Round 5: Day 41: Yoga

I was up early today (early for me means 5:30AM) for a relaxing and de-stressing session of yoga. I really needed yoga today, for a variety of reasons: it's been five straight days of Insanity and resistance workouts, without a break to stretch (I know, the Insanity adherents who go hard six days a week are without a shred of sympathy); and we've had a bit of a nasty spate with our neighbour which has really stressed my wife and me. Solution: yoga.

Since I didn't have much time this morning, in spite of starting early, I decided to do Patience yoga from the One on One series. I find this routine to be quieter than Tony's other yoga workouts, both in terms of Tony's level of excitement (the opening minutes of the DVD are a notable exception) and in the music. At times, Tony is completely silent, just moving through various poses, without any narration whatsoever. This has pros and cons: on the good side, silence is conducive to my desired state of mind. On the negative side, I find myself looking at the TV screen with increased frequency to see what Tony is up to and to confirm when I should change from one pose to another. The music is very soft and soothing, which I find contributes in a positive way to my overall sense of relaxedness.

I enjoy the pacing and tempo of this workout, and its differences from Tony's other yoga workouts. Sometimes, it's nice to simplify the process, do fewer moves, but hold them for a longer period of time. The combination of very slow and infrequent moves with soft and relaxing music and few vocal cues makes this workout special. I particularly enjoy the shavasana pose at the end of the workout. It's nice just to lie down, close my eyes, do a body check, listen to my breathing, and do absolutely nothing. What a great way to end the week's workouts.

Namaste.

Round 5: Day 40: Shoulders and Arms

This is one of those workouts which will reveal your weaknesses and, unfortunately, mine is still my left arm and left shoulder. I'm seeing some improvement in both those areas, as I'm starting to manage both arms repeating the same numbers of reps with the same weight; however, as I reach my last rep, my left arm is completely toast, whilst my right arm might be capable of squeezing out one or two more reps. The gap is definitely narrowing, which is a positive sign.

I had little spare time this morning, so I blasted through the workout non-stop, with a couple of exceptions when I fell behind due to changing my weights. As a result, I'm feeling slightly more fatigued than I'm used to with this routine. I don't think I've gone non-stop in quite some time, the last time being when I was using resistance bands, so the pace of the workout increased its intensity somewhat. I wouldn't say that it's a calorie-burner as Tony suggests in the preamble, but it does move rather briskly.

This is still an enjoyable workout. I've been appreciating the difference between this workout, which is circuit training, and other workouts which run straight through a series of exercises. It's nice to run through three exercises, to gauge my effort, success and failure, and then immediately have another opportunity to improve.

During the past two weeks, I've been challenged by doing three resistance workouts each week instead of two, and I think that, even though it's been a short period of time, it's been a positive change to the workout schedule. Having said that, though, I'm really looking forward to yoga tomorrow. I could use a good stretch.

Round 5: Day 39: Insanity: Pure Cardio

Now I know why yoga is placed mid-week: it's to allow your body some time to recover from the pounding it's taken during the past three days, to stretch out the kinks and aches and to permit you to clear your mind of all the clutter and garbage that's been accumulating since the start of the work week. Unfortunately, due to work scheduling issues, yoga didn't happen today. Insanity did.

There was a major gain today: for the first time, I completed the entire workout without pausing the DVD. I recalled through the fog of working out that I almost made it last time, and just needed a little more mental fortitude to make it through the workout. So, I pushed like crazy, tried not to sacrifice form, dug deeper, and managed to eke it out. It wasn't particularly pretty as I neared the end, but I made it. Now, having done it, I'll likely see some improvements the next time out.

There are three moves which really stressed my body today: leap frog (which is really an easy move, but doing it for a minute near the end of the workout is really energy-draining), and the last two moves of the workout, in-and-outs followed by push-up jacks. At the end of those, the sweat is freely flowing, and shavasana is definitely in order.

It was a great workout. It moved quickly and I was really satisfied with my gain today. Now I'm looking forward to completing the other Insanity workouts without pausing. That's not too likely, but I'll at least make it a goal.

Tomorrow, I'll give the legs and lungs a rest, and pound out shoulders and arms.

Round 5: Day 38: Back and Biceps

Although I didn't see major improvements in today's workout (heck, I never see major improvements anymore, just small glimpses of minor things about which to be hopeful), I did notice one significant thing: my left arm is starting to improve in strength. Previously, on some of the exercises, my left arm could manage three repetitions short of what my right arm was capable of accomplishing. Now, my left arm is almost equal to my right in terms of repetitions. I still have more confidence in my right arm to squeeze out an additional rep, whereas my left arm starts to struggle and shake. It is, however, an encouraging sign.

