Day 643 - Rest Day

What a nice rest day I've had today.  I even got in a little nap in the afternoon.  I'm continuing to each well and keep my protein up. I don't have any soreness after that monster of a workout yesterday with Base + Back, so I'm happy about that.  Clothes are back to fitting as well as they had when I was at my height of workout intensity.  Assuming I continue to have no soreness, I plan to do another week of Phase 2 next week before switching to phase 3 again. Ideally I would love to get back to doing more than one round of Ab Ripper per week, but we'll see how things go.

Day 642 - X2 Base + Back

It's been a few weeks since I've done this routine, so I wasn't sure what to expect.  It turns out it went well.  I was able to increase reps on a number of moves and I felt pretty good by the time I was done.  I guess that's the advantage of getting back into my regular workout routine.  I was low on my protein today, so I did a scoop before my workout and then one after and I think that helps me to get through the workout better.

Day 641 - X2 Yoga

Tonight when I started yoga I decided that my goal was to focus on relaxing.  As usual, I did some chin-ups before starting.  I was able to do 14, so I'm almost back to where I was before when I could do 16.  I found it interesting that as I focused on relaxing, this caused me to pay attention to my breathing more than I usually do.  I'm not sure if this is related of not, but I broke out into more of a sweat than normal tonight too.  That could also be the warm temperatures and the humidity :-) It was a very good workout.  I went out and bought a suit today.  I wear a 38 short for suit jacket, but need 30" pants, so that''s pretty uncommon for a "off the rack" suit.  I ended up having to buy a suit as separates.  When I first tried on the 31" pants that came with a 38 suit they were much too big.  Fortunately every make is slightly different and I found a maker than had 30" pants that fit well.  I paired that with a matching 38S jacket and I'm in business with my first new suit since loosing all of the weight.

Day 640 - 3.4 mile run

I got out for a run after work tonight.  It was warm and humid, so running was a bit more difficult.  I did my favor trail run and I found that my legs felt like Jello when I started (likely because of finishing up Plyocide last night), but I pushed through.  I averaged a page of 8:39, so not too bad considering.  My back continues to feel a bit better these last couple of days.  I think that's because I am trying very hard to avoid stretching the muscles.  I'm hoping that this approach along with continuing to apply ice after workouts will give me better results than what I was getting by stretching it regularly.

Day 639 - Make-up Day

I got home tonight and my back and elbow were both feeling better than they were earlier in the week.  I started out the night by finishing Plyocide.  Once I got through that I went back and finished the rest of Chest + Back + Balance that I didn't get done on Monday.  So, good news is that I'm now back on track for this week.  No doubt each of the routines tonight were not quite as effective as if I had finished the work as part of the original workouts because I had an extra day (or two) to recover in between.  But, I stand by my decision to stop when I did.  It was the right decision to avoid injury.  The saying is "Do your best and forget the rest".  Words to live by.

Day 638 - Plyocide (sort of)

I started out the workout and quickly found that my back was getting very sore from all of the jumping around.  I got about a third of the way through the workout and stopped to ice my back to see if that would help.  It did for a while and I was able to do more of the workout, but it still hurt, so I decided to play it careful and stop the workout at just over the halfway point.  I've learned before that I can seriously injure myself if I don't listen to my body and I don't want to repeat that mistake.

Day 637 - Ab Ripper

I started to do Chest + Back + Balance tonight and got about a third of the way through it before stopping.  I had injured my left elbow last week while doing PAP Upper because it was clicking a lot while doing the push-up moves.  It started up again while doing this workout, so I decided to play it safe and switch to a different routine.  So, I did Abs tonight.  Hopefully I can finish up Chest + Back + Balance on Wednesday on my off night.