Round 5: Day 9 - Total Body Plus

This is "Mr. Moon," it's harder than it looks.  (That's what she said.)

After we finished working out this morning, Mrs. Gias said that Total Body Plus was always harder than she remembers.  After sweating bullets this morning, I have to agree.

Round 5: Day 5 - Chest and Back + ARX

Pullups, they do a body good.

Chest and Back is one of my favorite P90X workouts, hands down. 

I like that it's all body weight exercises.

I like pushups.

I like pullups.

I like Tony's pep talk at the end.

I like that it was the first P90X video I ever did.

I like that it feels like a truck ran over my chest when I'm finished.

OK, maybe not so much that last one.

Round 5: Day 4 - Fountain of Youth Yoga

Quick, think of an inappropriate caption for this picture. Yeah, didn't take me long either.

This is the first time in a while that we have done some yoga...and you could tell. Although I was already sore from the past few days' workouts I was also pretty tight in my stretches today.  I'm not quite the Stretch Armstrong that Mrs. Gias is, but usually I can at least bend and get to my feet. 

Not today.  I could barely get my hands to reach my shins. 

Round 5: Day 3 - Shoulders and Arms + ARX

It looks like I died and am moving towards the light...

Holy crap I'm sore. 

We've been pushing it pretty hard these first few days of Round 5 and my body is starting to feel it.  For reasons passing understanding my butt feels like I went ice skating and fell on my ass.  Repeatedly.  It hurts to sit down, it hurts to get up, it hurts to do oblique v-ups during Ab Ripper X.  Hopefully a little yoga tomorrow will work out these kinks.

Round 5: Day 1 - Total Body Plus

Hello, old friend.

It's time to start a new round. 

We did day one of a new round this evening and it kicked. My. Ass.  I was sweating bullets at the end.  I could keep up, but boy, did I feel weak.  I don't have much time to post tonight, but I will put something up in the next day or two with our new Round 5 schedule and my goals for the round. 

Should be interesting.

Upper Plus

Combat iso pushups...they hurt.

I'm pretty focused on cardio work right now getting ready for my next tri in two weeks, but I still need to get some strength work in to keep my muscles working.  Accordingly, I let Mrs. Gias pick the workout today and she wanted to do Upper Body Plus from the P90X+ series. 

It's an interesting workout because it's all time based, that is, you pick a weight that you can finish for the enitre alloted time, not the number of reps you need to do.  Normally, I'd do curls for eight reps and use enough weight so that I would be feeling it on the eighth rep and basically max out right there.  For today's workout, we did bicep blaster (curls) for 90 seconds.  To do 90 seconds of curls I had to significantly lower my weight and it still burned like hell at the end.

CrossFit and Killer Abs

This is a CrossFit squat...maybe.

Today, I wanted to try something a little different.  As they say, variety is the spice of fitness (or something like that).

Fellow blogger Fitbomb has been talking about CrossFit to add a little functional fitness to his regimen.  I decided that Mrs. Gias and I should try a little something different so we are going to do one of CrossFit's "Workout of the Day" routines.  The one we chose was to do:

5 pullups
10 pushups
15 squats

Repeat 15 times or twenty minutes, whichever comes first.  The object is to go as fast as you can with good form.  Needless to say at the end, I was totally out of breath and got in a seriously good workout in the 13:11 it took me to complete the 15 rounds.  Mrs. Gias finished right on my heels at 13:20.  I know that we'll probably have to work on our form and try a few more workouts, but I think CrossFit might be a great new tool to add to our workout arsenal.

After we finished our first attempt at CrossFit and took a few minutes to recover, we threw in Killer Abs from Tony's One on One series.  I don't care how many times you done this routine, over 450 reps of ab moves still burns me up everytime. 

The workout today was quick, efficient and hit just about every body part.  I really liked it.

P90X Shoulders and Arms

Oh, you don't know this move, it's called, "Light headed Geek should take a break and know his limits."

It was my turn to choose the workout this morning and I wanted to do a tough upper body workout.  I decided to go old school with P90X's Shoulders and Arms.  This video is right at 60 minutes and it is tough. 

According to my logs, we haven't done this workout since January.  It was every bit as tough as I remember it.  It's 15 exercises repeated (30 total) going back and forth between Shoulders, Biceps and Triceps.  I like this workout because I can lift heavy and always feel spent at the end no matter how many times I do the workout. 

That's the great thing about weights, they can always get heavier.

Today I got through about half the workout and started feeling light headed; which isn't a new experience for me.  It happens when I workout hard.  For whatever reason I start huffing and puffing or muscle up an extra rep and I'll get a little dizzy. 

Only today it came back after every move.  It started to get quite annoying. 

Mrs. Gias: Do you need to pause the video and get a drink?
Geek: Maybe for a minute.
Mrs. Gias: 'Cause it looks like you do. Pansy.
Geek: Love you too.

Nothing better than marital banter at 5 in the morning.

30:15 Upper Body Massacre - Memorial Day Edition

Mrs. Gias wanted to get up today and do some upper body.  Don't know why, but this woman loves doing pullups and pushups.  We have probably 10 upper body workouts and she chooses 30:15 - 24 sets of pushups and pullups.  As you've read before...it's tough.  But she likes to work hard, and I love that about her.

P90X Chest and Back

Military pushups with a leg in the air...that's just silly.

My two days of doing nothing are over after my race and so this morning we jumped back into some morning workouts.  As Mrs. Gias has a race in about 10 days and we haven't started a new 90 day cycle yet, I let her choose what she wanted to do.  To my surprise, she wanted to do a resistance workout that worked "here" (pointing to her arms sides and upper back).  I told her we could do Chest and Back, Chest Shoulders and Triceps, Back and Biceps, 30:15...we have a lot of those type of workouts.  She settled on Chest and Back.

At the end of the workout, we were both totally spent and I asked her, half jokingly, if she wanted to do a quick ab routine too.  Her response:

"In hindsight, I don't even want to do Chest and Back."

Classic.

P90X+ Interval X

Here's a lateral move called Super-Skaters...it works ya.

I don't think I've ever written about Interval X before.  It's part of P90X+ (prounounced "plus" at the end), the follow up to P90X.  It's supposed to be a more advanced follow up to P90X, but I don't think the workouts are all that difficult.  They're good, don't get me wrong, just not super challenging.  Which is exactly why we did Interval X today. 

I'm only three days away from the Kansas City Triathlon and I really don't want to be sore.  Mrs. Gias wanted to get in some cardio cross training today for her run schedule, but I was worried that an Insanity workout (normally our cardio cross training of choice) might be a little more than what I was looking for. 

I definitely wanted to be active today, just not so active that my legs or abs hurt tomorrow.  Interval X is a perfect mix for that.  You can go pretty hard through the routine, but it doesn't kill you.  It's basically 15 moves for one minute each, a 60 second break and then you repeat the moves again in reverse.  The first 20 seconds of each move are easy, then 20 seconds of medium and then 20 seconds of "full tilt" as Tony calls it. 

The moves vary from jumping jacks, squats, kicks and pushups.  It has good lateral movement as well as a few moves that make you go vertical to practice your explosive leg strength.  Again, not too taxing, but enough that you are sweating pretty good at the end of the workout. 

Fountain of Youth Yoga

We were sore this morning.  I think we pushed it a little too hard on Monday with Chest and Back because neither of us could lift our arms during sun salutations without groaning something fierce.

P90X Chest and Back

Diamond Pushups - I haven't done these in a while...they're hard.

We're in a mix-n-match time period right now.  We're not using a formal schedule for our morning workouts because we've both got races coming up in the next few weeks.  We want to focus on our races and not on getting sore with Tony.  We're going to start a new round right after Mrs. Gias runs Hospital Hill the first weekend in June, but for now we're kind of playing it by ear.

