Insanity: "Sense of Humor" Day 3 of 60

When I commit to doing something, for me, it’s serious business.  My wife even looks at me at times like I am a little nuts.  The word “obsessive” comes out and sometimes even, “addicted.”  That said, I do think it’s important to keep your sense of humor in check.  I certainly needed it yesterday when I was on my knees huffing and puffing trying to get through Day Two.  Along those lines, I have to come clean on a funny story for a friend who has heard me mention it in passing but never heard the details.  It goes back to my obese days…

We were on a family vacation.  I was at my max weight, about 285lbs, and very big around the middle.  We went to an amusement park.  Let me say, right at the top of this, that obese people have a difficult time gauging exactly how big they are.  I know I did.  There was a time when I bumped into a lot of stuff because I was certain, looking at a doorway or some other restricted passage, that there was room for both me and everyone else.  Obese people actually look at things and think they can fit like a normal person.  That’s why you get jammed in when they come sit next to you on a bus or a train…they truly think they can fit.  Absent a measuring tape or a camera, you can’t prove it to them…but it’s true.

So there I was in the amusement park looking at a ride called ‘Nightwing.’  I have loved rollercoaster and spinning rides since I was a kid.  This one was unique.  It’s based on the Batman movie and is meant to simulate flying…flying horizontally like Superman.  Every passenger lays on it on their stomach and gets pancaked into the thing.  If you need a mental image, visualize a huge waffle iron and you being a waffle.  There’s a top section that has to snap into place, squeezing down on you and holding you horizontally, and safely, in place.

So me, the obese person that I was, decided to try it.  This was summer.  In an amusement park.  In a tourist mecca.  The line was very long.  Let’s just say that the heat must have made me delusional because I clearly had enough time in line for reality and physics to creep in somewhere.  But it didn’t.  I stood in that line and waited and waited, until it was my turn.  Finally, I was next.

You know how parks hire college kids in the off-season?  This one was no different.  Two enterprising and athletic looking youths were running the ride.  “Come right this way, sir!”  Who the hell was ‘sir?’  I’m not that old.  That’s what I was thinking as I stepped up and laid myself into the bottom of the black wing shaped waffle iron.

Now, I was one of the last people to get on the ride.  The wings are in pairs, side by side and they like family members and friends to ride together.  I noticed that the one to my left was empty.  Now, if you have ever waited in the heat of summer to get on an amusement park ride, you know that by the time you get on the damn thing, your patience is fried.  Also, this particular ride was black.  It had been sitting in the sun all day.  So everyone was laying on the temperature equivalent of black asphault in the form of this winged ride.  With everyone looking on in anticipation, the two kids finally got to me and started to push down the top and snap it into place.

As the top comes down and squishes me, I am laying there listening for the familiar snap of the safety harness.  The one I heard from every other rider as I was laying there.  Nothing.  I kind of want to hear the snap because I know that it is the only thing stopping me from becoming the unwilling participant in a Road Runner cartoon as I fly across the park through the sky.  These kids push down harder…NO snap.  Not to look away from a challenge, and notwithstanding that there is an actual human being under him, one of the kids climbs on top.  He is now using his body weight to push down the top onto me.

Through compressed lungs I squeal, “That’s okay, I can get off!”

The other kid, the one NOT on top, looks at me assuredly and says, “Don’t worry man, we have gotten fatter people than you to fit.”

Now I am looking around at the faces of the other people, now clearly melting in their 120 degree waffle irons.  They are wishing I would die.  Based on how much lung capacity I have left as the kid hops up and down on my back, I just might.  Everyone on the ride and in line is looking at this spectacle.  My wife and kids are outside the fenceline watching me and they are in hysterics.  Some are clearly very mad that I am holding this whole thing up.  I’m not easily embarrassed, but this is pretty close to the highlight of my life.

