So I received and another question the other day from someone who had purchased a pirated (bootlegged) P90X work out program and guess what?  They got burned.  I have so many of these stories that it makes me wonder why people go through the hassle just to save $20 bucks.  If P90X was twice the price I would have paid it and it is well worth it.  If you have done P90X then you know what I mean.

If you have purchased a fake or pirated P90X work out program then I would suggest contacting the company you bought it from first but I am pretty sure you will get no where there since they are most likely in a different country and really don’t care about your problems. If you get no where with the company then I would suggest contacting your credit card company next.  Tell them you were ripped off by a company that sold you pirated material.  You might get some where and they also might say shame on you, you should have known better.  If you purchased through paypal then you might have some other methods to get your money back but you will have to contact them to go over your options.

One thing to remember is when you buy these fake copies you never know what you are going to get and you need everything that comes with the P90X work out.  You need all the dvd’s, you need the P90X nutrition guide and you need the P90X work out guide.  All 3 of these things are essential to your success with the P90X fitness program.  If you do not get one or the other then what are you going to do?  You can’t just go walk into a store and buy these things.  The only place to buy an official copy of P90X or and Beachbody work outs is from a coach(authorized distributor) such as myself, Beachbody, Amazon (more expensive) and sometimes you can find P90X on QVC.  When you purchase from this site or from a coach you are getting the product straight from Beachbody.  If you ever have a problem you just contact customer service or myself if you have questions.  If you are un-happy then you can just return it as Beachbody has a money back guarantee.  You will get no such guarantee with a pirated or bootlegged copy of P90X.

So do yourself a favor and don’t get scammed with some cheap imitation copy of P90X made in China.  Get the real deal and get everything you need to get in the best shape of your life. Also after you buy P90X be sure to go to TeamBeachbody.com and log in and use the tools there to track your progress(you get a free basic account with your purchase).  You will see me as your first buddy so feel free to shoot me a message to say hi.

P90X Exercise Program

“Bigger, stronger, faster” is a great slogan, but from a training perspective, you don’t want to try to achieve them at the same time. The P90X training system addresses mass, strength, and speed together. This is fine for most of us, but if your objective is to target only one of these areas, you’ll want to customize the program. This is the first in a series of articles discussing how to customize P90X for different goals.

One of the beautiful things about P90X is its versatility. It can be molded into different things. The program offers you three training options: classic, lean, and doubles. These training schedules target different end goals. If you’ve been to our Message Boards, you’ve also seen us design programs for other objectives like skiing, triathlons, or gaining muscle. This series will teach you how to create your own specific training plan.

To understand how we’ve created P90X you must first have a basic knowledge of how all training programs are created. The principles discussed today will be used no matter what the goal of your program will be. So make sure you save this article, because it’s the basis of everything that will follow. Note that this is the most technical article in this series.

Your foundation

No matter what your goals are, I always recommend a full round of P90X as designed because it builds such a solid foundation. No matter your objective, simultaneously conditioning all of your body’s energy systems improves your capacity for targeted fitness. A quick explanation of why will help you understand all the other principles we’ll discuss later.

“Energy system” is a term for the various physical functions that your body engages in. You’ve heard of these referred to as Vo2/max, anaerobic threshold, and so forth. While understanding them is important, we’ll skip them for now except to note that training them separately reaps larger improvements than training them together. This is true even if you’re training for a sport that uses multiple energy systems at once. However, it’s important that your basic fitness foundation is up to snuff prior to this specialization; otherwise, your fitness level will never reach its potential.

The reason for this is your body’s capacity for improvement. The goal of a foundation phase is to improve each area of the body to a baseline fitness level before embarking on a targeted program. You may not care how your aerobic system functions, but if it’s conditioned properly, it will allow you to train more effectively in your anaerobic system. Failure in building your foundation will lead to one of two things: either you’ll lack the fitness to train to your potential and you’ll plateau quickly, or you’ll create a fitness imbalance that will lead to injury. Therefore, a foundation phase of training should be the base of any fitness program regardless of your overall goals.

In all my years in the fitness industry, I’ve yet to see one program that builds as strong a foundation as P90X. It targets your aerobic and anaerobic systems equally. You work on hypertrophy (muscle growth), power (strength), stabilizer- and core-muscle strength, as well as balance and flexibility. No matter what your end goals are, working off of an X foundation stacks the odds of success in your favor.

