How to keep going when life takes over

This is my craziest time of the year. I have a big project at work for our CEO with a tight deadline. As the deadline gets closer I know I will be working nights and weekends to get it done. Just because this big project is going on doesn't mean that everything else goes away either. So how does someone keep working out with even less available time in the day? The answer for me is commitment.

I have made a commitment to do my workouts and I am going to stick with it. That doesn't mean that I might not have to switch some workout days around or modify things a bit, but I will get my workouts in. I'll do it at 10 pm if I need to. As Jeff Hill said on one of the Team Beachbody Coach calls "Once you make a commitment, the decisions you make will be surrounded by that commitment."

There's a reason I started the P90X2 program. I want to to be healthy and energetic. I want to look good and feel good. If I forget that then I am simply going through the motions to get to the end. If I remember my "why" and focus on it, I can push harder and use that as my motivation to get through the tough times. Life rewards action.

I'll leave you with a couple of quotes today.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." - Wayne Gretzky

"Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live." - Jim Rohn

The cooking experiment

I've been trying out some new recipes lately in an effort to help with the dinner around the house. I also wanted to make sure I am incorporating some P90X2 friendly meals for dinner. So far I have tried three recipes from either teambeachbody.com or the P90X2 diet guide. One has been moderately successful with the family and that was a breakfast frittata. The other two did not go so well.

Normally we do pretty well for having healthy dinners. My biggest problem is that I am a pretty picky eater, especially when it comes to things that are good for you. I could eat cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and pizza every day. But I have to choke down a chicken breast or most vegetables, especially cooked veggies. The rest of the family likes them, so that leaves me to either force myself to eat them or grab something else for myself.

So I picked out a few recipes from the P90X2 diet guide that I decided I would make. My first attempt was fish tacos. Now I'm sure that when prepared by someone who knows what they are doing these are probably delicious. The problem is that instead of someone who knows what they are doing, I attempted to make these. Needless to say they did not turn out so well. My son keeps reminding me of the time that we had fish that didn't taste like anything.

As I mentioned, the frittatas turned out well. For the kids I cheated a bit. What they got was more of a ham and cheese omelette. Mine was completely egg whites, but for theirs I still used some yolks. It's hard to mess up eggs too much and I have been making omelettes for years, so it's a small victory.

Yesterday I made up some chicken bacon ranch wraps. It's one way that I can eat chicken and enjoy it. It also has a good mix of vegetables inside that I can make up to bring to work. It's a complete meal all wrapped up in one convenient package. My son didn't like that there were onions in it and my daughter took all of the insides out and just ate the tortilla shell. My wife ate hers, but only wanted a little bit because she was not very hungry when we started to eat.

So I guess the moral is that I can still make up these foods for my lunches, but maybe I should stick to homemade whole wheat pizza when I cook for the family. I know they like that.

First few weeks P90X2 impressions

Normally I like to put out a post after a week on a new program of my impressions. This time I thought a week was not enough. I officially started P90X2 on January 2, 2012, although I had done a walkthrough of some of the videos prior to that. The thing I noticed about many of the exercises that made P90X2 different from P90X was the learning curve.

P90X2 workouts involve a lot more balance and stability than I am used to. It has taken me a little while to get the hang of some of the moves, or to be able to do them without falling over. It can be discouraging, but I had the exact same feeling when I did P90X YogaX for the first time almost two years ago. I got better and eventually learned to embrace the things that are difficult. It's more rewarding to accomplish something that is hard than to do something that is easy from the start.

The length of the workouts is roughly the same or shorter. Yoga is about 30 minutes shorter, and the Ab Ripper routine is only on the schedule once a week for the first level. There is a greater emphasis on core strength through the normal workouts so there is not as much need for a specific ab routine more than that.

The one big thing that I notice is that the workouts seemed easier to me than the original P90X when I started. Now I see that it was more a matter of me trying to figure out the moves instead of just doing them. Once I started getting the moves down I found that I was trying to keep up with the folks in the video for reps and it was not so easy anymore. I could also increase my weights on the exercises that use them. This is also level one of three so it is going to ramp up. I'm looking forward to starting up level two in a week or two.

What I've been up to this year

It's been a busy couple of weeks. I haven't updated in a while, so here's a brief recap of what's been going on in this new year.

At the request of my Beachbody Coach I finally put together a YouTube video talking about my transformation journey. That took a fair amount of time to edit so I've been taking it easy on the blogging and updating at PromiseToBeFit.com since then. Here's what I put together for my transformation video:



After posting the video I was asked to write a guest article for Pledge 2 Stay Fit talking about my story. Here's a link to the article: How Team Beachbody and P90X Changed Pete Haack’s Life. It's also been picked up on a number of other sites as well, so I've been busy lately answering a lot of questions about my nutrition and workouts and helping others get started on their transformations.

I've also officially started P90X2. I'm about a week and a half into it. I had Lasik surgery two days ago so I had to take a couple of days easy, but I should be back to normal workouts soon.

