Motivation Has Nothing To Do With It...

“Motion creates emotion”

As usual I came home tonight and worked out.  But it wasn’t just a regular workout.  For the first time I did the Strength workout from Insanity The Asylum, all the way through, no breaks.  I did every single rep, even when I thought I couldn’t keep going I pushed through and got it done.  I love the sense of accomplishment when I can beat my own record, when I can achieve what my body tells me is impossible.  Always in competition with myself!  

Do you think I was motivated to workout when I got home from work?  Heck no!  All I wanted to do was sit on the couch, stuff my face, and watch The Walking Dead (which rocks by the way)!  I was drained from another long day at work.  If I had let myself be led by emotions, I would not have accomplished what was one of the best workouts I’ve ever completed.  

A lot of people ask me how I stay so motivated.  They tell me that they WANT to lose weight, they WANT more energy, they WANT to feel better.  They’ve bought workout programs, joined gyms.  They’re just not motivated to do the work.

What I do has nothing to do with motivation in my opinion.  I’m rarely motivated to exercise.  It’s about commitment.  I have a full time job and I own my own business, I’m a mom and a wife.  I’m busy and tired, all the time!  I come home drained, exhausted from work thinking about all the other things I could be doing.  I don’t really WANT Shaun T to make me want to cry or Chalene Johnson to make me want to puke.  But I’ve made a commitment to myself to be as healthy as I can be.  To be a healthy mom and wife.  It makes me feel good about myself, confident and strong.  I treat my workouts like a business appointment.  As soon as I get home from work I put my workout clothes on and press play no matter how tired I might be, and I ALWAYS feel 100x better and accomplished when I’m done!

Here’s what I’ve learned about motivation...  if you sit around and wait for it to slap you upside your head, it’s never going to happen!  Motivation does not come before action, action comes before motivation.  Once I get moving I feel better, the adrenaline kicks in, and THAT’S when motivation strikes.  Not the other way around.  As my hubby Syed likes to say, “motion creates emotion.”  The only workouts I’ve ever regretted are the ones I DIDN’T do.  

So the next time you think to yourself “I just don’t feel like it”, “I’m too tired”, “too busy”...  “I’m not motivated today”... cut the excuse and just do it already.  You’ll feel better when you’re done, I promise.

The Next X: What's New About P90X2™

Courtesy of Team Beachbody Newsletter Issue: #235, September 09, 2011

by Steve Edwards

"How can you improve on the world's number one fitness program?" is a reasonable question that I'm often asked when I tell people I've been working on its successor, P90X2. As Hollywood has quite clearly shown, sequels rarely live up to the original. But once in a while something bucks the trend, and we're fairly certain we've made The Godfather: Part II and not Staying Alive. In this series of articles, we'll be giving you a rundown on what to expect from the next P90X^®.

MC2

The working title of this project was MC2. That's for Muscle Confusion^™ 2, and of course, there's going to be more of what made the original so special. But this time around, we're taking Muscle Confusion to a whole new level, maybe even times two. To understand why requires a little bit of history.

P90X was developed to answer customer requests for a program more challenging than Power 90^® and Slim in 6^®, Beachbody's original blockbusters. So we set out to make the type of training program that an athlete would use to prepare for a season, except the sport we chose was life in general. Combining the theories of cross-training, progressive overload, periodization, and the specificity of adaptation, we began a series of test groups to try and estimate the tolerance of difficulty that the general public could handle, or more appropriately, would want to.

Turns out this was more than we knew at the time—though the fact that we cast test group subjects because they outperformed professional fitness trainers should have given us a clue. The program was so advanced that many professional athletes began using P90X instead of their own team trainers. This we hadn't anticipated. We knew we had a solid program, absolutely, but we didn't count on athletes who make millions of dollars a year ignoring highly paid professionals and working out to a video. If we had, we might have done things a little differently.

Knowing that the world was watching, we began P90X2 development searching for a consultant. We traveled as high up the food chain as possible, where we found Dr. Marcus Elliott. His training facility, P3 (Peak Performance Project), is at the absolute cutting edge of sport. Using the latest in equipment and applied science, P3's client list reads like, well, the front page of the sports section. Dr. Elliott signed on as head of our Scientific Advisory Board, ensuring we had the means to raise the bar.

That's not to say we weren't already succeeding. Anyone who ordered the P90X ONE on ONE^® workouts could see we'd been experimenting with many new training modalities. Tony's newfound love of training on unstable platforms, honed by his relationship with functional trainer Steve Holmson, became, literally, the foundation of P90X2.

