Join Me on Facebook!
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Other Stuff on February 17th, 2010
One of my favorite places to hang out on the web is Facebook. I’ve met a lot of really neat people there from around the world: folks who’ve read my books, other writers, fans of Beachbody’s fitness programs like P90X and ChaLEAN Extreme, book and Amazon Kindle lovers, and many, many more. I’ve learned a lot and made some good friends: it’s been, and continues to be, a great experience.
Recently, it dawned on me that I was pushing fast toward the limit of friends you can have on your personal page: 5,000 people! Holy cow! It sort of came as a shock, because I remember very vividly when I was “young” on Facebook and only had a few friends, seeing someone who had around 3,000 friends and wondering how the heck he did that – it seemed like such an unbelievable number.
Now, are all those people really my close friends? Of course not, at least not in the conventional sense. They’re more like contacts or connections from which friendships or otherwise beneficial relationships can spring up.
But that brings me to the real point of this post: since Facebook won’t allow me any more than 5,000 contacts, I’ve set up a page (technically a “fan page”) that will support more contacts with people like yourself. So come and join me on Facebook and let’s see what kind of relationship we can build together!
More P90X Workout Sheets
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Get In Shape on February 15th, 2010
Tracking your progress for P90X or any other workout routine is critical. To paraphrase Tony Horton, there’s no way you can tell where you are if you don’t know where you’ve been. It’s also a great motivator to watch the changes in your body’s strength and appearance, and to look at the numbers to see how much more weight and reps you’re doing now than when you started!
I did an earlier post on P90X workout sheets (or P90X log sheets) that are available from the Beachbody site, but decided to scour the web a little bit to see if I could find some others. I was specifically looking for spreadsheet-based workout logs or applications, rather than PDF files that you could just print out (so you won’t find any of those here). I didn’t find as many as I thought there would be, but here are the ones I found. Just as a note for Mac users: some or all of the spreadsheets contain macros that probably won’t work; the basic functionality may still be there, but some of the buttons and so on might not work right.
P90X workout sheet and P90X Plus Excel workout sheets on the Beachbody site. These are free and are probably the most popular workout sheets out there.
P90X Log sheet on Paulymath.com – Looks like a nice spreadsheet-based workout log. Requires email subscription to get the link to the spreadsheet file.
Excel Workout Tools – These tools are available in a variety of places, but it looks like all of them are available at this site. There are spreadsheet workout logs for P90X, P90X Plus, Power 90, and 10-Minute Trainer. They look like they’re well-rounded tools, but the downside is that they’re not free ($9.95 each).
WorkoutSoft – This isn’t a spreadsheet, but is a program that you can use to track your progress in either P90X or P90X Plus (there are separate apps for each). Again, they look quite capable, but are $19.85 each.
Free P90X Workout Sheet – I didn’t scope this out directly, but the site says it’s a simple spreadsheet to track five of the major exercises. So for those whose eyes glaze over at the complexity of some of the other spreadsheets, this might be an option to consider.
How Do You Say Siberian Cat?
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Siberian Cats on February 11th, 2010
Having been a bit of a linguist (I majored in Russian with a minor in French and a tiny bit of German), I was curious to see in how many different languages I could find “Siberian cat.”
I can’t confess to a completely exhaustive search, but here’s what I’ve found so far, plus some great submissions by other folks. Note that some of these are in non-latin alphabets, so your browser migh not recognize them if you don’t happen to have that font set installed.
| Arabic | القط السيبيري |
| Czech | Sibiřská kočka |
| Danish | Sibiriske kat |
| Dutch | Siberische Kat |
| English | Siberian Cat |
| Estonian | Siberi kass |
| Finnish | Siperiankissa |
| French | Chat de Sibérie (“Sibérien”) |
| Gaelic | Cat Sibéireach |
| German | Sibirische Katze |
| Hebrew | חתול סיבירי |
| Hungarian | Szibériai Macska |
| Italian | Gatto Siberiano |
| Japanese | サイベリアン |
| Latvian | Sibīrijas kaķi |
| Lithuanian | Sibiro katinas |
| Norwegian | Sibir Katt |
| Polish | Syberyjski Kot |
| Portugese | Gato siberiano |
| Russian | Сибирская кошка |
| Slovenian | Sibirski mucek |
| Spanish | Gato Siberiano |
| Swedish | Sibirisk Katt |
If you know how to say “Siberian cat” in a language that I don’t have listed, or if I’ve made a mistake in the list above, please send it to me and I’ll include it here!
And a big “Thank you” for:
- Doris for the Danish version
- Fran for the update to the French version
- Dar & Eyal for the Hebrew version
- Daisy for the Arabic version
- Merja for the Swedish version
- Ruta for the Lithuanian version
- Eamon for the Gaelic version
- Merja for the Estonian and Latvian versions
- Eva for fixing the Czech version
- Cristiana for the Portugese and Slovenian versions
- Corina for the Japanese version
- Marijke for correcting the Dutch version
Cover Art for In Her Name: Legend of the Sword
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in My Books on February 10th, 2010
With In Her Name: Legend of the Sword nearing completion – I’m hoping to have the Kindle and Mobipocket versions released within the next week, with the print version following not too long after – it was time to finalize the cover art. We had quite a bit of back and forth about it on Kindleboards, but here’s what I finally decided on…
Snowpocalypse 2010: Round 1
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Other Stuff on February 9th, 2010
Okay, I’ve had enough snow already. Really. Snowpocalypse 2010 Round 1 snow storm was enough: we got a full two feet, and maybe a bit more. I know that’s nothing compared to the folks up in the Great White North, but here in Maryland we panic at the sight of the first snowflake (and hey, I’m from Phoenix Arizona, where we only see pictures of snow and panic).
