Every morning, somewhere between the hours of 7:30 and 9:30, my living room is converted into a temporary home gym: chairs are pushed out of the way, sofa is shoved to the back of the room, bands, towels, water, and chairs (gotta love the swing kicks...) are ready and waiting. Minutes into the workouts, Abi and I are, despite having the air on high, dripping sweat onto my tile floor. If you were a fly on the wall, you would hear periodic moments of sarcasm directed towards Tony, groans of pain as we "bring it!," and occasional shriek as one or both of us lose our balance and topple ungracefully out of a balance posture in the yoga workout.
When Zoe joins us occasionally, you could add hysterical laughter to the strange sight you'd see if you were a fly on the wall. I don't have a pull-up bar in my house, so Abi and I do the modified pull-up exercise using bands instead of a bar. However, using bands for modified pull-ups requires that you loop the band around a sturdy object above head level in order to pull downward and mimic a pull-up motion. The only object above head level in my house are my chandeliers - obviously not a good option unless we want to "bring the house down" in a very literal sense. But they say necessity is the mother of invention; thus the birth of the "pull-up table." Abi and I have found that if we remove the top from my dining room table, we can sit on either end, loop our bands across the bar on the base of the table, and then do a sort of modified pull-up exercise. Weird, yes, but you use what you've got, and it's all we've got. Now, where does the hysterical laughter come into this odd scene? Abi and I were discussing how we could make the table higher when Zoe offered to hold it for us. The idea of Zoe, who was not doing the arm/shoulder routine due to back and neck problems, hoisting my dining room table above her head so that Abi and I can use our full strength to pull downward with our resistance bands was just so ludicrous that Abi and I dissolved into hysterical laughter. I think we both had a picture of Zoe, smashed under the table after the first pull-down. Zoe had actually only intended to offer to hold the table steady, not realizing that she was interjecting her comment into the middle of a discussion of how to loop our bands through a higher point.
Besides moments of hilarity, P90X has also brought significant gains in fitness - both Abi and I have exercised consistently in the past, but neither of us has ever done a program that brings such marked, measurable gains in fitness in such a short time. We both had decent cardiovascular endurance before we started, but we've seen significant improvements in strength and flexibility. Fun stuff! Abi has quit referring to P90X as P90X - she now calls it "Our Cairo Lifestyle" - she says we shouldn't look at it as a 90 day program, but as something that we will continue to do after the 90 days are up. I agree! Cairo Lifestyle, here we come!
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