Week 4 of P90X2

All I can say is I’m loving this program.  Having been through many rounds of P90X I was wondering how this would stack up.

Honestly?  The first few workouts I wasn’t sold.  I had grown to love P90X so much that it felt like X2 wasn’t quite as tough.  HAAAA  Isn’t that always the case?  Contempt prior to investigation!  But I know better… all the reps I’ve taken, and that’s not just physical reps as in exercise but reps, (repetitions), in personal development, getting out of my comfort zone, have taught me to give things time.

And what a great way to start a new chapter… try something that at first doesn’t seem like I’m too fond of it… wanting to go *back*, and what does that mean?  Not good… so I stay… and realize, just as I did with P90X, the original, if it’s not hard, yet, I’m not quite up to speed!  That’s what the first few weeks are for… they’re to learn to master the moves… suck at first, because we all do…

So I stick with it.  And week 2?  There we go!  I start seeing how difficult this is because my skills are improving which means I’m getting more range of motion… and then I see how the people in the videos are up to a certain level of reps… and I’m not anywhere CLOSE!  AHHHHHH, room to improve!

But the REAL fun part of it is I’m starting to DIG IT!  You see, it’s all about balance.  All of this stuff is on one leg… all serious core development.  This is modern exercise physiology.  And while there are no *new* fundamentals, this is the culmination of years of experience, research, etc. and it’s all about getting the best results in the most condensed/focused amount of time.  You notice how I didn’t go for the gimmick of “In the shortest amount of time”?  Because that’s not the appeal.  What IS the appeal is to be *efficient*.

As many of you know, Tony Horton has been a close personal friend of mine since the early 80′s and I understand him very deeply.  Tony, (and he’ll be the first one to say that he’s not inventing this stuff, he’s just a great motivator, mentor, trainer, friend who is smart enough to see all the things that *work* out there and package them in a way that makes this stuff FUN.  That’s why he and Beachbody are so successful.  They’ve made it FUN.

But Tony has been working on projects for years to pack the most punch into programs that have incredible value, not just on what they cost but in terms of time spent.  That, to me, is a value we all must pay attention to.  We don’t have all the time in the world so let’s maximize it.

Ten Minute Trainer, a great example.  A program that costs about 60 bucks, I believe?  I scored the music for it and while I was watching it was thinking what most might be thinking, “How can 10 minutes make a difference?  A dent?”  Well, try it… he’s put these programs together in a way that those 10 minutes just don’t let up.  Sure, you can make it easier, as in any workout program, but if you want to get a massive amount done in 10 minutes, this is the program.  And part of the genius of it is that for those who feel they “Don’t have time to work out”, this tackles that problem.

You see, (and I’ve been guilty of this so much over my lifetime), if the options are

1.  Pound ourselves with something like P90X, Insanity, etc. for an hour, 5 or 6 days a week, or…

2.  Do nothing

most of us will do *nothing*, because we’re not READY for the brutal workouts that people see plastered all over television in infomercials… but doesn’t that tell us something?  Those infomercials run as much as they do because they SELL!  People see the dramatic difference in what 90 days can do and they jump… but it’s too much for most people, at first… or it takes a real NUT to start with something like that… (I fall into that category… ONE pushup was all I could do on day one of my first round of P90X in 2007)

But now… if 10 minutes can make a difference, and it can, here is the program.  Because what happens is you get through the first 10 minutes and start to feel good and suddenly think, “Hey, what if I do 10 minutes more?”  Boom… you’ve just gotten a 20 minute workout…

It’s really that simple…

But man, I’ve gone off on a tangent, (which is so typically me…).  Let me focus back in on P90X2.  Oh, I guess what sent me on the tangent is because as experienced as I am with these programs, I found myself ready to make the same excuses at the beginning of X2.  “This isn’t as GOOD as P90X!  It’s not as HARD… I’m not really getting what I want from it!”  But I did what I’ve learned to do… stay… keep going.  Push through… what’s the worst thing that can happen?  I spend 90 days on something that I really didn’t like?  But did I get results?  If I stay, it’s impossible NOT to.  THAT, I’ve learned through the reps… so I kept going.

And then in week 2 saw how I was improving, a bit, in form, my numbers were going up, and I was getting a GREAT workout.  Phase 1 in P90X2 is all about developing a solid BASE.  The program is based on very explosive, athletic moves that have a lot of fast twitch muscle activity which is kind of a modern approach to exercise but actually a very ancient approach.  As I discovered in a period about a year ago going through a Paleo/Primal schedule, we look at how human beings evolved… what we did for activity, what we ate… and the activity was a lot of walking with some bursts of running either TO something to catch and eat to survive, or running FROM something that wanted to catch and eat US to survive.

That is fast twitch muscle activity which in the long run is going to be able to help me stay in the game longer.  Gone are the days of running 5 days a week pounding my joints.  Nothing against running… I know it works for a lot of people and frankly, I miss that mode.  Loved it… it’s just that my body can’t handle it but the good news is that I learned we didn’t really evolve doing that which says to me it’s not really necessary.  It’s an elective, just like P90x is.  It’s something *extra*, not a requirement.

That really helped me cut myself some slack that when I wasn’t engaging in that extreme activity I wasn’t thinking, “I’m BLOWING IT!  I SHOULD be doing, this, that, etc.”  No, I’m all about what’s the bare minimum… and that’s walking and eating properly.  The nutrition is another subject while I’ll cover later.

But again, to steer back to P90X2… I’m LOVING IT.  I’m heading into my 4th week today… X2 Core… I’ll probably do 2 more weeks of it.  THEN, segue into phase 2 which has Shoulders and Arms, which I’M IN!  haaaaaaaaaaaa

I’ve purposely waited to watch it.  So many of my friends have told me about it, how much Tony and I go off in it… and that’s just from our almost 30 year friendship coming out!  I said to myself, “You’re not going to watch the video until it’s time to workout to it.”  I want to have maximum impact on workout day!  It’s like the release of an album… all that anticipation… I’m looking at going into Phase 2 of P90X2 as the release of one of my projects… and I’ll tell you this, friends… this was a big goal for me… I said back in 2007 when I couldn’t do more than 1 pushup on day one of round one of P90X, “I want to be in the videos…”  I thought I was pipe dreaming… wishful thinking but you know what I’ve learned?  A dream is a dream… you gotta have it, say it, write it down, declare it and it’s amazing how they come true.  It starts with a, well, a START!  And a start begins with a PLAN.  Doesn’t have to be the right plan, just a plan… we course correct.  We change the plan but we must have one to start with.

Believe me, mine change constantly but the day I started making plans and setting goals, I’ve never been the same.  I’m a lucky guy… I’ve lived a charmed life and yes, I’ve worked for it but there wasn’t much focus, until now.  I realized as I was approaching 50 years old that if I kept living a life of *chance*, one day the luck runs out… there has to be a plan, and a backup plan… and a team…

What a team.  Starting with Tony Horton and then spreading out to Mark Briggs, Traci Morrow and then on to Carl Daikeler, Craig Holiday and most importantly, my friends who’ve come along for the ride.  So many of them it would take 10 more pages to fill… but that’s who we are… Team Scheffy, along with all of YOUR teams I’ve been invited to join.

I think I’ll stick around… so there it is… onward… I’ll post my numbers from my first 3 weeks in the next day or so, until then, keep pushing PLAY!  Jason