P90X – Days 13-16

Day 13 – X Stretch – a.k.a. The Scheduled Day of Rest

Weight: -2.4 lbs from start

For the blog as well.  (Yes, I’m copping out.)

Day 14 – Kenpo X – a.k.a. Another Unexpected Outage

Weight: -4.2 lbs from start

There’s been a lot of talk about sleep-deprivation these days incited by the Air Traffic Controller scandal.  My friend Mike clued me to this NYT article that talks about the effects of lack of sleep.  (I’m going to have to do a separate blog on this as well.)  Well, this was one of those nights.

One of the things I like about P90X is that I feel no pressure to kill myself to do it, but rather I can adapt it to my lifestyle (more on this on a post next week.)  I had a particularly late night the night before getting ready for work, so again not quite enough sleep.  I knew I could probably get through half of the workout today, but chose to take a rest day instead.  Probably helped that the weight line started to drop again.

Day 15 – Core Synergistics – a.k.a. Why Aren’t my Abs Sore?!

Weight: -4.6 lbs from start

I’ve been a bit frustrated with the core workout.  The P90X definition of “core” is everything from the pecs through the thighs inclusive.  While I don’t really care what they call it, I do care that I don’t feel like my abs have been getting particularly tight nor sore.  A lot of the workouts that involve my “core” end up tiring out my upper thighs and shoulders more than anything.  Maybe I’m doing it wrong?  I’ll have to investigated a bit more

Day 16 – Cardio X – a.k.a. I Almost Got Through a Whole Workout

Weight: -4.4 lbs from start

What a fun day!

I ran Cross Country in high school, but never lifted or anything, so Cardio X will definitely be the first thing I’m going to be able to do.  And I almost did!  For the first 40 minutes of the 50 min workout, I kept up with them, rep for rep.  I tapered off a bit at the end, doing about 70% of the wortkout, but man did it feel good to finally be doing what they did.  It wasn’t crazy hard (though it was pretty hard), I didn’t have to zone out…I could just do it and have fun.  Let’s hope there are more days like his one.

My Weight So Far:

P90X – Days 10-12

Day 10 -Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper X – a.k.a. Getting in the Zone

Weight: -3.4 lbs from start

Well, the weight seemed to level off, which is fine.  I think if it was 2 days straight of gained weight, that would be more of a problem, but for now I can feel all right with it.

It was actually a pretty good workout.  I felt like I was getting in the zone.  Hard?  Of course it was hard, but I didn’t feel like I had to think about it all that much.  It just worked.  Lets see how long that’ll go.

Day 11 – Yoga X – a.k.a. An Unexpected Day Off

Weight: -3.4 lbs from start

The P90X workout consists of 6 days of working out with a day off, which we have been usually taking on Mondays.  Today, I woke up after 11 hours of sleep, and was still tired.  I had a headache, felt dehydrated, and utter worn out.  Around 3 I was gonna try to push myself to do the day’s workout, but decided not to, and I’m glad I didn’t.

It might have been sleep, it might have been allergies, it might have been the normal wear of the week’s activities.  I actually think it’s really that I’ve been pushing myself a lot harder physically can I have in a long time.  During yesterday’s workout, I did close to 80% of the reps that they did.  Remember, I barely passed the fit test to begin with.  I think it’s time to slow down and pace myself so I can hit all 6 days instead of having to take this extra day off.

Day 12 – Legs & Back, Ab Ripper X – a.k.a. Tunnel Vision

Weight: -3.6 lbs from start

It was a nice (and surprising) thing to see that I lost a teeny bit of weight.  It’s well inside the margin of error, but it’s still nice.

If Day 10 was about getting in the zone, day 12 was about driving with tunnel vision.  I wasn’t feeling way too much better than yesterday, but I didn’t want to take 2 days off in a row, especially since tomorrow will be a rest day.  I didn’t get through the whole workout, but I did find that I could push through some moments of wanting to stop by trying to just not think about it and just go.  Of course, there was a breaking point (about 2 minutes into the ab workout), but I was able to go 10 – 15 minutes past the first breakpoint.  It’s motivating in and of itself to find myself doing that.  It makes me want to, as Tony Horton would put it, just Press Play.

P90X – Days 8 and 9

Day 8 – Core Synegetics – a.k.a. I Need to Get Proper Sleep

Weight: -4.6 lbs from start

The last couple nights, I haven’t gotten quite the sleep I should have, so going into today’s workout was tough.  I actually stopped about 40 minutes into the hour as I started to develop a headache from not enough rest.  This is somewhat frustrating considering the same thing happened a week ago on Core Synergetics day, so I still haven’t fully done that workout.  Hopefully tomorrow looks up.