Periodization

Periodizational training came about when we figured out how long your body could continue to make improvements in one realm or another. It’s all based around a progression curve where three things happen. First, you adapt to training (the adaptation phase). Next, you make rapid progress once your body masters the style of training (the growth or mastery phase). Finally, your body no longer makes improvements because it’s too good at the chore you’ve given it, rendering your training too easy. Your progression curve then levels off, which is called a plateau.

There are many different ways to periodize a workout program, which we’ll get into as we start to specify. For now, just know that periodization is vital to get the most out of any program. Whether a foundation program or a specialized program, all physical training follows the above progression curve example.

Progressive overload

To keep your body from hitting a plateau, you must overload your system during each workout. Adding weight or intensity over time is referred to as progressive overload. In the simplest sense, each workout should be slightly harder than the last. When you can no longer achieve this, you’ve hit a plateau. Progressive overload is not a phase of training, but it’s essential for each phase to work as planned. It’s something that happens from exercise to exercise and workout to workout.

Recovery

Following the above progression will eventually lead to a plateau, no matter how precise your training is. When this happens, your fitness will only improve if you let your body recover or, more appropriately, do exercise that promotes recovery.

A recovery phase of exercise generally consists of low-level workouts to help your body rebuild itself. Sometimes, depending on the plan, this can be more intense exercise that is focused on a different energy system (such as P90X’s “recovery week”). Regardless, the phase should continue until the body is rested, at which point a new block of training should start.

Putting it all together

When you design a program, you want to use a periodized approach. Always begin with a foundation phase, during which you can assess your ability to do the program you’ve designed. P90X gets you ready for high-level training, but some of you may still need to get ready for the X. Most of Beachbody’s programs are foundation phases for P90X, especially Power 90®. And most of our entry-level programs have an easy phase to build your foundation, like Start It Up! for Slim in 6®.

Beyond the foundation, you want to schedule something that is targeted. P90X is trying to improve many energy systems at the same time, so it is structured differently than, say, a program that is designed for you to run 100 meters at your fastest, squat a personal record, or run a marathon. We will get into how you’d structure a program for different purposes, but the point of today is to understand that there should be a targeted structure.

Finally, no matter what your program is, you should design it so that it gets progressively harder and includes recovery periods, and even cycles, so that you avoid hitting a plateau and continually get fitter.

Every workout program you design will touch on each thing we’ve covered today, whether you plan for it or not. Knowing these principles helps you design around the inevitable, resulting in more improvements, shorter plateaus, and fewer injuries. These are your baseline principles for customizing P90X.

Article by Steve Edwards

Since I’m sitting here in a snowstorm, it seems like a good idea to address how to use P90X to get your body ready for snow sports before it’s too late. If you recall the principles discussed 2 weeks ago (see “Customizing P90X for Specific Goals: Part I” in the Related Article section below), you might think it’s already too late. Luckily, Tony is a skier and he always designs programs with skiing in mind. This makes customizing P90X for skiing very simple.

It’s funny how we don’t get ski questions until it’s already snowing outside. In a perfect world, you’d begin your training for skiing as soon as the last season ended. This would give your body time to adapt and grow strong before it needed to engage in the rigors of the sport. But we don’t live in a perfect world, so today we will look at how to structure a short training cycle.

Your foundation

Last time we covered your foundation and how effectively P90X develops it. No matter what your goals are, you first want to make sure your fitness base is sound enough for you to engage in more specific training. Skiing is a core- and leg-based sport, meaning that a customized program includes more targeted work on these areas. However, if you can’t do all the movements in Legs & Back or fall over during Plyometrics, you need to continue building your base before you start to customize.

Remember that Tony is a skier. This means P90X is already good conditioning for skiing, and mastering the basic schedule is more important than customizing, even if you have a ski trip on the horizon. This is different than if you had, say, an upcoming triathlon. Endurance-based sports (or power-based sports) require a different strategy that we’ll get to in another article. For skiing, your first goal is mastery of the classic P90X schedule.