Access to P3 and Dr. Elliott also provided challenges. Because our customers are not primarily athletes, we needed to do a lot of homework to determine how to best integrate P3's elite systems into our demographic. Research was done, numbers crunched, theories were applied and tested, and test pilots (often yours truly) were beaten into submission. In the end, the collaboration resulted in a program that we think improved on our wildest expectations.

The program

While it's still based around the periodizational principles of P90X, X2 has a broader scope. In short, it's more versatile, which is saying something, considering that P90X is by far the most versatile training program on the market today. Here are the three training phases of P90X2 and what you can expect from them.

1. Foundation. The first training phase is about your foundation, as in your base, or more specifically your attachment to the ground. What we mean here is not just your legs but your entire kinetic chain. There's a saying that goes, "You can't shoot a cannon from a canoe" that relates to your base, meaning that if it's not solid, you're going to wobble like the visual this saying evokes when you attempt to do anything explosive. The goal of the Foundation phase is to help you create a solid attachment to the earth so you do all other movements without compromising your form. When this happens, you'll look better, feel better, perform better, and be much more resistant to injuries.
2. Strength. Next, we take your strong foundation and strengthen it big time. This training phase will be most familiar to P90Xers because it's similar in structure to what you're used to. However, the individual workouts have evolved. You'll continue to work from instability or athletic positions, because this will help you integrate your strength gains more seamlessly into your real-world movements.
3. Performance. Finally, we take all the physiological changes we've been making with your body and focus them on pure performance. The key to this phase is something called Post-Activation Potentiation or P.A.P. (which we'll explain next time), and doing repeat series of movements called complexes. These workouts will destroy you in an oh-so-beautiful way. After a few weeks of P.A.P., your body can feel more springy, loose, and young. It almost feels as if, to borrow a phrase from King Arthur of Camelot, "You don't age. You youthen."

In conclusion, we think we've created an "Oscar winner." P90X2 is a training program anyone with a decent fitness base can succeed at. It can be done by someone who has only completed one round of Power 90 and still be challenging to the world's best athletes. It's versatile enough so anyone who sees it through to its end can achieve major increases in performance. And while it won't replace P90X (or make it feel as dated as The Godfather), it should absolutely take your results to the next level.

Pre-order P90X2 NOW for guaranteed delivery before Christmas!! P90X2

Questions, email me at tamara.gomez18@gmail.com or find me on Facebook.

Getting Our Parents Healthy, 10 Minutes At A Time

Syed and I have been talking a lot about our parent's health.  They are getting older, they are overweight, and are having the health issues that come along with that.  Coming from Hispanic/Indian backgrounds, our food is not the healthiest.  The foods that our parents traditionally eat are very rich, fatty, fried.  Case in point, the first thing Syed's mom asked was if she can still have her empanadas...

So Syed decided to order 10 Minute Trainer for his parents.  It's a program developed by Tony Horton of P90X fame and it's awesome because it's broken up into 10 minute segments that work all your major body parts.  For someone that has no time to workout, or has to start off really slow, 10 minutes may be more than enough!  But for someone that is more advanced, you can stack the workouts and do 20-30 minutes.  

We went to their house on Tuesday to get them started.  We did the first 10 minutes with his mom and man did she struggle.  But she got through it and we were really proud.  It gave me an appreciation for how blessed I am to be able to do what I do.  I do very intense workouts regularly and I think I take it for granted.  If I want to help others, I have to remember that for many people just doing a few jumping jacks may be a HUGE struggle.  I have to take myself back to when I could barely do a push up, on my knees!  Or when my knees used to hurt soooo bad because I was weak and out of shape.  

The next day she attempted the whole body workout and couldn't do it, but instead of giving up she did a lower body workout.  Proud of her!  We are going to support her and push her to see that as long as she is consistent and tries her best every day, she will get better at it, healthier and stronger!!!

As Tony says, "DO YOUR BEST AND FORGET THE REST"

All of this has made me decide that I want to start a 10 Minute Trainer Group on August 1, for anyone that wants to join in and we will keep each other accountable.  The biggest struggle that I hear in terms of exercise is "I have no time".  Well we all have 10 minutes.  That's one less snooze on your alarm, 2 commercial breaks, 10 minutes less spent browsing Facebook.   If our parents can do it, anyone can!

If you're interested in joining in, hit me up at www.facebook.com/tamaragomez18 or tamara.gomez18@gmail.com.

