Wow, I just now am getting a chance to update this blog. But don't think I haven't worked out since Thursday (the last time I posted) because that's just not the case. It's been a few days, so forgive me if I forget some details.
Friday I forget what happened, but the evening hit quickly and I did not get to work out. I ate healthy though, so that counts.
Saturday I still had one more ESP-XC workout for Week 3, and that workout went well. It was Core/Balance and it went well. I got my 100 situps in in the finale and overall felt great about the workout.
Because I worked out Saturday I took Sunday off. Then came Monday. Monday was Legs, and this is a dreaded workout. It's hard, really hard, and my legs were on fire at the end. However, I think I had my best leg workout ever in this program and I felt great about it. I only get to do this workout one more time, since next week starts Month 2, the Strength phase, and all new workouts are coming out.
After the Legs workout the group came over and we ended up having a very interesting workout. We started with bench and pullups, which felt good, but then somehow we started rotating sets of 2 people and those 2 people would grapple for a few minutes. Mark's been showing us a bit of jiu jitsu (not to the level where any of us would claim to know what we're doing) but everyone got to roll with everyone at least once, and that took up about 45 minutes of the evening. It was fun! I really want to study jiu jitsu sometime soon so I'm going to look into it. But long story short the workout was a blast and it was awesome cardio!
Last night I hit play on Upper Body from the Endurance phase of ESP-XC. This was the last time I was doing this workout and I wanted to make it awesome! I pushed hard, held the pushups for a long time, held the chinup for the entire minute on the total gym, and overall had an amazing workout. and I did all 55 pushups in the finale! It was great!
So that's been the last few days. Just 3 more days in Month 1 of ESP-XC, and then onto the Strength phase!
Bring it!
Let's get Mazel-Tough!
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Group Workout and Ab Ripper X
I got home a little later than I wanted to last night, and after a bit of being lazy time on the couch I realized I didn't have time for ESP-XC last night. Fortunately there's 5 workouts per week and the instructions aren't really clear on if I should take two days off, space them out, or what, so I opted to push my last workout of Week 3 to Friday (tonight). The group was still coming over the normal workout, so I wanted to have some energy for that. The ESP-XC workout that was scheduled was Core/Balance, and I knew that after 100 situps I would have no desire to do any weight training.
The group showed up around 7 and we got started around 7:20. I started out with hammer pullups. I don't know what to call them, but they use the hammer handles instead of the chinup or pullup handles. I focused on going really slow and going to full extension down, and I ended up with 2 sets of 4 and 2 sets of 3. It felt good, even though by the end I felt my arms hurting from the upper body workout from Wednesday.
After that I got into bench and did 2 sets of 10 and 1 set of 12. Then came a set of deadlifts, some more pullups and then came Ab Ripper....
I don't really know how we decided to do Ab Ripper, but I'm really happy we did it. It was the usual 15 minutes of absolute agony, followed by an amazing feeling of relief. I did all 50 Mason Twists and felt great about it.
So that was about it. Tonight I'm wrapping up Week 3 of ESP-XC.
Bring it!
The group showed up around 7 and we got started around 7:20. I started out with hammer pullups. I don't know what to call them, but they use the hammer handles instead of the chinup or pullup handles. I focused on going really slow and going to full extension down, and I ended up with 2 sets of 4 and 2 sets of 3. It felt good, even though by the end I felt my arms hurting from the upper body workout from Wednesday.
After that I got into bench and did 2 sets of 10 and 1 set of 12. Then came a set of deadlifts, some more pullups and then came Ab Ripper....
I don't really know how we decided to do Ab Ripper, but I'm really happy we did it. It was the usual 15 minutes of absolute agony, followed by an amazing feeling of relief. I did all 50 Mason Twists and felt great about it.
So that was about it. Tonight I'm wrapping up Week 3 of ESP-XC.
Bring it!
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
ESP-XC Days 13 and 14
Forgot to blog yesterday. Sorry. Almost forgot to blog today. I've actually been playing on SpoonerSpot, a website that I'm beta testing, and lost track of time. That's beside the point though.
So last night was Cardio/Combo from the Endurance phase. I like this one because it's the most punching and kicking of any of the DVDs in the first month. Well, punching and knees. There aren't actually any kicks. But it's fun. Hard too. My cardio really needs work, and especially with my legs being shot from the day before (it was legs day) it made for a difficult workout. Also this is the only workout in month 1 that doesn't go in rounds, so there really aren't any breaks. It's a great workout, but rough. I did well with it. Broke a good sweat and fought through the leg pain. Good stuff.
