Day 48

Kenpo X. Still love this workout. This week felt more like what I enjoy and I was able to work through the break periods. Did take my own breaks to cough, but still worked up a sweat and got some good punches in.

Day 47

Tonight was Legs & Back. It's been a week now since I've been back to working out. My numbers tonight were much better than last week. And I felt pretty good about the workout. I was able to hold the one legged wall squat and the chair squat... though both really sucked tonight. Yesterday's yoga did too many chair squats for my liking; including ones where your legs were crossed and you were balancing on one leg!

Ab Ripper was harder tonight. I went into it hurting from coughing all day and had to take several coughing breaks. I suppose at least my abs were contracting!

Day 46

Yoga day! I decided to mix it up today. Mainly because I didn't want to do 90+ mins of yoga, but I wanted to stick with yoga. One of the other Beachbody products is a One on One series with Tony Horton. It's basically him working out in his personal gym with a camera guy. He makes these every month and you can get them shipped as they're made, or buy them individually. We signed up for this recently and November's workout was yoga... so I decided to do the One on One yoga.

This was a great yoga workout. 63 minutes long... but really hard. Had some new crazy moves and some that I haven't done since I took a yoga class when we used to belong to a gym. It was basically all variations on sun salutations and triangles. My arms were really sore from yesterday's workout, so I wasn't able to do the chaturanga every time, but I did what I could.

My favorite new move was going into plank, lifting a leg, and then doing chaturanga with the one leg up. Oddly I could actually do this. I was also able to do side plank with an elevated leg. There were also some interesting lift-a-leg-here and put-a-knee-there versions of downward dog.

All in all the workout made me feel pretty good about myself. But there were certain balance issues that I'd like to improve on. Will certainly use this again when I want a good yoga workout without spending 90 minutes to do so.

Day 45

Back & Biceps with Ab Ripper X. The strength workouts are much nicer when coughing. Don't have to worry so much about losing my breath. I was really able to push the workout and my numbers were actually pretty in line with the last time I did the workout. Other workouts have seen some decrease in numbers since the whole sick thing.

The best thing is that I completed the entire Ab Ripper. I've done that before but minus the side v-ups. Tonight I actually did all of those! Took me weeks just to figure out how to properly do one, so doing 25 is pretty awesome. I've decided that one of my fitness goals is to have a 6 pack by the time my son turns one year old. That seems like it would be a pretty awesome accomplishment. And I think it should be fairly realistic. I have about 4 months until then. 45 days left of P90X (I'm halfway done today!!). Then 60 days of Insanity.

Plus I think my current cough is like continual ab work throughout the day...

Day 44

Today was to be Plyo X. At the start of that workout it tells you that if you're not up for it you can substitute Cardio X. Due to the lingering cough I decided to go with Cardio X.

It's an interesting workout because it's never actually part of the schedule. So unless you do it on an off day, instead of Plyo, or to double up on workouts it never gets done. I've done it before on off days and as a stand alone. It's kind of a nice intro to P90X because it's really short... only 43 mins! And it includes yoga, kenpo, plyo, and core synergistics.

The yoga part was sad because my push-up muscles are killing me from yesterday, so there wasn't a hope of doing the yoga push up to upward dog part. And in general putting my head below the rest of my body still feels icky on my head.

The kenpo part is nice because it's pretty much my favorite moves from that workout.

The plyo part made me think I made the right choice in not doing the full plyo workout. It was fun, but got me coughing pretty good.

Core synergistics made me realize I should have used my thicker pilates mat. The Dreya roll is harder on a thin mat. As is Superman Banana. Both fun moves, but nicer when the floor isn't so hard.

Anyhow, I worked out and I'm glad I did something. Time for hot cocoa and a movie with my hubby.

Day 43

Today was the evil chest/triceps/shoulders workout. 50+ mins of crazy arm stuff. My arms were shaking so bad by the time I was done. Which I guess is a good thing.

