P90X Week 5: Plyometrics

Matt Stratton | Mar 29, 2011 min read

Inspired by Tori, I have decided to do daily blog posts about my P90X workouts. Since I know not everyone is fascinated by this, these posts will likely not be syndicated to my Facebook, but they will still be available via RSS. I have also created a specific RSS feed for just my P90X posts, for those of you who are only interested in that (it will include my weekly wrap-up posts as well). This feed can be subscribed to by clicking here. I might even start taking some photos DURING the exercises, just for fun.

Workout Summary

This morning was Plyometrics, aka “Jump Training”. For those of you who don’t know, Plyo is a cardio workout with a lot of leg-related exercise. It’s about an hour long, and it is go-go-go through the whole thing. One thing that I am really proud of is that in this round of P90X, I have managed to do the entire thing every time (except for week 1, when I didn’t do Plyo at all). The first time I tried P90X (in the fall of 2010), I was never able to get through the whole video. This is a major milestone for me!

Plyo is structured with several rounds. Each round includes three 30-second exercises, with the fourth one being 60 seconds long, and then the round is repeated. In between each round is a 30 second break, and then at the end there is a set of three 60-second “bonus” exercises, which are fun, since they are sports-oriented.

I still struggle through Plyo. I am not able to do all the exercises for the entire time of each set (they are all time-based sets). I am able to always do the entire bonus, which is good. The exercises that still cause me trouble are usually the 60 second ones – I never make it through all of Circle Run, for example, and the 180 degree part of Twist Combo usually kills me.

This morning I did push a little harder. What’s interesting is that I tend to falter more in the beginning than towards the end – I think it’s somewhat psychological. Since in the beginning of the workout I just see the timer counting down with over 45 minutes to go, it mentally tires me out – but when I see only 15 minutes left, it helps me push harder.

Next week I am going to try to push even harder and see if I can keep up with the entire time – just making modifications, such as going slower in things like Circle Run or Swing Kicks, and not jumping as high, for example.

Stats

Workout time: 58 minutes

Time in Zone: 31 minutes (53%)

Calories Burned: 803

Average HR: 133

DailyMile link: https://www.dailymile.com/people/MattS/entries/6177160