P90X Round 2 Day 1: Chest & Back - Ab Ripper X

"Do your best and forget the rest."

- Tony Horton

Write it down -- Day 1 Chest and Back is in the books! I can barely hold my arms up to type this post! It was that good. A little housekeeping first: My starting weight is 164.4 lbs. My body fat is 18.4 percent. I used both a digital BF scale and old fashioned calibers to get this reading. Now onto day 1....

It has been almost two months since I last did P90X and I almost forgot how darn hard it is. If you are considering the P90X program I want you to know that it is difficult. If you think you are going to buy the discs and half-ass your way through 90 days and come out looking like a Spartan from the movie 300 you are mistaken. Don't get me wrong, you can look like Gerald Butler but you have to earn it. And the way you earn it is through hard work, sweat and pain!

During the Chest and Back workout I burned 518 calories. With a max heart rate of 179 BPM and an average of 130 BPM. My reps on both the pullup bar and pushups decreased significantly from when I finished round 1 about two months ago. The good news is that my left shoulder felt great throughout most of the workout. I felt a little tenderness during the diver bomber push-ups the second time through but immediately backed off.

AB Ripper X was absolutely brutal. I started to hurt on the backwards bicycles and the pain did not stop until I was laying on my side unable to move after 32 reps of the Mason Twists. I did every rep until I got to the Twists and a couple of times I felt like I was going to vomit. But as I said above this is when you have to push yourself. When you feel like you cannot do another rep is when you have to - no exceptions.

I'd like to talk a little about my goals and what I am expecting from P90X this round. I was going to write about nutrition today but at the sake of not writing a novel I'll save that for tomorrow. Anyways, during my first round of P90X I weighted in at 181lbs to start. I lost 17 lbs and my starting weight this morning was 164 lbs. Now that I have lost the weight I wanted to, and P90X was great at doing that, I now want to add about 6-8 lbs of lean muscle. While reducing my BF% to the 12-14% range. The plan is to alter the nutrition guide some (I'll go over tomorrow) and calorie intake to accomplish this goal. I honestly believe that the P90X program is versatile enough to be both a weight loss and muscle gaining program and I plan on proving that. So, my main goal is to weight about 170lbs and be extremely ripped in the shoulders, chest and abs. And the journey has just begun!

Thanks for Reading,

Jeff