After waking up feeling really ill, and thinking I’d have to put off starting P90X, hallelujah! A small miracle happened. It turned out to be one of those bugs that just suddenly wears off. 8pm, still feeling crap. 10pm, felt all better. So I did Day One.

Overview

How did it go? Well … honestly, it was so- so. But I was sort of expecting it so I’m not too disappointed. I’ve never been someone who’s good at learning new physical stuff, I’m more the academic type. And Tony Horton doesn’t exactly over-explain this stuff. This is where it shows that the programme isn’t aimed at beginners. You’re mostly left to figure out how to do the exercise yourself, with just a few tips of what not to do. I spent most of both sessions watching, rewinding, pausing, and only then finally doing.

Having said that, as I said, I’m the slow learner type, and I know just to take this at my own pace to get it right. Better to do it gradually and get it right than rush in and do it wrong – that’s what causes injuries.

It did mean that there was really no cardio effect at all – I was going at a snails pace. But it’s a 13 week programme, and I can always extend a section a week if I think I need more practice – apparently that’s fine.

So here’s a quick breakout of the day one workouts.

Chest and Back

This is the “pushes and pulls” workout – as well as chest and back, it’s also working your arms. It’s almost entirely variations on pushups and pull ups. There’s enough variation to keep it interesting though, it doesn’t feel too repetitious. Some are easier and some harder. Tony doesn’t explain the mods that much, but you can do partial pushups (from the knees or waist) if you can’t do a full one. Obviously you should do as much as you can – but not more!

The main problem I had was not knowing what weight I should use. This first session felt mostly like an experimentation session rather than a workout. For the pull ups I was using the resistance bands option, and started with 18lb. I thought that would be quite tough, but eventually decided I should have gone higher. By contrast, for the fly backs I was struggling to pull 3lb. I’m not entirely sure if this was just a strength issue, or flexibility, or if I just had the position wrong. I did notice Tony had a lower weight for this exercise though, so maybe it’s a tough one.

Overall, it was challenging and I think it’ll do me good, but I’m looking forward to my second round where I know what I’m supposed to be going and can push harder.

Ab Ripper

This one I wasn’t so impressed by. Again, not too much explanation from Tony, so I was spending quite a lot of time with the rewind and pause buttons. The movements were tricky, but I didn’t get that muscle burn at the end. Maybe because I couldn’t do enough, maybe because I had to stop to figure it out too often.

Two differences between this and the chest one. With the first, I knew I didn’t have much strength and would struggle, whereas I’m already used to doing a tough abs workout so I expected to be able to do more. The second difference us that although the chest workout was tricky, at the end I felt I’d given those muscles a good workout. With the abs one, I didn’t feel that. At the end, I wanted to do more.

I’m hoping this was just unfamiliarity, and it’ll get better next time. Otherwise, I might go back to a different abs workout on the abs days.