as previous post only allowed 1 pic I have posted my phase II changes in this post

As I complete my chest and back workout today and add up my numbers I cant help reminiscing about that physical fitness experience I had when I had first come to the US as a graduate student seven years ago. The university gym had offered free physical check ups before beginning the gym program and part of the test was how many push ups one could do. I couldnt do even one and remember how embarrassing that had felt.
Today in phase III I just completed 139 push ups(regular) and 62 push ups on my knees. Even 6 weeks ago in phase I week 3 I could only do 57 regular push ups and 109 knee push ups. I feel this strength increase Iam seeing beats any other fringe benefit(though 6 pack abs would be good )
In all feeling pretty stoked about the whole experience. Who knows with all this push up strength increase I may one day be able to surf as I have always wanted to try. Five years ago as I took a lesson on a long board I remember not being able to push my self up to the stance and then getting whacked in my teeth by the board. I gave up any further attempts and took up windsurfing instead. May be this summer I will after all give regular surfing another shot.

This workout never fails to get me sweaty and elated. I took it kinda easy by doing it over 1.5 hrs instead of 1 hr taking breaks and doing other things. But this pacing my self hasnt affected the overall effect plyo has on my body. I took out two moves as didnt want my left ankle to begin hurting again as I wrote about last week.These two moves jump knee tucks and rockstar hops are quite killer on the legs and ankle. I compensated by increasing the intensity on two moves(mary katherine and squat jacks by putting my arma up and double timing my self).
(Could be psychological, but weirdly my abs (which were never used in this workout) were feeling a burn toward the end.)

I almost missed my workout as I had gone T shirt shopping today. I spent 2 hrs ending up with 1 t shirt. I was looking for something which shows my V shaped contour clearly and find most T shirts are not made that way. I noticed suddenly people at registers are smiling and being nice. I dont know if this is the effect of having a more toned body or my own confidence improvement. What ever it is I am liking it .
Anyways came back and did the workout motivated by the mall experience. Increase weights in all exercises by 5 lbs and did same number of reps as week 3, so strength improvement can be seen. Will do yoga first thing tomorrow so I dont get to a situation where I may miss it. I am kinda guilty of missing yoga twice in my recovery week.

Just completed week 9. I swapped rest and Kenpo again as usual. This week I skipped Yoga X. Somehow my Yoga X days are jinxed, I either have eaten few hrs before or it is too late in the night or something else. Still stable at 181 lb. Not shifting much. I took some pics in the morning and compared it to 1 week ago(end of phase II). I did not see major differences so I did not post it. I am feeling my tummy area get tight though and can begin to feel hard abdominal muscles.
My home cooked food veggie diet is going strong. Today had to meet friends in a resturant but had to tell everyone I couldnt eat there as it would mess my p90X workout diet and everyone was pretty understanding. Another thing which struck me was everyone seemed to recognize what p90X was as everyone knew someone or the other who was doing this program. I guess good things catch on fast. Looking forward to week 10.

Yesterdays chest should tri workout was pretty vanilla, I did it with a lot of breaks though. Noticed my knee giving wierd popping sounds(I posted this question in the beginners section). In todays plyo took out some of the impact to not injure knees. I was able to do plyo in 1 stretch without big breaks with the lesser impact versions.
In my tummy I am noticing today that the large single layer of fat seems to be showing gaps in between also a dividing line through my chest is forming. I feel pretty encouraged by the results so far.
One motivational tip I discovered yesterday is to touch your abs while doing Ab ripper X..
I was in exercise 5 cross legged situps and after 5 situps I was suddenly hit by an urge to move on. then I just kept touching my abs and completed 25 reps. It was almost like a battery charging me to push ahead. Same thing worked for the other harder moves.

Today is day 70, I will be doing yesterdays Kenpo as I gave legs and body a break yesterday. I took pictures and made a collage to see what an incredible journey it has been so far. So far Phase III gains have been not too noticeable, but may be I am hitting some equilibrium point.
All through I have been on my regular veggie diet which is 66% or so carb. To lose the remaining tummy fat may be I have to change that and go to high protien versions. However as that wont be sustainable for me in the long run I am going to keep pushing with my current diet and see what 3 more weeks will show. In this phase though abs cannot be seen, I feel a much higher tighness while doing ab ripper X.

The Pic is postedin the CB profile gallery as the size exceeds the forum limits.

Finished Day 71 Chest and Back workout yesterday. Going into the workout I was feeling as if I may not be able to do it, but I surprised myself by matching and slightly exceeding week 9 numbers. One thing I found which helps me is to break rep counting to 5's. If I am doing say fifer scissors and I need to count to 25 that is hard. When I count as five times five it becomes more manageable. This is some sort of a mental block I have I guess. Weighed myself today and have lost 2 lb from my steady weight of 181 lb for the past 5 weeks.

