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I picked up a pair of Vibram FiveFingers shoes today, and they felt great.

Tonight I went on my semi-regular "run with the dog at the park" with the Vibrams and it was awesome.

You pretty much have no choice but to run "right", i.e. as if you were running barefoot. What this means is that you don't have the "heel-to-toe" stride that sends jarring impact up through your heel into the rest of your body. I just had a light springy bounce on the balls of my feet - which felt like a dream and brought back memories from childhood of running through the yard without a care in the world.

It was a little chilly and rainy out tonight, so before I got moving (and every time I had to stop for the dog's benefit) my soles got a little cold.

I'm also going to have to re-think wearing socks under them - something was a little off and the fabric of my feelmax socks got a little bunched up around a few of my toes, adding a little compression which became uncomfortable.

I can also tell the change in the stride/footstrike pattern is going to challenge my calves a bit more. Good thing I'm still in the gentle re-introduction to running where I'm already taking things pretty light for maximal injury avoidance.

I'm putting my time off to good use.

Last week I pulled down a bunch of jury-rigged shelves and the drywall behind them, and hauled most of the rubble out. I still need to break down the shelves.

Today I hauled out three large (and heavy) contractor bags primarily full of "previous owner detritus" as well as two boxes - one of which was new(?) or at least unused subfloor adhesive tubes (which maybe someone cruising the alley might find a use for) and a box full of (wrong-sized!) discarded air filters.

I also found a replacement piece of glass for the glassblok window in the basement that's been missing a piece of glass - so I screwed that into place. That'll help keep the basement warmer in the winter if we don't get around to finishing it off this year.

I think I'll cut down the makeshift shelves and remove the crappy cabinets throughout the basement next.

It hasn't been too many posts since I've had to apologize for not posting in a while. And as it's been over three months since my last post, I suppose an apology is not only in order, but long overdue.

So having said that, I'm sorry :)

Recently, I've had to take some time off my routine for illness, and then I had to extend that time off for injury - i.e. my gradually worsening back pain. Well, mostly sort of kind of partly recently. I've been easing my way back into a workout routine the last month or so.

Of course I can't forget that Matthew, my son, turned one just a few short weeks ago, so there was the whole getting ready for the party, and the party, and the clean up/organization involved with that.

And then there's my sudden excess of spare time due to my recent bout of unemployment. Which is a good thing - I get to spend a little more time with Matthew, as well as take care of some thing around the house that I haven't found time to take care of in the last year.

So I'll add an update here once I get a little more time ;-)

So much to write, so little time.

Having trouble remembering what I did and when (again) - so I'll work backwards. Again.

So because of all of that, I decided to re-start week 11 this week and I did the Chest and Back routine on Tuesday. I think I did pretty well, 264 pushups (a personal best), 65 pull ups and 35 chin ups. I'm totally blowing off Ab Ripper. And I knocked the scab off my knuckle from Shoulders and Arms. At least I got to use my pull up bar again. Last week seems like it counted for something, because I got more pull ups and chin ups than I did last time I did this routine with a pull up bar. I'm really anxious to see how well I'd do on the old 100 pushups program.

And over the weekend I did Yoga X, again all of it, and came back to Chicago. Believe me, with a 20 pound child and a 12 pound dog, plus a 15 pound car seat, a 50 pound suitcase, and a ... well, I don't know exactly how hevy it is, but I'd have to say my shoulder bag fully loaded is about 15 pounds - toting all that around is plenty workout enough. Not really, but it wore me out anyhow.

Later on Christmas Day I did Shoulders and Arms. Kind of. I had to use the bands again. While I'm glad I had them, I didn't take the time before the trip to fully learn how to use them for the various exercises. I ended up abrading one of my knuckles on Congdon Curls (curl up, hammer down).

Thursday, I had some catch-up to do so I did Plyometrics in the morning, tucked away in about 5 square feet of spare room in the, uh ... spare room :) I couldn't quite get a lot of forward/backward distance with moves like Monster Truck Tires or Leapfrog Squats, so I did the best I could with the room I had. And Lisa was out spreading holiday cheer with Matthew, so I had a few minutes to run through it. She got back near the end though, I had a great time playing peek-a-boo with Matthew as he was on one side of his carseat and I was peeking around the sides as I did lateral leapfrog squats.

I'm pretty sure I skipped everything on Wednesday. I just couldn't find the time with all the errands, visitors, carseat shuffling, and Matthew toting that happened.

