P90X Day 78: Chest, Shoulders & Triceps

Another milestone. Last time for this workout. I’ll be saying that several times this week. This is the last “real” week of P90X. Next week is another “Recovery and Ab Focus” week.

This is one of the workouts where you can really tell at the end if you’ve put it all on the mat or not. During the cool down, you do some stretches that start with overhead stretches, putting your hands up as high above you as possible. Today, when I did that I could barely get my hands up there. Not because I was in pain, but because my arms were just too heavy to lift up that high.

It’s funny. I increased my weights on a couple of the exercises in this workout this week. On the first one, my form went straight to hell, and I immediately knew I had to go back to the lesser weight. The others went ok, but they were definitely much harder. It’s amazing the difference 5 pounds can make sometimes. You have a weight, and it seems like it’s too light. You add 5, and suddenly it goes from too light to no longer doable.

While I’m moving on to Insanity in a couple weeks, I know that I’m going to be coming back to P90X at some point. I’ll be doing some sort of maintenance workout in October-December, and at this point I’m planning on another round of P90X starting in late December or January. I’ve already decided that I’m going to keep track of all my weights that I’m currently using. Next time, I’m going to start with the next weight down for most of the exercises. Will be interesting to see how that works.

For this first round of P90X, my goal has really been to just get through the thing, and to improve on a week-to-week basis. Next round, I really want to concentrate on form, on doing every exercise as perfectly as I can possibly do it, even if that means doing fewer reps than I’m doing now, or going to a lower weight, or whatever. Not that I slack off now, but I am constantly noticing even still that there’s room for improvement on my form. I think some of that is just a learning experience. And, in the case of a few things, such as in Yoga, or even Plyometrics, I was totally incapable of doing the exercise perfectly on day one. My body just wouldn’t do that. Now, I’m doing better, and I can. And I want to put that to the test next time around.

Anyway, tomorrow is the last time for Plyometrics. I’m so disappointed. My friend is slacking off. He says he’s skipping the last Plyos. Something about a 100 mile bike ride or something. I think he’s just wimping out on me, don’t you agree?