P90X

[SirJangly]

Anyone have any experiences with this? I just started last week and love it!

 

[KoolDrew]

What are your goals? What's your diet look like?

I have no experience with P90X, but if you're a beginner pretty much anything will work that isn't completely retarded. However, you're definitely not going to "get ripped in 90 days" without proper diet.

 

[YetioDoom]

What are your goals? What's your diet look like?

I have no experience with P90X, but if you're a beginner pretty much anything will work that isn't completely retarded. However, you're definitely not going to "get ripped in 90 days" without proper diet.

 

[KoolDrew]

YetioDooms post wasn't there when I posted, yet his post shows up before mine and identical to mine? wtf....

 

[chess9]

I have the workouts and have tried some of them. The AB RIPPER X is a very very demanding workout. I'd guess that less than 1% of the population could finish it, but you don't have to do all of it.

Essentially, these workouts are HIIT variants. With your heartrate at such high levels for so long, though, you will tend to lean out, more than bulk UP. If you want to bulk up then I'd suggest something more conventional, as you'd find at www.bodybuilding.com.

Good luck!

-Robert

 

[EvilYoda]

Originally posted by: KoolDrew
YetioDooms post wasn't there when I posted, yet his post shows up before mine and identical to mine? wtf....

creepy!

 

[brikis98]

Well, I would personally refuse to do any program that:

1. Advertises that you can "get a six pack in XX days!"
2. Is advertised on TV and lists the price as "A $600.00 value for only 3 monthly payments of $39.95 (+$19.95 s&h)"
3. Has a sketchy website that makes the scam alarm go off in my head

Having said all that, from what I've read & heard, it's not the worst of the late night advertised "get ripped fast!" programs. In fact, many people do get good results with it, although I'm sure the majority get nowhere near a 6 pack. From what I've read & seen of it, I like the following:

* It comes with some sort of diet plan. This lends the program a lot of credibility, as any program that claims to get you "ripped" without mention of diet is full of crap.
* The workouts focus on high intensity and are supposed to be a combination of a number of disciplines, including cardio, "karate", plyometrics, etc. The fact that they aren't selling fancy "gizmos" to get you in shape (e.g. bow-flex, total gym) and instead focusing on full body functional movements at high intensity is great.

Unfortunately, I've also read that the program can get boring pretty fast, it is lacking many important parts of total fitness (such as heavy lifting), and it over-emphasizes isolation exercises (TONS of ab work, bicep curls, etc). However, the biggest killer, IMO, is that the program offers nothing that you can't get for free. I would instead point people to the following resources:

1. Crossfit: Crossfit workouts are extremely varied (no more than 3 or 4 repeats per month), are a mixture of olympic lifting, power lifting, plyometrics, running, gymnastics, etc, and are extremely intense. The goal is general fitness across all domains (strength, speed, power, quickness, balance, etc) and the results are incredible. Every workout can be scaled to anyone's level, from small kids to professional athletes to grandmas. CF's website is completely free, lists a new workout daily, and contains hundreds of instructional videos. CF also has a massive online community that is incredibly helpful and supportive. CF emphasizes proper nutrition and usually recommends the Zone and/or Paleo diets. IMO, CF has everything P90X has, but CF does more of it and does it better and offers it for free. The only downside is that to do CF properly, you need a lot of equipment - although a lot can be built cheaply and there are MANY workouts that require none, it's best if you have access to a nice gym.

2. RossTraining: a free resource for a ton of workouts you can do at home and usually with minimum or super cheap equipment.

 

[NGC_604]

RossTraining is great. The workouts featured on that site and messageboard are more than enough to get anyone in shape. Just do that and spend the money on any equipment you might need.

 

[yelo333]

Originally posted by: energydan
RossTraining is great. The workouts featured on that site and messageboard are more than enough to get anyone in shape. Just do that and spend the money on any equipment you might need.

May as well buy his books, too; they're cheap. I have Never Gymless and still get it out every week or so to look stuff up.

Edit: I should mention they're not just a rehash of the stuff in his articles. Here is a review.

 

[NGC_604]

I second that. I bought Never Gymless a while back and got a lot of good workouts from that book, and there is still quite a few exercises in the book that I cannot even do yet. I've heard good things about his other book, but I figured I'll need more training before I get into that one.

 

[queenrobot]

So, is the concept of "muscle confusion" a load of crap or what?

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: queenrobot
So, is the concept of "muscle confusion" a load of crap or what?

Pretty much.

 

[brikis98]

Originally posted by: KoolDrew

Originally posted by: queenrobot
So, is the concept of "muscle confusion" a load of crap or what?

Pretty much.

Well... "muscle confusion" is a relatively meaningless buzz word. However, the idea of constantly varying workouts is definitely not a load of crap.

I think one of the reasons Crossfit workouts are so effective is that every workout is different (you only get a few repeats per month). Each workout varies the type of exercise, the weight, the duration, the speed, the number of sets, the number of reps, the order of exercises, the intensity, etc. This forces the body to constantly adapt and helps prevent/reduce the plateaus that most people hit in standard routines. It also helps to make workouts less boring and increases "general preparedness" - the body is ready for anything.

