What are you dying from?

I was reading through some of the success stories on the TeamBeachbody site when someone's story reminded me of this quote from Lance Armstrong in the movie "Dodgeball: A TRUE Underdog Story". There's an old saying from Homer Simpson that "it's funny because it's true". Whenever I start making excuses I think of Lance Armstrong's quote where he says "what are you dying from". Here's the script from that scene:



Lance Armstrong: Could I get a bottle of water. - - Hey, aren't you Peter La Fleur?
Peter La Fleur: Lance Armstrong!
Lance Armstrong: Yeah, that's me. But I'm a big fan of yours.
Peter La Fleur: Really?
Lance Armstrong: Yeah, I've been watching the dodgeball tournament on the Ocho. ESPN 8. I just can't get enough of it. But, good luck in the tournament. I'm really pulling for you against those jerks from Globo Gym. I think you better hurry up or you're gonna be late.
Peter La Fleur: Uh, actually I decided to quit... Lance.
Lance Armstrong: Quit? You know, once I was thinking about quitting when I was diagnosed with brain, lung and testicular cancer, all at the same time. But with the love and support of my friends and family, I got back on the bike and I won the Tour de France five times in a row. But I'm sure you have a good reason to quit. So what are you dying from that's keeping you from the finals?
Peter La Fleur: Right now it feels a little bit like... shame.
Lance Armstrong: Well, I guess if a person never quit when the going got tough, they wouldn't have anything to regret for the rest of their life. But good luck to you Peter. I'm sure this decision won't haunt you forever.

We've Got a Situation

Since I'm not really following a specific program and I'll be heading to Disney World for a week I decided to try something a little different for my workout tonight. I played basketball yesterday and jammed my big toe so I didn't want to do much that would involve jumping around.

So I thought, what better night to try The Situation Workout with Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino.

Now keep in mind that if I had to pay for this I would not have done it. I already think this guy gets way to much attention and I don't need to put any money into supporting him. There are actually a whole bunch of workouts on Netflix instant streaming and this is one of them. I thought it would be just an ab routine, but I found that it is a series of 15 minute workouts for different body parts. I watched a little bit of the other routines and then skipped to the ab portion. There are actually two ab workouts. I'm not sure if they are meant to be done back-to-back, but that's how I did them. After doing Ab Ripper X these are pretty easy to get through.

I don't have a lot to say about the program. There are some good exercises and they seem to be done in a good order. It's not anything really new and you could probably just put together a bunch of ab exercises from a Men's Health type of magazine and get an equally good ab workout. But the thing you would miss out on is hearing the word "Situation" more times than you have ever heard in your life. It's pretty obvious that Sorrentino is not a fitness instructor. He stumbles through his introductions and explanations of the exercises and then hits on the girls in the video while they are trying to demonstrate the moves.

If you have Netflix instant streaming, feel free to check it out. But remember that you will not get any of the time that you spend watching this video back. I did get a small ab workout in, but I could have easily done half of the P90X Ab Ripper X for a better one.

Here's a little quote to leave you with for today from The Situation Workout:

"From my situation to your situation. Hope you have a great situation." - Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino

Without a plan

I've been working out without a plan for a couple of weeks now. I thought I would go back to P90X workouts for a few weeks, then take a week off for vacation, and come back to P90X until P90X2 comes out. But I started missing the Asylum workouts, especially the fact that they are usually 30 - 45 minutes long.

I find it is difficult to just decide at the last minute what I want to do. In fact, what I really want to do is lay down on the couch and watch a movie. That's why my brain must tell my body that it needs to push play on the workout video and do it. Once I'm started, I'm committed. It's starting that's the difficult part.

So tonight I decided to do P90X Back and Biceps mainly because I was looking for a good weightlifting workout. I am not as concerned for these next couple of months with keeping my weight down and I would like to increase my strength before starting P90X2. I did the Asylum Strength workout which mainly worked my chest and shoulders so I wanted to back off from that. In fact, I probably should have done a plyometric workout or yoga tonight, but I felt like lifting weights instead. I will probably be taking tomorrow off so I think this was a good choice.