After that I made ground turkey red beans and rice. It had spinach and tomatoes in it too. Healthy and tasty. I was pleased.
Tonight I got home from the office and hit play around 6:40. Today's workout was upper body. I've really only done this one once since last week I was tied up with the other workout during this one. Upper body is my favorite part to work since it's usually all weights; I like lifting weights. This one really doesn't have much weights (though it has some), but the whole thing is very different than a traditional weight lifting workout. There's a ton of doing one rep and holding it for 1 minute things. That's really hard in a chinup and a pushup. The chinup one I held for about 15 seconds, then a few more sets of 8 seconds. Good, but not great. But man did my biceps hurt afterwards! The pushup ones though I did great on! It was hold at the bottom for 10 seconds, followed by an up and then a straight back down, for 1 minute (so basically 6 reps). I did all of them. No breaks!
The shoulder stuff in this workout is great! Again it's all slow stuff or isolation stuff, but my shoulders were on fire by the end. All of the regular rep stuff went great too. It's all slow up, hold, slow down, repeat. That gets difficult after a few reps, and it's never just a few reps in this workout.
The whole thing ends with 10, 9, 8....., 2, 1 pushups, totaling 55 pushups done in under 3 minutes (2:30 in the DVD). They started to get hard around the 5 mark but I did them all, and actually did them a little faster than the DVD folks so I did the last 1 rep with them too.
Overall a great workout yesterday and today. Tomorrow is Core/Balance one more time to round out Week 3, followed by the group workout. Wish me luck!
Bring it!
So last night was Cardio/Combo from the Endurance phase. I like this one because it's the most punching and kicking of any of the DVDs in the first month. Well, punching and knees. There aren't actually any kicks. But it's fun. Hard too. My cardio really needs work, and especially with my legs being shot from the day before (it was legs day) it made for a difficult workout. Also this is the only workout in month 1 that doesn't go in rounds, so there really aren't any breaks. It's a great workout, but rough. I did well with it. Broke a good sweat and fought through the leg pain. Good stuff.
After that I made ground turkey red beans and rice. It had spinach and tomatoes in it too. Healthy and tasty. I was pleased.
Tonight I got home from the office and hit play around 6:40. Today's workout was upper body. I've really only done this one once since last week I was tied up with the other workout during this one. Upper body is my favorite part to work since it's usually all weights; I like lifting weights. This one really doesn't have much weights (though it has some), but the whole thing is very different than a traditional weight lifting workout. There's a ton of doing one rep and holding it for 1 minute things. That's really hard in a chinup and a pushup. The chinup one I held for about 15 seconds, then a few more sets of 8 seconds. Good, but not great. But man did my biceps hurt afterwards! The pushup ones though I did great on! It was hold at the bottom for 10 seconds, followed by an up and then a straight back down, for 1 minute (so basically 6 reps). I did all of them. No breaks!
The shoulder stuff in this workout is great! Again it's all slow stuff or isolation stuff, but my shoulders were on fire by the end. All of the regular rep stuff went great too. It's all slow up, hold, slow down, repeat. That gets difficult after a few reps, and it's never just a few reps in this workout.
The whole thing ends with 10, 9, 8....., 2, 1 pushups, totaling 55 pushups done in under 3 minutes (2:30 in the DVD). They started to get hard around the 5 mark but I did them all, and actually did them a little faster than the DVD folks so I did the last 1 rep with them too.
Overall a great workout yesterday and today. Tomorrow is Core/Balance one more time to round out Week 3, followed by the group workout. Wish me luck!
Bring it!
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
ESP-XC Day 12: Endurance Legs plus the group workout
ESP-XC preaches throughout the whole program that "Legs and abs separate the pros from the Joes" Pretty much every workout in some way works the legs and to a lesser extent the abs, and that makes the leg workout, at least the one I've been doing in Month 1, extremely difficult.
It doesn't help that my legs are weak. Weak is a relative term....they're actually the most defined portion of my body. We were being dumb in the gym last week showing calf and quad muscles, and somehow mine were the most defined of the group. I've been working out a while and have always done sports and activities that require a lot of leg, so my legs are pretty awesome looking. But strength wise, or maybe it's endurance wise, they give out quick and this workout is excruciating!
