P90X: Recovery Week and Core Synergistic

Yesterday was the first day of my ‘recovery week’ workouts. The recovery week is mainly cardio and stretching workouts, designed to give your body a break from three weeks of pounding.

Yesterday was Yoga X, which I’ve already done in weeks 1 – 3. Today was a new workout that hasn’t been done yet: Core Synergistics. Unlike the other routines, you never repeat an exercise in this workout which gives you a lot of variety. P90X Core Synergistics is about an hour long and is a good mix of upper body, lower body, yoga, cardio, and stretching routines. This was a much harder workout than I was expecting from a “recovery week.”

Two final things: I’m finally starting to see some results from the workouts. I was frustrated that I wasn’t losing much weight. As of this morning I’m only down about 7 pounds, but I can finally start to see some definition and that has given me more motivation to keep plugging away.

Also, I’ve also started using creatine this week. Right now I’m in a “loading phase” which is nothing more than taking 4 servings per day rather than two. I wish that I would have been using this supplement since day one, but better late than never I guess.

Read other P90X posts HERE.

P90X Frustrations

Just finished day 9 of P90X this morning (Yoga X). The soreness is completely gone; I haven’t felt sore since last Friday. Overall, I’m actually feeling pretty good. One side benefit that I didn’t expect is that I’m sleeping better. In fact, anybody with sleeping problems should try P90X. Between the 5:30 a.m. start time and the intense workouts, I’m sleeping better than I have in a long time!

That being said, I have a couple of frustrations that are really starting to bug me.

1) I’m not losing weight! Argh. I started at 183 lbs and after a week and a half of busting my arse for an hour a day, burning an average of 800-900 calories per workout and eating right (no alcohol, no soda, fast food maybe once a week (I never order fries), lots of fresh fruit and veggies, whole wheat bread, limited sugars, etc.) I’m only down to 181 lbs. Not sure what’s going on, but I feel like I should have lost waaaay more weight than 2 pounds!

2) I’m not very flexible! It’s very frustrating to bust my hump doing all of this Yoga and stretching and still not be able to bend. I’m about as flexible as uncooked spaghetti.

I’m not ready to give up because overall I really do feel pretty good, but it’s hard to stay motivated when I’m not seeing the results that I’d like to see.

Read other P90X posts HERE.