I’ve been asked what I like so much about P90-X. What makes it so special? What makes it different?
To me there are very important things that any sort of fitness/lifestyle program must include:
- Diet - and not just a ‘diet’ you do for a given period of time, but real lifestyle choices to echo a common sense approach to simply eating well. A lot of folks that do eat correctly call it, “Eating clean.”
- Strength Training – the basis. You must work the muscles to develop muscles. I am more a fan of ‘big’ complex moves that involve the entire body than focused on ‘small’ moves that isolate certain muscle groups only to the exclusion of others. Our bodies were designed to function as machines as a unit; not a collection of parts.
- Cardio Training – utterly indispensable. Your heart and lungs are the basis of what you can do, how long you can do it and without them, your life, let alone your fitness, is in danger. I am a tremendous proponent of ‘High Intensity Interval Training’ (aka HIIT) as opposed to low intensity aerobic work. I’ll expound on this further later (and in other posts).
- Flexibility - as we age, beyond losing other aspects of fitness, we lose our flexibility. And that lost flexibility is precisely what makes us feel ‘old’ and raises our chances of getting injured from even seemingly mundane daily tasks.
So that’s my basic exercise related ‘pillars’ along with diet. There are a lot of other aspects to pay serious attention to (sleep, recovery, breathing, stretching (ballistic vs. static), posture, drinking water, etc..) but we will approach those separately and in other posts in depth.
Other logistical considerations for me before committing to an all-inclusive program are as follows:
- At Home – I like gyms, enjoy working out in them and they have tremendous resources to offer. But I have a family with children, a wife and run a few companies. I simply do not have time to get to a gym. What happens is that no matter how dedicated I am to it, going to the gym becomes a major roadblock to actually working out over time. I need a program that I can do – in it’s entirety – at home.
- Equipment - because I need/want to workout at home, the equipment I need to have to do the program can’t be extensive, expensive or expansive. I want little to no ‘gear’ needed, I do not want to break the bank to have what I need to do it correctly and the equipment I have can’t take up lots of space.
- Support - I’m pretty smart about working out. I’ve done it for large parts of my life and read/researched a lot about it. I have scoured the web and found fantastic resources that have helped me to shape my own ‘custom’ programs in the past that did work fairly well. But what lacked and one of the most overlooked aspects to training at home is a lack of support. And I’m not talking about your significant other. I mean a support group for motivation, for accountability and for asking/sharing advice.
How does P90-X lineup with what I look for? Let’s breakdown what it is and what it isn’t.
If you have looked at P90-X at all, you’ve seen the infomercial. You’ve seen the website, you might have caught the videos on the making of P90-X on YouTube.
Beachbody is the parent company that works with different trainers. One of them is Tony Horton. He’s 50 as I type this, but was 45 at the time P90-X was done. He’s in better shape than 99.5% of 20 year olds. He’s been a trainer for a long time and developed this program as an extension or ‘extreme’ version of his P90 program (which is also still sold).
The P90-X program is a collection of 12 DVD’s, a diet plan and online resources to support you through the program. Let’s look at them in order.
The term they pitch in the infomercial is “muscle confusion”; and basically that’s what the workout side of the program is based on. There are six strengthening/resistance based workout DVD’s. Each is a different workout: Chest & Back; Shoulders & Arms; Legs & Back; Chest, Shoulders & Triceps, Back & Biceps and Ab Ripper X. There are three cardio based workout DVD’s: Plyometrics, Kenpo X, Cardio X. There is one core workout, Core Synergistics. And two workouts centered around flexibility, Yoga-X and X-Stretch.
The workout program is setup in three phases, each phase is 4 weeks. Each phase consists of three weeks of six workouts; then a rest day. The fourth week is a ‘recovery week’ where you do no strength resistance workouts. The ‘muscle confusion’ factor comes into play by switching up the workouts you do each phase. The idea is to increase your reps/weight used in each move over the progression of the phases and the variety of the workouts each week and than in each phase keeps you interested and forces your body to not plateau like in so many other workout programs. I’ll review each of these workouts in other posts. Suffice to say, they are all real deal. The focus is on basic moves like push ups, pull ups and adding a tremendous (and VERY challenging) spin on such moves. Tony ties each of the workouts in with a warm up and a cool down. The moves he does are closer to circuit training, combining aspects of giant sets and super sets. There is little ‘downtime’ between exercises. They are all about one hour each. Yoga is an hour and a half. You do not stand around much in that time. It’s intense. Yoga will get it’s own post for sure; that one is perhaps the most challenging IMHO. But that’s another topic. These are REAL workouts. I’ve heard other folks call it “Cross-fit Lite” but I’d call it practical fitness. You will burn fat. You will gain muscle. You will gain flexibility. You will get more speed (Plyometrics is brilliant). You will learn moves you’ve never imagined.
What I particularly like about the workouts is that they translate into real world. The workouts you do will help you in sports, hiking, living life at any level. I can do things with ease that I struggled with before this program, even though I was in decent shape.