Periodization

All training programs are somehow based on periodization. If you don’t know what that is, read “Customizing P90X for Specific Goals: Part I” in the Related Article section below. Periodization involves you doing blocks of training designed around a goal before you move into the next block of training. The various blocks of a program lead toward a point where your body should peak. Below is an example using P90X.

Foundation phase (Power 90® or what you did pre-X) + block 1 + transition/recovery + block 2 + transition/recovery + block 3 + recovery = peak (final fit test)

A training cycle can be any length of time. P90X is 90 days, but you can effectively design a training cycle that lasts anywhere from 2 weeks to an entire year.

The longer the cycle, the harder the individual blocks can be. The reason is that you only need to peak at the end of the given cycle. Therefore, it’s okay to design your training to the point where you’re in a state of almost total breakdown early in a program. Most people hobble around during the first couple blocks of P90X. During this period, you wouldn’t want to ski (or do anything) at your highest level.

This means that short training cycles should be easier than longer ones. Excessive breakdown, like the kind you may have experienced the first couple of times you did Plyometrics, happens when you engage something called type IIb muscle fibers. These are fast twitch muscle fibers that your body has saved for emergencies. These fibers are essential for maximum power, but once you use them, they take a long time to heal, usually around 2 weeks. So you obviously wouldn’t want to destroy them at the start of a 2-week training cycle.

This is why your foundation is so important. If you can’t do P90X classic without getting sore, it won’t help you to make this schedule harder, especially close to a ski trip. It would just result in further breakdown and have you hitting the slopes without a full contingent of your fast twitch muscles fibers, which are exactly what you’ll need to land a jump or dart between trees at 30 mph. If you want to stay injury free, you won’t want to hit the slopes in any state of breakdown.

Progressive overload

You always want progressive overload to occur in a training program (defined in “Customizing P90X for Specific Goals: Part I”). This simply means that the program should build on itself over time.

Recovery

Defined in “Customizing P90X for Specific Goals: Part I,” recovery promotes the healing of your fast twitch muscle fibers. When you recover toward a peak, it’s to allow your body to build these muscle fibers up. Only high-level training engages fast twitch fibers, which is why recovery weeks skip heavy lifting and plyometrics and focus on aerobic conditioning, flexibility, and training your stabilizer muscles.

Putting it all together

The first thing you need to consider is how much time you have. The longer the better (you know, “plan ahead”). No matter what your training program is, it should target a specific date you want your body to be at its peak.

When you have a long period of time, you can structure your training toward your weakness. For example, if you don’t have the leg strength to land a certain jump, you could build up the size and then the strength of your legs during the off-season. If you’re already in the season, however, the muscular breakdown required to do this will inhibit your ability to ski well.

Short cycles should focus more on mastering sports-specific movements. To do this, you use what are called integration exercises. These are the opposite of the types of isolation movements that you do for sheer hypertrophy, or muscle growth. Integration movements target strength, speed, and neuromuscular coordination. P90X is loaded with integration movements.

For our example, given that it’s December, let’s use a 1-month time frame. This is a very short training cycle, but it’s still enough time to fine-tune your body. Shoot, Rocky only had 3 weeks to train for Apollo Creed!

The next thing you do is decide which workouts are the most sports specific. For skiing, you obviously want Plyometrics and Legs & Back. Tony Horton’s One on One Plyo Legs (Volume 1, Disc 1) is a unilateral (one leg at a time) workout that is outstanding for skiing. Yoga, too, is very ski specific, and it trains the stabilizer muscles that get worked overtime when you do a sport on an unstable surface like snow. You don’t need much upper-body mass to ski, but you do need upper-body strength. Therefore, the standard weight-training routines should be dropped in favor of Core Synergistics. Again, we’re looking for strength and balance moves together—integration. So the key elements of your program will be the legs workouts, core synergistics, and yoga.

Alpine skiing (Nordic skiing will be addressed during the endurance sports article) doesn’t require any specific cardio training if your foundation is strong. It’s what’s called a power-endurance sport, meaning that your anaerobic system is taking the brunt of the abuse. You need a solid aerobic base to recharge your anaerobic system, but all of P90X’s workouts address that aspect to some degree. Therefore, workouts like Kenpo X will be fillers and not an essential part of your training structure. This means that if something in the schedule is getting skipped, make sure it’s your cardio workout.

