in the beginning

welcome to johndoesP90X, or what hath god wrought, title inspired by my first attempt at completing a P90X workout this afternoon. That's right, I, John Collins, have bootlegged the famed P90X videos from the internet and am going to do my damndest from here on out to follow the plan. That includes a diet, so I guess I'll also record what I eat here, starting... tomorrow.

I had planned to start yesterday, but didn't because friend Joe ate my day (which is fine, but did preclude my p90xing, a verb i'll have to improve as time goes on) and so i started the second day, plyometrics. according to the man in my computer who yells at me, that is like the science of jumping and fucking everything involves jumping. it's an hour long, which sounds ok to me for the following exercise styles: riding a fake bicycle, playing basketball, walking around san francisco, sexual intercourse (though let's be honest that's way pushing it) and i'm sure a couple others i'm not thinking of. i found out today that i am not currently capable of doing supersets of jump related exercises like squat jacks, frog squats, something called, i think, "mary katherine" lunges, and the rest of the variety of almost all squat and jump related exercises that the screaming man encouraged me to do, all in a row. the warm up was good, i was feeling properly warm, maybe a little more tired out by it than i would've liked. that was about the first five minutes of the video.

by minute 22, i was straight dogging it. pausing between exercises, drinking water, i think somewhere in there i ate a couple apples. i can't be sure because around the thirty minute mark i hallucinated lyndon johnson shouting at me to work harder on his great society speech. of course that's not true, because it would imply that i was still pretending to follow the program at the thirty minute mark. this was not the case. apple in hand, i was toweling off, hands on knees, doing every third exercise and enjoying the witty dialogue. one example: during rockstar jumps, which looked horrifying to my thighs by the 45 minute mark at which they took place, the screaming man (whose name i promise to learn by my next post) told the guy with the prosthetic leg next to him to "step it up, peter frampton." first, yes, i got burned today by a video man with only one leg. second, maybe it's a generational thing, but i will just never get used to the idea that at some point people viewed peter frampton as a rock star. i don't fault the man's music or his character, by any means, but he does not work for me as a stand in for the phrase "rock star." anyway, all this talk of frampton seems to have degenerated into a transparent glossing over of the fact that i got outworked by a one legged man inside my computer today. it is what it is, as they say.

after embarrassing myself in front of my video overlords, i went to the gym to practice my new jump shot (thanks joe!) and lifted some weights to make myself feel better, unsuccessfully. i did see 175 on the scale today, which was a goal i set for myself 6 months ago, and consequently i also shaved my beard (unfortunatley, don't think i lost much poundage there).

my conclusions today: my diet is not sufficient to fuel these kinds of work outs. more importantly, i am ideologically unprepared for the rigors of P90X. like america in vietnam, i have jumped into this without a proper assessment of the sacrifices necessary for victory. i thought that i could ride through the P90X by being relatively fit after 6 months of on and off working out and body transformation, much as america took for granted that its ideological poses would substitute for the cold blooded and politically motivated military strategies it would need to implement in order to walk away from vietnam with its objectives achieved. fortunately, i have the luxury of re-orienting myself at any time without the worries of domestic public opinion. so, for tomorrow, i'm getting psyched today. and also going to the grocery store to buy more proper foods.