About a year ago my husband decided to do a couple of the workouts from P90X. They looked interesting and when he asked if I would join him in doing the program it took me a few days to decide. I had been doing workouts about 2 or 3 times a week, and this was a commitment to exercising every day.
P90X stands for Power 90 (days) extreme and is split into three phases that each last about one month. The program has a workout and a nutritional component; I’ll save the nutrition review for later. Daily workout videos are scheduled and involve routines that focus on different muscle groups and activities depending on the day. For example, there are videos that primarily involve pushups or pullups with weight lifting in between sets, and then there are kenpo and yoga routines. Three times a week you also have a core workout component, which depends on which version of the program you choose to do. Every four weeks there is a rest week, which simply means that workouts are more cardio-oriented and do not focus on muscle development, so you also skip the core workouts in those weeks.
P90X is complex and was designed meticulously so that you customize it. There are step-by-step instructions that explain how to decide on what schedule you will follow. Then you decide at the beginning which version of the program you will do, and it depends on your fitness goals.
Once you have made the decision to do a P90X workout it becomes a question of sticking to the schedule. Because it becomes painfully simple to check which video to put on and hit play, you just have to do it.
Motivation to stay with the schedule was the hardest part, especially during the first few weeks when my body didn’t understand that the workouts were a good thing. I quickly found that just doing the workouts was better than pushing hard through them because then I didn’t have the excuse of being sore or weak, and I never hurt myself. And as I became stronger I naturally did more and more repetitions, toward the end I exceeded the number of repetitions they tell you to do for certain things!
I did P90X on the condition that we would also follow the accompanying nutrition plan – there was no way that I would devote so much time to daily workouts and risk not seeing results! At the end of the first month I was incredulous that my body could change so quickly and people started asking what I was doing differently. By the end of three months I had tripled my original weight loss goal. I was stronger than ever, and I ended up continuing doing P90X daily for another two months, making it 5 months running. At that point we traveled abroad for a few weeks and I decided to branch out upon our return. I still do these workouts about once a week and am extremely thankful that I decided to commit to the routine because it kickstarted my healthy and fit lifestyle.
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