Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Detour from P90x

It has been a while since I posted anything. Life got a little crazy for me last summer, and I could not keep up with the blogging. Luckily, I had not developed a large following, so chances are noone missed me too much.

I did end up buying my townhouse, and did continue on P90x. I ended up having to modify the program somewhat because I had to deal with tendinitis in my knee. Therefore, I was able to pretty much maintain my level of fitness, but did not make the kind of gains I wanted to. Plus, I did not follow a great nutrition program as strictly, which did not help my cause.

A few weeks ago I decided to purchase the new Chalean Extreme program from Beachbody. While my knee issues were resolved, I was getting somewhat bored with the P90x workouts, and wanted to change things up. I am just about done with the third week, and I am loving it so far. I will do a more detailed review of the program in later posts, but for those who are, or have done P90x, it is a great alternative, and in spite of what you may think, is not just for women.

Like P90x, it is a circuit training program where you are going from one exercise to the other with very little rest in between the moves. The one issue I have with it, is there are a few points where you can tell it was edited to make the breaks shorter and they are already onto the next move before you can get your weights ready. The routines are shorter than the P90x routines where the shortest one in P90x is about 45min, most Chalean routines are anywhere from just over 30 min, to about 50 minutes on the days where you do a couple different workouts. I am sure the reason for this is because on the lifting days you are expected to go to failure on every exercise whereas P90x, wants you to struggle, but not fail when you get to 8-10 or 12-15 reps.

I will go in depth on the routines and my experience with them more in later posts. I will try to keep more up-to-date. I may not post every day, but will every couple days or so.