I started Phase 3 this week, and it’s going well so far. It’s nice to see progress in both my strength and appearance. I can definitely do more pushups in all of the sets than I did in Phase 1, and I upped the weights with all of the shoulders and arms stuff, and might even need a little more next week.

The diet’s been sporadic as well. Most days during the week I’m pretty good about eating “good” foods, but then end up eating out or having lots of cake or something. At this rate, I’ll never have a six pack, but that’s really ok with me. Also, to combat this, I’m running a bit more. I’ve run 3 days this week, and hope to keep that up through the end of this thing. I’m going to swap out Kenpo with running from now on, so that’s one day I’ll get for sure.

I finished Week 7 this morning with Kenpo. Wednesday was tough with Legs and Back in the morning, then I went for a long-ish bike ride with some guys from work (20 miles in 1:17 or so), then I still had to do Ab Ripper X when I got home. My legs were hurting pretty good yesterday, and I was more tired than I’ve been in a while, so I moved my rest day from Friday to Thursday, and did Kenpo this morning.

Tomorrow will begin the Recovery Week of Phase 2, which is the same as the recovery week from Phase 1. I think Kenpo and Core Synergistics are the only things I’ll actually by the book. For Yoga, I plan to go for an easy run, stretch real good, and then do the Runner’s Yoga DVD. I’ll do a run and good stretch for the Stretch day, too. I didn’t get much out of the stretch DVD the one time I did it, so I think I’ll do my own stretching from now on.

Saturday was Chest, Shoulders and Triceps which is pretty good. I kept up my streak of completing the entire Ab Ripper program, didn’t even need to rest during the Fifer Scissors this time, either! I do still need to work on getting my legs higher and straighter during those, though.

Yesterday’s Plyo was replaced with a run since we weren’t at home and I didn’t have the Plyo DVD with me. I probably burned just as many calories, if not more, running for 30 minutes than Plyo would have. But as weird as it might sound, I dis kind of miss Plyo. It’s such a great, hard workout, that I almost feel like I cheated myself by not doing it.

Back and Biceps was good, but I still feel like I need heavier weights for most of the curls. I’m not feeling the burn at the end of 15 reps quite anymore. I’ll probably just deal with it for now, since we don’t have room to store any more weights, and I’ve only got 4 more active weeks left of this thing.

This morning was tight on time again, so I’ll do Ab Ripper after work. I’ll probably try an easy run beforehand to warm up and tire myself out a little bit. I’m still deciding what to do about Yoga tomorrow. I might do Plyo instead since I couldn’t do it yesterday, or I’ll try to get to the gym to run and then do the Runner’s Yoga when I get home.

We finally finished the 7 pound cake last night, so the diet will be better for a week or so, but my birthday is next week, so we’ll have a cake again. This one won’t be as big, though.

Today was the final day of Week 6. Nothing was too out of the ordinary for this week, except my schedule got messed up a bit, so I ended up making Sunday Yoga day, but didn’t do Yoga (long story), and moved Plyo to Tuesday. I ran after work Monday, and hope to run tomorrow morning or afternoon, as well.

Monday morning, since I was running late, I skipped Ab Ripper, and moved it until the afternoon after I ran. For the first time, I was able to complete all 349 reps, and my abs could feel it the next day or two. Yesterday after Legs and Back, I did mostly everything, but skipped the leg climbers due to time constraints, and I feel like I get very little from them compared to how long they take.

Diet’s been about the same, not terrible, but could be better. I eat pretty well for breakfast and lunch, but then we have like 3 pounds of cake left so I have a giant slice of cake after dinner which throws everything off. The cake should be gone soon, and I hope to keep running more, so it should get better.

I finished Kenpo this morning, which effectively gets me through the first week of Phase 2. I’ll be getting to work early tomorrow, so while I’d like to run in the morning, it’s not feasible, so it will be a rest day. Saturday starts Week 6, with Chest, Shoulders & Triceps. I won’t have access to dumbbells, so it will be all bands. We’ll see how that goes.

