P90X Day 61: Legs & Back

Yes, I know. Yesterday I said today would be Kenpo X. For some reason I was thinking today was Thursday. Tomorrow will be Kenpo.

This workout is just painful. There's no other way to describe it. I think I mentioned last time that I've come to truly hate the pull ups. Every time a pull up set comes, I look at my worksheet to see how many I did last time. These days that's usually followed by shock and anguish. "I did HOW many? I have to do that many AGAIN?" But I do. In fact, except for being completely out of breath at the end of each one, they're really worse in my mind than in reality. For reverse grip chin-ups, I can now whip out 7 or 8 without even taking a break or slowing down. I think I did 17 of them in one set today.

Despite the improvement, I'll definitely be glad when I can start a new round of P90X and set a new baseline for all my pull up numbers. Yes, I'll use my previous ones as a guide, but I may not force myself to better my current numbers the very first week. I want to focus more on form this next time around "quality over quantity". In the beginning of this round of P90X my form was awful on quite a few of the exercises. It's better now on most, but not always perfect, particularly on the last few reps. I'm going to concentrate on better form next time and maybe sacrifice a couple reps for it if necessary.

Since this was a strength training day, of course it ended with the 16 minutes of Hell known more formally as Ab Ripper X. I've complained that in some ways P90X is too short. You only do Chest & Back 5 times for example. But Ab Ripper X appears on the schedule 30 times. And, I think you do Yoga X 16 times. Yoga X contains Yoga Belly 7, which you can think of as Ab Ripper Yoga X. So, in the 90 days, you work your Abs 46 times. That doesn't include the 6 days of Core Synergistics, btw.

Anyway, the point of all of that in the last paragraph, is that you definitely do ab stuff enough to see and feel improvement. I may not have a six pack, but my belly is rock solid. And I'm doing more sit ups in a given week than I can recall doing at any time in my life. Still, I'm happy knowing that I only have to do Ab Ripper X 9 more times this cycle.

Tomorrow, Kenpo X. This time I really mean it.