I just received in the mail my first heart rate monitor. Actually, no make that a second because technically I actually have a blood pressure monitor that kinda does the same thing but only tracks your resting heart rate but doesn’t track in real time continuously. I tested out this evening during my shortened Shoulders & Arms routine. It’s pretty cool! At first I thought it wasn’t working right because I couldn’t get any reading so I removed the battery and still it didn’t work. I ended up going to CVS to see if they had the battery I was looking for but they were out of stock. It was a good thing that happened because somehow magically I got it to work. Perhaps I had to moisten the heart rate sensor pads more to get it working. This thing works with a wireless chest strap. At first it felt kinda strange wearing it but you don’t even think about it too much after wearing it during the workout. It’s very accurate with keeping your BPM as I can actually feel my right beat right as the indicator pulses at the same time. This TIMEX T5G971 is able to track the amount of calories you burn, allows you to set ranges for what heart rate you wish to keep at, the amount of time you workout, your recovery heart rate, set your maximum heart rate, and a lot of other useful training tools. Since Insanity is coming up pretty soon for me, this will definitely assist me in letting me know whether I’m at 85% and above which is gonna be insane! Along the heart rate monitor note, I bought myself a new pair of cross-trainer shoes and boy they sure do make a difference. I was using my plain running shoes for P90X but these shoes feel so much better support-wise for indoor use. I should’ve bought them earlier! My knees aren’t aren’t the strongest so the more support the better. That’s why I also invested in BeachBody’s plyometric mat or “jump mat” as it’s named on the mat itself. Usually these things cost 90 bucks not including tax and shipping. But I found it on eBay for 64 bucks that’s with no tax and shipping included! It was a steal so I had to take the plunge. I also got the heart rate monitor off eBay for 35 bucks which normally cost around 50 bucks too! I’ve shopped on that site for a very very long time ( 2001 ). Great shopping website!
Anyway, the reason why I mentioned shortened Shoulders & Arms workout is because I’ve taken the advice from the P90X fitness guide of only doing 1 round of the resistance exercises to shorten the routine. They say the first round produces about 80% of the pump from the workout and is just enough for maintaining muscle mass. Right now I’m still on cruising mode until I’m feeling ready to start conquering Insanity. I’m very excited to start the program as I know with the amount of dedication I’ve put into P90X, I will replicate that success and do even better with Insanity. I’m not gonna be just lean……I’m gonna be ultra-lean and cut up like a statue! Well, that might be an exaggerating but I’m really serious about getting that physique. We’re talking single digits body fat percentage. The tentative plan for the first month of Insanity is to drop my BF% below 10% and most likely lose hopefully only 5lbs. Surprisingly enough since I finished my first round of P90X, I’ve dropped 4-5 lbs unintentionally! It sounds funny to say now but I really don’t want to lose a lot of weight anymore. During the last month of Insanity, I’m gonna to attempt to gain muscle muscle mass which is really going to be difficult with the longer workouts and raging metabolism. From the Elite Nutrition guide in order to gain more muscle mass, I think I will have to consume at least minimum 3300+ calories!!! INSANITY!!! That’s like almost equivalent to gaining/losing 1 pound of fat ( 3500 calories ). Anyway, nutrition is key to anything and that will be hardest part about the workout because now my worry will be about eating enough so that I don’t drastically lose a lot of weight which would be unhealthy. I will stop there as this is long enough already.
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