P90X Week 9 review

So this week I went back to a full complement of P90X workouts. Week 9 is really a repeat of the workout sequence done in Week 1. One on hand it was sort of cool to go back to the original DVDs and see how much progress I'd made. Overall, even with the 10 day hiatus I took from all things P90X, I saw some really dramatic improvement in my overall muscular strength and muscular endurance. This made it really easy to get through the week even with some lingering fatigue that I still had from the swimming, biking and running I'd done while I wasn't doing P90X.

I noticed that I was able to do a lot more reps without assistance on the Pull Up Bar. And I was able to keep up with the advanced moves in Ab RipperX (no small feat here) even though I don't think I'll ever get to the point where I say that 15 minutes is a piece of cake.

This week also was a first in that I decided to do one of my workouts at the gym using dumbbells instead of resistance bands for a change of pace. I took the workout sheet with me and actually this works quite well once you know what movements to do. I must admit I was a little surprised. For some reason I thought doing the workout in a gym I wouldn't push quite as hard or I'd be self conscious. But instead P90X gave me a really narrow focus and rather than spending time wandering around the gym looking for an empty machine, I stayed in one place and just hit it. It probably looked like I knew what I was doing.

I think Beach Body, the folks who produced the P90X videos, should see about putting the videos on iTunes for download. How awesome would it be to carry P90X on your iPod? You could take it to the gym and have Tony and the crew to help you where ever you wanted to work out. Oh well I now have a couple of days to get ready for Week 10 and the one workout I have truly come to hate, Chest and Shoulders. There will be no doing this one in the gym. I think I'm going to have to take my heaping helping of humiliation in the privacy of my own home, "Thank you very much." (If you don't know what workout I'm talking about, you can find my description here.)