Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Law of the Fist!

Oh my god.

So, yesterday, I was SUPPOSED to do a plyometrics DVD. My dear husband raved about it -- he did it in the morning, before he left for work, and he kept telling me how intense it was. How he could barely complete some of the sequences. How his legs were burning and screaming.

I was really looking forward to it. After walking Sophie, I went upstairs to our "home gym" (formerly known as the "guest room," more recently and realistically known as "the room that only has a lamp and an ironing board in it"), set up my laptop, and opened the DVD package only to find out that my dear husband had forgotten to take the plyo DVD out of his laptop when he finished his workout. Those burning legs must have distracted him.

So, I poked around on the internet to find out what would be a good substitute. PhillyGuy wasn't getting home until after 8, and I didn't want to wait that long to work out. Half of the review sites suggested substituting an hour of cardio, the other half suggested substituting the "Kenpo X" DVD. I checked our schedule -- we're supposed to do Kenpo on Saturday. So, I figured I'd just swap it out -- do Kenpo then, and plyo on Saturday.

OK, guys, Kenpo X is everything that I find laughable about P90X. The description? "Kenpo means "law of the fist", and that's exactly what you'll be throwing during this cardio-intense workout, that and a whole bunch of kicks, elbows, knees, and forearms!" OK, REALLY? "Law of the fist?" WTF. How can I take this seriously?

I have mixed reviews on Kenpo. My heartrate did get up decently high -- max of about 170 -- but not as high as it would get during a run, which is more like 180-195. Also, I am not particularly coordinated, and there are a LOT of combination moves in this. Before this will be really effective, I think I'd need to get through it a few times so that I don't spend the first few reps of each move tripping over myself trying to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to be doing, and where my legs are supposed to be vs. my arms, etc. I'm not sure it's worth the strain it put on my knee, though -- I'll give this another shot next week, but this might end up being a cardio sub-out for me.

One thing I'll say for the Law of the Fist! is that it didn't leave me nearly as sore as the chest and back day. My abs are still sore, but nowhere near as bad as they were yesterday, when I thought my stomach was going to rip open when I sneezed and I could not even sit up in bed without propping myself up on my arms. Which is good, since tonight we've got yet another "Ab Ripper X" session on deck after our shoulders and arms.

This weekend is going to be a challenge. PhillyGuy's aunt and uncle are coming into town for a couple days with our niece/cousin (technically she's a cousin, but since she's about 20 years younger than us, it feels weird to call her that), and I know we'll be spending a TON of time out on the town with them. Usually, this would be one of those occasions where I'd throw diet and restrictions to the wind and indulge with everyone -- have a nice glass of wine or two with dinner, share some dessert, order whatever I wanted. But we're not even a week into this new plan, and I'm just not interested in derailing it. Dinner with the fam wouldn't be so bad -- we're taking them, by request, to Fogo de Chao -- if I didn't ALSO have a client lunch earlier that day at Smith & Wollensky. I'm inclined to just order soup at lunch and stick to the salad bar at dinner and just fill up on my "normal" food during the afternoon -- at least I have an excuse.

You know, it'll be really nice in a couple months when I'm posting my "after" pictures and I can tell you wonderful bloggers how worth it this all was!

2 comments:

  1. Ha, that does sound...just a bit silly. You'd think they would/could have marketed it better.

    So...you don't like P90X? I honestly don't know what it is. I know that a simple Google search would suffice for getting at least a basic description, but I feel like even that would be a waste of time, because I refuse to do "fad" diets or workouts.

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  2. @Tara - I do like P90X, so far -- though I will reserve final judgmet for when I've completed a rull round of it. Basically, it's a 13-DVD set with a workout schedule and nutrition/diet plan. Each round is 90 days, and every day you do one of the DVDs. The plan is working out 6 days, with a 7th rest day that gives you an optional stretching session.

    The workouts themselves, so far, seem to be sufficiently intense -- god knows I've been sore. The drawbacks are the douchey advertising -- I feel like an ass saying I'm doing "KENPO X" and "AB RIPPER X," but the actual workouts are great. I think I'm going to get really annoyed with the host -- Tony Horton -- since the whole time he's making crazy comments about how to BRING IT! and being EXTREME! Right now it's funny, but in a couple weeks I bet I'll want to kill him. Thankfully, it gives you the option to play the DVD with or without his goofy commentary.

    You don't really need to spend $150 on this package to get this kind of workout, but for people like me who do much better with someone telling them EXACTLY what to do, it's nice to eliminate the "thinking" part of it. I definitely got suckered in by the results I've seen on other fitness boards -- this is a good example: http://community.thenest.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/33820582.aspx

    ...now it's my turn to write a book!

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