Day 1: Chest & Back

I came home today from a weekend in St. Louis visiting my brother. Over the weekend, we ran about 3-4 miles on Saturday and about 10 miles on Sunday. It was great, but I was a little tired.

So of course today is the day my boyfriend Mike reminded me we start our P90X routine. P90X is an intense workout program designed to get you ripped in (can you guess?) 90 days. Last week I'd played around with one of the cardio DVDs just to see the style of the videos. I was very impressed and felt really worked out! So I figured this Monday was good as any other Monday (and the sooner we start, the sooner we finish).

Tonight after dinner, Mike and I got ready to go downstairs and hit the gym in our condo for some chest & back. Right off the bat, I was not thrilled about this first day lineup. It was a combination of pull-ups and push-ups, which are two things I can never do well. There are twelve exercises that you go through twice. I won't bore you with the different variations, but my arms felt like jelly at the end. And I wasn't even able to do the pull-ups (not that I expected to... I mainly just hung there are long as I could).

After our cool down, it was back upstairs to do Ab Ripper. It wasn't just crunches. It was total core work. One of the reasons I'm doing this program is to strengthen my core. My chiropractor told me during my last visit that since your core is the biggest muscle in your body, it make sense that you should work it out the most. (Then you work out your next biggest muscles a little less and so on). Well, this workout was so difficult. It didn't help that my heart wasn't in it. I was tired and frustrated from working out already for an hour with the back and chest, but feeling like I hadn't accomplished anything. So I did some of the stuff, but I could have pushed harder.

Mike let me try his whey protein powder mix for a recovery shake. The flavor is banana cream, and it was disgusting. I may have to look into other tastier options. Normally after a long run, I crave chocolate soy milk. Since I'm going to be running and lifting now, I think I need to pack something with a little more protein.