CommonSense Fitness

You’ve seen the infomercial. You’ve heard about it. Here’s my experience with it.

In short, yes it works. Yes, it is VERY hard work. There are no shortcuts. You need to step up and bring it hard in the workouts (1 hour a day, 6 days a week) and in the kitchen (every day).

I can answer particular questions; I’m a Beachbody coach to help folks get and stay motivated to work through the program.

Here’s the no-BS straight-talk facts:

Who: the program was developed by Tony Horton with Beachbody products.
What: it’s a balanced three-phase workout (3 30-day phases) that incorporate ‘muscle confusion’. You do a variety of workouts; and those workouts change in each phase. You do 3 weeks resistance; and one 2 week ‘recovery’ in each phase. You can do the program at home. You need minimal equipment (pull up bar, dumb bells/resistance bands, enough floor space to move a bit and a DVD player). You keep a training journal (you can download them for free). You need to keep a food journal and spend some time/effort to clean up your diet.
Where: it’s best to do it at home; I’ve done it on the road in hotel rooms and workout rooms.
When: you need to really dedicate yourself to doing it for 90 days. I restructured my life, but found it gave me an entirely new way to live. It’s worth the effort.
How: Bring it. Everyday. Decide. Commit. Succeed.

The workouts are a mix of resistance workouts (lifting, push ups, pull ups), cardio (plyometrics, kenpo (karate cardio) and flexibility (yoga, stretching). They are not easy. You will sweat and work VERY hard. You will do and then get good at doing, things you may have never tried. Yoga, in particular, was something I never tried or thought to try. One thing that Tony preaches that is very true, I came to find out…. the key to staying young is flexibility. I thought the Yoga was silly and ridiculous the first few times I tried. Then I got into it and fought through it (I was not very flexible nor was my balance that great I learned). It’s now one of my favorite workouts. And the results speak for themselves. (That’s below).

Here’s a link to Beachbody’s support forum for P90X: Beachbody’s Forums

There is a support network forum and other online tools to get/keep you motivated on task. Check the communty forums on Beachbody’s site; and get your diet straight with Fit Day or The Daily Plate .

Though P90X is marketed as a 90 day program (and a lot of why it works is that focus and intensity over 90 days time); it is also a very good idea to have some perspective on it. If you take a day off, just add it on and push back your program to a 91 Day program. Obviously, you can’t continue to miss workouts get sloppy with your eating and then complain; but a ‘process’ instead of a ‘race’ focus is better.

I’m 41 and it’s taken longer for me to get where I originally wanted to be at the end. (Some guys in their 20′s can rip it up and look tremendous after the first 30 days!). We are all working with the genetics and age we are; there’s no way around it. We all progress and improve at different rates, no matter how hard we work at it.

That’s life. I achieved where I wanted to be slower then 90 days compared to my initial goal. But I got there.

I reset my goals and now want to push it even further and be in as good as shape as I was at age 23 when I was in the best shape of my life. I’m close now when I compare photos objectively. That to me, is unbelievable. No matter that I believed I could and worked hard enough to get there… it just didn’t seem possible in reality. I was bigger then (not much, but I was lifting pretty heavy): but my core was weaker and I wasn’t in as good fitness overall. I ate poorly back then and got away with it because I could.

Now I have to eat very well, I have to work on my flexibility (Yoga works; and I’ve actually grown to really (gulp) like Yoga. I hated it, really hated it for about the entire first round). And my cardio is as good now as it was then.

What I enjoy the most is playing soccer in a men’s Over 30 league. Last April I was feeling out of it, a step (or two) slower and was just hitting the wall with my conditioning and dying in the second half of games. Now after almost two full rounds of P90X? My explosiveness has improved in a MAJOR way. I am much faster from a standing start. The practical and complete fitness level has made me more durable; being more flexible is a tremendous advantage. It is the key, as Tony notes, to remaining young. And it takes much more focus and work to get it/keep it/develop it as we age. I can get extremely winded now on the field and recover in less than 30 seconds. Ready to go again. And I can play back-to-back games on one night and feel fine afterwards. It’s a very real and very honest experience.

So if you miss a workout, or need to work around an injury… don’t sweat it. Push back your entire program for a day and get back on track. Keep your diet on task and still have a little fun; but within reason.

Once you have become accustomed to it as a lifestyle, then you can guage where your body is and how hard to push or pull back on your workouts and diet as you get through life. I’m here to stay and in it to win it for the long haul.

Peace.

I went from 18% bodyfat to 11% over the series of the pictures from Day 1 to 170.