Time to Bring It!

I’m one of those people who like having a workout program to stick to. If I don’t give myself a schedule, I’ll either wake up in the morning and spend 20 minutes trying to figure out what workout I feel like doing (eating into my actual workout time) or I just won’t workout at all.

I started out the year with Insanity, but after that I just floated around a bit. I did some running, took some yoga classes, went to a spin class every now and again – but I wasn’t feeling the results of Insanity and I didn’t have any sort of calendar or plan to keep me on track.

I’ll be training for a marathon come September, but in the meantime, I need to strengthen my upper body for the Tough Mudder I’ll be toughing out in October (pun intended). I can’t afford a NYC gym membership, so I don’t have access to fancy weight machines or a wall full of free weights. So what’s a gal to do?

P90X!

That’s right! I’m officially on the Beach Body bandwagon. First Shaun T turned my bedroom into a sweat pit each morning and now it’s Tony’s turn. I had to buy a pull-up bar and some resistance bands, but that cost me about $40 total (the equivalent of about 2 weeks sans initiation fee at a gym in the city!). There was a little bit of an issue with the pull-up bar not fitting in the doorways of my apartment, but luckily, my boyfriend is an engineer and figured out a way to make it work. It may have required removing a closet door and sawing off part of the metal pull-up bar but hey – a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

Anyway, I’m already 5 weeks in and I’m loving it! It’s definitely different from the cardio-based workouts I’m use to, but I’ve really been enjoying stepping out of my comfort zone.

This is what my first month of workouts consisted of:

Monday: Abs, Chest + Back
Tuesday: Plyometrics
Wednesday: Abs, Shoulders + Arms
Thursday: the program says yoga, but I ran instead (I can’t not run!)
Friday: Abs, Legs + Back
Saturday: Kenpo (I usually ran on this day, too)
Sunday: Rest

This is definitely more strength training than I’ve ever done, and I’m also working out 6 days a week (I was just doing 4-5)!  I had three weeks of that followed by one “recovery week.” I put that in quotes because it was still crazy hard!

Monday: Yoga (this workout is 90 minutes long and made me sweat like Bikram!)
Tuesday: Core Synergistics (1 hour of mostly ab work? Ouch!)
Wednesday: Kenpo
Thursday: X Stretch (one hour of stretching is surprisingly difficult)
Friday: Core Synergistics
Saturday: Yoga
Sunday: Rest

The best news is I’m already seeing some results! Here are some stats from day 1 to day 30:

body fat – 14.5%
weight – 142.4 to 140.8lbs
chest – 90.5 to 87.5cm
waist – 78 to 73cm
hips – 86 to 80cm
right thigh – 51.5 to 49.5cm
left thigh – 49 to 48cm
right arm – 31 to 29.5cm
left arm – 30 to 29.25cm

My beginning results probably aren’t that accurate because I didn’t have a tape measure. I improvised with a cloth belt and a ruler – but even if the starting stats are way off, I can see a difference in some of these pictures and I can certainly feel the difference.

I just finished the first week of phase 2. I hope I continue to progress and stick with it!

What does your current workout routine consist of? Have you ever tried one of the Beach Body programs?