Day 1

Day one of P90X is like starting a new job! I felt bright-eyed and excited, even though the baby woke up too early, and I went to bed too late the night before.

My immediate observation was that although the workout was still tough, my body could handle it better than any other time I've tried this program because I've been working out regularly for about 7 months now. I have always casually played sports, but I haven't always worked out, and I now realize my chances of sticking with the program are probably better because my initial level of fitness is higher. People might think they can just go from lightly active to P90X, but I don't think that's going to be true for most.

I knew what to expect from this workout, since I've done it before. You are supposed to Bring It!, which I think means you should push yourself to muscle failure, but I didn't exactly go that far. In the past, I have gotten so sore from day 1, that I skipped the day 3 workout, which isn't chest and back, but does involve holding weights in your poor sore arms. What I didn't know then that I know now is that the cure for soreness is more exercise.

How sore you get doesn't necessarily indicate how effective your workout was, but I was glad that today I was pleasantly sore (erm, is that even something anyone says?). I'm still continuing my other activities during P90X, including working out with my trainer twice a week, playing soccer on Fridays and playing roller derby, which could involve anywhere from one to three nights of practice in one week. So in the evening, I had a second workout with my trainer that focused on legs, which resulted in a sore muscle in every part of my body. Yay!

Here's a chart of my reps. All of the pushups were completed on my knees except for my first set of dive-bomber push-ups, and I used a medium band for the pull-up moves.

	Week 1		Week 2		Week 3
Chest and back moves	1	2	1	2	1	2
Standard push-up	20	22
Wide front pull-up	25	20
Military push-up	12	10
Reverse grip chin-up	20	25
Wide fly push-up	15	15
Closed grip overhand pull-up	20	20
Decline push-ups	12	9
Heavy pants	20	20
Diamond push-up	12	20
Lawnmower	15	15
Dive-Bomber push-up	8	10*
Back fly	15	20
*The first set of these I did not do on my knees, but the second set I did.

My legs workout later that night included:

1. Two sets of 25 squat jumps using TRX suspension band things
2. A kettle bell squat pyramid. Starting at 10 reps, I held a kettle bell and squatted elbows to knees, then for 10 reps held the kettle bell against my waist and bent at the waist to work my hamstrings. Resting briefly in between sets, I continued until my reps were down to 2.
3. Laying on a mat, I put my feet on a bosu ball. I lifted and held my butt in the air while I brought the ball toward me, and then away from me with my heels. Keeping my feet on the ball, I lifted and dropped my butt. I can't remember how many reps for each of those, or how many sets.
4. Three different kinds of squats: with feet together, squat, then come up on balls of feet; same with feet shoulder-width apart; same with feet in wide stance.
5. Forearms on a mat, on toes in a plank position. Bring knee out and forward toward shoulder, then straight back and kick upward. Repeat reps without letting foot back onto the ground, then switch legs.
6. 90-second wall sit.

Ok, so that's an account of the workout part of my day, but there's this whole other important part, which is the diet. I'm going to write a separate post addressing what I'm doing about the diet, but here in my daily posts, I want to briefly record what I ate. You COULD follow the meal plan in the nutrition book, but if you don't, it can be hard to come up with what to eat, and I know I love to get ideas from other people.

• Breakfast
• One egg plus two egg whites, fried in 1 tsp. of earth balance butter
• Steel cut oats with some frozen berries thrown in near the end of the simmering
• Three strips of turkey bacon
• Black coffee
• Snack
• 1 serving of ham sandwich meat
• 2 low-fat mozzarella cheese sticks. The Trader Joe's Lite sticks are not too bad.
• High-protein greek yogurt. Check the label for a good balance between carbohydrates and protein, though.
• Lunch
• Chicken breast cooked with liquid in a pan with sugar snap peas and mini bell peppers
• Dinner
• Sliced top sirloin and sliced chicken breast, cooked in a peanut-butter-hoisen-sriarcha-teriyaki sauce
• Sauteed frozen stir-fry veggies

Day 1 was as great as you might expect a day one of anything to be. And day two and three probably. I'll make it to day 4, and then we'll see how things are really going!