I guess these 73 days have been hard on the joints. Knees, elbows rotator cuff every thing practically groaned when doing the workout yesterday. I went very very slow not to tear anything, but every rep I heard either a crack, pop or some other sound which is pretty scary when I read about peoples experiences with knee meniscus tears etc.
I had begun taking the glucosamine/MSM combo but had felt some scratchy throat. I wanted to check out if this was due to some shellfish allergy I didnt know of(glucosamine is from shellfish). I had given it up yesterday and have begun taking it once again after confirming that the scratchy throat was not related to the joint supplement.
Anyways completed shoulders and arms, I am seeing more toning in my tummy compared to week 9 and 10. Will check when I take pics on day 77.
Hope I can do the yoga which I have planned for this evening.

2 more weeks to go and I am excited to be close to the finish line. I think after these 90 days I will take 2 weeks off and just do yoga and X stretch for a week. Hopefully this can help recover after this extreme program. I can then get into another round with full force.
Swapped kenpo for rest today and skipped yoga this week as well.
Diet has been uniform but I have begun adding white rice and even some fried foods in moderation(falafal genre home made indian stuff).
For desert I had baked a 9000 calorie cake and cut it into 90 pieces. I have been pretty satiated with that.

I am almost done. This week I am taking it very easy, I may stretch out the final recovery week for may be a week and half. I am not sure when I will begin another round as I can feel some knee pain off and on. Week 12 pics look comparable to week 11 potentially due to not exerting my self to the full extent. I plan to do a lot of yoga in the coming weeks. I will post complete pics on day 90.

well done so far! I am also nearing my final days. See you at the finish line

GREAT JOB!!! Seriously, you are good inspiration to me. I see there will be results! Thanks for posting your pics. I took my photos after a week of the program (close enough) and I hope my results are as good as yours.

Thanks guys/gals for the messages. I finished core syn drawing strength from these messages. Core syn is a workout which hasnt still lost its bite and I had a good workout. 1 more session of core syn to go in this recovery week.

well done dude. looks like you have made some significant progress throughout the 90 days. you can tell you have tightened up that midsection and overall lost a good amount of fat.

what level were you classified as? and what was your diet like? how many cals a day? protein/carb/fat ratio %???

Thanks fatal1ty. I didnt go by the fitness guide for nutrition as I am a vegetarian. My diet stayed arround 2000 cals aday sometimes may be 200 cal more or less. Also I stayed on a staple Indian diet which as i calculated one day is 66% carb,25% protien and 9% fat. So essentially quite high carb.I have to take whey protien supplements to come to the 25% protien level.

Played tennis for 2 hrs today instead of kenpo. I think I felt I burnt more cals than my kenpo workout.

So one of my coworkers invited me to a game of racquetball yesterday. I got totally breathless in 30 mins. Thats when I realized 3 months was too much of a gap. A new job, a move to a new place had made me forget the importance of working out.
Thats why I have decided to begin Round 2.

I took day 1 pics and was shocked at what missing 3 months of p90x had done. I wasnt as out of shape as before p90x but I was definately not at where I was at the end of round 1.

Finished 5/12 ab exercises in the morning and plan to start the chest and back routine after work in the evening.
The Key I think is not to come home hungry, as then I have no motivation to workout. I have planned a bagel snack at 4 pm to hopefully accomplish this.

A

The bagel snack Idea at 4 pm worked great. I had energy to do the workout after coming back. I had to skip 3 exercises though as I have really lost stamina. I have to work to bring it all back again.

in round 1 I got knee pain in month 3. So this time I wont do Plyo but do kenpo instead.

Great blog. Glad to see you're starting back up. I'll be following your progress .

Wow I had never imagined RoundII start up would face so many obstacles. In october when I began roundII after 2 days work was so busy that I never got a chance to go beyond day 3. Also after 4 months of not doing much I had lost all the fitness needed to do one P90X routine.

So with all that I restarted round 2 monday and decided to do the easy routines on day 1 and not begin with Chest and Back( which is a killer routine).

So day 1: Kenpo (done )+ didnt do ab ripper
day 2: Shoulder and Arms : did 7/15 exercises
day3 tommorrow: plan to do legs and back

The idea is to get used to the routines once again. Dietwise its been my usual veggie diet with protien drinks.
Hope I can keep this up till March 13th 2010(day 90).

With the upcoming christmas break that will be quite a challenge.