P90X Hybrid Day 31: 40 Minute Run + Back & Biceps + Abs/Core Plus

Well, it was quite the exercise packed day today! Annie and I dragged our butts out of bed at 5am and went for a 40 minute run. This is what her 1/2 Mary training program calls for and it sounded about right for me also. I could not believe how humid it was at this early hour. About 5 minutes into the run I looked down at my Garmin 305 and it was covered in moisture from the humidity. Then I looked over at my iPod and it was soaked too! Damn Houston. We are a couple of weeks away from the weather getting cooler, it has cooled some but not enough!

Anyways, we did the run and it went well. We ended up doing 3.9 miles which is just a tick above a 10 minute/mile pace. Legs are still feeling pretty good even after running 14 miles over the last 3 days!

I then went to the gym to get in my Back & Biceps P90X workout. Since this is only the 3rd day of Week 5 this was the first time doing Back & Biceps this round. This was a relatively easy workout to modify for gym use. All the dumbbell moves were obviously the same as they are at home, but the pullups were a little challenging. Especially the corn cobbs and the towel pullups. For the corn-cobbs I just held the lat pulldown bar down at my chin for a few seconds and moved my head left and right and then slowly raised it up. For the towel pullups I just wrapped a towel around the handle - although I probably appeared a little weird it work rather well.

Next came Abs/Core Plus and speaking of looking a little weird ......

Abs/Core Plus is from the P90X PLUS workouts. Which is marketed by BeachBodies as the next thing to do after you complete P90X - they advertise it as Extreme - I advertise a lot of it as pointless, but that is a whole other post - which can be found here.

This is my first time doing Abs/Core Plus in a long time and it absolutely destroyed my core! At the gym I was able to throw a mat on the floor next to the hanging leg raise device. I used this machine as opposed to a pullup bar and it it was great. This workout is superfast paced so with the mat right there I was able to jump right into the one the ground moves.

As mentioned above Abs/Core Plus is just as "Extreme" as the rest of the series but it is also damn effective. It does not focus on your abs as much as Ab Ripper X but it does focus on your entire core region and this was a great workout to do to mix it up. I really believe in the concept of muscle confusion and Ab Ripper X has been becoming rather routine to me so this was just what I needed. I am going to do this more often, maybe even do it and ARX on the same day!

Now as for the looks at the gym. It was more crowded than usual today (usual is like 3 people, today was like 8). I started doing Abs/Core Plus at the open end of the weight room and I was the only one in that location. Well, about 10 minutes in I was doing the X knee raises/crunch things where you bring your left knee up to your right elbow while in a standing X position. With the proper intensity they are hard and I was grunting away! Well, as I was moving to the next move I noticed a few of the people had stopped what they were doing and were just blatantly staring at me. Not sure if it was because I was so intense or if I looked foolish. I am going to go with intense (-:

Tomorrow is a cardio day and I really want to swim. My gym sucks though and I am going to have to figure out when the stupid pool is available.

Thanks for Reading,

Jeff