Sample schedule

Here is a sample training cycle using P90X, designed for a ski trip that’s 1 month away. This schedule is for someone who can do a given week of P90X classic without getting very sore. Note that this cycle has no training blocks. There simply isn’t time.

Week 1

* Day 1: Plyometrics

* Day 2: Yoga X

* Day 3: Core Synergistics

* Day 4: Legs & Back

* Day 5: Kenpo X

* Day 6: Plyometrics

* Day 7: Yoga X

Note: There is no “rest day” because of the time constraints of the program.

Week 2

* Day 1: Core Synergistics

* Day 2: Legs & Back

* Day 3: Kenpo X

* Day 4: Plyometrics

* Day 5: Yoga X

* Day 6: Core Synergistics

* Day 7: Legs & Back

Week 3

* Day 1: Kenpo X

* Day 2: Plyometrics

* Day 3: Yoga X

* Day 4: Core Synergistics

* Day 5: Legs & Back

* Day 6: Yoga X

* Day 7: Plyometrics

Note: The change at the end is for maximum breakdown during the last hard bit of the 1-month cycle. Now it’s time to slow down before your trip. Hard training during your recovery will negatively affect your ability to perform well.

Week 4

* Day 1: X Stretch

* Day 2: Core Synergistics

* Day 3: Kenpo X

* Day 4: Cardio X

* Day 5: Yoga X

* Day 6: X Stretch

* Day 7: X Stretch

During your trip, begin the day with some light yoga to warm you up for skiing. Ending each day with X Stretch or something similar will help you perform better the following day. Now rip it up and have fun!

Article by Steve Edwards

Guys have a thing for mass. It’s hard to explain, really, but boys seem to grow up wanting nothing more than to be big. Guys want speedboats and trucks, and they want to look like The Hulk, regardless of what their wives may think of green skin. If this sounds like you, here’s the article you’ve been looking for: customizing P90X for mass.

Even if mass is your only goal, make sure to read the subsequent articles in the series on customizing the X. The principles discussed in subsequent articles will be put to use here. To look like The Hulk, you don’t need to have a mad scientist father, but you do need to consider science as we know it. The articles that have appeared in our last few issues all led up to the question: what is mass? (See the Related Articles section below for the last few issues on customizing the X.)

What is mass?

Because many of our Success Stories, not to mention Tony, aren’t exactly skinny, we must begin by defining mass—most of you are looking for more. Mass simply means size. As part of the word massive, we assume it means above average in size. It doesn’t, but that’s beside the point. A program targeting mass is concerned with one thing: muscle growth (from here on in referred to as hypertrophy), and a lot of it.

In a training cycle for mass, we should target hypertrophy even at the expense of other fitness goals. P90X is not a system designed for mass. It’s designed for overall fitness, which means that ultimate gains in targeted areas, like speed, strength, flexibility, and muscle growth, are compromised to provide a program that improves all of your body’s physical energy systems during one 90-day effort. We feel as though this is the preferred training system because it addresses the big picture. But if your picture is quite literally being bigger, then you’ll need to read on.

Foundation

You’ve read about the capacity for improvement throughout this series, so here’s where I tell you to do a round of P90X as it’s designed before embarking on a mass-specific program. It’s healthier, sure, but it’s more than that. Training all of your body’s energy systems until they’re running efficiently increases your body’s ability to do, well, anything. Part of anything includes looking like Lou Ferrigno. Once you’ve done a round of the X and aced your fit test, the foundation has been laid. You’re ready to start gettin’ big.

Resistance

Tony loves the word specificity. He often uses it when referring to exercise movements, but we’re going to use it to refer to the equipment you’ll need. With mass as your goal, you’d better acquire specific resistance equipment. The simplest form is weights; however, mass can also be created by using other forms of tension, like resistance bands. The bottom line is that if mass is your goal, you’ll need to have more weight available than you’ve been using. Body weight and plyometric movements can be used effectively for strength training, but strength and hypertrophy are not synonymous. To make hypertrophic gains, you’re going to need to find ways to make your body fail at a given number of repetitions. You’ll want an array of weights and bands, and some extra devices like ankle and wrist weights, or a weight vest, to add resistance to all the movements you’re doing.