I need to get back on some kind of a routine and have a plan so I don't fall into the danger of deciding not to work out. Take the decision making out of the equation and then there's nothing to it but to do it. I like these little quotes that Tony Horton and Shaun T use so I think I'm going to incorporate them into my posts from now on.

"Do your best and forget the rest." - Tony Horton

Who got the better delivery?

Today I came home to find yet another t-shirt waiting for me. This time it was the Insanity: Asylum - "I'm Committed" shirt for completing the Asylum program.

But this time there was another box waiting there by the door as well. A larger one with my daughter's name on it. We just had her birthday party this weekend so we opened them up at the same time to see what we got. It seems that we both received clothes. Hers were for Barbie dolls and mine was for me. Hers was a gift from her aunt, uncle, and cousins in Taiwan and mine was a reward for completing a month of some of the hardest workouts available on DVD. 

Happy birthday to my little girl.

P90X Crushed It T-shirt

Look what arrived in my mail the other day.

It was a nice suprise that I didn't really expect. After receiving so many comments on my transformation I decided to submit my success story at Teambeachbody.com. I was planning to put together my before and after photos anyway for the Asylum T-shirt offer so I thought I might as well enter. They give out $1000 to ten people each month for their stories. Plus I guess they send out free t-shirts to everyone who enters the Beachbody Challenge.

It's a nice motivator that I didn't really know about, but I can share this with you. Here's the link to the challenge: http://www.teambeachbody.com/connect/beachbody-challenge

Something to shoot for. Good luck.

My Diet Plan

Diet is a very important element of health and fitness. While I've followed a number of different plans over the years I haven't settled on just one. Rather I have taken elements from many of the programs and incorporated them into my everyday eating program.

A diet is no good if you can't stick to it and your progress will often be lost as soon as you go off the diet. So I have decided to stop with dieting and just use things I can follow all the time.

Although I generally eat things that I want, I do try to follow these rules:
1) Eat 5 to 6 times a day.
2) Consume most of my carbohydrates at the beginning of the day.
3) Try not to eat after 7pm unless I have just finished a workout (then it's usually a recovery drink, Shakeology, or whey protein powder).
4) Eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables each day (can include Shakeology).
5) If I don't like it I don't need to eat it.
6) I don't deprive myself of foods I love, but I don't need to go overboard either.
7) If I'm full, stop eating.

That last rule is one of the most important, especially if weight loss is your goal. This is a key principle of a program called Winning Weighs. Imagine your body is like a car and you fill it up with fuel. If you keep filling after the tank is full you will end up spilling gas all over. In your body the excess food that usually would get used for energy is not needed so it is converted to fat for use later. Since you're probably not going to be going for an extended period of time without food, you most likely don't want that fat.

Whatever you do for your nutrition plan, find something you can stick with and that gets you the results you want. I could stick to an all pizza and peanut butter cup diet, but it probably would not help me to run faster or feel fit and healthy.

Here we go again

I decided to start up another round of P90X this week. I planned to take thing easy for a while, but I also could see that if I didn't have a plan for the next few months prior to when I get my P90X2 program, I was going to lose a lot of what I have gained over the summer. I feel like I am in great shape right now so I don't need to necessarily get better at this point, but I do want to keep from going backwards. I know I have a vacation coming up and I'm not planning to do much for workouts during that time.

The major thing that I noticed was that I did not feel sick from the Chest and Back workout this time. Now I did do the workout in the evening instead of the morning and I ate about an hour before doing the workout, so that may have helped. But I started off trying to pace myself and found that I was easily hitting the numbers that I was getting at the end of my last round of P90X. When I finished it up I was able to go right into Ab Ripper X.

Yesterday was the first time that I did the PlyoX workout for quite some time and it seemed easier than it has in the past. I guess when you've been doing Shaun T's Vertical Plyo workout anything seems easier. I do have to say that even though PlyoX seemed easier, it was by no means easy. It just means that I could stick with pretty much the entire routine and work on keeping better form and jumping higher. The workouts are always as difficult as you make them so I still have room for improvement. I try to stick with Dom as much as I can until the jump knee tuck where he has to go double-time. Maybe next time.

I've got to say, it feels good to feel good. Especially after a workout that used to pummel me into the ground.