Last Sunday I ran the 200 and 400 Meters at an indoor track meet. My 200 was almost identical in time to my previous meet a few weeks ago. My 400 did not go very well. I got out slow and never really figured out my pacing. I let myself get behind another runner and couldn't commit to whether or not I was going to pass him until it was too late. Indoor 400s are just difficult for me mentally to keep from relaxing too much on the first lap and leaving way too much for the end. I'm hoping to get one more meet in this year so I can at least post a decent time.

It was an all-ages meet so my son ran at the meet also and did quite well. I think I get more satisfaction from watching my kids accomplish things than I do for myself. So while I was disappointed with my performance, I was excited to see my son break two of the meet records. He cut about 25 seconds off of his previous 400 meter time...while I can't even cut 1/2 second off of my time. Oh, to be a kid again.

The Power of the Buddy System

This is always a difficult time for people to keep working out and eating right. Everywhere you turn there is a plate of cookies and plenty of reasons to not take the time to work out.

I am as human as anyone else, have the same excuses and temptations, and just plain don't feel like working out sometimes. Add to that an injured shoulder and shin splints that just started creeping up and I've got more than enough excuses to put my workouts off until I feel like doing them again. That's just how it is.

One of the only things keeping me on track right now is knowing that other people are looking to me for guidance with their health and fitness goals. They say that life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent what you do about it. If my example to my family, friends, and people I coach is to give up when things get tough, then that's exactly what I would expect to see from them.

There are also a lot of people who motivate me. People like Jesse, who I coach. Jesse has done three rounds of P90X and is in phase two of his fourth round. Every time he gets done with a round of P90X he jumps right back in and finds ways to work around a busy schedule. My Team Beachbody workout Buddy Lynn, who works nights as a 911 dispatcher. Working out literally paid off as she won the $500 daily prize this week for logging her workout in the Online SuperGym. Fred and Rob, who have shown me how fit and ripped you can be into your 50's. Fred just won the monthly Beachbody Challenge, transforming his body after a total hip replacement, and Rob is still running times in track meets that I wish I could run now. I've mentioned IceBandit before and my quest to match his Insanity fit test numbers. I did the fit test this past week and used his numbers as my challenge again. I don't know that I would have pushed myself nearly as much without knowing that he did it, and so could I.

I could go on and on, but these are just some of the people who are my workout Buddies. They inspire me and give me motivation to keep going and push harder. I know that peer support is a major piece of the puzzle to keep going when times are tough. Hopefully I help to keep my Buddies and people I coach accountable, because I know that they do that for me.

Happy New Year.

Charities Challenge Track Meet

I had my first indoor track meet of the year (or you could say the last meet of the year) this past weekend. They did not have blocks for us, which was a bit of a surprise. Otherwise it was a great meet and very well run. I wanted to see how I could do only using Insanity as my workout program. Last summer I backed off on the training on the track and used Insanity: Asylum. This year it was the original Insanity program.



We only ended up four people in our heat for the 400 meter dash. Just as we were lining up the first heat of the 400 Meters, one of the officials pulled a couple of us out because he wanted a couple of people from the fast heat to run with two late high school aged entrants. They thought it would be better to split up the fast heat into two groups of four than to have the younger guys run against the older men. As it turned out, the other two kids probably would have been better off running with the older heats.

Overall I thought it went pretty well. I should have gone out faster, but I'm just not used to the pacing for an indoor meet yet. I'm going to try to get into a few more of these meets and I should be able to improve my times later in the winter. I'll also be starting up P90X2 as my primary workout program. It is specific for sports performance improvement so we'll see how that goes.

First Indoor 400 Meters This Season

I normally don't do indoor races, mainly because I don't have a facility to train and would prefer to take the winter off of the track to recover. But this year since I am planning to really push for a good finish at the Outdoor Championships I want to get as many races in as I can. I'm going to head up to the Twin Cities this weekend to run in the Charities Challenge meet. I will run the 200 and 400 Meters.

I've had some soreness in my legs lately and I'm not entirely sure why. It could be the couple of days I tried to do double workouts of Insanity and P90X2. I had a few days off last week so I was feeling pretty good going into the week. I wanted to preview the P90X2 workouts so I can be ready to jump right in on January 2 when I officially start the program. I also want to make sure I finish up Insanity so I don't want to back off on those too much. So I have been doing both a morning and night workout, but really taking it pretty easy on the P90X2 program. I guess not easy enough though. After the Plyocide workout I have been pretty sore in my left hamstring and both calves. That's not a good thing to have going into a track meet. So last night I did Insanity Max Recovery and the night before that I did X2 Recovery + Mobility.

One thing about the X2 Recovery + Mobility is that it incorporates the foam or rumble roller into a large portion of the video. I can alread tell that the rumble roller is going to become one of my best friends this year. It's all the pain of getting a deep tissue massage on my legs without the expense and time of going to a massage therapist.

Well, I hope to have my brother videotape the race this weekend and I might post the video next week. Unless I do poorly.