"Extreme fitness, extreme results. My friend, it is time to get serious. You've got a 90-day commitment in front of you. So, are you ready for your first workout? I'll hold up my end of the deal if you do your best, forget the rest, and BRING IT." Tony Horton.
And with those words, I was off. I was ready to transform my life, as my new friend and virtual personal trainer Tony put it, both "physically and mentally." I had just watched the first DVD of P90X.
P90X is a grueling 90-day workout program that guarantees "amazing" results if you stick with it for 90 days. It's a series of intense workouts that can all be performed right in your living room. All you need is some resistance bands, a yoga mat and a chin up bar.
I decided to take the plunge and drop $150 on the program when I was at home this summer. One night, while one of my friends was having a pool party, I looked around and thought to myself, "Holy shit, I'm like one of the least fit people here." (Admittedly this is a slightly insecure reaction, but by owning up to it I feel like that shows a sign of security, so it all cancels out.)
Now at school, where I've joined a house with a decent amount of athletes, I'm used to being relatively out of shape compared to everyone else. But with my home friends, in terms of fitness, I'd always been towards the high end of the spectrum. I could always just hold the marathon thing over them. When I realized this was no longer the case this summer, let's just say I was more than rattled. At least at school the fitness gap with my friends is so big that it's not even a fight worth fighting but at home, it's like "Come on Dolan, get it together you scrub."
So, one afternoon in late August, I found myself standing in my bedroom listening to the aforementioned words. I had my yoga mat out, my resistance bands ready to go and my door locked because I knew even my parents would make fun of me if they saw me doing this.
Before I could get started, however, per Tony's instructions I had to take a "before" photo. Of all the embarrassing moments I've had that no one else has witnessed, I think this is number one. While standing in my boxers for the "side-profile" shot, I just started laughing. I thought to myself, "Wow, I'm such a joke."
But, nevertheless, I had spent 150 bones on this I was going to do it by the book. Plus, you know how you get overly ambitious and excited about stuff at first, even though you know in reality you'll never deliver on your plans? I was still in the ambitious mode. So I took the pictures (which are now on a secret, password-protected hard drive), and got ready for the first workout.
As I mentioned earlier, the host of the P90X videos is a man named Tony Horton. Tony's easily the biggest tool I've ever seen. Think Richard Simmons, just a little less gay and a little more Jersey Shore.
Tony also constantly talks to you throughout the video. At first I thought it was kind of annoying, but the more I watched the videos, the more he grew on me. Just so you get a sense, here are some of my favorite Tony quotes "I'm a pterodactyl comin' in for a landing, Caw! Caw!" "I hate it (big grunt) but I love it (grunts again)" and "X Me Baby!"
The videos are all roughly an hour and besides Tony there are usually three other people helping out. This is both good and bad. It's good because there are more people for you to mimic. It's bad because one of them has a fake leg and he can still jump way higher than me, so that kind of blows. The other thing all the videos have in common is the background music is strikingly similar to the music in late night Cinemax shows.
While when I started this column the plan was to write about the experience of actually doing the exercises which range from yoga, to karate, to moves such as "the crunchy frog" and why I think it's started to pay off. But, I'm completely out of room so that might have to be next week's.
I will say this though. I got in a 4 a.m. wrestling match this past weekend with four kids who were all bigger than me and though when I was in a headlock at one point, I thought to myself "Oh my god, if this person wanted to kill me I think he actually could," by the end of the match, two kids were bleeding and one thought he might have broken his arm. I was unscathed. Was it all those pterodactyl landings I'd perfected over the past few weeks? Probably. Tony would be proud.
Eff you Gumby.
