P90X

In her previous post, Sara alluded to both my working out. So, as not to leave all of our blog followers hanging any longer, here's the follow-up.

I quit playing Ultimate seriously in August 2007. At that point I was in pretty good physical shape - I weighed around 167lb, and as we'd trained pretty seriously for the Peachtree Road Race that previous July, I had a pretty good base of endurance. I was practicing or playing Ultimate at least twice/week and doing at least weekly track workouts and felt good. I kept up training for a few weeks after that but then, without a specific goal to motivate me, I stopped. Every few months since then I would occasionally start "working out" (typically running 2-3 miles a few times a week) but that would last for a few weeks or a month at most and then peter out. It was particularly hard during the Spring when I was coaching and working. Between the two I was working from 7am-8pm or later and didn't have the time or energy for conditioning.

At some point I got it in my head that I would have abdominal definition (a six-pack) either when I turned 30 or when I had my first kid. Now, despite being semi-athletic, I had never had much core strength and had never had anything close to what one would call a six-pack. But this idea had made it's way into my head sometime in my mid twenties. Both turning 30 and having a kid represent to me the "end of my youth." And having a six-pack represents "athletic and in-shape" to me. I think I believe that if I can't be "athletic and in-shape" before the "end of my youth" than it would be highly unlikely that I could achieve that state at a later point in life. To the right is Wolverine, a super-hero for hairy people everywhere and my inspiration.

30 came and went without much protest from me. I continued to occasionally make slight efforts at working out but never pushed past some very basic conditioning (but even running two miles when I hadn't done anything for a month or two was a huge challenge). But overtime I continued to put on weight pushing past 170 and 175 and nearing 180. I started to not like the way I looked in pictures. When having a photo taken, I would try to angle my face in a way to prevent the creeping double chin from making its way in.

Last summer, two of our good friends, Maggie Jackson and Jason Simpson, did P90X together. P90X is a 6-7 day a week training program that combines many aspects of fitness (strength, balance, flexibility). It typically consists of resistance training on Mon, Wed, and Fri, plyometrics on Tue, Yoga on Thu, and Cardio on Saturday with optional stretching on Sunday. Workouts are between an hour and an hour and a half. It is broken up in to 3 four-week segments. Each 4-week segment has a slightly modified resistance routine. Every fourth week is a recovery week and has no resistance and increased flexibility and core strength work.

Both Jason and Maggie had pretty dramatic results in terms of fitness and looked great as they neared the end of the 12 week program. The physical results were obvious. Jason tried to sell Sara and I on the program and I went out and bought a doorway pull-up bar, but I wasn't yet motivated enough to commit to it.

When we found out that Sara was pregnant this spring, my goal of being fit by the time we had a kid suddenly had an end date. But it was the spring and the hardest time for me to commit to myself because of my other commitments (see the "In like a Lion, out like a Lion post"). In March, I played an Ultimate tourney with a Brown Reunion team and I was clearly in the worst shape of my life - I had a very noticeable spare tire and after a possession or two was gassed.

But when Paideia's spring break rolled around, I got moving, literally. I started running every morning and going in to work later. My goal at that point was just to show myself that I could fit fitness in when the Ultimate season ended in May but once the week ended I kept running three days a week - slowly increasing both my pace and distance.

Encouraged by my ability to carve out time for exercise and Sara, I started talking to Jason again about P90X. He burned me the DVDs and we decided that on June 7th we would start P90X. Because it would be hard to meet up, we agreed to gchat or video chat with each other each morning when we started. On Memorial Day weekend I was in Madison for the College Ultimate Championships and, watching the athletes run around, was even more motivated to get back in shape. But, in my mind, I still wasn't sure I would actually wake up and push through the work out that following Monday and keep it up.

When June 6th rolled around, I printed out all of the documents to keep track of my workouts and popped the first DVD in to see what I was getting myself in to. It made me nervous - I've never been big on lifting weights (as Harper Alexander would say "you want to lift weights? Those things are heavy.") But on June 7th I woke up and did the first workout - Chest and Back, one hour of push-ups and pull-ups (literally, that is pretty much the whole workout with variations on those two themes). That was followed by 16 minutes of "ab-ripper X." My performance wasn't pretty. I was a drenched in sweat and dizzy, while doing less than 50% of the reps that the people on the video were doing and far less weight. I felt like I had been run-over by a train. But as Tony Horton (the dude running the workouts on the video would say) "Just do your best and forget the rest."

