necrotimus
Stop looking at my title!
**Didn't put it in the reviews b/c its not motorcycle related but feel free to move it.
P90X has been around for a few years and is growing in popularity as a fitness program. You may have seen an infomercial or seen ads on the internet. What follows is an initial review from a user of the program.
First let me state that I am only starting week 2 of a 13 week program (90days) so these are initial impressions, having researched the product for about a month before pulling the trigger on it.
Price: The program is expensive. It retails for about $120 from Beachbody Fitness, Nutrition, Diet and Weight Loss Products and Videos. It includes 13 DVDS, a nutrition guide, work out plans, and access to their fitness website. I purchased my dvds off of ebay and then worked to piece together the nutrition and fitness materials I needed.
Equipment: First I will tell you what they recommend and then what I recommend. They recommend: Yoga mat, yoga block, Pull-up bar, heart rate monitor, Push-up bars/stands, resistance bands or dumbbells. You CAN do the entire workout with just resistance bands, if you go this route I highly recommend you buy the resistance bands from their site and you will also need the door anchor. I recommend getting the pull-up bar and the resistance bands to start unless you already have dumbbells. The resistance bands will not do as much for you as the pull-up bar (even if you use a chair) but the bands are good to start for dumbbells otherwise you will be buying a lot of dumbbells as you increase in strength. For a yoga block you can use anything, I use a paint can. For a heart rate monitor I use my internal "I'm going to throw up meter". I'd only go for a yoga mat if you don't have carpet, if you do throw down a towel. Buy the push-up stands later or if you have wrist issues.
Diet: The diet comes in 2 flavors either a specfic meal plan (you make the food still) or a portion plan. It will be very difficult to do the meal plan if you do not buy from beachbody as the nutrition guide has all the recipes. The diet has three categories and each category is based on your current weight. You do some calculations and this tells you how much you should consume. For the first month your diet is heavy protein and you focus on burning away fat. The second month the diet changes and you introduce some more carbs to give you more energy as the excercises pick up a notch. The third month's diet is a professionally athlete's type diet. Now when I say diet I don't mean this is a weight loss diet necessarily. You are eating a lot of food to keep your energey levels up for the strenous excercise routines. However if you are overweight you will lose weight because you are working hard and you are eating better. Without using this or a similar diet plan then you will not get the results you want. So don't waste your money if you won't stick with it.
Excercise program: The program is top notch. There are 13 discs (1 of which is introduction, 1 which is abs). Typically odd days are 'lifting' and even days are 'cardio'. Odd days average about 75 minutes (15 minutes of abs) and even days about 60 with the exception of the yoga disc which is 90 minutes. You work hard for 6 days and stretch the 7th day. I highly recommend you do the yoga and the stretching because it will help you recover faster and become more flexable. Every fourth week is a recovery week so you do cardio and toning work and no lifting.
Results: It has been 1 week (I was following the diet and excercising everyday the week before) and I have seen more muscle gain and ab building than a month at the gym of cardio and machine work (was not lifting). This is not a weight loss program but I have lost 7 pounds in two weeks of following the diet and regular excercise. The only draw back is while the program offers a great upper body workout it will not work the legs as heavily as specific leg lifting. That being said your legs will still be screaming at you and will probably fail before your arms.
Final thoughts: This program will work the hell out of you but you will only get out of it what you put into it. If you don't follow the diet or don't do the dvds everyday you will not see the results. On the flip side you will NOT be able to keep up with the dvds but that is not as important as doing as much as you can and always pushing yourself to do more. Finally if you decide to do the program do not start it the first day you get it. Give yourself a week or two to start the diet and try a few of the dvds. Learn the moves and increase your fitness level then pick a day and say "This is day 1."
Rating: A+, this is about as close to going to the gym without buying thousands of dollars of equipment.
Youtube is a great place to see result videos just search P90X results. I'm pretty high on this program right now plus talking it up keeps me motivated to keep struggling. If anyone has any questions let me know.