The crowning glory of Round 1 was that we lost power for 32 hours. I bought a diesel backup generator a couple years ago after we lost power for a couple days after a hurricane, and thought, “Hey, we’ve got this in the bag!” Half an hour of cursing and cranking later, the generator sputtered into life, then died after about thirty seconds. Is that typical, or what? Needless to say, as soon as the snow is cleared enough for people to make their way out again, I’m having a local backup power company come and install a natural gas-fed standby generator that takes care of itself and comes on any time the power goes out. I’m not going to mess around with that again!
Fortunately, the stores weren’t too bad last night when we made our resupply run in anticipation of Snowpocalyps 2010 Round 2, which is supposed to dump another ten to twenty inches of chilly white stuff on us. The good news is that work was closed again, but we’re not looking forward to shoveling the driveway out again: the piles of snow we made after Round 1 were as tall as my wife, Jan!
In the meantime, I’ll try to get more revisions done on Legend of the Sword, and get in a P90X Core Synergistics workout to get loosened up for the shovel-fest!
Beachbody’s P90X – A Quick Overview
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Get In Shape on February 8th, 2010
I’ve gotten a number of questions lately on Facebook and Twitter about P90X by Beachbody, and thought it would be worth giving you some of my overall impressions of the program (I’ll save more in-depth reviews for later).
The first thing I have to say is that the P90X program really is complete, moreso than any of the other Beachbody programs (in my opinion). What I mean by that is that it’s not just packed with great workouts and a schedule to do them, but it also has an incredibly thorough nutrition guide. And that’s something I want to emphasize right up front: while the eye-catching part is the workouts, your success is going to largely depend on how well (or poorly) you follow the nutrition part of the program. That’s hard for me to emphasize enough: if you don’t change the way you’re eating and follow the guide, you’ll get in better shape and be stronger at the end by following the exercise routine, but you won’t come close to achieving optimal results.
Both the nutrition and the workout guides are packed with good information that’s very well-structured, and there is a LOT of it: take some time to really get acquainted with both manuals before you start.
The DVDs are, not surprisingly, extremely well done, and there are a lot of them: thirteen, to be precise! I’m not going to cover all the workouts here in any detail, but I did want to make a few observations based on our previous experience with Power 90, Power 90 Master Series, and ChaLEAN Extreme.
Being a veteran of the other workout programs, I was not nearly as intimidated by the workout routines as I thought I might be. While they’re definitely extreme and really tough, the programs we’ve already done have provided us with a great foundation. We saw a number of familiar exercises – along with lots of new ones! – and that gave me a greater sense of confidence. Ironically, this was particularly the case with Cardio X: after some of the cardio workouts in ChaLEAN, this one’s not a huge deal.
To be perfectly honest, that’s probably the one major downside to P90X for me: a lot of the exercises in the cardio routines were a bit too familiar. This wouldn’t be an issue for anyone jumping right into P90X, but if you’ve done the other Power 90 series workouts, it’s something to keep in mind. The good news is that it’s easy to substitute for cardio with workouts from other programs (particularly ChaLEAN Extreme and INSANITY, if you’re in good enough condition), or any other cardio activity like running, biking, etc.
The main concern I have with the weight training workouts are simply that, in addition to being extremely intense, they’re long (a full hour, including warmup and cool down, plus Ab Ripper X), so muscular endurance is an issue. And that brings us right back around to the nutrition portion of the program: it’s very clear (over and above the admonitions in the P90X documentation) that you’ve GOT to ensure that you’re eating properly to give yourself enough fuel to do the workouts, and enough protein to repair and build muscle.
Actually, the toughest workout for me is Yoga X. If you think yoga is for sissies, you’ll change your tune after you do this workout the first time. I’m not a yoga buff, but I can’t argue with the benefits of concentration, flexibility, and control that it gives you. The big downside with this particular workout, though, is how long it is: 90 minutes. That’s really hard for me to do during the week, so when I don’t have enough time I substitute the Dynamic Flow Yoga workout from ChaLEAN Extreme, which is 40 minutes long (I really like that workout, especially the guided meditation part Chalene Johnson does at the end).
Finally, if you’ve seen the P90X infomercial and are thinking about buying it, consider this: if you’re in good shape and you exercise fairly regularly, go for it! But if you’ve been sedentary or only work out every once in a while, please consider what you’re getting into. It’s called an “extreme” fitness program for a reason! If you’re not already in good shape, you really should think about starting with Power 90, Power 90 Master Series, or ChaLEAN Extreme to build up a good foundation before you tackle P90X. You want it to be a challenge, but not so much that you get discouraged and drop the program.
And remember: as with all Beachbody programs, there is an absolutely awesome support community with on-line forums and independent coaches like my wife, Jan. Joining Team Beachbody is absolutely free, and is one of the best things you can do to help ensure your success!