Day 9 – Cardio X – a.k.a. A Bump In the Road

Weight: – 3.4 lbs from start

You may have noticed that I actually gained 1.2 lbs from yesterday.  While I know I shouldn’t expect that I lose weight every day and that there are bound to be some off days, this still got me a little down in the morning.  Should I stop weighing myself every day?  Did I do something peculiar?

After shaking it off, I went off to work then home to do today’s Cardio.

And it was awesome.

It was the closest I got to actually finishing the workout.  So screw you weight!  I’ll be the master of you yet!

P90X – Days 6 and 7

Quick update today

Day 6 – Stretch X - a.k.a, Good Morning Calf Muscles…and Hamstrings…and Back…and Shoulders…and Arms….

Weight: -3.2 lbs from the start

Woke up feeling pretty rested, but intensely sore.  This was the most intense soreness I’ve felt not only since we started, but in years.  If scientists could harness the power of my soreness, I could power a small city.  A diagram of what hurt:

The stretch was an hour long, and I loved every second of it.  I only wish it was an hour and a half.

Day 7 – Kenpo X - a.k.a, Asians Like the Martial Arts

Weight: -4 lbs from the start

Little known fact: I took about 10 lessons in Tae Kwon Do when I was in Junior High (one of my many adventures from weekend Korean language school.)  This brought back fond memories.  Maybe that’s why this is my favorite routine so far.  It’s fun to imagine that I’m kicking someone’s butt.  The sad reality of it is, at 5′ 4″ and losing weight, I wouldn’t be a match against most average men.

But I can still do something bad to them with numbers or the internet.

P90X – The First 5 days

Jenny and I have I started P90X, which, for those of you who don’t know, is a pretty intense workout routine and I wanted to post some status on the whole thing, but I’ll try to keep it to a few sentences a day.

Day 0 – Fit Test - a.k.a, The Day of Fear

We did a little test to see if we’re fit enough to do the workout, and I’m more or less there.  We also did measurements and take the “before” pictures, but I’ve decided to spare everyone the picture of my pregnant belly until we get to the end.

Day 1 – Core Synergistics – a.k.a, Don’t Hurl

Didn’t get nearly enough calories before working out and by the end, I’m about to throw up.  The workout is crazy hard, and I’m realizing that for the start here, I need to try to do about 70% of what they do 70% as hard as they do it, or I stand no chance.

Day 2 – Cardio X – a.k.a. I Have How Many Muscles in My Hip?

Weight: -0.8lb from start

According to the pictures on wikipedia, there are 17 muscles that are attached to the hip.  All 17 of mine are sore.

Luckily, I got carbed up before this time around and it went decently well.

Day 3 - Shoulders & Chest, Ab Ripper X – I Can’t Wait to Do Abs, and I Can’t Wait to Stop the Workout

Weight: -1.8lb from start

I actually turned to Jenny and said “I can’t wait to do the ab workout because that’s what I need most.”  While true in theory, not quite as true in practice.  As if i wasn’t tired enough after the Shoulders & Chest workout, we do another 15 minutes of abs.  Trying to tell myself that it’s the first week.

Day 4 – Yoga X – a.k.a. You Can’t Possibly Bend That Way

Weight: -2.2lb from start

The most surprising thing about Yoga is how I can sweat profusely while my heartrate doesn’t go up so much.  The craziest move (that we tried) was balancing on one leg, hanging my arm behind my back, and attempting to grab it with the other one…with the latter being under my second leg.  Yes, it’s as complicated as that sounded.  Hopefully one of these days…

Day 5 – Legs & Back, Ab Ripper X – a.k.a I Really Miss Carbs

Weight: -2.4lb from start

The workout was pretty good today, though I can do pull-ups about as well as Kevin Braush gives the floor report in Iron Chef America.

The hard part was that I really started to miss carbs.  I’ll post about the P90X diet at some point, but at this point, we’re eating a LOT less carbs.  We walked by a pizza place and the smell was captivating.  I want a giant bowl of pasta…no sauce necessary.  I want a loaf of french bread.  I want to dive into a swimming pool of sugar.  Only 85 days left.

Tell me what you think about me!

Two and a half years ago, I took a little test called the Johari window where I list some traits about myself and then have others do the same.  I’d like to see if time (and new people) have changed this at all.  Take 2-3 minutes and tell me who I am!  =)

http://kevan.org/johari?name=change02-09

Results in a couple weeks!

Double-Loop Reflection

This post is a follow up on my last post: Being TOO good on my feet

Thanks to everyone for their support from the last post.  It was really encouraging to see that you guys not only read, but could also relate to what I was saying.  Some follow up.

