Gym Jones Week

It's all Gym Jones style workouts this week. Monday was the plyos class which was good. Those classes are much harder when we only have 4 or so people, which has been the last few times. So it's actually pretty good there's a poor turnout cause I'm all about the go, go, go.

Tuesday was the first Gym Jones workout this week. I started with the row machine. 2K in about 7.5 minutes. Then I did some dead lifts and pull ups. I was doing sets of 10x at 135# for the dead lifts and did 5 pull ups in between. 4 sets and then I did some floor wipers, also with 135#. After that I did some box jumps using the step things (14 boxes). Finally, some medicine ball work with their heaviest ball, 10#. A bunch of different throw downs, ups and catches. I also added some ab work with the med ball just to finish it all off. Oh wait, forgot about 10 minutes of interval running at the very end.

Wednesday was a rest day. The wife said I needed rest, which was true but annoying. I'm not a big fan of resting. And generally my days are not quite as good when I don't workout. But Giannina was right, I was a little sick and needed some rest.

This morning was another 4:30a start. Pretty much the same workout as Tuesday. Some small differences. I upped the weight on the dead lifts and was doing 12 reps. I also didn't have time to do the interval run at the end. I modified some of the box jumps. I did some plyo style jumps with one big box followed by a slightly smaller one. Jump to the big one, then quickly down and up to the smaller one, followed by a final jump. That was pretty much it for today.

Tomorrow will probably be more of the same. And hopefully this weekend I'll get the garage all cleaned so I can resume P90X Plus. I'm actually really liking the current workouts, but the time investment is a bit of an issue. Plus waking up between 4a and 5a can get a little rough day in and day out. I also want to see my results from doing the Plus. So far, it's been pretty good I think. Maybe next time I'll post some pics with my Plus day 1 pics and my day 30s.

A Decent Plus Week

So this week was my Week 4 of P90X Plus. They don't call them recovery weeks any more, which is kind of funny. And they're not really much easier, not that recovery weeks were ever easier.

Monday was Back & Biceps, but since I have my VB Plyos class on Monday mornings, I decided to do it on Sunday. It was supposed to be followed by an Ab Ripper, but family obligations made me stop right at the end of Back & Biceps, so no Ab Ripper. Monday was the plyos class and Tuesday was Core Synergistics. Wednesday was the first day this week that I missed a work out. But since Thursday was supposed to be Abs Core Plus and a Stretch, I decided to do Chest, Shoulders & Triceps on Thursday (Wednesday's workout). I was planning to follow it with Abs Core Plus, but that was ambitious and didn't end up happening.

Friday was Legs & Back, but yet another miss. Saturday was supposed to be Yoga, but I decided to do something a little more intense. That and my garage has been taken over by the tools needed for some household projects. Saturday I went to the gym and did some of my old Gym Jones style workouts.

I spoke about them briefly toward the end of the bet, but I really think they played a big part in getting me to those final shots. I started with a swim (not Gym Jones). I followed that with 5k on the rowing machine (a Gym Jones favorite). Normally I was doing 5k in sub 20 minute times every time toward the end of the bet, but having not done it in some time resulted in barely beating 21 minutes. Not bad, but not very good either.

Next I did 3 sets of box jumps. I'm not sure how high they are. But using those awesome aerobics step thingies I did the box jumps using 14 boxes and the step. 2 sets of 15 and finished with a set of 20. Finally I finished with some work with the medicine ball. A whole bunch of throws, catches and situps using the heaviest ball I could find. You can see some of where I get my ideas at the Gym Jones video section.

That workout felt awesome. It reminded me of some of the best workouts I had at the end of the summer. Intense, different and athletic. I wanted to do another one of those today or go surfing. The plan was to go surf, but the wonderful wife made me aware of a big ass swell and possible 10' waves. I'm not quite that pro yet so I had to bail on the surfing. Then the day just got away from me. Between some prep work for the household projects and taking care of the little one I just didn't have time.

Tomorrow is the plyos class which is a pretty good workout. Then I'm supposed to be in week 5 of the Plus, but the garage is still a mess and full of tools. So my plan is to do all workouts at the gym this week. Mostly Gym Jones style and maybe some more traditional shit. I may go back and only count next week as week 5, but that all depends on how intense and frequent my workouts will end up being this week. The plan is the usual 6 days of workouts (minimum 1 workout per day). That's the goal always as a minimum. Nice to surpass, sucks to fall short.

Life + P90X After The Bet

It has been quite some time since I posted. Well, since the end of The Bet to be exact. It was a crazy time leading up to the end of the bet. I worked out harder than I had ever in my life. Most days in the last month I worked out twice or even three times. All hard workouts and the effort paid off.

Chris and I had decided that we would decide the winner based on the first 1000 votes ($1 per vote). So basically it would mean the first to 501 votes would win. It took a little over a week for me to get to 501 and only a few days more for the total votes to surpass 1000. I received about 63% of the vote to that point. Not a land slide by any means, but a definitive victory. It was really funny to see all the comments the site generated in those first couple of weeks. They were all pretty nice, so thanks to all the peeps with positive feedback. I don't have much to say to the haters; you're all entitled to your opinion and I respect that.

So after The Bet was over I had no intention of stopping. I was in the best shape of my life and felt real good about it. The reason I made The Bet was to see how far I could come and I did that and then some. I was convinced for sure that this was a lifestyle change. My sister also joined me early in my 2nd round of P90X and I had full intentions of at least finishing out her 90 days, which we did.

In October, Chris and I also competed in a Sprint distance Triathlon in Hermosa Beach. You can check out the results here. But the short of it is that he somehow beat me. He's actually quite an athlete and a real solid swimmer. Swimming is my weakest event and he had about a 5 minute lead coming out of that. I gained almost no time on the bike portion (mainly due to my slower transitions) and he beat me in the run by a solid 2 minutes. The run was the real surprise as I was pretty sure I would take him having had the Triathlon experience. He did over a month's worth of specific training which I think helped him quite a bit. I did very little Triathlon specific training but kept up with the P90X.

So that was mid October. Since then I finished my 2nd round of P90X, did another round of testing (some performance upgrades - biggest one was pull ups, up to 12 from 7 after round 1), and completed a half assed 3rd round. You might ask what's a half assed 3rd round. Well, I skipped some Ab Rippers missed a few days here and there and just in general was not quite 'bringing it' as much.

Then in January I received the news about P90X Plus and was very ready to renew my commitment to the workouts. I received my P90X Plus about mid January. I've been trying to stick to it best I can. Though I find that without the motivation I had during The Bet amongst other things (got sick, baby on the way preparation, etc.) it's not quite as easy to stick to it. I'm finishing my 4th week this week and have seen some progress already since I started the Plus. Though the verdict is still out on P90X Plus. I like it, but have some issues that I'll go into detail in later posts.

So that's basically it for now. My plan is to start posting more regularly as I see people are still checking out the site quite a bit. We're still getting about 10 votes a day to the original bet, not to mention a whole bunch of hits to the site in general. It's also amazing to me how much time people send on the site. It's been impressive.

There will also be an update coming soon to amiripped.com So check back for that.