The difference between size and strength

As we touched on last time, hypertrophy training simply increases the size of the muscle. Strength training increases the efficiency of the muscle. Large muscles have a greater capacity for strength. Absolute strength is the ability of the muscle to use all of its muscle cells for movement. People in sports dependent on strength-to-weight ratios target high muscular efficiency in their training, whereas those in sheer size-dependent sports will focus more on hypertrophy. Most sports are somewhat dependent on both size and strength, which are ideally improved during different cycles of training.

Periodization

The periodizational concepts that have been discussed in prior issues need to be explained here before a mass schedule is created. Remember that a standard schedule would look similar to this:

Foundation phase (Power 90® or what you did pre-X) + block 1 + transition/recovery + block 2 + transition/recovery + block 3 + recovery = peak (final fit test)

The difference here is that we’re going to structure an entire training cycle based only on hypertrophy. This means we won’t be setting up a peak phase. Over a long period of time, you would want to teach your muscles how to function more efficiently. We’ll get to this at the end.

For now, we’ll just say that there is still a periodizational approach to consider. You will still adapt, gain, and plateau over time, so we’ll need a structure to keep this happening. But the structure will be dependent simply on rep schemes (the number of repetitions that you target to bring you to failure) and progressive overload. The blocks of our 90-day schedule will each target a different number of repetitions, which you’ll want to aim for to induce failure. But because we’re not changing the schedule much, and thus creating less Muscle Confusion™, we won’t need such frequent recovery phases.

Progressive overload

Hypertrophy is all about creating progressive overload. To create muscle growth, you must keep stimulating the muscles during each workout. This requires that you add weight as necessary to create failure at the desired number of reps.

Recovery

The more we can focus on hypertrophy, the more muscle we’ll gain. Since we only have so much energy to expend, this means we should spend less time working on other areas. This is where you’ll see the biggest differences from the traditional P90X schedules. When you’re not training for hypertrophy, your entire focus should be on preparing your body to create more hypertrophy. Therefore, the P90X mass schedule will have a lot of active recovery and flexibility work and very little intense cardio. This means we’ll spend more time recovering during each training block and taking fewer periods focused solely on recovery.

Putting it all together

Before we get to the schedule, here are some general things to consider. The first is pacing. Instead of following the kids in the videos, target your rep scheme (and push pause when necessary). Do each set to failure (if you can add enough resistance; if not, get as close as you can), and don’t exceed your targeted number of reps. Do not, however, use the pause button simply to increase the time between exercises.

A good way to choose the resistance for each movement is to use enough so that you can only do the lower number of your targeted rep scheme. Once you can do the higher number, it’s time to increase the resistance.

Do your repetitions slowly and with control. Speed is for power, not size. Focus on perfect form and only add weight when you can do each rep with great form.

When you’re done, you’re done. You don’t need to finish an entire workout if you’re struggling. Once you lose the ability to move the weight or do the move in strict form, stop the workout. Any further training would only create more breakdown than you could recover from and increase your risk of injury.

Your diet

You won’t be burning as many calories as you would during the classic schedule of the X. If you eat the same amount, you may gain more mass, but you’ll also gain more body fat. This might or might not be acceptable, so pay attention and adjust your diet as necessary. If you want mass, then you need to eat enough for your body to put on weight.

Block 1, phase 1 Weeks 1 through 3

* Day 1: Chest, Shoulders, & Triceps

* Day 2: Cardio X, Ab Ripper X

* Day 3: Legs & Back

* Day 4: X Stretch; Ab Ripper X or Abs/Core Plus (from P90X Plus)

* Day 5: Back & Biceps

* Day 6: Yoga X

* Day 7: Off

Targeted number of reps: 8 to 12 (focus on 10 to 12)

Block 1, phase 2 Weeks 4 through 6

* Day 1: Chest & Back

* Day 2: Cardio X, Ab Ripper X

* Day 3: Shoulders & Arms

* Day 4: X Stretch; Ab Ripper X or Abs/Core Plus

* Day 5: Legs & Back

* Day 6: Yoga X

* Day 7: Off

Targeted number of reps: 8 to 12 (focus on 8 to 10)

