Day 3 Shoulders & Arms...

Well, yesterday was shoulders and arms day P90X style. Of course like most guys I really look forward to my arm workouts, as my arms get really pumped up! As you can imagine I was pumped for this workout.

Traditionally when working shoulders, arms or any other resistance training I go as heavy with the weight as I can so that I fail between 8-10 reps on every set. I also superset biceps/triceps; that is I do a bicep set followed immediately by a tricep set then rest for about 90 seconds. P90X resistance workouts are very much like circuit training...well really it is circuit training using resistance to 1. Work the muscle group...and multiple muscle groups and little rest in between sets to 2. Get your HR up and keep it there.

So the workout started out with alternating shoulder presses. On a traditional workout after a warmup I'll start with around 60lb db's usually for 8-10 then drop the weight during future sets in order to keep that 8-10 range. With this workout I decided to start at 45lbs knowing I was immediately going into a bicep set...The thing with alternating shoulder press is that I find it harder than traditional shoulder presses as you have to use your Core muscles to hold your body straight, especially if you perfrom the set standing up. So I actually stuggled to get 10 reps (which is a good thing). Then the workout goes into a bicep set, tricep set back to shoulders, biceps, triceps and follows that pattern throughout the whole workout...there are 30 second water breaks after performing two rounds of a shoulder, bi, tri circuit. Other than that not much rest in between, so I definitely was feeling it throughout this workout. Taking my HR manually I figured it never went below 150bpm and at times was as high as 180bpm..Yikes! At 59mins for the entire workout (inlc warmup and cooldown) this is a long one, but man what an arm/shoulder burn at the end. Today my biceps are sore even though I went lighter on all bicep sets, shoulders/tris aren't too bad, but my traps are sore as heck!

Well todays workout is Yoga X which I will do in the early afternoon. Yoga X is 90mins long and is not easy especially if you're new to Yoga....some of those postures kill me becasue my flexibility and balance sucks but I am sure it will improve.

"bring it, bring it, X me!" Tony Horton Shoulders & Arms