 

[iluvdeal]

Originally posted by: queenrobot
So, is the concept of "muscle confusion" a load of crap or what?

No, it's a sound concept. It's just another way of saying to change up your workout in some way every few weeks. You can do that by increasing the amount of weight you are lifting, change the exercises themselves, change the order you do exercises in, etc.

I've done P90X and it's a good workout program. It's not perfect by any means, but I'd easily recommend it to someone over using a program from a trainer at 24hr Fitness or having them try to cobble together a program themselves if they are inexperienced.

For a mass marketed program sold in infomercials, I was surprised at how well designed it was, thought was actually put into it. For example, they just didn't tell you to eat healthy, they included a nutrition plan and a daily log for people to keep track of what they eat. There's no secrets in P90X, all the info is out there but it's the only product I've seen put everything together nicely in one package where users just have to press play and go.

 

[KoolDrew]

However, the idea of constantly varying workouts is definitely not a load of crap.

If you want to get strong you need to concentrate on the lifts themselves and any assistance lifts that will help with the lift. Switching up your workout routine just for the sake of switching it for no reason except "muscle confusion" is a great way to set yourself up for failure.

Find out what works for you and stick with it, making changes when needed. Why fix something that isn't broken?

 

[brikis98]

Originally posted by: KoolDrew
If you want to get strong you need to concentrate on the lifts themselves and any assistance lifts that will help with the lift.

To an extent, this is true. If you keep doing the same exercise while progressively increasing the difficulty and adding in assistance exercises, your body will gradually adapt and become better at that exercise. This is the basis of all training, really.

However, doing some exercise X is not the only way - and possibly not even the optimal way - to get better at exercise X. For example, training for a marathon does not entirely consist of really long distance runs. Many successful marathon runners spend a great deal of time doing short sprints, interval training, and even completely unrelated endurance/stamina work (such as Crossfit workouts) and actually only do a limited number of long runs.

Originally posted by: KoolDrew
Switching up your workout routine just for the sake of switching it for no reason except "muscle confusion" is a great way to set yourself up for failure.

Randomly switching around your routine probably isn't the best idea. But if you do it with a logical structure behind it, it can be incredibly successful. For example, Crossfit has an enormous variety of workouts, but they are supposed to be laid out based on the Theoretical Template for Crossfit Programming. This template tries to ensure a reasonable balance between the types of exercises (metcon, gymnastics/bodyweight exercises and weightlifting/powerlifting) and the structure of the workouts (number of reps, sets, timing, weight, etc).

Originally posted by: KoolDrew
Find out what works for you and stick with it, making changes when needed. Why fix something that isn't broken?

Well, if you really think about it, even with pure strength training, no one just sticks with one plan for that long anyway. Most people start with a simple beginner routine. Over time, they change it by adding exercises. Eventually they move on to an intermediate routine, which often varies the numbers of sets & reps & exercises. After a while, they'll move on yet again to an advanced routine which usually consists of an even larger variation of exercises, sets, and reps, recovery days, intensity days, volume days, timed sets deloads and so on.

Routines like Crossfit try to avoid this whole problem by just varying workouts right from the get go in an intelligent manner. If you look through the exercise logs of many Crossfitters, you will see MASSIVE improvements across a broad array of exercises, even though each individual exercise is repeated relatively rarely. It's quite typical to see a person do the back squat only a handful of times over a 3 month period, but each time their strength increases enormously. Why? Because in between, they do front squats, clean & jerk, snatch, running, box jumps, burpees and so on. Of course, it's important that all the exercises are compound, full range of motion movements done with free weights or body weight, which means they have tremendous carry over to both the real world and other exercises. But the ultimate result is that the constant variety in CF allows a person to excel at any given exercise X while also improving their fitness across the board in all other domains. It also seems to produce astonishingly quick results with relatively little plateauing in between.

 

[KoolDrew]

Randomly switching around your routine probably isn't the best idea.

That usually what happens when people fall into the ridiculous idea that you have to "confuse" your muscles. Then they end up making no progress. Switching up your routine a bit every once in a while is good and usually required to continue making progress, but too many take it too far.

 

[JDub02]

I have a couple friends that started on P90x. They both love it and said they'd definitely buy it again. I'm thinking about purchasing it solely for the structure of the program. My apartment complex has a small gym that has decent machines, dumbells up to 50 lbs, and some treadmills. My problem is that I'm terrible on the calorie intake side and I'm not consistent with the gym and hate treadmills. P90x sounds decent in that it will give me a diet plan and guide my workouts. I'm 6'3" 235 and would like to lean out before next summer.

Is there any place online to get an organized diet plan like P90x comes with?

 

[Scarpozzi]

I've heard good things about it. I've actually got a copy of it right here that a friend's letting me borrow, but I haven't tried it yet.

If you need a good routine to follow, it will fit the bill and it's a good value since there are 12 programs. Most workout tapes only have 1 tape you play over and over. I've been told that after you follow the program, it really does hit all the muscle groups and the varying exercises guarantees that you work different sub-groups of muscles each time.