P90X has been around for a few years and is growing in popularity as a fitness program. You may have seen an infomercial or seen ads on the internet. What follows is an initial review from a user of the program.
First let me state that I am only starting week 2 of a 13 week program (90days) so these are initial impressions, having researched the product for about a month before pulling the trigger on it.
Price: The program is expensive. It retails for about $120 from Beachbody Fitness, Nutrition, Diet and Weight Loss Products and Videos. It includes 13 DVDS, a nutrition guide, work out plans, and access to their fitness website. I purchased my dvds off of ebay and then worked to piece together the nutrition and fitness materials I needed.
Equipment: First I will tell you what they recommend and then what I recommend. They recommend: Yoga mat, yoga block, Pull-up bar, heart rate monitor, Push-up bars/stands, resistance bands or dumbbells. You CAN do the entire workout with just resistance bands, if you go this route I highly recommend you buy the resistance bands from their site and you will also need the door anchor. I recommend getting the pull-up bar and the resistance bands to start unless you already have dumbbells. The resistance bands will not do as much for you as the pull-up bar (even if you use a chair) but the bands are good to start for dumbbells otherwise you will be buying a lot of dumbbells as you increase in strength. For a yoga block you can use anything, I use a paint can. For a heart rate monitor I use my internal "I'm going to throw up meter". I'd only go for a yoga mat if you don't have carpet, if you do throw down a towel. Buy the push-up stands later or if you have wrist issues.
Diet: The diet comes in 2 flavors either a specfic meal plan (you make the food still) or a portion plan. It will be very difficult to do the meal plan if you do not buy from beachbody as the nutrition guide has all the recipes. The diet has three categories and each category is based on your current weight. You do some calculations and this tells you how much you should consume. For the first month your diet is heavy protein and you focus on burning away fat. The second month the diet changes and you introduce some more carbs to give you more energy as the excercises pick up a notch. The third month's diet is a professionally athlete's type diet. Now when I say diet I don't mean this is a weight loss diet necessarily. You are eating a lot of food to keep your energey levels up for the strenous excercise routines. However if you are overweight you will lose weight because you are working hard and you are eating better. Without using this or a similar diet plan then you will not get the results you want. So don't waste your money if you won't stick with it.
Excercise program: The program is top notch. There are 13 discs (1 of which is introduction, 1 which is abs). Typically odd days are 'lifting' and even days are 'cardio'. Odd days average about 75 minutes (15 minutes of abs) and even days about 60 with the exception of the yoga disc which is 90 minutes. You work hard for 6 days and stretch the 7th day. I highly recommend you do the yoga and the stretching because it will help you recover faster and become more flexable. Every fourth week is a recovery week so you do cardio and toning work and no lifting.
Results: It has been 1 week (I was following the diet and excercising everyday the week before) and I have seen more muscle gain and ab building than a month at the gym of cardio and machine work (was not lifting). This is not a weight loss program but I have lost 7 pounds in two weeks of following the diet and regular excercise. The only draw back is while the program offers a great upper body workout it will not work the legs as heavily as specific leg lifting. That being said your legs will still be screaming at you and will probably fail before your arms.
Final thoughts: This program will work the hell out of you but you will only get out of it what you put into it. If you don't follow the diet or don't do the dvds everyday you will not see the results. On the flip side you will NOT be able to keep up with the dvds but that is not as important as doing as much as you can and always pushing yourself to do more. Finally if you decide to do the program do not start it the first day you get it. Give yourself a week or two to start the diet and try a few of the dvds. Learn the moves and increase your fitness level then pick a day and say "This is day 1."
Rating: A+, this is about as close to going to the gym without buying thousands of dollars of equipment.
Youtube is a great place to see result videos just search P90X results. I'm pretty high on this program right now plus talking it up keeps me motivated to keep struggling. If anyone has any questions let me know.
Some of the workouts are truely brutal but it is great when you accomplish them. To give you an idea I am consitently burning over 1,000 calories on cardio days and have gone as high as 1,500. Resistance days aren't much better and I am hitting 700+ calories burned.