5 Day Inferno

So I’ve been in a bit of a workout and diet slump.  I spent the better part of 2010 being very disciplined.  I ate well, worked out 6 days a week.  In spite of having a full time job and being alone with Novali, I made it work.  For a whole year, I could count on one hand how many workouts I missed.  I was on fire!  And it was easy to eat well, because I’m a creature of habit.  I could eat chicken breast and veggies every night and it wouldn’t phase me.  Now that Syed and I are living together, I feel like I need to provide more variety with my meals, which means more time to plan and prepare foods.  So I’ve let myself slack a bit.  I’m still working out 5-6 times a week, but I’ve slacked on the eating part.  I wish I could say that working out was enough, but clearly it’s not.  I also think that I became comfortable in that I maintained a very steady weight all last year.  Again, because I was consistent in my efforts.  In the past few months, I’ve gained a few pounds. Not a lot, but enough where I’m feeling the effects. I’m experiencing that dreaded “none of my pants fit” feeling.  At least not the pants I’ve been wearing the past year.  And I do NOT want to go back to my pre-weight loss clothes.  So it’s time to re-evaluate and focus!!!  Hey, I’m human, I probably burned out on my efforts and it’s time to get serious and back on track so that I’m ready for the warm weather clothes!  Not to mention, so that I feel healthy and confident.  

Starting tomorrow, I am going back full force to my favorite workout program ChaLEAN Extreme. Chalene didn’t let me down the first time around, and I’m sure that if I focus on my eating, I will be back at my goal weight in no time!

In addition to that, I’ve challenged myself and friends to a week of no fast food/take out.  To help me with that, this week I will be following the 5 Day Inferno meal plan that came with my TurboFire.  It’s an eating plan that is designed to cleanse your body and change your daily eating habits.  I will be doing it with Syed Ahmed and Grisel de la Torre. Grisel will be following the actual TurboFire 5 Day Inferno workout schedule.   Syed is in the middle of P90X and will follow his regular routine.  

I’ll be blogging all this week about my meals and workouts.  I appreciate any support and motivation!  If anyone wants to join me for the next 90 days, we can help keep each other accountable!

I took my starting stats this morning on my digital scale and they were:

Body Fat: 25.3%

Body Muscle: 41.8%

I will take my before pictures and measurements tonight.  Now it’s off to the grocery store to get everything I need for the week!

Full Circle - How I Lost 20 Lb. & Will KEEP IT OFF in 2011!

One year ago today, I was pretty much in the best shape of my life, and proud of it.  I’d gone from my heaviest ever at 128, to about 115.  Now to a lot of you, 128 might not seem like a lot, but keep in mind that I am barely 5 ft. tall.  128 was a lot of weight for ME.  

My best friend Grisel and I had been doing Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Slimdown, which consisted of 30 Day Shred, No More Trouble Zones, and Banish Fat Boost Metabolism.  We’d both had amazing results and as of 1/1/10, I’d lost about 12-15 lb. We were ready to step it up.  So we did our research, well SHE did the research, and found a program called ChaLEAN Extreme.  She purchased it for me for Christmas, and that was the beginning of a total life change for BOTH of us.  I started it on 1/1, and I was hooked.  Chalene Johnson is a phenomenal trainer and I loved working out with her!  This program changed my body, I lost another 5 lb., doesn’t sound like a big deal but it was to me!  But what amazed me is how STRONG I felt!  It transformed my body.

Even better was that I could do it all at HOME!!!  I’m a busy mom, at that time I was a SINGLE mom working full time, with a 2 hour commute.  It was just me and Novali.  Which meant it was not realistic for me to go to the gym.  So what I would do was, I’d come home after work, start a quick dinner, and workout while dinner cooked.  I had a tiny place so it was easy for me to keep a eye on everything.  Novali had dinner first, and then I would eat after my workout.  It was the only way for me to be able to balance it all.  And I was determined.  

After ChaLEAN I went on to do several more at home programs, including Insanity, P90X, and now TurboFire.  They kept me in great shape.  But ChaLEAN was the program that inspired me, and still it is my favorite.  It’s my soulmate workout.  

2 months ago I started TurboFire, also by Chalene Johnson.  I LOVE it.  But I’ve realized that the best workouts for me are the ones that incorporate a lot of resistance training.  I love to lift weights and my body responds better that way.  In the past few months, I’ve gained a few lb. back, and I’m determined to get back to where I was with ChaLEAN.  

So in honor of my soulmate workout, I’m going to come full circle for 2011.  I will continue TurboFire, but I am going to do the ChaLEAN Extreme/TurboFire Hybrid.  The best of both worlds!  I know that this will get me the results that I want…  Tomorrow morning I will take my before pics and measurements so that I can compare in 3 months and see how far I’ve come!

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