What is P90X?

One of my friends told me today that he wants to read more about P90X, so I'll start with the background...

P90X is a 90-day physical activity routine developed by Tony Horton (and Beachbody CEO Carl Daikeler), which emphasizes what they term "muscle confusion." This confusion basically keeps your body on its toes. Haha, get it? Since your body is usually on its toes (except when you're sitting or lying down obviously). Anyways, the program is intended to keep your body off balance so that you can avoid the dreaded plateaus in your performance/weight loss/whatever you're working toward. The program promotes a nutrition and supplement plan in addition to the workouts in order to get you that "beach body." Each day focuses on a different area of the body, such as chest and back, shoulders and arms, legs and back, or a full body-workout such as cardio (like kickboxing) or yoga. One day a week is an optional day where you can either rest or do the stretching routine (I've gone with stretching). The exercises you do require the use of dumbells or bands, pull-up bars, chair, and a yoga mat. These are the essentials. You could also use push up bars and yoga blocks.

According to me...

Some of the benefits of the program:

• Your workouts are already planned for you.
• You can go easy and do the beginner versions of an exercise or make it harder for yourself and try advanced.
• You have someone talking to you the whole time to keep you motivated.
• Variety! There's no mind-numbing 30 minutes of elliptical at the gym every day.
• Warm-up, Cool-down, and Stretching. Most of us don't do this on our own even though it's so important for preventing injuring and improving performance. It's been really helpful for me to have it included as part of the workout.
• Tracking spreadsheet. If you're at all like me and love spreadsheets, this is just fun. If you're not like me, then it's also helpful for tracking the number of reps you've done and at what weight (if applicable) or even if you completed the workout.
• You do exercises that you wouldn't normally do (I never did pull-ups on my own. Though I can't really say I've done a full pull up yet - I do the "assisted" version with my feet on a chair. Don't judge me, I'm working on it).

Some of the negatives of the program:

• You're sucked into a 90-day workout routine.
• Each day's workout takes 1 hour to 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete.
• You work out to the same routines each week. We would normally do this on our own, but the downside to the P90X schedule is that you watch/listen to the same guy introduce the same people and tell the same jokes.

I just had a online chat with one of my friends today about P90X. See below...

Z: so how are you liking p90x?
compared to other exercise programs
me: I like having the routine and that it forces me to try exercises that I wouldn't normally do, but I won't mind a little more variety
Z: really? i thought the variety was good
what with the different routine for every day of the week
me: well, I mean that I don't want to listen to the same jokes each week
Z: then again when i went to gyms i would do the same thing every single time
haha
you can silence the jokes
me: I do better when someone is talking to me

...but I think it comes from years and years of coaches and then crew where someone literally yelled at you the entire workout

Overall, I'm happy with it. Waking up at 5am to fit in my workouts before work can be a bit rough, but it's become routine now and it's not so bad. It's worked well for me, but sometimes I feel like I'm not getting enough of a workout. Trust me, I'm not just moseying my way through the workout. I'm tired during the workout and I feel like I'm pushing myself, and sometimes just want to stop. But after I finish the workout, I'm not very sore and my energy bounces back pretty quickly. If I had more free time, I'd be tempted to work out twice per day. But since I don't have more free time. I'll just keep up what I'm doing.

I dare you to wake up at 5 with me and do a workout! Let me know if you do.