New Year's Ponderings

Happy new year everyone! Hope you're looking forward to the new year as much as I am...

Well, the holidays and holiday traveling wreaked havoc on our little P90X workout schedule. We started out doing pretty well... We decided to postpone our Yoga X before our flight on Friday till our rest day, but then we did our Core Synergistics the next day, at Big E's parents house and Kenpo X the next day. Then it began to fall apart a bit. On Christmas eve, we did the Yoga X as planned but dropped out the corpse and oms. Then came Christmas and between hustling back and forth between both families, we decided to skip the Chest Shoulder & Triceps.

The next day should have had us right back on track with Cardio X, but somehow we were so wiped out from all the hustling about and merry-making, we mutually agreed to skip it. By the 27th, we decided this week was a bust and skipped the Back & Biceps. Given that we've never missed more than one workout this entire time, that week was unprecedented. The next day we were traveling back, and next thing you know, the week is over. Oh well. At least I managed to get in a 10 miler in on Sunday and Big E played beach ulti on Saturday, so we didn't completely end the year as lazy lumps.

Yesterday was the rest day and in theory, today we start up again, as strong as ever to make up for our failings last week. Today's workout is Chest & Back and Ab Ripper and we're off!

We've been discussing the P90X lean and the P90x schedule, as I've begun setting up our calendar for the next cycle, when we move up to the standard P90x plan, and we've come to the conclusion that the beachbody concept isn't exactly what either of us is going for. The focus on upper body, while useful in many ways, isn't our main interest. We don't so much want to look good as want to be strong and supported in our chosen sports (and it wouldn't hurt to look good while doing it). For example, we'd be more interested in more Legs & Back workouts, but not quite as many Chest, Shoulders, Triceps, Biceps, etc. variations. We also feel that we could use more Core Synergistics than are offered in the standard P90X plan, where they only show up in the rest week.

So I've decided I'm going to revisit the plan before we begin it on January 22nd, and cater it a bit more to our shared interests. Along those same lines, I've spoken to many friends who are interested in checking out the P90X workouts but don't necessarily have the 6 days a week to give to it. While I'd agree that in order to maximize your benefits from the plan, it's best to try to adhere to its guidelines as closely as possible, I think it's also important to also be realistic. Doing Ab Ripper 5 days a week isn't going to to much for you, but doing 3-4 workouts a week can still give very good results, especially if the workouts are carefully selected to be complimentary and balanced. So over the next few weeks, I plan to put together some alternative schedules that will offer a variety of timing options as well as slightly different focus depending on what the end goal might be.

Tamsen and I also have some exciting news coming up for you guys, our lovely readers, so tune in soon for our upcoming announcement!