P-LINDY-X, Week 9: Jumping and Crunching Finally Pay Off (Sort of).
by Robert White
Bobby “Extremely” White is currently in the middle of P90X, a 90-day work-out regimen that’s growing in popularity with swing dance instructors. Each week, he reviews one of the programs 12 exercises, and gives an update on how it’s going and where it hurts.
DAY 63
At the writing of this post, I had begun my final month of P90X, which starts off with a First Month workout week, followed by a Second Month work out week, and then repeats that, ending with a final recovery week.
I started off the third month reaching two big personal goals: I did a complete Ab-Ripper X workout without taking any breaks, and I did a really good, complete Plyo workout without taking any breaks.
For the Ab-Ripper goal, I was afraid that it would be awhile before I could do it all without breaks, because my back could never last through the little Bermuda triangle of Scissors/Hip Raise/Hip Pop, which takes place in the middle of the workout. But I did it, and though my form got a little sloppy towards the end of some of the work outs, and though it hurt a LOT finishing up the Hip Hops, I stuck with it. I never expected to get through it all, but, late one night, tired of taking breaks, I just tried to keep going. It somehow worked.
Completing Plyometrics with a hard workout and without a single extra break was equally surprising for me, mainly because it happened at 8 in the morning—a time I usually dedicate to drooling. When I usually do Plyo, I stop after the fifth set of excercises, because I think the sports bonus is a bit of a joke and doesn’t do much for me. I’ve done that without breaks for awhile now. But that day I knew we’d be traveling from ten in the morning to ten at night, and there was no other time to do my workout. So I woke up at 7:30, felt like death, shook the house a bit, and decided early that I was going to go straight through the sports bonus. It was a great way to start the month.
Workout breakdown: SHOULDERS, CHEST, AND TRICEPS.
This is the workout that kicks off the second month of P90X. (Basically, for the second month, all the other workouts are the same, except for two replacement upper body workouts; this one, and next week’s featured workout.) And, right from the beginning, it steps up the intensity from teh first month workouts. Aside from the usual chair dips and shoulder flies, it’s got all new sets of push-ups, as if you expected that Tony Horton ran out of push-up ideas. There’s one armed-push ups, Pike presses (sort of like doing push ups while staying in downward dog position), Floor Fly Push-Ups, and, of course, the flash and trash of the push-up world, the Plyometric Push-Up.
Near the end of the DVD, it’s time to do Plyo push ups, and Tony steps up. “Bob’s going to do them on his knees, Vasquez’ll do them hard core, and I’m going to show you extreme.” He then gets on the ground and pushes his body into the air, whipping his feet off the ground, claps, and comes back down. He does twenty of them. What you probably don’t realize the first time you see this incredible feat, is that for the previous forty minutes Tony has been doing nothing but checking up on people, maybe getting in one or two reps himself, and not even breaking a sweat. He works a lot less in this workout than other ones, it seems to me. Granted it’s still a pretty awesome thing to watch, and after I’ve done my three (Third month update: 8!), I’ll sit and watch him do the rest, amazed at this ultimate body-builder’s stupid-human trick.
Also, this video gets props for including a middle-aged woman who is a lot more like the average human than the circus aerialist Dreya. And that middle-aged woman brings it.
The Next Day, you feel pretty chiseled. That’s the good thing about the month 2 exercises, they really make whatever muscles you do have bulge out.
TOTAL ABS RIPPED: I realized there was a terrible error in my calculations over the past month. The real number is 7,329
X-TREME COSTS
Hopefully, I’m done buying stuff for awhile, except for protein. $50
TOTAL COST SO FAR: Approx. $1,290
