Day 61 - Legs & Back, with Ab Ripper X!

Well, today was an early morning Legs, Back, and Abs workout.  It's a pretty decent legs and back workout, but I'm sad that there's not another variation for legs to mix things up some.  I know you have to use your legs on a lot of the other workouts within P90X, but I'd still like to change it up sometime.

Legs - I'm in Phase 3 now, so I really want to "Bring It" as Tony Horton says, so I made a point of doing all of the exercises with max effort.  There are some that I'm not crazy about in general, and a few that make my knees feel "tweaky", if that's a word, but I did my best, and noticed the difference in the workout.  The Super Skaters, Lunges, and Speed Squats were all ones that I would skip or not give maximum effort on, because I was shaky, or my knees felt weird, but I figured I'd gone this far, I need to give it my best.  Plus, now that I have the title of "coach", I need to be able to demonstrate or at least discuss all of the moves.  The Speed Squats at the end really get the heart rate going!!   

Back - For this one, it's two sets of pull-ups, wide grip, close grip, chin-ups, switch grip, etc.  Nothing fancy, just hard work, and a great back workout!  I've been using the pull-up bar similar to the one below...

I work out in my garage, and the pull-up bar is setup in the doorway from m house to the garage.  I have it set up so I'm doing the pullups in the house, and looking out to the garage.  It's a standard door height, so when I do my pull-ups, I have to bend my knees, which I don't really like, but do my best.  I have a chair nearby when I start to struggle so I can do a few more reps.  I recently ordered the Chin-Up Max from Beachbody, and am looking forward to using this and see if it improves my workouts.  I use the chair more than I should, and I think the Chin-Up Max is going to work well.

Ab Ripper X - Short answer, a killer ab workout.  My goal one day is to do all 300 plus reps that are in this short workout (A guy can dream, right?).  I'm usually so exhausted by the time I get to abs, that I can't put forth the effort I need to.  I've tried to break up the abs and do them in the evening, but they still are tough, tough, tough!

Kenpo-X tomorrow....stay tuned!