Day 48 – One on One P.A.P.

Having put in the DVD last night, I decided that I needed to actually try this P.A.P. thing today. The thought scared me. Putting in the DVD and seeing the clock start at 1hr 9min didn’t help. But, I can’t put it off forever.

So, what is P.A.P. ? Copying from another person’s blog: “P.A.P. stands for Post-Activation Potentiation. Sounds a little “sciency” uh? That’s because it is. It is an idea developed by Dr. Marcus Elliott at his Santa Barbara training facility for high profile athletes called “P3“. In the most laymen terms, Post-Activation Potentiation is a training routine that involves complexes of heavy strength movements followed by explosive exercises that is said to fire your muscles so that they are more activated to help you perform better.”

In other words, bearing weight, then doing plyo moves. Because I need more plyo! Apparently so. My legs were aching from yesterday before I even began. But, I was locked in once I pushed play. There’s a warm up section. Then some lower body moves which are repeated four times. Then some upper body moves repeated four times. Then an awesome cool down stretch section.

The warm up was jumping and salutations. I hate when he does salutations for a warm up; specifically because I don’t like wearing my shoes and being on the mat. But, I also don’t want to wait and stop to put on shoes after the warm up. And I don’t like doing salutations on the hard floor. I usually just end up having my shoes on the mat. Or my hand on the mat and feet on the floor, but that causes slipping more often than not. If we had carpet this probably wouldn’t be an issue. But, no carpet here.

Throughout this routine I had issues with space. Where to put the mat so I had both mat space and floor space? How to alternate between weights and jumping? The hardest for me was doing weighted lunges followed by plyo lunges. Weighted push-ups followed by plyo push-ups had me on my knees sooner than I would have liked. There was a cool wrist/elbow stretch after each push-up segment.

The stretches at the end were great. Tony took stretches that we’ve done before and inserted variations to work smaller more specific muscles. Very cool. Felt amazing. My legs especially needed all the attention after today.

I was sweating so much, one of the problems with the heater kicking into morning mode when it does. But, by the end stretches I was freezing… due to the sweat and no longer moving all around.

Time actually flew by once I got going. The workout won’t scare me as much when it comes up again. I believe next week is a recovery week, so not sure what routines that will hold. Then this last part seems to be heavier on the One on One routines and lighter on the P90X.

Here’s hoping I can walk tomorrow! Yowzers!! (Or is it Wowzers? Is there a difference between those words? Spell check doesn’t seem to think that either is actually a word. Something to google…)