Finally, the kid on top looks at the other one and says, “I don’t think this is gonna work.”  I breathe a sigh of relief.  I can get off this damn thing and stop being the elephant in the circus.  Then he says, “I think this car is broken.”  Oh, crap.  Really?!  Come on kid…I’m TOO BIG FOR THE RIDE!!  “Come on sir, hop in this one right here.”  I look at him, “Really, it’s okay, I can leave.”  “No, no, one of the cars was busted, I think this is the one.  Get in this one.”  Now the people on the ride are really mad and the people waiting are laughing harder.

The same process happens again.  No snap.  More time passes.  The other kid, slightly bigger, hops on top this time.  SNAP!!  Really?  Did I hear right?  God, I hope I did.  This thing better be fastened.  They both smile.  Conquering heroes.  One looks at the other, “I knew I could do it, man.”

It’s one thing to make yourself an obstacle to your own health, it’s another to put out others in the process, but it takes the cake when you become an athletic event and you are the goal.

The ride was really very cool but I will say that I began to look at my relative size a bit differently that day.  It was funny.  My condition wasn’t, but what happened that day was.

You have to keep your sense of humor.  Life is too short.  But if you don’t take your physical condition seriously, it may be shorter than you think.

Tonight….Insanity workout number three!!

THE WORKOUT

Cardio Recovery.  Thirty three minutes??  Oh, cmon!! I was ready tonight.  Really, really, ready.  Tonight was a ‘recovery’ night.  The workout was not very intense at all.  It was a smattering of last night.  I have to say, my calves did hurt from the past two nights.  So, I probably got some benefit out of not hopping, jumping and leaping around.  However, I LIKE working out and when I put in the time, I want it to count.

The Cardio Recovery is only 33 minutes long.  So, I threw in P90X Chest, Shoulders and Triceps (the first half).  I have decided that I enjoyed P90X and the muscle workouts so much that, in addition to doing AbRipperX three mornings a week, on two mornings I will do half of P90X Chest, Shoulders one day and Tri’s and then do half of Back and Biceps the other day.  On week two, I will do the second half.  So, tonight I threw in P90X CST part one.  Then I did the treadmill for 25 minutes.  I have to feel like I really worked out.  The last two nights have been intense.  I wasn’t looking forward to another intense night and then really put myself in a state of mind for it.  Then it didn’t happen.  So I compensated.  Okay, AbRipperX in the AM and back to the Insanity grind tomorrow night.

As for tonight, the exercises were not Cardio intense.  They were, however, real muscle burners.  A lot of the leg dips burned pretty good toward the end of the exercise.  The one thing I am having issue with on these DVD’s is being able to see the exercise and doing it with good form while also rushing to do it.  Some of the stretching is rushed and I need to make sure I am using good form.  My advice would be to watch these things ahead of time before you do them.

One more piece of valuable advice.  Your calves.  Mine have been hurting at the top of my calf, behind my knee.  I left some messages on the Beachbody message board and apparently this is very common and well known.  If you think you might have calf weakness, you might want to do some calf stretches prior to the workout.  Okay, time to turn in. 

See ya tomorrow.

Insanity: "Commitment" Day 2 of 60

For all of you who are not familiar with my blogging approach through the life of an exercise program, it goes something like this.

I exercise every night during the week and I work out in the morning on the weekends.  I typically blog every day, but may make exceptions on the weekend and sometimes condense my Saturday and Sunday into one blog on Sunday.  I write my blog in the morning when I go to work and sit on the train (which is where I am right now) and let you know how I feel and how I am going to approach my day.  I then post the blog in the AM.  After I exercise at night, I usually append the blog and write about how it went.  I then update the post that night.

In retrospect, most people read in the morning to afternoon.  They don’t read at night after 9PM and anything you post then is buried by the AM.  I have this feeling that no one saw my updates at night when I did P90X.  With that in mind, I am taking a new approach to Insanity.  I am going to write on the way to work, update at night, and then post the following morning.  I just want to see how that goes.  Additionally, I am posting to my normal blog and copying to my Beachbody blog as well.  Same content.

