This is my second official week. In addition, I previewed this workout once or twice. I still find myself wondering, “Why are they pretending to arrive at the gym again? Isn’t this an at-home workout?” I laughed at the beginning of some of the P90X workouts, too, where they were in a pre-game huddle or whatever. I do enjoy the intro clips before the workout, though. That can be a good way to get psyched.
This is almost the same warmup as the other workouts use. They demonstrate the foam roller for the legs only, since the arms are not really involved in Plyocide. I have noticed that the foam roller portion of the warmup is only a short demonstration, which means the total warmup time might be longer by 5 or 10 minutes.
Some exercise-related notes:
- The Fast Feet Chair Jump starts in the yoga chair position, and adds a football drill in which you move your feet quickly up and down, staying close to the ground. It looks a little silly, but it is very difficult.
- The Think Drill is another football-inspired exercise, which also uses the “Fast Feet.” At one point, we put our hands out in front of our chest to imitate a rabbit. Really? A rabbit? Oh, why not…
- The Super Skater Kick is a modified version of the exercise used in P90X Legs and Back. With the new emphasis on one-legged exercises, keeping the raised foot off the ground, I am more conscious of the toe-tapping.
- The Depth Charge uses a chair or plyo box. Step on the chair/box, step down, and jump, then turn around and repeat. The challenge for me here is a low ceiling.
- Today I did 9 Frog Burpee Hops! I can’t quite jump back as smoothly as Tony Horton does, but I am getting better at the burpee move.
- The Launcher Lunge is the P90X Core Synergistics “Box on a Shelf” exercise with a lunge at the end.
- The Flying Fighter Kick reminds me of the Kenpo workout. I am happy to say that I can follow along a little better.
- The last exercise is a “Simon Says” game in which Tony calls out Set (football crouch stance), Sprint (run in place), Plyo (pushup), Plank, or Jump. This time around, I kept up the pace pretty well, for 60 seconds.
I didn’t do the neuro-integrated stretching, because I was short on time, and the section is over 11 minutes. I substituted the P90X Plyometrics stretches instead. I was wondering why the Plyocide stretches do not include a cat stretch, but they do a yoga bow position (lying on stomach, grab your feet behind you).
I noticed that I had a higher calorie burn than last week. Either I worked harder this week because I was more familiar with the exercises, or my heart rate monitor was working a little better.
A cast-related question: Is Mark Briggs the same person who created the “Briggs Ram” exercise for the “Bring It!” book? I suspect he is…
P90X2 Tip of the Day: Tony doesn’t mention a heart rate monitor at all in P90X2, but remember that it’s a useful tool to measure your exercise intensity and your calorie burn.