My new challange, in addition to still not feeling 100% healthy, is that I'm now doing P90X solo. My poor hubby has a hernia and will be having it surgically repaired in the near future. So, no one to work out with for the next while. Glad I have the blog and the business to hold me accountable!

So much to be thankful today. A wonderful son. A supportive husband. Friends. Food. One of the fun food things today was that we made an awesome sugar free chocolate peanut butter pie out of Shakeology. A pie that's actually healthy! And delicious. You can check out the recipe here.

Day 42

So, today is rest day. Yay! I know I've only been back on schedule for 3 days. But today's schedule says to rest. As much as I feel like I've been doing less than I'd like my legs have hurt these last two days. Guess I really am back!

Day 41

Tonight was Kenpo X. I certainly didn't kick butt tonight, but I kept moving and that's better than sitting on the couch. I was pretty happy for the break periods tonight. My least favorite part was the stretches where you were bending over; turns out that's hard on the sinuses. Course, the first time I bent over I discovered a Little People person driving around under the ottomen... so that was fun!

Day 40, take two

Alright, I'm now feeling mostly better. Not 100% but I have some level of energy, so I thought I'd stick with my plan to resume working out today. Two weeks off and I've restarted on day 40, Legs & Back with Ab Ripper X.

It was a little sad how my numbers looked more like early week numbers. But I didn't want to push too hard. Stopped whenever my head told me that I needed to. Saddest was that I wasn't able to do the one legged wall squat. But I held a normal two legged wall squat for the time period. I'd be disappointed in my preformance if I wasn't so happy to be moving again.

I'm not sure how Kempo will go tomorrow. Today I pushed 'pause' a lot and took some pretty awesome breaks. But I did something, and that's more than I've done in the past two weeks.

One more day of antibiotics...

still not counting days

Well, Monday came and went without resuming the P90X. I did go to the doctor Monday and was told that I looked 'horrible' ...or rather that my throat looked horrible. I've been home from work the past two days and the doctor has me on a pretty crazy antibiotic dosage for 10 days. New goal is to re-start P90X next Monday. If I'm feeling up for some working out before then I'll pick some other, likely shorter, Beachbody DVDs to do...

Not another day

Okay, so I'm officially on a break. My head is killing me. I'm downing Shakeology as fast as I can, but it can only do so much once the ick has already set in.

Hopefully we can resume on Sunday with Yoga and basically just back everything up one week...

Days 41 & 42 ... sort of

Well, the inevitable happened... I got Todd's cold. Or, to not place blame, I randomly came down with a cough and icky feeling. I was going to just skip Tuesday and then double up on workouts on Weds... but now it looks like I'm taking both days off. Sleep sounds much better.

I think tomorrow we'll resume with where we should be on the schedule and then we'll just extend past the 90 days. Course, it's not like I ever thought I'd just stop working out when the 90 days is over. Disappointed that this will probably hinder the results, but I gotta take care of myself.

On a plus side, Shakeology will be here tomorrow and I can stuff myself crazy with healthy stuff!

Days 39 & 40

We decided to take our rest day on Sunday, as we had company all day and into the evening. So, we've bumped workouts back and won't rest on Wednesday.

That made Day 40 (today) Yoga X. The exciting thing is that I did Vinyasa! For those of you not familiar with yoga terms, I was able to move from plank to chaturanga to upward dog without touching my body down. I've been determined to do this since starting P90X, as I could do it once upon a time... I guess some things just take 40 days... like floods and desert wanderings...

Day 38

Back & Biceps tonight. This is an odd one for seeing progress. I feel a little stronger, but I use the bands for most moves. The sheets tell me which bands I use, but I don't indicate how far apart my feet are, how close to the handles I'm standing, etc. So, hard to really know if I'm doing a harder thing than last week. I just need to focus on making this one as hard as I can work today and not worry about if it's an improvement over how hard I felt I could work last week.

As for Ab Ripper, that whole side v- up thing is really hard now that I can do it. Tonight I was able to do 20 of 25 on each side and I felt pretty good about that.