The workout goes back and forth between holding something with your legs for a minute or two, followed by slow movement exercises like lunges and squats. There's almost no weights used, but it's still so painful. The frog sits in the beginning got my legs feeling sore within a minute, and the second minute was me holding for ten seconds and then taking a five second break over and over. The rest of the workout went similar. On a few sets of the one leg lunges I felt like my quad was going to explode. It's a genuinely painful feeling, like a muscle became a knife and is determined to rip through my skin. I pushed through and did the whole exercise, even though one set has you going ten right ten left, and I could only manage five right five left.
So overall a good workout, but I don't understand why my legs hurt me so much! I want to be a pro, not a Joe!
Anyways, that was started around 6:15, so I finished right as the group was arriving for workout. We talked for about five minutes and then hit the gym around 7:15.
The first thing we did was a round of Ab Ripper X. We had talked about it via Facebook during the day, and since it'd been a while (not once in 2012 so far!) since we'd done Ab Ripper we decided to START the workout with that. Ya, start....
So we hit play and all found room on the floor. No one made it through, and we probably should have done a better warmup, especially for our legs. Mine were already killing me (obviously). But we did Ab Ripper and all of us got an excellent ab workout in!
We hit up 300 next. I did pullups for 2 sets of 5. I realize my numbers were higher a few weeks ago, but I'm really focusing on doing the full range of motion at a slow slow tempo, and that really does make it harder.
Deadlift was next and I did 2 sets of 10 and 1 set of 5 at 135. It felt good, but towards the end my legs were giving out.
I finished with 2 sets of 15 on bench at 135. It always amazes me that even though I can (or could) do sets of 5 at 175, 135 still feels extremely heavy. I was proud of my two sets of 15.
After that I went inside to check on Heather but she was sound asleep on the couch. I didn't want to wake her but was pretty sure she hadn't eaten all day, so I did a quick stretch, called it quits on the gym for the night and got started on dinner. I made turkey burgers and rice.
So ya, I'm pleased with the night's workout. After the workout and dinner I got started on some work. My company is creating a very cool, unique new product (I'll post a link sometime soon) so I'm going to be working around the clock for a few weeks. Stayed up til midnight working, then went to bed, and got up this morning about 30 minutes ago to work some more. I'm just using this blog to wake myself up (working good so far!).
Tonight I'm going to get my Cardio/Combo workout in and follow it up with more work or sleep depending how I'm feeling.
Bring it!
It doesn't help that my legs are weak. Weak is a relative term....they're actually the most defined portion of my body. We were being dumb in the gym last week showing calf and quad muscles, and somehow mine were the most defined of the group. I've been working out a while and have always done sports and activities that require a lot of leg, so my legs are pretty awesome looking. But strength wise, or maybe it's endurance wise, they give out quick and this workout is excruciating!
The workout goes back and forth between holding something with your legs for a minute or two, followed by slow movement exercises like lunges and squats. There's almost no weights used, but it's still so painful. The frog sits in the beginning got my legs feeling sore within a minute, and the second minute was me holding for ten seconds and then taking a five second break over and over. The rest of the workout went similar. On a few sets of the one leg lunges I felt like my quad was going to explode. It's a genuinely painful feeling, like a muscle became a knife and is determined to rip through my skin. I pushed through and did the whole exercise, even though one set has you going ten right ten left, and I could only manage five right five left.
So overall a good workout, but I don't understand why my legs hurt me so much! I want to be a pro, not a Joe!
Anyways, that was started around 6:15, so I finished right as the group was arriving for workout. We talked for about five minutes and then hit the gym around 7:15.
The first thing we did was a round of Ab Ripper X. We had talked about it via Facebook during the day, and since it'd been a while (not once in 2012 so far!) since we'd done Ab Ripper we decided to START the workout with that. Ya, start....
So we hit play and all found room on the floor. No one made it through, and we probably should have done a better warmup, especially for our legs. Mine were already killing me (obviously). But we did Ab Ripper and all of us got an excellent ab workout in!
We hit up 300 next. I did pullups for 2 sets of 5. I realize my numbers were higher a few weeks ago, but I'm really focusing on doing the full range of motion at a slow slow tempo, and that really does make it harder.
Deadlift was next and I did 2 sets of 10 and 1 set of 5 at 135. It felt good, but towards the end my legs were giving out.
I finished with 2 sets of 15 on bench at 135. It always amazes me that even though I can (or could) do sets of 5 at 175, 135 still feels extremely heavy. I was proud of my two sets of 15.
After that I went inside to check on Heather but she was sound asleep on the couch. I didn't want to wake her but was pretty sure she hadn't eaten all day, so I did a quick stretch, called it quits on the gym for the night and got started on dinner. I made turkey burgers and rice.
