So, I’m trying P90X now.

I’m not sure what to do with my down time from “organized training”. I know I want to do another Ironman next year, but I’m not sure which one.

So for the time being I’m just kind of doing… whatever.

A few months back I decided to buy P90X and I’ve had it sitting on my shelf. When I bought it, Ironman Wisconsin was about two months away and I didn’t want to start something that wasn’t part of Coach Jen’s training plan.

Now I find myself not doing much other than taking my kids to classes and a few leisurely bike rides. So it seemed like a good time to try something new.

P90X has gotten great reviews from the people I’ve talked to. The major complaint was the pullup bar, which I’m told is really poor in quality. So I’ve substituted that for some homemade suspension training straps similar to TRX.

Other than the straps (or bar) the program doesn’t require anything more than barbells.

Today was ground zero for my P90X experiment and I’ll say it was a KILLER workout that left me exhausted. The first day is a chest & back workout with some core work tacked on to the end.

I found some of the moves for chest & back (and abs for that matter) pretty challenging. Made up of mostly pushups and pullups, P90X “coach” Tony Horton talk you though each move and constantly (almost an obnoxious amount) reminds you to set a goal number of reps for each exercise and not to over do it. Because the circuit is done twice.

Pushups get me every time  I always feel completely weak in my upper body. I fought through each set and did the max reps I could (per Tony’s instructions). In addition to the standard form for each exercise, Tony’s posse shows different variations to make the work a little easier. I totally took advantage of some of those variations.

The ab workout didn’t seem to bad in the beginning, but the difficulty quickly sneaks up on you. Again coached by the overly peppy Tony Horton, the exercises range from bicycle kicks to some very odd oblique twists.

I’ve never been a lover of core work to begin with (as if you couldn’t) tell, so this was 15 minutes of pain in muscles that I’ve probably never used before.

Later tonight I’ll add a “before” picture to this post and then I’ll write a weekly update with photos as I hammer through the next 90 days.