The diet program is divided up into three phases too. They go along with the workout and are as important or even more so than the workouts IMHO. In essence it’s a Phase 1 (low carb); Phase 2 (medium carb), Phase 3 (higher carb) diet strong in protein and focused on dividing up your meals into 5-6 smaller meals throughout the day. They give you lots of ways to customize it for where you are in your fitness journey; but since P90-X is stressed for folks that come into the program with some degree of fitness the diet isn’t anything revolutionary, just… common sense. It can seem overly complicated at first; but the key is using it as a learning guide to illustrate ratios between carbs/proteins/fats through the phases and observe how your body reacts to them with the workouts. I feel they overload you with calories in the third phase; but frankly by the time you get there, you already know what works for you.
There are other tools not in the P90-X program that work perfectly hand-in-hand with it. One is The Daily Plate and it’s free. A fantastic guide if you simply need a road map is from Beachbody, it’s called Michi’s Ladder. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a fantastic guide. The thing that these tools all start you at is ’40-30-30.’ “40-30-30″ means a healthy, balanced diet made up of 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat. It’s a good starting place. Using something like Fitday and tracking your actual diet for a week gives you some idea of what you are actually eating now. That’s an eye opener for most folks. It was for me. Note we all need carbs; the issue with them is what sort of carbs. I actually prefer to follow a 50-30-20 diet; which works for me. Once you get hip to this sort of thinking and simple portion control… well, then it’s easy to do.
So the workouts fit my three pillars of working out perfectly. And the exercises you do all make you stronger, faster, flexible and last longer in the real world. What about the logistical aspects?
The program is designed to be done in your home. On your timeframe, at your discretion. The secret is simply committing to do it. When I bought it, it sat for a few weeks as I familiarized myself with the workouts, the diet program and tried to get myself to finally give in and commit to it. One hour a day is a lot of time. I made a promise to myself to do it to the best of my ability for 90 days come hell or high water. And made the time, if you look for time that you can ‘find’ to do things… you’ll never ‘find’ the time. If you instead ‘make’ the time, it’s there for you to use. Just use it wisely.
What equipment do you need? Well, you NEED a pull up bar, some floor space (more on this), a yoga mat and block, and either some dumbbells or resistance bands. Pull ups are essential, and Tony has more in this program than I’ve ever seen before in any program my entire life. I already had a door frame pullup bar; so no big deal for me. (Beachbody sells a very nice one at a good price – click on the link for their store on my site here and check it out). I bought a Yoga mat and black at Target for about $25. I have owned dumbbells for years and years; but ended up with every resistance band that Beachbody sells (they call them B-Lines) in addition. They are VERY nice quality equipment. I think using both dumbbells and resistance bands is a great mix. They are very different in use and the variety is good.
There are other very helpful additions to consider if you are going all out. I ended up buying the power stands that Tony designed from Beachbody; they are extremely heavy duty and work phenomenally well. I didn’t buy them until after my first 90 day cycle. They are essential to doing P90-X Plus, but are great for all the P90-X exercises too.
Space. The final frontier…. err, well, ahem. I do all my workouts in my home office. In my family room, there are kid’s toys and a lot of the time, when I want to do my workouts (weekends and during the summer) my kids or wife a) don’t want me to hog the TV; and b) don’t want me sweating and jumping around in front of them. My home office is not huge. I need to modify some of the bigger moves that cover ground. But that’s no big deal and I do it. I have a useable floor space of about 10′ x 20′. That’s not a lot of room, but it works for me.
Support. We all need it. There are days you don’t feel motivated. Days you want to back off. If you aren’t answering to anyone about your progress, aren’t getting positive reinforcement… it’s easy to back off. There are fantastic support threads on the Beachbody forum. Great ‘rah rah’ posts, folks offering advice and you always have access to a coach. I do coaching for P90-X; and to me it’s about answering questions, finding answers and keeping the motivation up. Some folks have dramatic before/after pictures and stories. It’s far more important than you might imagine.
As I type this, I’ve lived with one hour of my day – every day – dedicated to Tony and P90-X of one form or another six days a week over 7.5 months. I’m never bored, not sick of Tony, the music, the chatter in the DVD’s or the moves. I get into doing them, form is a big deal to me. I work very hard at it and get it done.
As you can see (I hope) from the pictures, this program transformed my fitness. It’s taught me how to enjoy working this hard and I’m at a point where I am mixing/matching other workouts (Tony’s extension to P90-X, P90-X Plus and Tony’s “One-on-One” workouts) to keep the variety up and the muscles from plateaus. It’s working. I’m faster on the soccer field, stronger, have better posture without effort, have control of my diet, have energy, feel good and sleep well. I get sick less. I get better faster.
It’s hard work. It takes dedication and focus. But the pay off is enormous. Aspects of my life that are not related to fitness at all are benefiting. I have more energy and focus to do my work, play with my kids and spend time with wife. I find my confidence levels are higher when I am working with new clients or vendors for my business affairs. I am calmer and stress doesn’t get to me as much as it has always done.
To me this program was the complete answer. Beyond the 90 days they focus on.