I didn't notice that my left side was much weaker than my right until I started doing workouts using dumbbells instead of resistance bands. The difference was pretty surprising and a bit disappointing. Now that I've been using dumbbells, that gap is closing. I'm looking forward to making greater gains in this area.

Today's workout, Back and Biceps, is still challenging. I don't think that any of these workouts will ever get easy. They continue to challenge because I keep increasing the weight or the number of repetitions. I like the banter going on in the DVD. Some people find Katy annoying; I just think she's enthusiastic. Heck, I would be too, if I had the opportunity to be on a workout DVD.

It took a long time to complete the workout because I paused the disc numerous times to give my arms a bit more recovery time between exercises. I also found that I was distracted for some reason, and I would pause to clear my head, focus, and get my mind set for the task at hand (no pun intended). It's really important for me to establish a mental attitude that will assist me in being successful in an exercise. If I can't get my mind right, I'll likely not give my best effort. I work hard at trying to succeed. As a result, I take each exercise seriously, focus on form, focus on the specific objective of each exercise, focus on making the last few reps tough, and then proceed to slog it out. Much of working out is mental, I find. The mind is a powerful thing and, properly trained, can really take you much farther than you thought.

Tomorrow, I'll be jiggling the schedule a bit, as I plan to do Insanity instead of yoga, pushing yoga to Day 6 this week. This will be a temporary adjustment for this week only, to accommodate my personal schedule.

Round 5: Day 37: Insanity: Cardio Power and Resistance

Oooohhh, I was so close to completing this workout today without pausing the DVD. I bravely soldiered on until the last 6 minutes, when I thought that my form was being so severely compromised that I was no longer really benefitting from doing the workout. In retrospect, I should have pushed through to the end, but now I'll know better for next time.

This is probably the easiest (if one can say that with any form of sincerity) Insanity workout for me, because of the numerous resistance moves involved: pike presses, walking pushups, table dips with leg raise, and others similar to P90X and various and sundry Tony Horton One on One DVDs. I'm sure that if a participant has had little or no experience in resistance training, these would be much more difficult; however, having been happily resisting for over a year, these portions of the workout are a welcome break from the cardio work. I'll be the first one to admit that cardio is not really my specialty (as if I have one to brag about); that's the driving reason behind my doing the Insanity workouts in the first place. It's part of my philosophy of challenging myself to do what I'm NOT good at doing. On the other hand, I love doing resistance workouts, and am reasonably successful at them. But back to my point, if a participant hadn't been doing any resistance training prior to taking on Insanity, this workout would be tough. On the other hand, I don't really see this amount of resistance leading to any significant muscle gains. On the contrary, I've heard that people who pursue a 60 day period of Insanity tend to lose muscle mass. Hence, my approach to this Round, which is an attempt to balance intensive cardio with equally intensive resistance. There's some method to my madness.

Having said that, I'll admit that I'm pretty wiped as I write this. I'll assign blame to the change in DST last weekend. I'm sure it doesn't have anything to do with my conditioning. Nah.

Round 5: Day 36: Chest, Shoulders & Triceps

As with some of the workouts last week, today's workout saw small, incremental, minor improvements in some of the exercises, whilst mostly holding steady with the others. In a couple of exercises (1 arm balance pushups, notably) my numbers decreased. I'm not too unhappy with that, following an overall review of the workout, because I had increased my weights or reps, or both on some exercises, so a decreased level of energy for 1 arm balance pushups isn't particularly surprising, nor is it disappointing. During that exercise, I still pushed through as hard as I could, but when my arm starts to severely wobble, it's time to stop. I don't want to risk hyperextending my elbow for the sake of one extra balance pushup. Brains before brawn, I say.

This is still one of the most challenging workouts I have. Its intensity and the pacing of the exercises still cause me to pause the disc several times during the course of a workout. Since I've been doing the Just Arms and Diamond Delts workouts, I've been finding this workout to be a bit easier and more enjoyable, but it's still difficult and I like the range and variety of exercises. I still find Plyo pushups to be difficult, and I do wide fly pushups to exhaustion. The slow motion pushups (2 rounds of them!) are killers, though they look so easy, and I'm still nervous that I'll drop a dumbbell on my face during the final move, punching the air with the dumbbells whilst lying on my back.

Great workout. I'm glad that the increased focus on resistance will allow me to do this again relatively soon.