Tuesday evening I got out my trusty bands, mounted them in a doorway, and did the Chest and Back routine. On the one hand, I couldn't do too many more of the band pull ups than regular pull ups, which tells me that it's a fair approximation of the real deal pull ups and chin ups. On the other hand, it just didn't feel like an honest-to-goodness pull up and chin up routine. But I managed to pump out 235 push ups.

Tuesday morning, December 23rd, was spent traveling with Lisa, Matthew, Spike, and the luggage.

Monday the 22nd I was busy tying up loose ends and packing.

I'm pretty sure I did Kenpo around the 21st.

I probably did Legs and Back on the 20th, or thereabouts.

It's very likely that I did Yoga X on the 19th, give or take. Of special note, I think I finally did the entire Yoga X routine.

There's a good chance I did Back and Biceps on the 18th.

I very possibly did Plyometrics on or around the 17th.

I find it likely that I did Chest, Shoulders, and Triceps on or around the 15th.

Signs point to that I maybe did a catch up Legs and Back on the 14th.

I have a fair degree of confidence that I did Shoulders and Arms on the 11th.

The odds are pretty good that I did Chest and Back on the 9th.

The week of December 1st was supposed to be a recovery week, and it was. I was sick. Not terribly sick, but enough to make me not want to keep up with everything. I have recollection of doing Core Synergistics, Yoga, and possibly Kenpo, but I'm not so clear on that one.

And that takes me back to where I left off.

Yes, I'm still here.

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth.

Yes, I'm still moving along with P90X.

No, I haven't been fully healthy, so I've missed some workouts.

Yes, I plan to update my progress Real Soon Now™.

So it seems that nearly every time I write about what I plan to do or what I'd like to do in the near future, I do just about everything in my subconscious power to not do exactly that. And if I just shut up about it, I tend to do what I intend to do.

I actually did Plyometrics Tuesday night like I intended to do, but I think I got a fairly late start on it. Now I know I have indeed been squatting deeper ad jumping higher - my quads and glutes were sore for days.

Wednesday turned into a surprise rest day. It probably had to do with the rest of my family coming into town for Thanksgiving.

Thursday morning I did back and biceps - luckily I was able to do this because we weren't cooking for Thanksgiving, so we didn't have everyone crammed in our tiny little kitchen and making me too self-conscious to work out. Instead, I snuck in my workout before everyone came over from the hotel.

And of course, we had Thanksgiving dinner Thursday evening. Because we weren't cooking, there wasn't any taste-testing the food during preparation all day, and there wasn't any real ability to eat way too much.

I did eat a lot - hey, it's Thanksgiving after all! - but I was still able to come home and later on and do the Ab Ripper X workout. And I improved a bit from the time before, instead of just 332 moves, I did 342. Still not at the top of my game, but still up there.

Friday I did 43 minutes of Yoga again - stopping just before Warrior 3 since there's no way I can do those.

Saturday morning I mixed it up a little. Since I could still feel some residual soreness from Plyometrics, I decided to completely skip the legs part of legs and back. Instead I did all the pull ups and chin ups interspersed with bits of Ab Ripper X. All tolled, I did 76 pull ups and 51 chin ups. That's no typo, that is one hundred and twenty seven chin to the bar moves in a single workout.

For Ab Ripper X I've finally got it to the point where I do every rep of every exercise as on the Ab Ripper video. Even the cross leg wide side ups - I did 50 of those, with a few rests thrown in. And when I say 50, I mean 50 the way I started counting them, which is in reality 25 the way the video counts them. And I'm also counting the V-up roll-up combos differently - I did 13 in my way of counting where the video calls that 25. So I'm finally at the magical 349 that the video counts, which in my way of counting the moves is 362. Whew.

I'm not going to talk about what I want or plan to do tonight. Because I want to do it, and I don't want another self unfulfilling prophecy.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday - all a whole lot of nothing.

No Yoga, no Legs and Back, no Ab Ripper, no Kenpo, no X Stretch.

Granted, I made a few trips to a few stores over the weekend, toting along a heavy car seat with a 19+ pound infant in it. And we got a lot of stuff from the trips to the stores, so I had to carry a lot. So that counts for something.

I just couldn't find the time, energy, or motivation for the regular workouts.

Also, I was running low on protein drinks. But that's just a lame excuse.

This week I'm back on track (again), for now. It might get rough when more family arrives for Thanksgiving. We'll see.

Yesterday was Chest, Shoulders, Triceps, and Ab Ripper.

I did a few more pushups than last time. 106, up from 99. The number of triceps moves I did went down a little, but the weights went up across the board. Shoulders, the same - down a little in the numbers, but all the weights increased.

