Day 1: Chest Back Ab Ripper, or; Mr. Horton, We Are Not Yet Friends

Tony Horton, you seem like a nice guy. You do. Sort of a macho-femme Nathan Fillion who spends more time on his pull up bar than singing songs about himself or smuggling various things away from various authorities.

I'm pretending Captain Hammer is in charge.

And you sound pleasant, as well. I was expecting more the R. Lee Ermey approach to motivation - the finger-waving, in-your-face, you-have-got-to-be-KIDDING-me-Pyle ethic. Instead, what I got was some California-sounding guy, a little on the pompous side, but with the attitude that makes you want to listen. Except for a few creepy times when you channel T-Bag from Prison Break.

Oh honey, I put the X in the P90, delicious.

So all in all, you seem like a nice guy. We could hang out over a beer - sorry, recovery shake - and you could tell me stories about how your assistants first started the program. But we will not be friends. Not yet. Because my arms hurt and my abs hurt and you maybe made me throw up a little in the back of my mouth. It's not you, really. It's the things you made me do. Or maybe it's the things I made myself do while trying to do the things that you were asking me to do. Whatever.

You might have gathered by now that Day One was not a shining example in the annals of fitness. I warmed up. I stretched out. I got down. I brought it, to the best of my ability. I wondered why I was attempting this in an apartment that already reaches the upper eighties in the summer with all the fans on. My cats, again, thought I had lost my mind. For a fleeting second (the second right after the gastrointestinal dismay), I thought I had too.

"When you die from this, we'll eat the soft tissue first."

But you know what? I made it through Day 1. I couldn't even come close to keeping up, but I could do at least a few of the chest and back exercises, as well as the AB RIPPER X. That's about an hour and twenty minutes of sweating, which is an hour more than I usually do each day (unless it's in the nineties outside, in which case I just drown anyway.)

So Mr. Horton, we may yet be pals. Buds, even. For now, though, my favorite Horton remains this fella:

Before the scandalous sequel Horton Hires a Ho

and not this fella: