycles (25)
3. Crunchy Frog (25)
4. Wide-leg Situps (12/side)
5. Fifer Scisors (30count)
6. Hip Raise (25)
7. Heels 2 Heavens (25)
8. V-up Roll-up (26 total)
9. Oblique V-up (25/sdie)
10. Scisor climber (25count)
11. Russian Twists (50)

Then on Monday he's going to give me a 1hr free fitness instructing - which is kinda cool. So next two workouts at the gym will be strange, to say the least!

Day 37+ Training the Trainer...

Let me explain. So previously I had told you that one of the trainers at the gym wanted me to become a trainer. That's cool. Well now a different trainer wants me to show him some of the things I do for 1 hour on Thursday. In return he'll show me some things (without a trainer fee) on Monday. So that's kinda cool. But now the question becomes, what do I show him?

I was thinking I would do a mixed version of all the best P90X exercises that don't require weights. Things like super-skaters, corn-cob pullups, 80-20 debie seiber squats, widefly-pushups, diamond pushups, divebomber pushups, side-tri-rise, side to side pushups, balance pushups, plyo pushups, chinups, pullups, deadlift squats, who knows? Whatever I put together needs to last about 1hr though. And they've gotta be good!

It'll be my turn to be Tony Horton for a day! WOOHOO. That means I get to say random nonsensical gibberish "DIAMONDS OF GOLD!"

Day 36+ Something

For some reason the blog was busted for a minute or two... It seems to be working now. Today will be Legs&Back. My weight today is 150.5lbs. Up 4lbs from day 110.

Day 36+ Chemical Carl + Pictures

So let's see how these chemicals that I have been taking have added or subtracted from the overall P90X experience in picture form... What we have here are day 1 P90X+ photos and Day 30 P90X+ photos. I can clearly tell I have bulked up, hopefully you can tell too.

Day 35+ Pics on the way Chest&Back

I took the day 30photos yesterday, I was too lazy to put them up in a post and now I am at work. So tonight I'll throw the photos up from Round 2 - Phase 1. I think the results are reasonable, I'm definitely a bit bigger.

What's going on these days? A guy at the gym on Thursday asked if I was "shredding"? I didn't know what that was, so I told him I was doing P90X. I haven't really determined what shredding is, but now that I've had some time to think about it, I bet it's just losing a lot of weight. "Fat Shredder" phase? perhaps he was referring to P90X the whole time and wanted to know if I was in phase#1, who knows? Regardless, I'm out of phase 1 now and into phase 2. Bring on the pain-train.

Because I have been doing the P90X+ program so willy-nilly, it's difficult to say if I will see much difference between phases. But maybe I should get my trolley back on the tracks and start pounding away these PLUS programs? Abs Core +, Kenpo+, Upper+, Total Body+...

Day 32+ Kenpo Cardio X plus

Here goes my 2nd round with Kenpo Cardio X. It should be fun, last time I really enjoyed it. But I was sweating to the oldies like Richard Simmons! Speaking of which, I wonder where Richard is these days. He was super popular in the late 80's early 90's you could consider him the Tony Horton of his time. Oh well, I'm sure he's out there somewhere comforting fat women and maintaining his afro in his pile of money.

Yesterday's workout was fantastic. You know, really all the workouts this week I felt very pleased with. Pushed myself really hard, did all the reps I had previously done, and sometimes I even increased the weights. I'm definitely thinking I'm gaining some bulk... It's been very difficult for me to dip below 150lbs, which means at minimum I think I've gained 3-4lbs.

Sunday will be a bit of a challenge. I won't have a pullup bar or access to the gym, so I might miss a day. But tomorrow I plan on taking day 30 photos and post them up on the blogosphere. I've got my fingers crossed for some decent results. My day 110 photos were awesome.

One final note... I got a wedding invitation the other week and in the response line there was this M____________________ section. I didn't know what it was for, so I looked it up, it was a place to put your name down, but it was too late, I already filled it with the most appropriate M-word I could find: Maritodespotism, meaning "Tyrannical ownership of a woman by a husband". Yay for having too much free time!

