It is difficult to get rid of those extra five kilos, but it is more so when it is only the first five that you have to lose.
Something called P90X
Time it takes to lose 5 kilos: 40 days
Difficulty level: High
When I started, I had no idea what that 90 represented. I hated the name. I felt ridiculous saying it. P90X: It could have been the rejected name of some older Pontiac model. P90X: It could be one of those potentially inhabited planets that lately seem to swarm all the time in the orbits of more or less close stars. P90X: a red stroller for children. Even after receiving the 12-DVD package in the mail, I continued to tear the name apart over and over again, until I discovered an entire nation of people who had watched all the nightly infomercials and the everlasting testimonials and then got nailed to the show. until complete. They no longer even associated the program with the number. They spoke of the man, the inventor of the concept, the leader whom they had decided to follow. “Ah, Tony Horton?” A friend asked me in an elevator. “It’s disgusting.” The woman next to him nodded vigorously.
But what is disgusting? At first, nothing. Horton is well aware that he is a handsome fellow, that he looks like an action figure; It is obvious that he is someone informed and understood, he expresses himself in clean language, without abusing technical jargon, and he has a decent sense of humor. The first day is devoted entirely to doing push-ups and squats, and there is plenty of space to take a few pauses when the body is no longer. On the second day, you start with jump training, and he recommends taking it easy if you need to. Occasionally, he begins to present the “Ab Ripper” workout, which is a brief but hellish attack on the abdominal area. One day you are doing weights to shape your shoulders and back and the next day you have to do yoga. Then there are more weights. Then karate Kempo, which is more like boxing with an imaginary opponent than a martial art. Then there are more weights. And it’s been a whole week already. Different muscles are addressed each day. Nothing hurts … well, not too much. It gives you a day off, and then you start again. And that’s when everything starts to get gross. Having done it once, you would expect to do better. You start to ignore the recommendation to take it easy, and you start to hear Horton pressuring you not to pass out, to try harder.
Time goes by. Horton keeps a stopwatch in one corner of the screen. The exercises become more complicated. Horton helps keep time, interpolates anecdotes with routines, makes silly jokes, which he also repeats more or less once a week. And it has not been long, when the hours that you are investing in training begin to transform themselves into an anecdote, one that is told in that discreet 60-minute unit format.
I was good at jump training. But I never managed to do more than 20 minutes of the yoga sessions (out of 60). How to explain that the warrior’s posture destroyed me? I was looking for people with whom I could talk about this, to whom I could tell and ask my doubts; but the only person I really wanted to get answers from was Horton himself. And I only knew it through the DVDs, through the P90X program. He was on the fifty-fourth day; by then I already knew what the number represented. Ninety days. If I gave him the time he had learned to steal for the show, the time Horton had shown me how to use, I would be able to figure out the answers for myself.