That being said, Mrs. Gias wanted a good upper body workout today, so she chose Chest and Back.  Oooh, it's an oldie but a goodie.  Basically pushups and pullups with a few weighted exercises thrown in for good measure.  I went about 85% today because normally this workout makes me pretty sore and I don't want to strain myself much because of my race this week.

That or I'm just a slacker.

Two Mile Run and Patience Yoga

I went into work this morning super early, like 4 something in the morning early, so I didn't get a workout in.  After I got home I put B & G to bed and Mrs. Gias had a meeting at church, so I took advantage of some alone time. 

I got on the treadmill and pounded out a quick two miles.  It was a good run, not too hard and my knee didn't hurt at all.  That's a good sign.  I have to admit, I've been really tenative on my knee the last few weeks and pretty scared to run hard.  This weekend is a short run, about three miles and I'm excited to really open up and see what happens.

After I finished my run I popped in Tony's Patience "Hummingbird" Yoga to get a nice post run stretch.  It was 35 minutes of quiet, relaxing stretching.  It was a pretty good for a taper workout.

Two days and counting until race day...I'm getting pretty stoked.

Round 4: Day 89 - Core Synergistics

Core Syn again today. I got through the workout but I felt like I was horizontal more than I usually am during this workout...weird.

Round 4: Day 88 - X Stretch

This is called "Camel".  I don't know why.  I did drink a lot of water...

X-Stretch this morning.  It's easily the least demanding of our workouts, which is nice sometimes, but I usually finish the hour of stretching and feel like I haven't worked out.  Because I haven't.  That's fine every once in a while; and it was fine today.

Round 4: Day 87 - Fountain of Youth Yoga

Only 3 days left this round...clearly I'm praying to the P90X Gods to ensure my survival.

Work's been a little hectic lately.  Yesterday I was pretty sure I was going to Ohio today and Wedensday.  Then that got canceled yesterday afternoon.   About two hours after that got canceled I was scheduled to go to Los Angeles for Tuesday through Thursday.  This morning (before my flight, thankfully) that got canceled and it turns out I'm (likely) home all week. 

At any rate, a nice quiet session of yoga was a nice way to start the day.  It's weird though; I know during yoga I'm supposed to let the stress of life slip away and focus on positions and breathing and balance.  However, sometimes you focus on all the stress and other stuff in your life and almost forget that you're sweating bullets and you're not sure how you got into the twisted position you're in. 

Today was one of those days.

Round 4: Day 86 - Core Synergistics

Nothing like a nice full body workout to get your day going.  I'll admit, I was a little fatigued this morning but I still got a good workout.  Apparently my fatigue was a little too apparent to Mrs. Gias.

There's a move called loading docks where you take a weight from the floor on one side of your body to up above your head on the other side (as seen in the photo above).  I used a 10 pound weight today and had a good range of motion, but admittedly it was a little light for me.  Mrs. Gias also used a 10 pound weight today.

And she let me know about it. 

Repeatedly.

Round 4: Day 82 - Total Body Plus

Note: Ahh!  Almost forgot to post this. Mrs. Gias's laptop went a little haywire yesterday so I spent my evening doing recovery of her files rather than wasting time on the internet posting this. (I backdated it to last night so it would show up on the right day.) 

We did Total Body Plus this morning.  You know I like this workout.  That is all. 

Round 4: Day 81 - Fountain of Youth Yoga

Half Moon.  Just be glad I didn't give you the "full moon" or you'd be blind right now.

My left hip and left wrist were all out of whack today (unrealted, I think).  I couldn't quite torque the right way on my left hip, making my yoga even more wobbly then usual, which is to say, it looked like I was performing yoga during an earthquake.  As for my wrist, I think I may have tweaked it during Diamond Delts on Sunday and stressed it a bit yesterday during our resistance workout.  At any rate, up-dog was not nearly as relaxing as it normally would be.

Overall, not really very loose today, not really very excited about yoga today, it was just a day to get the workout done.  These days happen and in my experience, pushing through the discomfort and the lack of motivation make you more ready for tomorrow.  Here's hoping that's true.