Embarking on a New 90-day Plan!

Tamsen and I are yet again challenging ourselves and each other to a new 90-plan.
We're challenging you as well!

I think I know what mine's gonna be - here's a hint, though I'm going to leave the specifics to later.

In the interim, tell us what you look for in a workout plan: workout types, variety, length, focus, general goals, etc...

A Creature of Whim

What's the opposite of habit? I looked everywhere and couldn't find a good antonym. What I'm trying to say is I'm not a creature of habit. Repetition bores me. Which is why I keep swapping out workout plans. ALL the time!

The only thing I seem to be able to do repetitively is run. So my workout routine will always have a certain amount of running. But it helps that it's usually training for a specific goal, like a marathon.

These days, since I'm in travel-mode (Again! Still!) I've been limited yet again to workouts that are portable and equipment-free.

Here's what I've been doing: 3 days a week, I run. Twice, I run for about 4 miles, then on the weekend I do a longer run (I'm currently working my way back up again, so I just did 7 miles this past sunday and plan to do 8 or 9 this coming sunday). I keep meaning to add a 20 minute interval run, but I've yet to work that in. Maybe today will be the day...

In addition to that, I've been intermittently (about 3 times a week) doing the Nike Yoga for Runners, which I bought on iTunes, by Kimberly Fowler - a 15-20 minute yoga stretching routine.

I usually also do a core workout: P90X Core Synergistics or Yogamazing podcast for example. An upper body workout, often also from Yogamazing. And then I through in P90X Cardio X or Kenpo X for good measure. Other than the running, I usually let my mood, work schedule and the way my body's feeling dictate what I'll do that day. And I've been pretty good at keeping it to 6 workout days a week.

So, any of you folks out there the "non-habit" types? How do you switch up your routine?
Or if you're doing P90X or P90X+, do you ever stray and create your own workout combo? What do you like to do?

Reality hits the mat with you

Starting over is not the easiest thing.  I've moved from an apartment to a room,  I'm thinking of leaving a fairly secure job, family may require me to leave my favorite city for one that's blech in comparison. Why is it all of those seem easier than putting my mind to dropping pounds and increasing fitness?

My demons chasing the reality of rebuilding fitness:

This feels like hell > > > Hey, guess what feels like hell? Being older, stiffer and losing capability.

I used to be able to do all this stuff so easily > > > So get there already.

This is silly, all this effort. "No one dies of physical fitness"! > > > Shut up and Spin, dummy.

That chick on the machine next to me...she's working harder. She thinks I'm lame. > > > You are lame, right up to the moment you kick it into a higher gear. Cut your own path.

The reality is: It is harder, fitness wanders off unless you keep it close, and yeah, pretty much anyone could kick your ass if they wanted to.

But do it because it's harder. Keep it close because your body is a damn good friend. And cheer on any woman you see sweating it up - the other unfortunate reality is, bouncing off the Fat Wall happens more often to us than it needs to.  Be the change....be the change...

I *heart* Jay Blahnik!

A while back, I participated in the Nike+ world race 10k, where you run from wherever you are. I happened to join a friend and go to our local Niketown where they had a course laid out from there, although you could really just run wherever you wanted.

It was well worth going to Niketown, they had all kinds of treats, gave out goody bags and had snacks at the finish!! All the things I love in a race :)

Best of all, as a reward for signing, you got a nike audio training mix, a 40 minute training workout that got you prepped for the 10k. I didn't actually download it till way after the race, but then when I was in Cyprus, I loaded up my ipod & tested it out for the first time.

It totally rocks!!! A 40 minute interval workout, hosted by Jay Blahnik. He starts you off with a 5 minute warmup (where he doesn't talk much, just tells you what to do then lets the music help set the pace), then a 10 minute sustained pace run, then one minute on, one minute off intervals with corresponding music. The music is great! And varied! And different!

