Swimming Is What To Do After P90X

I had taken the last week off from doing any P90X workout. I had a couple of other things going on like being out on a friends boat over the weekend. I play softball on Wednesday nights and don't like to do any cardio on those days to keep fresh and to not wear myself out. I know on my last post I spoke about the importance of running while doing P90X. Sometimes I get bored running. I have this 5 mile route that I do a lot and I do it once or twice a week. Well, ever since the canoeing trip a couple weeks ago I told myself I wanted to get back into swimming. Some of my friends that flipped over had all of our beer supply floating down the river and I David Hasselhoffed it in to save them. I was treading some serious water and was able to save about 15 beers.

Anyways it motivated me to get back in the pool because I was winded after doing that. I'm sure the 8 beers I already had in me was not helping out either, but it did motivate me. I will say that I still have a membership to a gym called Lifetime Fitness. Its actually one of the nicer gyms around. They have 3 pools, basketball courts, aerobic studios, weights, cardio machines, sauna, huge hot tubs and most importantly they keep it clean. I kept telling myself to cancel the membership because it is about $60 and I had not used it since last November. This is when I started doing P90X. P90X was kicking my butt already so there was no need to go but I really enjoyed the pool so I kept paying and told myself I would return.

Well, last week I returned. I did 50 laps in the lap pool and man did I feel exhausted. Not too exhausted because of all the P90X'ing I have done. I was so whipped that I feel asleep about an hour earlier than usually that night. I went back to the gym two more times last week and even stepped it up to 60 laps. The poolis about 25 yards long so when I did my calculations I almost swam a mile. I switched between breast stroke and the normal stroke. I started feeling some strength build up in my back and it felt great.

So why should you do swimming after P90X? The cool thing about P90X is that it works a particular muscle in about an hour. You workout your whole body during the span of a week. Swimming works your whole body the entire time you are doing it. You use every muscle in your body when swimming. Today I decided to pull out the P90X DVD's and I did P90X Back and Biceps. I felt stronger today than before. I was able to increase my P90X results by at least 5% over the previous time. I was able to knock out 1-2 more pull ups or chin ups and increase my weight on all of the routines. I was happy about that. What I am realizing is that all of the hard work I did building up these muscles has not gone away. Now I just need to maintain them. What I am going to do now is get back into the pull 3 times a week until I feel like Flipper moving through the water while doing 1 or 2 P90X DVDs. This way I can build new muscles and maintain the ones I have already built.