Ab ripper I was pretty tired, so that number went way down, 332 down from 380. Overall, OK. I think my performance was a little lackluster because I got such a late start. I was still sweating like crazy, but I didn't finish until about 12:25. At night. Ugh!

I'll start Plyometrics tonight at a more reasonable time.

The week is about half way over, and so far I haven't skipped a beat. Unless you count skipping physical therapy (which at this point, is just like an extra "bonus" workout twice a week).

But I did Plyometrics yesterday, Back and Biceps as well as Ab Ripper today.

I hope Plyometrics eventually gets easier. Maybe the reason it hasn't done that so far is that maybe, just maybe, I'm actually doing it a little harder, squatting a little deeper, jumping a little higher, covering more distance each time. Maybe. I'd like to think I am, anyhow.

The Back and Biceps routine is still tough - I just finished up a little bit ago and my arms are feeling like jelly. Of course my triceps are still sore from Monday, but I was almost expecting that. Again, I increased the weight on nearly everything, all except the "static curls", where I increased the reps to 16 "c'mon, everybody does 16 of these". A lot of the biceps moves are hard, and since there are so many of them I'm not increasing the weight a lot. Which is another great thing about my Bowflex SelectTech dumbbells , tiny increments! Instead of going from 25 pounds up to 30 pounds, I can increase only one side of them and get 27.5 pounds. It's a little unbalanced, but I think that's OK.

As far as the non pullup back stuff, I'm increasing the weight a little faster, since I've been starting light in order to take it easy my shoulder, and these back exercises don't hit the shoulder too hard.

Pullups are plugging along. 56 pullups, 19 chinups, up from 45 and 16, respectively. Again, I might've gotten to a higher number were it not for those blasted corn cob pullups. I got 6 of those, but just barely.

Ab Ripper X was good. I did a few extra of a few moves, with a slightly different mix than last time, for another 380 move abdominal/core workout.

I just need to keep this up.

I lied.

Friday evening I didn't do anything.

Saturday morning, though, I did legs and back and the Ab Ripper X. 60 pullups of a couple varieties and 39 chinups, for a total of 99 pullups and chinups. I used 10 pound dumbbells through the exercises Tony says "everyone uses some weight on these", no weight on the "weight optional" moves. I think I'm far enough along to add in weights on the weight optional exercises, but I'll start light. I'm also thinking I can add a little more weight to the "everyone" moves, too.

353 core moves during Ab Ripper X - a nice improvement for directly after another workout. I was hoping to do Yoga X in the afternoon or evening, but Lisa and I went out for dinner (thanks to Michelle for babysitting!) and I felt like having a nice drink with my dinner. Which usually means I won't generally feel up for exercising afterwards - even though I should've - the restaurant we went to had gelato and I just couldn't refuse.

Sunday morning I did the Yoga X up through the side balance poses, and stopped again before Warrior 3 (which, the last time I tried, I just couldn't get anywhere near what they're doing on the DVD). So that's close to 50 minutes of Yoga, and judging by the amount of sweat on my yoga mat, still a pretty strenuous workout. I'm hoping all the plank/upward facing dog/downward facing dog moves don't weaken my triceps too much for tomorrow, since it'll already be time for another chest, triceps, and shoulders routine. I also noticed a lot of extra burn in my quadriceps during all the warrior 1 and 2 moves, most likely due to hitting legs the day before.

And of course I intended to do the Kenpo X routine later on in the evening.

Just once I'd like to follow the exact schedule and not feel like I have to do a lot of catching up on the weekends.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I passed on Kenpo X Sunday night. I noticed a little pain or annoyance in the achilles tendon of my right foot, so I figured I'd rest.

Monday, right back on schedule for Chest, Shoulders, Triceps, and Ab Ripper.

For chest - primarily pushups - and I did about 99, up from around 82 last week. I'm not really firm on these numbers, since I seem to add them up mid-workout, and my sweaty, hurried math hasn't proven to be extremely accurate. I had a big increase in numbers of the floor flys - I didn't try to slide my hands on a towel this time, which helped me do a bigger number. Everything else I increased the reps a fair amount.

For shoulders, there wasn't much of an increase in the raw number, but I increased the weight slightly for nearly every move - including one I shouldn't have (I only did 5 "fly-row presses" after having done 7 at a slightly lower weight last week. I also decreased the weight on the weighted shoulder circles, because I couldn't do all 40 last time.

For triceps, I did 116 moves, up from about 113 last week. No real surprises here. Increased the weight on most moves, increased the reps where I didn't increase weight.

