The holiday always throws a monkey wrench in my workout plans, and last year was no exception. We’re back on the Tony Horton home workout wagon now, and here are my thoughts after session 25 of P90 Basic by Beachbody.com … the second time around.
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I have really enjoyed the Beachbody.com at-home exercise programs. I started with the Power 90 Fat Burner Express fifteen months ago and aside from a few detours with kettlebells never looked back. I have to say, working out at home with Tony Horton and his minions has done more for my body than personal trainers, strength coaches, and mind-numbing laps in the pool ever did.

The biggest reason is consistency. Most of the Beachbody.com workouts are forty-five minutes or less; the majority of those still are thirty minutes or under. It’s hard to skip a day when one could easily spend thirty minutes browsing a Web site, watching television, or playing a video game. If you have time to complain about not working out, you have time to actually work out.

Lately I’ve gone back to the original P90 Basic routine. It’s considered the foundation series for other workouts I own, like the Power Half Hour or the Great Body program. I’m all the way at the starter pair, Phase 1 (cardio and abs) and Phase 2 (strength). This time, however, I’m doing things a little differently.
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Week two of growing my beard (and participating in the Ars Technica beard growing event).

It’s still filling in, but I’ve passed two important milestones:

1) My face is warmer inside of my motorcycle helmet. The beard is definitely blocking some of the wind that bounces off of my chest and up into my helmet.

2) I am now combing my beard out after showering.

I’ll probably let it grow another week or two and then tighten it up a bit with my Norelco G390.

When I saw the Colgate Wisp for sale at my local Target, I thought to myself, “this is a Gibberish review waiting to happen.”

The Colgate Wisp is a mini toothbrush that does not require water, and does not require you to spit. I bought it thinking that it might be nice to use at the office. I have never wanted to store a full-sized toothbrush and paste at work. If the Wisp did a great job, it might even end up in my go-bag.

Despite a great idea, the Wisp is too uncomfortable and unwieldy to use. I am a little concerned that it might damage your teeth during the initial brush strokes.
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It’s that time of year again when I stop shaving the hair off of my face. I do it mostly as a way to keep my face warm while motorcycling. I usually start on Thanksgiving day so I have a few days to grow out my stubble before I go back to work and scare my officemates.

This year, however, there is a beard-growing contest over at Ars Technica. I’m kicking it off a bit early, and unlike last year I may get more mileage out of my beard as I ride deeper into the season.

The contest ends on March 1st, 2010 … which might be a bit longer than I can tolerate. We’ll see. :)

I’ve been at the Beachbody.com workouts for a little over a year now. In that time, I’ve gone from a size 34 pant size down to a size 31. I used to wear a size XL t-shirt; now I wear a large. It was a lot of hard work, some fun, and totally gratifying — except for all of the clothes and motorcycle equipment that I’ve “undergrown.”
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Part of safe motorcycling is comfortable motorcycling. Any time spent thinking about discomfort detracts from your ability to pay attention. It might be the weird stitching inside your glove, or how hot your feet are, but that sort of stuff adds up.

I wear tall, wool blend socks (Bridgedale knee high ski socks and SmartWool knee high snowboarder socks) as a way to control sweat and temperature. They work great for keeping my foot temperature as regulated as possible, even if they happen to get wet. Unfortunately, as all socks do, they tend to sag over time. When mid-calf socks turn to “quitters” it’s annoying. When knee high socks slouch inside of an 8″ boot and underneath leather riding pants, it’s a constant source of discomfort. You can’t really reach down and pull them up at a stop light.

I started looking at ways to keep my socks up. And that, my friends, is why you are about to read a review on men’s garters.
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My buddy Jumbotron sent this to me at work: the Real Age Virtual Age quiz on sonnyradio.com. It’s Flash-based quiz that asks up to 34 questions to determine your “virtual” age and your life expectancy. Your virtual age is how old your body and mind are based on diet, exercise, lifestyle, and family history.

Unfortunately I initially took this test at work, and had my information architecture and usability hat on. I bitched about the poor question phrasing and goofy slider the whole time. For example, the race question is flawed. There’s a radio button that makes you select one race. There needs to be at least a “Mixed” option, but a multiple select would be even better. I imagine the scoring algorithm isn’t complex enough to handle multiple racial vectors.

The answer options are mostly on a scale, and sometimes the scale doesn’t make sense. For example, on the “Male conditions” question answers range from “average” to “bald and stocky.” I’m bald, but not stocky. So where do I put this slider?

Another stupid question was about marital status. “Cheating” is at the bottom, and “Happily married” is at the top. “Married” is one down from “Happily married,” but what if you’re in a happy committed relationship? According to answer slider, being happily committed is less healthy than being not-so-happily married. Weird.

I don’t put too much stock into the results. It’s hard to agree with my virtual age of 23.6 when my right knee is bothering me from over-training with kettlebells. My life expectancy is also really high at 84.4 years. No one in my immediate family has made it past 74. Although I don’t drink or smoke and am not overweight, there are a lot of genetics that have to be overcome.

My final results were:
Virtual Age: 23.6
Your Life Expectancy: 84.4

Give the test a run and report back if you feel like it.

After deciding to repeat week four of the 100 Pushup Challenge, I threw in the towel. I realized that I was holding back on my “rest” days and altering my workouts too much to justify the limited gains I was making during the Challenge. Yes, the sets were difficult, and yes I was getting better at doing more pushups. However, in order to perform as well as I could, I would do limited or no ab and cardio work the day before. I did P90 Basic Phase 03 a few times, and found that it was much more difficult to perform my Challenge work out the next day.

In order to safe the village, we had to destroy it — so the 100 Pushup Challenge is over for me.

So what am I going to do instead? Until I decide on a longer-term endeavor, I am going to revisit the Great Body short workouts and the P90 Hawaii Fat Burner Express DVD. They were fun, and at this point I just need to stay active.

Two possible candidates for my next workout regime include more kettle bell training or P90X.

The end of the 100 Pushup Challenge’s Week Four is an all-out stress test to see how many pushups you can do at once without stopping. I could do forty before I started the program, and figured I was sandbagging. I was excited to do the test at the end of Week Four; after all I had been cranking out a lot of pushups and going to failure in the last two weeks. Plus, I was skeptical that I would be able to go from forty pushups to 100 in just four weeks.

I knocked out thirty without a problem. I felt strong, I felt like I had made an improvement. As I approached forty, my arms and chest started to get very weak. My rate slowed, and by forty I was creeping along. I completed forty-five reps before my arms were shaking. Done.

Yes, it’s an improvement, but a little over 10% in two weeks isn’t going to get me from forty to 100 any time soon.

However, doing forty-five at once puts me into the hardest category of Week Five. That’s nice, but I couldn’t finish Week Four’s workouts without taking extended rests or without cheating.

So I’m going back down to Week Four, and I’m going to do the middle column this time. I am going to do it all by the book and see if I can hit each rep without doing breaking pace or form.

Overall, my body feels softer than it did before the 100 Pushup Challenge. I think the total body workout I was getting from the Beach Body programs put me in better physical condition. I really want to get to 100 consecutive pushups, but at this rate I may not achieve it for another month. I don’t think I can take being off of a full-body workout for that long.