I’ve been thinking about this idea of comparison and self-evaluation.  Yes, I am not anyone else, I am myself.  It is a self I’m slowly growing to understand and accept.  Growing up being Korean-American has definitely skewed my understanding of me over the years.  On the Korean side I have a self that has been pushed to be highly self-critical, amongst other things.  On the American side, I have someone trying to be comfortable with myself.  These two things collide to produce someone who has difficulty gaining any real understanding of who I am.

I tend to get feedback on the extremes.  On the one end, I have people telling me (with loving intentions) that I’m at the top of my class and that I’m super bright and that will take me a far way.  On the other side, I have people reminding me (again,  lovingly) of the many shortcomings I have in my life.  But there have been rarely people who have been able to say to me “here’s the good and the bad and that’s who you are.”  As such, I’ve have difficulty seeing myself that way as well.

I’m pretty sure that there are good things in my life as well as bad.  There are things I excel at and things I really do need to work on.  I’ve been really thinking about this notion of reflection lately and trying to learn how to be better, and more importantly more practical, about it.  Hopefully through that I’ll be able to settle some of these issues.

Being TOO good on my feet

I have a problem.  I’m good on my feet.  I don’t mean Fred Astaire graceful, but rather good at talking on the spot.  I’m a great interviewer.  (Getting the interview in the first place is a different story.)  But there’s a problem with all of this.  I’ve gotten way too comfortable trying to live on my feet alone.

I had a presentation for class a few weeks back where I didn’t get to quite finish the last slide, which was a circle filled with points mapping to another circle filled with points.  There were only a few points in each circle, though I intended for the circles to be well filled.  As a cover, I pulled up the screen, behind which there was a whiteboard, and I filled out the circles with the help of our small audience.  The move was a big hit and everyone thought it was a great presentation technique.

+1 for quick thinking
-1  for deep comprehension

A few weeks before that I had another presentation.  It was 10 minutes long and I did it with 2 other people.  It looks like the other groups put in many hours of work to polish and lock down their presentations.  We put maybe a grand total of 1:15 of real work into the presentation and it came out pretty well.  In fact, I called a last minute audible and presented an extra minute of wrap up at the end because I could tell we were running short.

+1 for looking polished
-1 for not actually being polished

I’m very good in theory classes in being able to ask what seem somewhat like insightful questions.  As my girlfriend is very keenly aware of, I think out loud.  I process through information by having a conversation about it.  In that process, I ask a lot of questions, some of which hit the mark as “great.”

+1 for interesting questions
-1 for internal comprehension

This theme runs my life.  I’m good at getting things done on the fly.  What results tends to be decent work, though not necessarily exceptional.  But the problem is that there is a lot of positive reinforcement I get from being able to do this, or at the very least a lack of negative reinforcement.  So on and on I go.

The problem with this all is that I’m realizing that I’m not quite as good at thinking about problems deeply, creating rich solutions, and carefully articulating my responses.  In the first presentation, part of the problem was that I didn’t really know what I wanted to put on that last slide.  In the second, I spent the minimal amount of time to get something done instead of really thinking about what I wanted.  In the last, I leave the thinking to the classroom when I talk and forget about it until the next session.

It makes me wonder what I’m missing out on.  It’s not that I don’t think there is an appropriate time and place for the sort of behavior that I exhibited above.  Rather, I want to know how to properly appropriate that behavior and, more importantly, know what the opposite sort of behavior is.  What would it be like to really finish a project deeply, with nuance and revision?  And how do I get there?  Hopefully I learn to be more careful in the future.

Thanks for voting (at least some of you)! Here are some Halloween pics!

Costumes

That’s right…I’m Twinkie the Kid!

Party Fun!

Slaying the Viking

Slaying the Twinkie

Pumpkin Hero

“What a nice day!!”

“Oh no!  Spider Guy!”

“Help help!  We’re caught in a web!”

“Hurray for Pumpkin Man!”

“Thanks for saving us!”

Twinkie looks for a new job

Twinkie was sleeping with his stuffed Sally one day.

“Hey Dave,” he said to his roommate, “I think I need a new job today.”

So he took a shower…

…and got some food.

Twinkie went to IUCAT to try to find some answers and headed out.

He tried being a gangster

He tried being a doctor

He tried to be a sports agent.

He tried to be a dancer

He tried to be a ninja…

…but he didn’t do very well.

He eventually went home without finding anything and did some dishes…

…vacuumed…

…and tried to forget his sorrows.

But then he found a pretty Viking and was happy.

So he was able to sleep well that night.

If you vote, I’ll post pictures!

I’m watching you!  Go do it!!!  =)