Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler P90x fitness - done it or know anyone who has?

Oh, and btw, as I wrote Jay in a PM, I did Day 1 of P90x today.

While it's a good workout, my main gripe is that it takes so long to get through. Because I can't get through as many reps as they do (yet), I end up having more wait time between sets than I really need. (believe me, it's plenty hard)

With that said, once I know what all the moves are without watching the video, I imagine I can cut about 1/2 the time out (until I can do 2x the reps I can do now). I'm going to stick with it at least until I've tried all of the workouts. We'll see how it goes.

The Ab Ripper X program lives up to the name. My gut hurts!

And as I just replied, don't wait till the next set starts, give yourself some time to recover a little and then knock off a couple more reps before the time is up. This eliminates the extra wait time and you do more work

You can easily get away doing CrossFit without much equipment. I too workout at home, and just have a basic bench, dumbbells, barbell, and a pullup bar. Also bought a kettlebell, but it's not necessary. The FAQ on their site has subs for anything you need to do that requires odd equipment.
I really enjoy it because it has a relatively short time requirement, intense, and is quite varied. The Workout of the Days are great cause they take all the thinking out of exercise, which is perfect!

I have used freetrainers.com for a more usual approach to weight training, as they have built in 8 week programs that you just print off and follow week to week. The weeks are customizeable for 2, 3, 4 or as many days a week you want to work out. It came in handy when I got bored of my more usual routines.

Thanks for the update Craig - in that case I may take a second look. I've actually been considering getting a kettlebell as well. Do you get by ok with just one or do you find you need a pair?

By the way, I'm now through two days of P90x (I'm at P2x!). The plyometrics workout yesterday was a killer. My main complaint remains the same, the workouts are lengthy, an hour or more each. However, at this point I can make it work in my schedule so I'm going to stick with it for a week or two and see if I'm still enjoying it.

I generally get bored doing the same routines after more than 2-3 weeks, so I might be back to looking at crossfit or freetrainers like Jay mentioned once I tire of the P90 routines.

Jason

I keep expecting this to be about machine guns.

I think there might be an ab exercise with a name involving machine guns.

I saw the P0x infomercial last night for the first time.

Holy. I wish I could look like he does at 50 now at my age of 41.

With P90X, the whole idea is to do different routines, so for the first few weeks you get to do the same ones then a week break with the yoga or what ever and then onto the next set of routines which are even more demanding and different than the first ones, etc. You shouldn't get bored with the same routines as it changes, but you may get bored with the idea of working out for an entire hour, but really most real workouts take about an hour anyway. I did start to split up P90X inot 30 minute work outs just from time constraints.

I'm up to P4x at this point and scheduled for P5 today. I'm finding that once I know what the moves are that are scheduled in the workout for the day, I can get them done in ~40 minutes, which isn't bad, especially considering I'm doing them at home and don't have to drive to/from the gym.

The exceptions (that I know about so far) are the cardio and yoga days. They are just both long workouts and it's hard to cut time out of them. Yoga was interesting... haven't done that for about 6 years and it made me realize just how inflexible I'd become.

Jason