I also got married this winter and I couldn't be happier! My wife and I have gotten up many an early morning to workout together. During the last round of P90X my wife and I both sort of cooled to the idea of the program, not because it wasn't working, but more in just that it wasn't as much fun as it started out as. I think some of it was that I had been through it a few other times and it was almost getting routine. My numbers were still improving so it wasn't physically not working it was a mental thing.
I started looking at some other ways of staying in shape and improving my strength, at the same time not spending lots of money on equipment. I was researching body weight exercises and came across a few books, Convict Conditioning, You Are Your Own Gym, and Naked Warrior. They all discuss own to improve your strength with only using your own body weight to get stronger, as the strongmen of old times did before all the fancy weight machines.
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| Sole E35 Elliptical Machine |
The wife has used it a few times as have I. It's the first time I have ever used one and I'm enjoying it. My goal from it is just to help with improving my cardio. Wednesday I did a mile, yesterday improved to one and a half miles and today was just shy of three miles in forty five minutes. I did take a couple of breaks but I know that will improve as I continue to use the elliptical machine.
As for my strength training, I'm going through the progressions that are laid out in the Convict Conditioning book. There are six areas of the body that are focused upon and there are ten types of exercises for each area. The types of exercises are pushups, pullups, squats, leg lifts, shoulder stands and bridging. As I read the book and saw the steps I know that I could jump to certain progressions since I've been able to do, for example, 3 sets of 20 pushups. But I want to start at the beginning and gain the strength needed for the final step as well as condition my tendons and ligaments for the more strenuous steps.
I am currently on step two of four of them, the book suggests to get to step six before starting bridging and the shoulder stands, so that is what I'm doing. I'm taking my time progressing through them to make sure I have proper form as well as so when I jump to the next step I will be able to continue without much strain.
I have been doing pushups and leg lifts on Mondays and Thursdays and squats and pullups on Tuesdays and Fridays with weekends and Wednesdays as my rest days. Once I get to step six on each I will then either move each exercise to its own day or add shoulder stands and bridges to Wednesdays and Saturdays. These exercises aren't always easy but they also don't usually take long to complete three sets. And if I move each exercise to it's own day then it shouldn't take me more than 15-20 minutes per day to complete which I can always find that much time to workout!
Well that should have caught you up to where I am now. I hope to do a better job of adding to this blog here in the future. Hope you keep reading and continue in your improvement in your struggle against yourself!