My blogs are kind of a personal commitment.  Just like the program I undertake.  I have been thinking about the word commitment all week.  It’s an important part of successfully beating any challenge in front of you.  It’s also something I take for granted a lot.  I think that happens because I structure the challenges in my life in such a way as to ensure that I beat them.  So, I set up a framework for commitment.  I do it almost unconsciously.  There are folks, however, that are challenged by commitments…and I also understand that.

Structuring your day around the commitments you have made is truly the only way to succeed without the fortuitous condition of luck.  When you commit, you are saying, “I will not let anything derail this effort.”  The only way that I can succeed in pursuit of my health goals, is to structure my life around them.  When I went on the Optifast diet four years ago, I firmly believe that is why it worked for me.  Three shakes a day, plus one small meal at night, add in 40 minutes for exercise…done.  After four months, I had lost 85 lbs.  I just stuck to the plan.  I didn’t deviate.  In fact, I ate almost the same thing for the one small dinner meal every night!  My thought was to make it simple.  It worked.

When I started P90X in February of 2012, I did the same thing.  Same breakfast, lunch and dinner almost every day.  Oatmeal for breakfast with natural applesauce, a palm full of raisins and some natural ground cinnamon.  Granola snack before lunch.  Salad at lunch with about 4 oz of grilled chicken.  Shakeology for dinner with fruit blended in.  Recovery drink post-workout and some nuts and fruit as a snack.  Sleep.  With the exception of Friday Pizza Night, on which I have pizza and allow myself a cup of ice cream as a snack, that’s it.

With P90X, there was an added element of control that helped the commitment.  The routine itself.  Before I had P90X, when I was going to the gym, I did the treadmill until it was boring.  I did some weight and situp routines here and there.  But I basically made them up...they weren’t balanced.  I wasn’t getting the right level of exercise or a program that addressed all areas.  I certainly couldn’t work out every night.  P90X is a program designed to be done every day but also has been designed around an exercise discipline that allows for the repair of the body while you exercise another.  It is not arbitrary.  On the infomercial they say, “Just push play.”  It sounds simple…because it IS simple.  But there is a subtle elegance to that simplicity.  You don’t have to think about it.  You just have to do it.  That’s your whole focus.

The commitment to get more fit is actually enhanced by a program of this caliber.  You work with a program that helps you NOT have to think and take the chance on derailing your commitment.

I tried many other ways to succeed in accomplishing goals.  Having something set in stone works the best.  It’s too easy, without the rigor of the scheduling, to blow off a day here or there.  Next thing you know, you are saying to yourself, “How many times did I exercise this week?  Wow.  I think only once.”  Then the guilt creeps in, and you resent the commitment.  The discipline of a good program helps because when you get into the routine (and this takes about two weeks), you don’t want to miss it.  If you do miss it, you aren’t guilty, you’re mad.  You’re angry with yourself for getting derailed.  Being mad with yourself is so much more productive than feeling guilty and resentful.  The guilty make excuses, the angry work out harder the next time.

For anyone interested in P90X or Insanity, when you wonder why I am doing it, the discipline of the routines are the reason.  It is said over and over, but you really have to experience it.

If you want to make the commitment easier, my experience is to find a good program or plan and…

Just push play.

If you are doing your own program, JUST KEEP GOING.  If you want to know the different Beachbody programs, there are many from beginner to advanced, just reach out to me!

Have a great day, Insanity tonight!!

THE WORKOUT:  

Cardio Power and Resistance.  Alright, it's Day Two.  Do you know what the picture up above is?  It's a set of rubber floor tiles.  Beachbody should sell them along with the recovery drink and the bands and Shakeology...etc.  Why?  Because you are going to need them to protect the rest of your house.  You will need them if, like me, you are doing Insanity and sweating out every ounce of liquid in your body.  I had to wipe the damn tiles tonight more than I wiped myself off!  I got them for cushion because after yesterday, I knew I was doing a program with a lot of jumping and hopping.  Little did I know they would be more valuable to me as sweat-catchers.


