Day Five of P90X

I may have gotten a bit over confident during this first week. I was expecting the work-outs to be pure torture and too hard to get through. I was surprised and pleased that I was able to do most of the moves and reps. My confidence was building. Then yoga slapped me into reality. Here I thought I was a strong yogi, but I wasn't feeling too strong during that session.

Yesterday was Legs & Back, followed by Ab Ripper. Legs and Back was a series of standing leg exercises, mostly with no weights. How hard can that be? Well, it was pretty hard. I usually pride myself on having very strong legs, but we are out of biking shape. I have a bad knee and doing too much weight in squats has always been a challenge. My thighs can take much more than my knee can. I made it through all the leg stuff, but it was hard.

And in between each set of leg exercises we had to do pull-ups. Yuck. All different kinds of pull-ups: wide arm, narrow arm, hands wrapped around the bar one direction, then reverse the direction. I knew I wouldn't last very long doing multiple pull-ups so I used the back of a chair for assisted pull-ups. Even that was hard. And the worst part . . . I never tried doing a pull-up with my hands wrapped around the bar, in what I consider a backwards way. During my first pull-up I felt something snap in my back and instant pain up to my neck. Just what I needed. I've been in a lot of pain ever since that moment. The rest of the workout became doubly challenging.

After an hour of this, we still weren't done. Next it was Ab Ripper and it's called that for a reason. I have always had amazingly strong abs. I compare my abs to my greyhounds. They lounge around 99.5% of their lives and still look like buff athletes. They don't deserve to look the way they do. They don't work at it. It just comes naturally. Well, that has always been my abs. I guess I'm very lucky that way. But still, last night showed me that I have a long way to go in building more strength. There were very few exercises that I could do the full 25 reps. I think after the 15 minute blast, if you did them all, you would have done over 600 ab ripping moves. Good grief, I need a donut.