Round 4: Day 3: Shoulders and Arms

Resistance is not futile. That's what's been missing from the P90X+ workouts. There's certainly some resistance training in both Upper Plus and Total Body Plus, but not like the pounding your shoulders, triceps and biceps get from the 1-hour long Shoulders and Arms P90X workout. Similar to Sunday, when this workout was over, I could barely lift my arms to wash my face.

When I work up this morning, I was still sore from Sunday's workout. My shoulders and arms were still stiff and pained, and I was still experiencing abdominal pain (muscular, not food or disease related) from the appropriately-named Killer Abs routine.

I liked returning to this workout and enjoyed the good, old-fashioned, push and pull exercises. Nothing too fancy, everything is pretty basic. I noticed some areas of improvement, using my final Round 2 numbers as benchmarks. Upper Plus has improved some of my shoulder strength, as straight arm flies were no problem. I increased the intensity of the curls by standing on the resistance bands with two feet (instead of one, as demonstrated by Daniel Haas). I used the blue band for the curls instead of the black band, as the black band handles are starting to chip and deteriorate, and, using 2 feet on the band, I slowed down the exercises, focussed on form, maintained my elbows in a static position, and tried to achieve an isometric hold at the top of the movement when the band is at its point of greatest resistance. This approach led to a nice burn, especially during the repeat round. Now, I just have to work out some of the kinks in my neck.

Later: Abs