A couple of months ago I played basketball and made the observation that it went pretty well considering I hadn’t played basketball in years. Well, the other day I decided to pump up a deflated ball gathering dust and mold in our garage and put my post-P90X physique to the test just casually shooting around at our condo’s tennis court / basketball court. Even though this wasn’t overly intense activity, my experience was surprising!
If you’ve ever played sports and felt “connected” to what you’re doing, maybe even in the zone, you’ll know the difference between that and coming back to a sport you haven’t played in years. In general, when you feel in the zone with something, you feel like you have something to offer that activity, and that activity has something to offer you. In contrast, when you’re coming back to an activity you haven’t engaged in for years — particularly a more strenuous activity — you feel more like you should be slumping in defeat in the mere presence of that activity and that activity wants nothing in return but your demise and exile from the land of the living.
The past couple of days with basketball have been pretty encouraging. I felt completely coordinated, and my shot was weirdly accurate considering it had no good reason to be. Generally it’s been my experience that it takes several days, even several weeks to get a basketball shot reasonably back after being dormant for even a few months. For me it has been maybe 80% of the way (or even better) there already, which is way different from my previous history of chucking air balls and bricks when first coming back to basketball after long hiatuses. In general my shots felt strong and crisp, dribbling was easy, and I felt agile. Added bonus? I was able to dunk again for the first time in about a decade. Granted, it was no LeBron James backboard destroyer or anything, but it was an honest-to-god hand-touching-ball-while-simultaneously-touching-rim-while-also-penetrating-basket combo; enough even to remind me of one of the few areas p90X does absolutely nothing for — hand sensitivity! You may not believe it, but ANY form of dunking hurts for the uninitiated. This is an under-discussed aspect about dunking (where are all the confused, frustrated, outraged sensitive-hand-dunker-bloggers?) This means my guitar playing would be fraught with similar under-callousing / under-conditioning issues I’d need to address independently from P90X, but these are minor quibbles at best.
In a future blog post I’ll try to highlight more where I think P90X really excels, where it falls a bit flat, and who would most benefit from the program. I’ve kind of touched on these issues in the past, but I haven’t really dug deep into them, and I think it’s worth exploring. I say that because my wife, with her newfound bounty of time from finishing grad school, has decided to not start back on P90X (so much for the web address’s premise!) but has instead started another interesting Beachbody program called Chalean Extreme. She hasn’t gotten too far into the program, so the jury is out on how good of a fit it is for her, but I can certainly see some advantages with that program for her specific wants and needs over P90X. Maybe she’ll be so good to grace us with her presence for a moment to discuss the program when she gets a chance.
But who is P90X most ideally suited for? Any type of athlete? Certain types of athletes? Someone who wants to lose weight? Couch potatos who want to repent? Gym rats who need a change? Someone who wants to bulk up? This is what I’ll take a stab at answering soon.
Tags: Plyometrics, sports