So ya, I'm pleased with the night's workout. After the workout and dinner I got started on some work. My company is creating a very cool, unique new product (I'll post a link sometime soon) so I'm going to be working around the clock for a few weeks. Stayed up til midnight working, then went to bed, and got up this morning about 30 minutes ago to work some more. I'm just using this blog to wake myself up (working good so far!).
Tonight I'm going to get my Cardio/Combo workout in and follow it up with more work or sleep depending how I'm feeling.
Bring it!
Monday, February 20, 2012
ESP-XC Days 10 and 11 - Endurance Core/Balance
I have two workouts to recap plus one crazy birthday event in the middle. The two workouts were both Core/Balance from the Endurance phase, and it occurs to me that it's kind of lame that the end of Week 2 and the beginning of Week 3 are the same workout. Meh, at least it's a fun workout.
Friday I got home from the office and hit play on this DVD. Awesome workout as always. The 100 situps at the end seemed to go by really fast; so fast, in fact, that I finished before the guys on the DVD by a good 30 reps. Overall a good workout.
Saturday I worked out of the house most of the day, and that night we went out for my and Heather's birthday. The group went to sushi followed by a big Mardi Gras party called Naughty Gras. Very successful evening, we had about 20 people floating in and out of the group and we all got home around 2:30 am. Very fun way to bring in my old age.
Yesterday was the beginning of Week 3 of ESP-XC, and like I said, it was Core/Balance again. My roommate decided to join me for this workout, which was good cuz it forced me to work a little bit harder on some of the isometric stuff. I held Superman pose longer than ever before (still not the full 2 minutes though), I held the entire plank, and the rest I kept my pace up really well. Also on the situps I tried to go a lot slower than I have been. I ended up finishing my situps about the same time as the trainers this time, and I kept a good pace rather than focusing on sets of 30 or 20, which is what I have been doing. This felt harder so the slow tempo is what I'm going to stick to.
Overall a good weekend and two good workouts. Right now I'm writing this blog to get my head clear because I've gotta get some work completed before I go in today.
Tonight it's Legs and the usual group workout. I'll let you know how it goes.
Bring it!
Friday I got home from the office and hit play on this DVD. Awesome workout as always. The 100 situps at the end seemed to go by really fast; so fast, in fact, that I finished before the guys on the DVD by a good 30 reps. Overall a good workout.
Saturday I worked out of the house most of the day, and that night we went out for my and Heather's birthday. The group went to sushi followed by a big Mardi Gras party called Naughty Gras. Very successful evening, we had about 20 people floating in and out of the group and we all got home around 2:30 am. Very fun way to bring in my old age.
Yesterday was the beginning of Week 3 of ESP-XC, and like I said, it was Core/Balance again. My roommate decided to join me for this workout, which was good cuz it forced me to work a little bit harder on some of the isometric stuff. I held Superman pose longer than ever before (still not the full 2 minutes though), I held the entire plank, and the rest I kept my pace up really well. Also on the situps I tried to go a lot slower than I have been. I ended up finishing my situps about the same time as the trainers this time, and I kept a good pace rather than focusing on sets of 30 or 20, which is what I have been doing. This felt harder so the slow tempo is what I'm going to stick to.
Overall a good weekend and two good workouts. Right now I'm writing this blog to get my head clear because I've gotta get some work completed before I go in today.
Tonight it's Legs and the usual group workout. I'll let you know how it goes.
Bring it!
Friday, February 17, 2012
ESP-XC Day 9: Endurance Upper Body
Got into Endurance Upper Body from ESP-XC last night. Unfortunately it was also workout night and I had to take care of some stuff before hand, leaving me stuck doing my workout during group gym time again. I had promised everyone on Monday I wouldn't do that, so I put the DVD and did a combo of 300 and upper body. Basically between my sets of 300 I did whatever the DVD was doing. I got a good workout, but it wasn't great. In about a week I'll have some big stuff off of my plate and I can get back into working out in the morning on those days, which will really help me out.
Despite the kind of sort of ESP-XC workout I definitely worked out and I'm counting it! Today I'll hit up Core/Balance and wrap up Week 2. I don't think I'm going to post tomorrow, so just in case tomorrow is my girlfriend Heather's birthday and I want to wish her a very happy birthday!
Ok, tonight's workout sounds fun. I'm ready! Bring it!