And the workout isn't easy, though of course it really depends on how hard you push yourself for those intervals. Though I for one am much better at pushing myself harder if someone's telling me when to start and stop, to keep going, etc.

I looooove this workout and have since done it many time! Around the same time I also got a 20 minute quick run from the same folks. While Big E says it's great, I don't usually go out for 20 minute runs. But who knows, maybe I'll try it one day.

Move It and/or Lose It

Surely, when they update definitions in the Oxford Dictionary, this one should be added:

Desk Job/faet' aess/ (n)

1. Work that involves long hours at a desk.
2. An involuntary method of adding flab and increasing one's BMI.

As I sit here typing this, I can grab my gut with one hand, squish it like kneaded dough, lift it off my thighs, and swing it around like Jeter at home plate.

Homer said it best: "Wu-HOO! Lookit that blubber fly!!" (that's a direct quote from The Iliad.) I've been in this uncomfortable place before, misquoting ancient Greeks and playing with my belly fat. The last time was 8 years ago, just before I decided to take action by joining a marathon training program...which resulted the gain of an additional ten pounds.

Yeeeaaaah.

Now, of course, I know better - it's a balance between food and activity, one dependent upon the other. And I know why every fitness and health magazine cover has at least one blaring-red tease touting flatter stomachs and faster weight loss: The real formula for having the body you want - you, individually - is unique, somewhat complex, and a real PITA to figure out.

There are some decent solutions you can throw at the yoga mat to see if they stick, and we've investigated some of them here. But if you're anything like me, you really, really get into it for a while and then after the 100th mile, the 150th salad or the millionth sit-up, you hit the wall. Suddenly, you want every future Sunday morning to be snuggles and lolling instead of heart rate and Clif shot.

I thought that was OK for a while, and enjoyed not measuring my life by zones and tempos. But it wasn't worth the trade - I grow older, and my fitness declines faster with each year. There's no pause button on this machine, you either keep it moving or lose the ability.

So here I am, starting over, as I said I would over the past months but took no action until now. A motivating desire for fitness is just another wall you have to hit. The wall that is sprayed with tags: "The longer you wait, the longer it takes;" "Aging = Stiffness" and "Nothing changes until you change your mind." It's not inspiration, it's reality. The wall says You Do Not Want To Be That Person.

I've been that person. I love my Sunday mornings. But my Saturday mornings are about miles, supplements, sweat and rediscovered joy.

P90X+ Kenpo Cardio Plus

I know I've mentioned before my love for Kenpo X. The punching, the kicking, the grunting... good stuff. I really do love it. So naturally it follows that once Big E and I came whimpering back out of the cave we've been hiding in ever since we tried (and failed) at P90X+ first attempted workout: Total Body Plus, Kenpo Cardio + seemed like a better first pick.

And it was: The workout was shorter than the Kenpo X (probably because Tony takes longer to explain the moves in the first one. In this one, he flips through them pretty quickly) but still action-packed with loads of fun kicking and punching. And this time, it comes with flashy new names, like The Gladiator and Spinning Swords. So much fun!

Overall, I don't feel that I was sweating as much as I was in Kenpo X, though I'm not sure why and part of me did wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that I'm not in as good shape as I was when I last did Kenpo X, thus not quite as capable of pushing myself as hard. It could also be that having to understand new moves for the first time kept me from working out as hard.

Regardless, it's a keeper! I loved it and it'll definitely jump into my workout repertoire.

What I did on My Trip to Cyprus...

As I mentioned a while back, I went to Cyprus for work for several weeks and was debating how to work out while I was there. Several of you had some very handy suggestions... Some of them were totally doable, others were maybe more applicable to traveling in the US and staying in hotels. (I'm just guessing here... I don't do that for work very often.)

So here's how the fitness game played out for me. I went to Cyprus to start editing a documentary. I knew I had a ton of work to do and limited time in which to do it. This translated to many many long hours spend sitting at my computer, for days on end.