Today is my wife’s birthday, so we’ll be eating cake tonight, and then leftovers for a while after as well. So it could be another week of not-so-great food. Someday soon I’ll start eating better, I promise…

Today was Legs and Back, so I got to use my pullup bar again. I don’t know if it was eating less healthy this week (sister’s wedding, White Sox games, etc.) or just not having enough in my stomach, but I felt more tired than usual doing all of the lunges and squats today.

I’ve given up on Yoga X for a couple of reasons. First, I never get up in time to do the whole thing, and second it’s becoming increasingly more boring for me. My new plan for Yoga days is to run, stretch, and do the Power Yoga For Runners DVD I have instead. It’s more geared toward what I’m trying to accomplish, and it’s not as long and drawn out as the Yoga X DVD is. Now the only problem is having enough daylight to run before doing Yoga in the morning.

Holy crap this is tough. It’s 24 exercises, each max reps, alternating between two back and two bicep exercises – 24 in total. Half of the back stuff is pullups/chinups, and most of the bicep stuff is various types of curls. By the end, my arms were so tired I could barely lift my water bottle to take a drink. I know I’m going to feel this one tomorrow, but I’m looking forward to it.

I did get the pullup bar at Linens and Things yesterday. It’s very easy to set up, and it’s much better than the bands. The bands are great for a lot of things, but I wasn’t getting very much resistance for the pullups. I was doing 20 reps per set of pullups with the bands before. Now, I’m using a step stool for some extra support, and still just barely being able to do 10-12 reps. I hope to be able to wean myself off of the step stool over the next few weeks, and increase my reps.

In other news, I’m going to the White Sox – Rays playoff game tonight. Go SOX!

I’m one third of the way through this thing, and it feels good. I’m glad the recovery week is over, it was good to wake up with sore muscles again. Today was Plyo, and I definitely feel like Tony – “I hate it, but I love it!” I was starting to get sick of not really feeling like I was doing anything, except Core Synergistics is a good workout – I wish it was included during the regular weeks sometimes.

I was thinking about taking some Day 30 pictures to see progress, but I had a huge dinner last night over at my parents, and feel like my stomach is exceptionally large. So I may wait until tomorrow when things even out a bit.

I’m hoping to go find a pullup bar today over at Linens and Things. It’s very similar to the official P90X bar, but cheaper. If I get it, I hope it will help with my progress a bit, because the bands are not giving me as much resistance as I had hoped for.

I started Phase 2 today with Chest, Shoulders, and Triceps. There are 24 moves, 8 each of Chest, Shoulders and Triceps. The chest portion is mostly different types of pushups, shoulders is a lot of flys and, and then various triceps moves. I found it good to mix things up from the Phase 1 workouts, and this workout definitely Brought It. As always, the workout is confusing the first time though, especially some of the more complicated pushup moves.

After that was Ab Ripper, which is still hard, but I’m able to do more of the reps now. I still need work, but I think by the end I’ll be doing the whole thing.

I’m now three days into the Recovery week, but I changed the schedule a bit due to some scheduling conflicts. My sister’s wedding was this weekend, and we ended up needing to leave early for it at the last minute, so I wasn’t able to get Yoga in Saturday morning. So I figured the 5.5 mile run I did on Friday would count as my Yoga day, since I did spend a good amount of time stretching, and Saturday became my rest day. Then I picked back up with the schedule Sunday with Core Synergistics.

Core Synergistics is a core workout, but done with other exercises as well. There are prison cell pushups, which are pushups with pulling in your knees for some core work. Then stuff like doing lunges, then doing tricep kickbacks, curls and shoulder presses all in the lunge, and “Banana Rolls” which are a bit hard to describe, but they work all 4 sides of your core at once. It’s all good stuff, and my low back muscles are sore today, which is good because I know they need work.

Today was Kenpo, which I’m starting to enjoy a bit more. I’d still rather go for a run, but it’s not as bad as Yoga. Tomorrow is X Stretch, but I think I’m going to go for a real easy run (20 minutes or so) then stretch for 20 minutes on my own, since what I’ve seen of the X Stretch DVD is kinda lame.