Day 20: PLYO CARDIO CIRCUIT

I FEEL LIKE A MILLION BUCKS!! My joints and muscles feel great. Week three is done. One more week of the month 1 rotation! I'm going to miss them. I have really gotten to like these (well, at least the cardio circuit and power/resistance). I love the length, the sequencing, everything. When I'm done with Insanity, I can't wait to come up with my own Insanity and yoga rotation, including the extra routines (Upper Body Weights, et al.).

I can see keeping up with this style of intense workout, even though I've been strictly a yogi for years. I'm smarter about it now than in my fateful early 20s as far as my joint health goes, and I'm so enjoying the sheer athletic performance and sense of accomplishment from doing something so tough. If nothing else, my standards of what constitutes an intense workout have definitely changed.

Day six of each week is always tough, although I felt less worn out today than usual. Still, this one was extremely hard and I found myself wondering why I have always considered it the easiest of the month one routines (besides Cardio Recovery). It most certainly is not, and in looking around the Web a bit I've seen that people with calorimeters report burning a lot more calories with this one than with Cardio Power and Resistance. I still seem to be taking breaks at the same spots and of the same length, but I did notice my speed is much faster and my knees much higher. I would love to be able to compare my form and power now to what it was three weeks ago. So I'm trying not to get hung up on the necessary breaks and modifications. I ordered a nice heart rate monitor for myself, as well. Another observation on the cardio circuit: my heart rate stays in the high aerobic zone even through the stretching. It was about 157 at the end of the stretch today. I took my pulse rate a few times during the water breaks, too, and it seems to hover in the 170s. At one point today, it was 188!

Scale weight is the other thing I'm trying not to get hung up on. While I dropped a few pounds quickly the first couple of weeks, I'm now only about a pound or two below where I started. However, the clothes are telling a different story. I would imagine all that lower-body muscle you have to put on to get through the plyos is heavy indeed.

No crazy cooking today, although I did create a great breakfast granola using the low-cal granola recipe I posted the other day but adding an extra 1/4 cup of high-protein, high-fiber cereal to it (Kashi) and an extra 1/2 TBSP of Cary's syrup. With the milk this gives you about 13 grams of protein and 250 calories. For lunch I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a light cheese stick, and baby carrots.

Ah, rest day, here I come. I love the week's end because I polish off my recovery drink, wash all the bottles, wash my mat, wash all my clothes, and put them away. It makes it feel like even more of a success.