The first several weeks, my working out was intermittent. No matter what I told myself at the start of the trip, heading into it, once on the ground nothing could pull me away from the looming mountain of work that needed sorting through. I'd get to the computer in the morning and work straight through till 1:30pm when my director showed up. We'd have lunch together and then edit until 8:30pm or so, when it was time for dinner. Occasionally, we'd go back to work after dinner. The working out wasn't really happening. I'd squeak in a run maybe in the morning, but that only happened 2 or 3 times those first couple of weeks.

In addition to that, I was being fed 3 meals a day by a fantastic cook (the director's mother) who was intent on teaching me about Cypriot cuisine. Which is delicious. This didn't help me stay in shape though.

My last 10 days there, my aching, stiff, tensed up body finally caused me so much pain (and actually threatened me with a gun) that I figured out a way to make the working out and working work out for me. (Was that too much work? I thought so. My apologies)

Here's what I did:
Every evening, if it got to be 7pm and I hadn't done a workout yet that day, I would tell my director that no matter what, I had to go get a workout in an hour before dinner was served. That resolved the timing issue. She was understanding.

The next issue was what workout to do. The obvious easy answer was running. There was a lovely trail right near my house that was beautiful and filled with other walkers, runners, bikers and mysteriously, kittens. Lots of kittens. They occasionally attacked but not in any seriously harmful way. So I ran about every other day, but I wanted a more balanced workout regimen.

I didn't have weights: couldn't bring them with me and didn't really have the knowledge or flexibility or frankly the desire to spend euros on weights I would abandon at the end of the trip. Unfortunately, this eliminated a lot of the P90X workouts. The other limitation was time: I really didn't have the luxury of doing Yoga X, while I would have loved to, for 2 reasons: one was that it's an hour and a half and that was just too long for me to take during our joint workout time. (Also, please don't tell me I should have gotten up in the morning and done it before work. I'm not a morning person at the best of times and given the difficulty of the topic I was working, I wasn't really sleeping well, so that made waking up all the more difficult).
The other was that the intensity of my work schedule was messing up my wrists again and I didn't have my Push up bars for all the downward dogs. Ouch!

The only plausible P90X that really left me was Cardio X (well, Core Synergistics was also an option but that also had too many push ups for my wrists). So I started my 10 day program with that. The next day was a long run. So far though, that doesn't leave too much variety if I just alternate the two.

That's when I discovered this new concept, something I'd never done before. It solved all my basic problems: variety to keep the workouts interesting, variety to also shift the focus on different parts of my body, flexible timing so that I could fit in a workout in the amount of time that I had, something that I could do from my living room in Cyprus without having to purchase or bring something with me...

The answer was Podcasts! I browsed around in iTunes and discovered that there are tons of workout podcasts out there... It's amazing! While I was there, I found two yoga podcasts and a pilates one. The workouts are as long as 30 minutes or so and as short as 3 minutes: just one move. You can find workouts to stretch your body post run, workouts to strengthen your core, release your office stress, sleep better, upper body, lower body, morning wake up (yeah right!)... The options are endless.

So now, on alternating days, when I wasn't running or doing CardioX (which I still love), I selected around 30-50 minutes worth of yoga and pilates to satisfy whatever I felt my body was missing, workout-wise. It was fantastic.

The podcasts I enjoyed were:
* Yogamazing: This is the one I used the most.
* Yoga Today: Liked Adi, not so much Sarah Kline, or at least not her workout for walkers and hikers.
* Pilates on Fifth: Pretty good 30-min workout, though they occasionally say "do the same on the other side," so you have to hop up and pause it to do that, which sucks.

These are just quick first impressions. I'm going through the workouts and will have more details on them soon. But on the whole: great resource, greatly varied, can access it from anywhere and doesn't need equipment (well, I did have a borrowed yoga mat, but could do it without).

What about y'all? Any workout podcasts I should know about?