Fitness update – P90X3, first block

I don’t usually write about my workouts, but I want to change that and make a monthly update. In February I managed to get a knee injury, unrelated with the workouts. I had to wait a couple of months to recover and now I’m back on track.

I’ve started P90X3 on 17th April and so far it was great. P90X3 is a BeachBody program made by Tony Horton. The workouts are only 30 minutes and most of them have a few more minutes of cool-down. The entire program is 90 days and there is an workout for each day. The schedule is divided into 3 Blocks of 4 weeks each, hence the monthly updates.
Every block has 3 weeks of intensive workouts consisting from a mixture of strength training 3 times a week, cardio 2 times, yoga and stretching one each. The last week is for recovery, where the workouts are easier, more stretching, yoga and Pilates.

I finished the first block a few days ago and I’m pleased to say that I’ve missed only 4 workouts and 3 of them are yoga, which I can catch up in the next weeks. I think is pretty clear I don’t fancy yoga. But I do it anyway because it improves flexibility and it helped me with my issues. I had problems with the knees since I was doing karate as a teenager and with the lower back since birth.

After the first week I’ve noticed a big increase in the number of push ups I was able to do. One of the exercises is a combination of push ups and pull ups and is my favourite workout. In the first week I was able to do 85 push ups and that was quite a low number for me, but in the 2nd week I did 111 and a staggering 127 in the last week. Is true that in the last week I wanted more push ups and less pull ups. For pull ups I’m still using assistance, still a work in progress.

I feel a slight improvement with every workout, I can do a couple of reps more, I can go lower in a squat, I can use a bigger weight. I write on the worksheets as much info as I can, to help me keep track of what I’m doing. If in the first week I mention “hard”, I’m very happy if in the 2nd or 3rd week it becomes “easier” or I don’t need to add anything more.