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A personal dream of mine has always been to have a flat stomach (don’t ask me to quantify it, but I’ll know it when I see it).  I came close 2 years ago when I lost 38 lbs in the winter to get down from 218 to 186.  When I got down to 186, my metabolism was operating at such efficient levels that I would eat junk and still lose weight!  Unfortunately, I took note of this, slacked on my workouts (from 5-6 workouts / week to 1-2 / week), nutrition and lost my motivation.  Subsequently, I gained 16 lbs over the next 17 months.  That’s failure #1: Not keeping up with the nutrition and workouts because I thought my body was finally efficient (like Laura’s).  Since September 2008, I have been trying to get back on the workout and nutrition horse.  A friend gifted me a workout program called P90X through the recommendation of one of the top sports therapists in the country (yes, he works on the Habs).  The P90X program is a 3 month, 6 workout day / week (the 7th day is optional) program that uses the strategy of muscle confusion.  Each month, your program changes so that your body doesn’t get used to the workouts and is unable to plateau.  The thinking is that if you keep your body guessing, your muscles will operate at their most inefficient levels and thus consume and burn the maximum amount of calories.  Sounds insane, right?  The workouts are really great, intense and dare I say even fun.  But here’s why I LOVE the program:  Tony Horton, the creator and instructor, ALWAYS tells you to do what you can and not follow them.  He literally says “If you’re exhausted or need a break, pause the DVD, drink some water, get your heartrate down and come back to us when you’re ready.  You don’t have to do what we’re doing.  Just do your best!”  When I initially started the program, my attitude towards this advice was “Whatever.  I can hold a 170 bpm heartrate for hours.  I don’t need a break.”  What ensued was failure #2:  My mind and body wasn’t ready for something so different and intense than what I was accustomed to and again, my motivation and effort waned (but I would still manage to workout 3 times / week).  Then I started to listen to him.  I took to the workouts with an attitude of “I’m going to do my best, but if I can’t catch my breath, I’m going to break.”  With this revised attitude, my motivation and discipline were immediate benefactors.  I’ve been able to follow the program for 5 weeks now and today was a breakthrough day.  One of the 6 workouts is called Plyometrics.  It’s basically 1 hour of anaerobic hell where my heartrate fluctuates anywhere from 160 - 195 (no lie) bpm.  Although the DVD is 60 minutes, the warmup and cooldown sections take up 16 mins, leaving you with 44 mins of Plyo.  For those who don’t know what an anaerobic workout is, think of what I’m describing as 44 minutes of sprinting all out with just 2 minutes of break.  Tired yet ?   I usually need about 5 - 6 minutes of break for the whole workout.  Today, I was able to do it without additional breaks and the best part was that I felt I could go for more.  I don’t think I would have been able to do this if I didn’t go through failure #2 and adjust my approach to the workouts.  Very cool feeling.

I love P90X because of the encouragement to do your best.  I think that most people looking to get in better shape fail because they get discouraged when their best efforts result in an instructor yelling at them “COME ON!!!!  GO HARD!!!!  FASTER!!!  LET’S GO FATSO, you’re not going to lose weight bent over with your hands on your knees!” Anyone working with an instructor or trainer that does this should fire them immediately.  When your best isn’t encouraged or you don’t feel like it’s enough to get you to your goal, I think most people would reasonably conclude to give up on the goal.  The guys at P90X always tell you that your best is good enough and to go at your own pace.  So you do.  You start getting faster.  You start wanting to go harder.  Five weeks later, you’re keeping up with the instructors and sometimes even outpacing them.  Amazing.

Thanks to failure #1, I know that I have to keep working out over the summer.  In fact, I’m pretty thankful for failure #1.  If I didn’t go through failure #1, I’d like to think that I would have attained my goal, but would have then proceeded to lose it.  That would have sucked and I think I would have had a bigger mountain to climb to get back to where I am now.  If it wasn’t for failure #1, I wouldn’t have learned a fitness lesson that I’ll keep with me for the rest of my life.  So now, I’m 2 inches thinner and much smarter thanks to my failures.  Awesome.

Anyone who’s interested in getting the workout series, you can find it here.  No matter how out of shape you think you are, or how lofty your goals, this is the program for you.