And then right to Ab Ripper X. 380 moves, an all-time high - even more than when doing Ab Ripper alone! I felt like I had extra gas in the tank, so I busted out more than the minimum for the fifer scissors, hip rock 'n' raise, pulse ups, v-up/roll-up combos, and leg climbs. I'm still not up to 50 (!) cross leg wide side ups, but I'm getting there.

Now I just want to try to keep on track all week.

It's been a while since I've updated my P90X progress.

A week ago Tuesday I did the Core Synergistics routine, and it was tougher than I was expecting (considering that the week is labelled "recovery week").

Wednesday I did a pretty solid workout at physical therapy. I think once I got home and ate, I was too tired to do anything, so I'm thinking I missed Kenpo.

Thursday I meant to make up for the Kenpo, but again was tired, so I skipped it as well as the X Stretch routine - which, now that I've actually watched a bit of the video, it looks like it's worthwhile enough to actually do on my "rest" days, even though it's longer than I was anticipating.

Friday, I'm just going to call it laziness, so I didn't do anything then either.

Saturday I think is when started trying to make up lost ground and did two workouts. I did Kenpo X during the day - Lisa was out shopping, and I put on a Kenpo show for Matthew. Apparently Daddy bouncing around throwing punches and kicks is mildly entertaining for him. I think I did another workout in the evening, but I'm having trouble recalling which one.

Sunday I did Yoga X, not wanting to do anything that might interfere with getting back on schedule starting Monday.

Monday, Lisa had an early soccer game so I skipped physical therapy, planning to go Tuesday and Thursday, and in the evening I did the chest, shoulders, and triceps routine. And it left my arms pretty abused by the end of it. I did fewer pushups than in other routines, mainly because there was so much triceps emphasis in this routine that it made the pushups much more difficult. I'm very glad it's going to be a week before I have to do that routine again. I had to modify a lot of the pushups to be able to even do them - especially the one arm pushups (ha!) and the hand-clap pushups - those were both done with my knees on the ground instead of my feet. The slow-motion pushups at the beginning of the routine really took their toll on me.

And right afterwards I did Ab Ripper X. Very difficult. I did fewer reps than when I did it standalone, but a lot more reps than the last time I tried to do it immediately following a workout. The best news is that I've apparently figured out how to fold my yoga mat to make it so my tailbone doesn't hurt any more. Good news is that I had been counting something else wrong - the roll-up v-ups. I had been counting them half as many as the DVD - how i counted, I had done at most 20. But according to the way the DVD counts them, I had done 40. I also had been doing "too many" leg climbs. I assumed I should do 25 of each of those, whereas the DVD only does 12 each. See what I miss by not following the DVD? Regardless, I won't change the way I've been counting them - but instead of striving to get 25, I'll be comfortable doing only 13; because it's a two part move, I don't want to leave the last move half done.

Then I took my day 30 photos. I'm not sure I'm seeing a ton of improvement. I should probably really watch my diet better.

Tuesday, on schedule, I had physical therapy where I did a lot of legs stuff, and then came home and did the Plyometrics. I'm still not squatting as low as I could possibly go during the various squat jumps, but I can at least get through the whole routine and still be able to walk the next day.

Wednesday, I was still feeling the effects of all the triceps work from Monday. I ended up doing Back and Biceps very late - too late to do the Ab Ripper afterwards. This was a pretty challenging day with tons of biceps work, and my new least favorite pullup, the corncob pullup. While holding your chin over the bar in a wide-grip pullup, move your body to the right, then over to the left, back to center, then push away from the bar, then go back towards the bar, and then finally let yourself down. Sweet mercy! (sweat mercy?) I only did five of those. I could've possibly squeezed out one or two more if I got myself off the bar for a few seconds and tried again, but I felt that stopping where I did gave me room to improve next week and the week after that.

Thursday I went again to physical therapy and concentrated on my lower back, leg abductors and adductors, and hamstrings. For good measure I threw in a chest press and pectoral fly, since it had been a couple of days since chest day. I didn't do any of the major leg work I tend to do since I'm doing legs later today. I also didn't do much other core work, because as soon as I got home I ripped through the Ab Ripper routine - 363 core moves. I intended to do Yoga later in the evening, but waking up early after going to bed late the last two days took its toll - I fell asleep early.

Now it's Friday afternoon, and my biceps are pretty sore today. I'm buttoning up the text of this post, and I fully intend to do Back and Legs today, Kenpo and Ab Ripper tomorrow, and at least Yoga if not also X Stretch on Sunday. Or maybe I'll switch Kenpo and Yoga - I haven't decided yet. I'm hoping the sore biceps won't interfere too much with the pullups and chinups I'm supposed to do tonight.