I am still trying to figure out why they labeled the Insanity workouts with catchy names.  I have no idea how the name relates to the exercises.  They all seem the same to me...they should just call them "Hell, Part One" "Hell, Part Two" etc.  This is way harder than P90X.  I have to keep reminding myself how bad I felt after that first week of P90X, because it was bad.  But either I have Alzheimer's or I am losing my mind, but I don't recall P90X feeling like this.  I was exhausted.  The only difference today is that I was ready for the rhythm of the program in terms of the number of exercises in a cycle.  Other than that, I am glad I had the extra cushion, it was much more comfortable when I was on my knees trying to catch my breath.


Here is a tip.  HYDRATE.  Don't forget.  If you like coffee...you better consider limiting it or double your water intake during the day.  You are going to need every inch of those twitch muscles and you are NOT going to want them to be brittle or tight.

I did manage to pace myself better tonight.  The one thing I am struggling with is the correct form.  Shaun doesn't really point it out and just jumps into the exercise.  Then...I look to the people on the disc and many are doing it different ways.  Some are going slow, some are not deep into the squats.  I guess there is a rhythm that I will have to get.  I am not in a position to judge here, I can't really see anyone too well with all the sweat in my eyes.

All right...let's see what tomorrow brings.  You know, I used to look forward to each new day of P90X because it was always so different.  With Insanity, I find myself looking forward to finishing it, NOT starting it...because I know what's coming...work and sweat.  It will pay off, you know THAT!

Later! 

Insanity: "Sweating" Day 1 of 60

"I just finished P90X."

"I'm in the best shape of my life."

"I did the Insanity Fitness Test and rocked it!"

Words.  Just words.  Gone like the wind.  As I lay there face down on my basement floor with my face transferring gallons of salty fluid into the towel, those words were history.  I forgot that I said them.  I forgot what they even meant.

No matter how many routines I start out with as "new" I always think that I am going to do awesome.  Confidence is something I never lack, even to a dangerous point.  Right around that corner though, reality always is hiding with a mallet...waiting to slam me in the lower back with it.

Okay.  Enough drama.  The Insanity routine kicked my a$$.  I couldn't finish everything.  I did make a classic mistake though, one I will pass on to all of you who start this for the first time.  There is a pace you have to maintain to survive.  On Day One, you have no idea, unless you watch the DVD's a couple of times, how many times you are going to repeat the exercise cycles in a given routine.  In P90X, I learned on the weights that you do not blow out your muscles on the first cycle because two, maybe three, are coming up behind it.  In Insanity, same rule applies.

In the circuits, they do four to five sets of various exercises.  They do the sets in about three minutes.  Then you get 30 seconds to catch your breath and take a mouthful of water.  That thirty seconds FLYS.  Then you do that set again.  In each circuit, you do each set of exercise four to five times!!

I started out thinking, "Oh, for crying out loud, I can go so much faster than these people."  Then, at about set three, I am wondering how many there are.  Then, as the fourth or fifth set is winding up, I am on my knees.  It is a crusher.  No kidding.  It is a total of 40 minutes...but you are drenched when you are done.

Do I like it.  Heck, yeah!  It's another mountain to climb, another program to master.  I know in sixty days I will be doing a lot better.

Right now?  Right now, I am wondering what little places will hurt tomorrow when I wake up.

I went out this afternoon and got a 3/4" mat for my basement floor.  I have carpet tiles but they are still pretty hard.  The mat will keep my sweat off the rug and keep my knees from the impact.  So...this is not easy.

For all of you thinking of doing this...they ALL are hard.  I don't care what routine or program you try.  If you haven't done one before...it is hard, new and it is work.

So...day one is done.  Tomorrow, I am going to do AbRipper X from P90X in the morning before work.  That is going to be something I do three times a week.  Why?  Because it is working, it took me a while to master it (and I know some of these things fade quickly) and because it only takes 20 minutes.  And I can do that after breakfast and then hop in the shower.

Okay...have a great night!