There is no other workout in P90X that makes me sweat more than Legs and Back. Plyometrics does not even surpass the amount of sweat that comes from doing Legs and Back. Still, I absolutely LOVE Legs and Back and it is my second favorite workout for P90X. The sweat rolls off of me like I am melting everytime I do this one. The main reason I love this workout is because there's a lot of variation involved with the legs and backs. You do four different types of pull-ups twice in this workout. There are reverse grip, wide forward grip, closed overhand grip and switch grips. In my personal opinion, the wide forward grips are the most difficult variation. Switch grips seems to be the easiest as I always crank out the best numbers on that variation.
I decided to up the ante a little bit today when doing my workout. As I was driving home from work today I was thinking about how I could become more "extreme" for today's workout. Of course, I always could pop a couple of steroids before my workout and get busy, but I want to be practical and ethical. Plus, that would be cheating and not fair. That's why I decided that I would add some form of weight on every exercise today. I added the usual 25 lb weight to the dip belt for doing pull-ups today, and I upped most of the leg workouts to 30 pounds. On the exercises where Tony doesn't use weight at all, I added 5 pound dumbbells to those workouts because they are generally very long, and I don't think I could last for 25 deadlift squats with 30 pound dumbbells. I got a pretty nice sweat going today, and like Shoulders and Arms earlier this week, this Legs and Back workout was probably in the top three workouts I ever had. I really was able to bring extra intensity during today's workout and I especially felt a crazy burn after doing the calf raises today. Like always, the pull-ups were challenging with added weight, but I was able to actually log some pretty nice reps with good form today.
Ab Ripper X is always pretty tough but I am still able to pull through all of the reps barely. I think that perhaps a reason I have been struggling on the Crunchy Frog move is because of how much my quads and legs are engaged up to that point. The previous three moves are In and Outs, Bicycles and Reverse Bicylces. All of those previous three moves use the quads pretty extensively actually. Once the Crunchy Frog comes on, I discovered that my legs are usually toast. That's what makes balance pretty difficult I feel. Therefore, I feel that once I build more muscle in my legs, I'll be able to crank those crunchy frogs out no problem.
I think working the legs out is extremely important, but I feel that a lot of gym junkies overlook them. Not that I really care what someone else does at the gym, but I'll tell an interesting story at how overlooked legs really are. A few weeks ago, I decided to sub a deadlift and squat day in for plyometrics. I really wanted a day of putting a lot of tension on my leg muscles, so I went down to gym to workout after work. By the time I arrived, it was after 6PM. This is usually prime hours for the gym I workout at, so I was not shocked to see that it was PACKED when I walked in the door. There were at least 20 people in the room I was in. Naturally, I expected that it would take forever to be able to actually do squats in the power-rack, because they only have two available at the gym. After I finished warming up and strecthing, to my surprise there was no one even near the power-rack for squats. I walked right up, loaded my weight on the bar and cranked out ALL of my squat sets without anyone even approaching me to use the power-rack. Meanwhile, every dumbbell was virtually unavailable, and forget about even trying to use an incline bench or even a flat one, as everyone was so set on working their upper body and abs. After I finished my squats, I did some deadlifts, calf and hammy moves for about fourty five minutes and I counted maybe two people after me who used the power-rack. To top it off, one guy was using it for bicep curls. Like I wrote before, I'm not personally upset about this (especially since I had no trouble using equipment), but it seems like the society we live in today is so set on building the perfect upper body and core, but yet fail to recoginze the importance of balancing everything with a strong lower body. Do people actually want a huge upper body with peg legs? Just my two cents.
The diet went clean for the 5th day in a row this week. I decided to take a little more food in today because I truly believe that I burn the most calories on this workout compared to any other. I ate close to 3900 calories today.
Here's how it went:
- 2 whole eggs, 3 egg whites
- cup of oatmeal
- orange
- glass of soy milk
Meal 2:
- tbsp olive oil
- carrots
Meal 3:
- protein bar
- protein shake
Meal 4:
- whole wheat pasta (cup)
- whole grain brown rice (cup)
- banana
- 1 0z dry roasted peanuts
Meal 5:
- solid white albacore tuna on whole wheat wrap
- yogurt (non-fat fruit flavored)
- honey nut cherrios (cup)
- granny smith apple
Meal 6:
- recovery drink
- protein bar
Meal 7:
- grilled chicken breast
- glass of V8 low sodium
- tbsp olive oil
Meal 8:
- two scoops of casein protein before bed
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