Day 31+ Back and Bicep

Random story I heard on the news on my drive to work: 5hour Energy has taken on a lawsuit of $105million because there is a claim that the energy drink has caused a heart attack in a young-man. Insane! I always see the ads on the internet and see them at the checkout counter as I'm leaving the grocery store. Hard to imagine those little bottles of vitamins + caffeine could give somebody (without a pre-condition) a heart attack. That's like having a morning starbucks coffee give you a heart attack... could you really file a lawsuit against coffee? Oh wait, they did back in 1994 Liebeck vs Mcdonalds for 2.86million, and that didn't even involve a death. The joys of the judicial system.

In other news, trying my best to bring my weight down back to normal P90X graduate weights (below 150). I'm hanging in there from my binge weekend, but only by a thread. The last two days workouts were tough ones, although I thought I did an exceptional job yesterday with CST. One handed pushups anyone? Managed to muscle out 12 per side, a new record.

I've swapped out leg climber for scissor climber in abripperX. I learned it from Ab-core Plus. You do a leg climber, then while in half-boat, swap legs and come down with the opposite leg up in half-boat. It's quite nice. Very ab-tastic. And I have been adding some hanging leg-raises to the tail end of the AbripperX, just because I think they are good for my lower abs, which have been the last things to really show. We'll see how that all works in a couple weeks.

All my fallen trees/branches have been picked up. Thank you town traffic department.

Been playing starcraft 2 in the late afternoons, been a lot of fun so far!

Day 30+ Chest/Shoulders/Tris

Thankfully, work really puts me back on my eating schedule. If it wasn't for the structured daily habits of waking up at 6:45am, having lunch at 12:00pm, leaving work at 5:00pm and eating dinner after the gym 7:30pm, I don't know how I would even be able to maintain a diet at all.

Legs and back yesterday was pretty rough. It's amazing how a couple lazy days really makes you remember how hard some of these workouts can be. All the more reason to stick to the program I guess.

I saw some kids at the gym doing AbripperX, I know it was abripper because they started doing the V-up roll-up, and seriously, who's going to do that unless they're doing P90X. So I talked to them and asked what week they were on. Turns out they were on week #3. So good for them! I hope they make it through!

I somehow managed to become a top-contributor on yahoo answers for Diet & Fitness. That's never happened to me before, but it's cool that I got that little orange bubble so people will actually read my responses! But it probably also means I should be doing more work at work and less answering people's fitness questions (doh!).

It's already Wednesday, and I am 30 days into P90X round2, but I want to keep everyone waiting for day 30photos because I have taken so many days off in the past week. I'll post them on Saturday! But it's amazing that I'm already 1/3rd done!

Day 29+ Vacation is Over

I'm back from the Beach-House. I feel fantastically relaxed and happy. My liver, on the other hand, seems to believe it needs another vacation to recuperate from the previous 5 days. I certainly did not exercise or follow any nutritional guidelines over the long weekend... in fact I drank more soda, ate more chips, and consumed more carbohydrates than the whole of 2010. Sad to see the scale tell me I was 153.5lbs this morning, well over my previous weigh in, but we'll see what happens tomorrow after I workout today and get back on track with eating healthy.

I'll definitely have to tack on a few extra days at the end of the program to make up for this weekend's antics. I'm starting to feel a bit nervous about day 30photos being worse than day 1 photos after this weekend... Perhaps I'll wait till Saturday to take the photos, as usual. At least that way I'll give myself 4 days to get back into shape. I want to be accountable for my actions... but not THAT accountable! Plus nobody wants to see pictures of a fat-guy (we had this discussion at the beach - how fat men can go without a shirt...)

My chili peppers are LIMP AND DYING! I though I had a watering system figured out, looks like I did not! All the leaves are limp and wilty, I'm hoping that by this afternoon, they'll perk back up from this morning's watering... but who knows? It might be the end for them!

Oh and Starcraft 2 is out and installed on my computer! I didn't play it at all this weekend, but the intention will be to play it at least once a night! Pretty much everyone I know has it now so there will be lots of opportunities to play with friends! Yay!

Now I need to convince myself to work... Legs/Back Today