A quick word on Tony - At first I thought I was going to be really annoyed by Tony. He's cliche, makes corny jokes, and clearly is attracted to Drea (one of the women doing the workouts in the video), constantly flirting with her. And you hear the same jokes again and again every time you watch the DVD. But let me say, I warmed up to him really quickly. I find myself snickering at all of the little silly things he says. "Up on your tippy-toes. Why do they call them tippy?" "This is a mixture of static stretching and ballistic stretching. Stablatic. I just made that word up." At one point in the Ab Ripper X DVD (which you will watch 30 times over the course of the program) he says "That's the croton!" after an intense portion of working out. I have no idea what the word "croton" means but I plan to start using it when coaching to mean something like "intensity."

So, I almost died on Day 1. But I came back for plyos on Day 2. Plyos was more my style but still an incredibly difficult workout (I still find it hard here in week 11 - particularly the rock-star hops). In the first week, I felt pretty good about the plyos and legs and back (which are much closer to the training I've done in the past for Ultimate) and struggled with the arms, chest, and shoulders portions of the workout. And I had always disliked Yoga - and while I still can't really do half-moon or twisting half moon, Yoga has become my favorite workout. My favorite Tony quote is "just put the DVD in." That really couldn't be more true for me. The biggest challenge is getting out of bed and starting the DVD. Once I get past that, I'm not going to quit half way in to a DVD.

I was out of town (in LA) for most of the second week of the program an so I just went on 30 minute runs every day and pushed the workout back. But I was fired up that I was still working out every day. Jason and I managed to connect most mornings for the first month, but we petered out after that. Still, knowing he was there in the beginning really helped push me to get out of bed and do the work in the beginning.

I know this is already long, but I should add that early in Sara's pregnancy, she challenged me to see if I could weigh less than her at some point before Champ was born. Sara started the pregnancy at 145 and I was at 178. The average weight gain is 25-35 lb. So, this was a completely reasonable challenge. While, I'm not measuring my success by my weight, I expected to get below 170lb and perhaps to 165. By the end of the first month, I'd managed to drop to 172 lb. but then leveled off. Sara meanwhile I had gotten up to 168 but leveled off. At that point, with about 3 months left in the pregnancy, I was pretty sure that if I kept up working out that Sara would pass me - but I was hoping that we would cross the 170lb. threshold at around the same time.

Somehow though, we went about four weeks without either one of us gaining or losing weight. I was seeing physical changes but was putting on muscle at about the same rate that I was dropping other weight. Then, at the beginning of the 10th week of P90X I threw my back out while doing plyometric (clap) push-ups on the chest, shoulders and triceps day. I could barely move for two days. After that, I tried to do some stretching and Yoga for a couple days but my back was still hurting too much to do anything more intense. So I took a week off (almost two total weeks off). During this time I found that I was less happy and less productive at work. But not working out meant that I was losing some of the muscle weight I had put on. At the end of those two weeks I actually weighed in at 168 lb! And Sara passed 170 and made it up to 171! (It's funny, when I tell people at work who don't know Sara about her weighing more than me they always say "you don't tell her that, do you?!" as if she would freak out about putting on weight during pregnancy. First, if you haven't seen her, Sara is incredibly beautiful while pregnant and second Sara is far less concerned about her weight than I am about mine (as you might be able to tell from this blog post)).

Last Tuesday I was able to resume the 10th week of the program and quickly put the muscle weight back on to get back over 170. Getting re-motivated to start again was challenging but it has definitely made me happier and more productive at work. And I was sore again like I hadn't been since early in the workouts.

I've got two weeks left in the program. After I finish week 12, I plan to do a week of recovery with mostly stretching and running. I'll then start again through Champ's birth and after that, who knows.

I don't have a six-pack yet, but I've learned a lot about myself in this progress. Most importantly that physical fitness is critical to my happiness - which I'd never really known before. Sara, who's being doing Yoga has been too busy this week to do her work-outs and that has clearly taken a toll on her as well. I think we have a very similar emotional need for exercise which is a really good motivator and bond for us.

I've also learned that I can commit to a serious work-out regimen and get through it. I'm pretty proud of that. I'd always thought that I was only motivated by being on teams where others were dependent on my fitness. But knowing that I'm can personally motivate myself has really changed my view of myself.

One thing I did not commit to was the P90X diet. Maggie had said that the diet made a huge difference and I'm pretty sure that the physical differences would have been even greater had I been more conscious of what I was putting in to my body.

Perhaps I can get that six-pack by the time Champ is born - but even if I don't I'm sure I'll get it before I turn 35 (or he turns 5).

Kyle