Days 36 & 37

These last two days have been a little of a challange because Todd has been sick. It would be easier to skip the workouts since he was unable to join me... but I pushed on! The plus of not blogging for a day is I might actually have stuff to say today. So, here I sit with my recovery drink trying to recover my thoughts...

Day 36 was the Chest, Shoulders and Triceps with Ab Ripper. The arm work was a little frustrating. I would do a move until my arms were shaking and I didn't think I could go longer, then I would look at my sheet and see that I did more last week. So, I'd get back into position and eek out another rep or two. Ab Ripper was more encouraging. I have finally figured out how to do side v-ups. I realized that I needed to be leaning back more on the butt, rather than just being on the side of my hip. Now what I'm doing looks more like what is on the TV. Hopefully at some point I'll go as long as the people on the TV.

Day 37 was Plyo. This is the workout that has changed my attitude the most. Or rather, I've changed my attitude about this workout. The first time I did it I abhored it! I thought it was torture and hoped that someday I would get better at it ... I at least knew that the workout would help my running. Today I found myself truly looking forward to Plyo. I've decided that jumping around is kind of fun. (Funny that I've had to learn this... it was probably common knowledge to me 20 some years ago. Kids just know that jumping is fun!) Anyway, it was fun tonight. And I saw some progress. This was the first time I was able to the hot foot for the whole time; hot foot is jumping on one foot in a cross shape. Hard to do hot foot for 30 seconds on each side... twice. But, I did it!

One thing I find kind of funny in P90X is that some (maybe most?) of the workouts have a 'bonus' part. I've never not done this. Once you're doing the workout and you know how much time is left, it seems like more work to push skip than to just do the bonus part. And I think I would feel like I cheated... I mean the 'bonus' time is always worked in to what you're doing. To skip 3-5 minutes, or some extra reps seems somehow wimpy. Never mind that I've done the rest of the hour or so...

Another thought: I really need to work on eatting better. I feel like I've been saying this a lot, and I blame Halloween. I haven't had any candy since then, but today a work meeting tempted me with donuts. Free donuts. I actually had someone call me out on eatting two donuts, and she doesn't even know about my current fitness goals. Oh, Shakeology, why haven't you arrived in the mail??? I can really tell that my sweet tooth is getting the best of me without the Shakeology. And my energy level is in the basement in the afternoons. On the plus side more recovery drink and protein bars showed up today.

Day 35

Rest day! I thought about doing Cardio X today, but Todd hurt himself and I'd rather not work out in front of him. So, hot tub it is...

Day 34

Kenpo X. Have I mentioned that I love this one? Have I mentioned it every week?? Still true.

I pushed myself yesterday with leg stuff and I could feel that during today's warm-up. Once I got going it was pretty good. Warm muscles move so much better. Another awesome thing today was that we actually worked out before exhaustion set in. I can't remember the last time I was done working out by 8:30! So excited to have a little more of the night left and still get to bed at a decent time!

Day 33

Legs & Back. I really enjoy that this one alternates two totally different body parts. The exciting part tonight was that I was able to do the one legged wall squats for the whole time. It's hard to hold a leg up for 10 seconds while 'sitting' with your  back to a wall. But I did it! And I was able to do the chair squats for the whole time. Pretty awesome to see progress.

On a side note, I think this is the only workout we do every week (excluding recovery weeks) that isn't cardio/full body.

Day 32

Yoga day. I think yoga will go better on a day when I'm not exhausted. Balance was an issue and I didn't really see any improvements. Went to bed immediately after finishing.

Halloween candy has reminded me that health and wellness are lifestyle choices and all decisions are tied together. I can't binge on candy and expect it to not effect how I feel. You think I'd know that. It was a really unfortunate time to run out of Shakeology; that's usually my go-to when I need to satisfy my sweet tooth. Instead I gave in to a lack of will power and a bunch of fun-sized evil. Ah well, it's November and candy is gone. Here's to getting back on the wagon...