Despite the kind of sort of ESP-XC workout I definitely worked out and I'm counting it! Today I'll hit up Core/Balance and wrap up Week 2. I don't think I'm going to post tomorrow, so just in case tomorrow is my girlfriend Heather's birthday and I want to wish her a very happy birthday!
Ok, tonight's workout sounds fun. I'm ready! Bring it!
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
ESP-XC Day 8: Endurance Cardio/Combo and a tribute to Jerrame Glenn
Well, last night was kind of a whirlwind of events and emotions, so let's recap that.
It was Valentine's Day, as I mentioned in the last post. I got home around 5:30 from the office, sat for ten minutes and then went straight into the gym. I hit play on Cardio/Combo from the Endurance phase. My legs were in absolute agony from the night before and it made the workout very difficult. The whole thing goes back and forth between a combo (punch, knee, elbow, etc.) and a cardio exercise (weird jumping jacks, regular jumping jacks, burpees, etc.). I made it about 20 minutes in and all of a sudden my body decided to be extremely tired and sore. I pushed through and finished the workout, but the intensity in the second half wasn't even close to what I've normally been bringing to my workouts.
I got done around 6:45 and would overall give the workout a low B. Not terrible at all, but between my legs and my energy the second half I'm not to thrilled with either.
After that was dinner. I met Heather at her restaurant, Mr. B's, around 8. They were packed, which slowed dinner down a bit, but I had my veal with ham and sauce and whatever else it is (it's mighty tasty) and it was a great night. And I got to dance with my girlfriend! I'm not a really mushy guy, I've never been into Valentine's Day and even relationships are something that a part of my brain doesn't fully grasp, but I know that spending last night dancing with Heather was awesome and I'm smiling now just thinking about it!
So I came home and went to work on some homework, but sadly I got some news about a friend of mine from high school named Jerrame Glenn. Apparently Jerrame took his life about a week ago. I was never incredible friends with Jerrame, but we were in band together from 6th grade through the end of high school. I shared a room with him for a week when we went to Hawaii 10 years ago on a band trip. I have nothing but good memories for Jerrame and was very sad to hear that this had happened to him. So I'm dedicating a part of this post to Jerrame. I'm sorry things ended up the way they did for you sir, but please know that I have nothing but excellent memories of you, and I will always remember you as a positive, caring individual.
...
...
...
So that's my post for the day. No workout tonight. It's actually my birthday (I'm not big on birthdays, but I guess last year I didn't work out so that seems like a nice little tradition) today so I'm going to see the folks for dinner tonight. That's all I've got.
Bring it!
It was Valentine's Day, as I mentioned in the last post. I got home around 5:30 from the office, sat for ten minutes and then went straight into the gym. I hit play on Cardio/Combo from the Endurance phase. My legs were in absolute agony from the night before and it made the workout very difficult. The whole thing goes back and forth between a combo (punch, knee, elbow, etc.) and a cardio exercise (weird jumping jacks, regular jumping jacks, burpees, etc.). I made it about 20 minutes in and all of a sudden my body decided to be extremely tired and sore. I pushed through and finished the workout, but the intensity in the second half wasn't even close to what I've normally been bringing to my workouts.
I got done around 6:45 and would overall give the workout a low B. Not terrible at all, but between my legs and my energy the second half I'm not to thrilled with either.
After that was dinner. I met Heather at her restaurant, Mr. B's, around 8. They were packed, which slowed dinner down a bit, but I had my veal with ham and sauce and whatever else it is (it's mighty tasty) and it was a great night. And I got to dance with my girlfriend! I'm not a really mushy guy, I've never been into Valentine's Day and even relationships are something that a part of my brain doesn't fully grasp, but I know that spending last night dancing with Heather was awesome and I'm smiling now just thinking about it!
So I came home and went to work on some homework, but sadly I got some news about a friend of mine from high school named Jerrame Glenn. Apparently Jerrame took his life about a week ago. I was never incredible friends with Jerrame, but we were in band together from 6th grade through the end of high school. I shared a room with him for a week when we went to Hawaii 10 years ago on a band trip. I have nothing but good memories for Jerrame and was very sad to hear that this had happened to him. So I'm dedicating a part of this post to Jerrame. I'm sorry things ended up the way they did for you sir, but please know that I have nothing but excellent memories of you, and I will always remember you as a positive, caring individual.
...
...
...
So that's my post for the day. No workout tonight. It's actually my birthday (I'm not big on birthdays, but I guess last year I didn't work out so that seems like a nice little tradition) today so I'm going to see the folks for dinner tonight. That's all I've got.
Bring it!
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