Tapout XT Week 5!

Good afternoon everybody! As you know, I'm Kevin Wright!  Today, I'll be talking about Ripped Conditioning XT + Ultimate Abs XT.  I'll also throw a calorie counter into the mix as well.

On Week 5, day 2 or Tuesday, I had the honor of doing Ripped Conditioning XT, and let me just say, it was as tough as Cardio XT.  As you guys know if you've read my blog, I'm not very good at cardio, but I am getting better as time goes on, I was actually able to stay with Karpenko and gang during Cardio XT day!  But I'm getting too ahead of myself.  So, what is Ripped Conditioning XT all about?  Simply, it's about losing fat, without losing muscle.  You do a lot of muscle blasting moves, such as -surprise- punches, kicks, and what not.  You also throw some band work and leg band work in there, and you've got yourself a muscle-kicking workout.  Ripped Conditioning XT is 41 minutes long, warm up and cool-down included, plus with the 15 minute Cardio XT, it'll be around the one hour mark.

Plus, since it was my 30th day of using tapout, I had to do a weigh-in!  I was really excited to see what my progress would be.  Below are the results from day 1, 10 and 30:

	Weight	Jean Size	Chest	Bicep	Waist
Day One	297	44	47	16	45.5
Day 10	293	43	48.5	17.5	41.25
Day 30	287		49.25	17	42

As you can see, I've already lost 10 pounds from first starting Tapout, and I've felt that I've lost weight too. I'm looking thinner and healthier as well.  Chest size has gone up considerably as well.  I wish that it'd be higher, but I can't be getting greedy about my progress.  Bicep size is up and down right now.  I deduced that the reason for that is because part of my arms were made of fat, but now that I'm slimming down, I'm losing that fat and my arms have gone down in measurements.  I'm starting to gain abs and I've felt thicker and tougher in my abdominal area, so I think it's okay that my waist has gone up, not to mention that I can see the top of my abs as well now!

At the beginning of the post, I alluded to using a calorie counter.  This counter is called MyFitnessPal.  This useful gadget tracks your exercise, water intake, measurements, and the amount of food you're taking in.  I feel that the important thing about this is the food because you can track everything non-food wise, but the MFP database contains the most diverse food recipes at a whopping 2 million foods and recipes.  In my opinion, it's the best way to track the food you eat and if they don't have a food you made, you can easily add it to the database.  I did that with the chicken salad I made on Friday.  If you're serious about losing weight, but don't know where to start, MyFitnessPal is the best way to start.  They also have an app for Android - MyFitnessPal Android and Apple - MyFitnessPal iPhone, iPad

So today, I talked about Ripped Conditioning XT which builds and tones muscle, my weigh-in where I'm seeing a good amount of progress, and MyFitnessPal which is a pretty nifty gadget and also provided links to Android and Apple services.

Remember, don't forget to add me on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+!  Don't forget to comment as well to let me know how i'm doing!

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Have a good day, everyone!

Tapout Week 4

Hey everyone, how was your weekend?  I hope it was good, because it was good on my side!

I did a couple new workouts this week during Tapout XT: Buns and Guns XT and Muay Thai.  Not only we these workouts fun but they were tougher than I had given them credit for while looking at the case they were in.

Buns and Guns XT focused on - surprise surprise - the arms and the buttocks.  During this workout, which had a lot of mat work in it, I was constantly using my leg band and i'm pretty sure i used my arm band as well.  I remember not being able to walk as proper or with as much power as usual, possibly because workout made my limbs cry uncle.  The workout, thankfully, was only 33 minutes long.  "But Kevin", you all might be asking, "why was this workout so short??"  Well, I'll answer this question with one thing: Ultimate Abs XT.  That's right, a 33 minute workout of blood-gushing pumpiness to the limbs followed by massive core work is never easy.  There were times where I just wanted to stop and leave, but I had to persist, especially since I had never done anything like B&G before.

Muay Thai focused on the martial arts style of fighting.  You were introduced to advanced techniques that MMA fighters use to take their opponent down.  Punches, hooks, uppercuts, kicks, you name it and it happened.  I went no shoes and socks for this because I wanted to get a good workout like the actual MMA fighters did.  Boy, did it ever work!  I felt that i got solid calves from it and also I was greeted with burning feet and legs.  Part of the reason why my feet were hurting was because I don't usually get too much foot workouts in.

What I mean when I say that is many third world countries, such as most parts of Africa for example, walk around without shoes most of their lives or have a very small cushion between flesh and earth.  Their feet get toughened by walking around all day.  By no means is this safe because of infections, but going every now and then without shoes for a workout will give you strong, tough feet.  Next time you do cardio work, sprints or something, try to go without shoes for as long as possible and I'm sure you will be having burning feet afterwards.

Lastly, I'm giving myself a pat on the back for completing my first month of tapout!  I have completed 28 days of tapout and on Tuesday, I do a weigh-in to see how I have progressed since day 10 and ultimately day 1!  I was going to talk about iTunes 11 but that is going to have to be another day.  Have a good night everyone!

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Day 15: Cross Core Combat

Good Monday, everybody!  I know I know, why use that to open up this new blog post??  Well, let's just say I made it past Day 14 without any injuries this time!!  Day 14 a few months ago, I was getting diagnosed with a vertical tear along my lateral meniscus.  Not good.  Well I'm now on Day 15, injury free!

So today, I did Cross Core Combat.  In simple terms, introductions to punches, crunches, resistance band work, plank work, and kicks and ended it with a killer move known as the Grinder.  But more on that in a moment.  Cross Core Combat or C3 for short, was about 47 minutes long.  We started up with a good warm-up about 8 minutes long, and continued right into the workout.  It was a variety of standard MMA workouts.  One exercise I'll tell you about today is the Superman Elbow.  First, you lay down on a surface with your chest, arms and feet in the air; it varies on how flexible you are.  Next, you simply alternate your elbows across your face as if you were elbowing someone in the face, or that unliked co-worker; really anything(one) would work to use to visualize this movement.  Keep that up for about 45 seconds and you're golden.

Lastly, after the water break of course, was the Killer Move known as the Grinder.  You count down from 10 to 1 doing wide push-ups on even counts and triceps push-ups on the odd counts.  You do Hellcats from 10-1 the whole time after the pushups.  I had to stop a couple of times and ultimately paused the video in order to finish it.  No need to cheat yourself right?  I included a video that would be a lot easier to show than to explain.

Thanks to sctrojan818 for having the video on Youtube!

And that's basically it!  So we talked about C3, me being injury free (yay!) and the fact that Grinders look tough, and are a lot tougher to do all the way through!  Also, you learned about the superman rolls!  Comment in the sections below the toughest exercise you've ever done!  Have a good rest of your day, everybody!

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