My wife got me into P90X, the fitness program invented by Tony Horton. I didn’t know much about it at the time and I was willing to try anything. We were getting a little saggy, a little soft, and we needed something, anything, to get us off the couch.
It’s a routine that compromises about 15 routines. Legs and Back, Shoulders and Chest and Triceps, Yoga X, Biceps and Triceps, Kenpo X, cardio X, and Ab Ripper X. I probably missed a few, because it’s a big program. You live P90 X when you’re doing it.
My wife actually followed the program but I didn’t at first. I don’t like to follow rules, to my detriment or not. So the first thing I did was Legs and Back. Wall squats, Iso toe-rolls, Dead man Drops, Super Skaters, Chair Lunges, Sneaky Lunges. It was a week later when my legs and my butt stopped hurting. After that I got with the program.
The results were fabulous. I gained 10 pounds. Not the sort of shameful weight gain associated with eating, but ten pounds of hard lean muscle. I looked great. I was sore all the time, because my body was always repairing one muscle group or another, but it was a good kind of sore. As Tony likes to say: Ab Ripper X: you hate it… but you Love It.
But there are disadvantages to religiously following anything, be it a church or a fitness program. After you’ve done one routine for the fifth or sixth time, you realize that you’ve begun to memorize every single word that Tony says, even though he’s just talking off the top of his head. You unconsciously decide to internalize everything: “This is THE X, PEOPLE! It’s time to get real!” “The only reason I do P90X is for the recovery drink at the end.” “I recommend foot-spray.”
But Lordy! You feel like your life is starting to inhabit the world within the P90X fitness routine, and the people who are on screen with Tony. Are Tony and Phil and feel going to get into a fight? Is Tony gay, and is he just best friends with Pam the Blam? What is its about him and Drea anyway? They look like they’d be perfect together!
When my wife and I would go downstairs to do the routine of that particular day, we’d talk about Tony and referto him by first name. Tony says this.. Tony says that. Do you really think Tony is 45 years old? He looks really good for his age if he is! After a while, I started doing the yoga ex routine and nothing else, because I was starting to like yoga so much that I was willing to do it to the exclusion of all other forms of exercise. And I wanted a life outside of Tony and his friendly yelling.
And another thing: I did some research on Tony. I saw a whole bunch of videos about him on YouTube. He’s got his own personal vegan chef. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine what you would look like if you have a highly trained professional chef cooking all your meals to a standard that is formulated to put you at your highest level of physical perfection? I think you’d look pretty good too. I can’t blame Tony Horton; he’s a businessman. He needs to look as good as the nifty box in which the DVD’s are packaged. But it did make me think: I can’t really expect to look like the plucked, tanned, and Botoxed people in the P90X testimonials. It’s not really something I can expect of myself.
It’s been a few years since I was a P90X junkie. I’ve been relying on yoga to keep me slim, but now, what with all the crap we’ve been going through, I’ve gotten a little heavier than I want to be. I’ve been emotionally eating. I’m keenly aware that every year I lose a few percentage points of muscle, so now, at long last, I think I have to go back and pay Tony Horton a little visit.
Like before, I got into the Legs and Back routine first. And like before, I’ve been unable to walk for the past week: I’ve had to limp and stumble about until the horrible burning pain in my butt and hips abates. But I rest easy in knowing that my body is building muscle as I speak, and hopefully as my muscle is building, my body is generating just a little bit of testosterone to make me feel young again.
Most of us just just want to feel younger. Not be younger, with all the stupidity that comes with youth, but we want to feel younger and know better. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, or how important you are: you can’t buy back time. But with the help of a fairly ridiculous man who lives somewhere in California and has his own vegan chef, we can at least not feel old anymore.