Recovery Block Week 7

* Day 1: X Stretch

* Day 2: Yoga X

* Day 3: Core Synergistics

* Day 4: Kenpo X

* Day 5: Yoga X

* Day 6: X Stretch

* Day 7: Off

Block 2, phase 1 Weeks 8 and 9

* Day 1: Chest, Shoulders, & Triceps

* Day 2: Cardio X, Ab Ripper X

* Day 3: Legs & Back

* Day 4: X Stretch; Ab Ripper X or Abs/Core Plus

* Day 5: Back & Biceps

* Day 6: Yoga X

* Day 7: Off

* Day 8: Chest & Back

* Day 9: Cardio X, Ab Riper X

* Day 10: Shoulders & Arms

* Day 11: X Stretch; Ab Ripper X or Abs/Core Plus

* Day 12: Legs & Back

* Day 13: Yoga X

* Day 14: Off

Targeted number of reps: 6 to 10

Block 2, phase 2 Weeks 10 and 11

Same schedule as weeks 8 and 9

Targeted number of reps: 4 to 8

Block 2, phase 3 Week 12

Same schedule as weeks 8 and 9

Targeted number of reps: 4 to 6

Final note: This is an entire cycle of training based only on hypertrophy. To have an athletically efficient physique, you should do other training cycles that target different goals. Even if your only goal is hypertrophy, training these other systems properly will improve your body’s physical systems and increase your capacity for muscle growth, as well as the speed at which you can add or shed muscle and fat. So while you can tweak and reuse this basic structure over and over, it will also benefit you to get back to basics and do P90X classic from time to time.

Article by Steve Edwards

P90X is not a weight loss program, yet most people lose weight by doing it. This is because most of those people begin the program with more body fat than they’re happy with, and getting ripped means they’ve lost body fat and weight. But some people want more. They want nothing but to be lean. Last week, we covered how to get big with P90X (see “Gaining Mass with P90X” in the Related Articles section below). This week, we’ll do an about-face and discuss how to get small. Such is our privilege by designing the most versatile workout program in the world.

Choosing the right schedule

P90X comes with three scheduling options: classic, lean, and doubles. Both the lean and doubles schedules are designed more for weight loss than the classic schedule. However, losing weight has a lot more to do with how you do the program than which option you choose. You can lose weight doing the classic rotation as well, provided you follow the guidelines we’re about to go into.

What lean and doubles do is prohibit too much mass gain by having you do so much volume you can’t fully recover between workouts, or by having you avoid the heaviest resistance workouts altogether. If you wish to get lean, beginning with the lean schedule and progressing to doubles is what I would suggest. However, once you’ve done both of these, a round of classic, done correctly, will actually enhance your body’s ability to stay lean. Conversely, you can gain weight on any P90X schedule if you don’t do the schedule correctly.

Foundation

We’ll follow the same format we’ve used for all the articles in the series on customizing P90X (see the Related Articles section below). In each article, we’ve discussed the importance of building a solid foundation. With regard to getting lean, however, you can start customizing your program to get lean as you build your foundation. Unlike sports-specific training, you don’t need to first do a round of X as designed. In fact, the guidelines for getting lean will lay a great foundation for anything you’d like to do later on.

Hypertrophy (and how to avoid it)

Our discussion of mass was all based around how to induce as much hypertrophy (or muscle growth) as possible. To stay lean, we still need some muscle growth. Adding muscle to your frame is the best way to raise your resting metabolic rate, and in turn lose weight. But we also want to be careful not to create too much hypertrophy.

The way we do this is by doing a lot of repetitions for each exercise. In most programs this is pretty simple. You just use lighter weights and bang out the reps. The X is different because you’re challenged with numerous movements that make it hard to do any reps, like pull-ups. This is where things get tricky.

The key to getting lean is to use enough weight to fail at the end of each set. I should repeat myself because this is important. Actually, just read that first sentence again. Got it? Good, because one of the concepts I have a hard time instilling in Xers (and women doing any of our programs) is that you’ve got to push yourself using weight—adding weight as necessary—to get lean.

The next step is deciding where to fail. If you read the mass article, you read that failing at around 12 repetitions was at the high end for hypertrophy. To gain mass, the number of reps we targeted got lower throughout the program.

Anything over 12 is technically targeting muscular endurance. However, up to around 25 reps, you will still be building muscle. This is the zone we want to target. Throughout your program, you should increase the number of reps you can do, not by lowering the weight you lift but by getting stronger! This means you should choose a weight that allows you to do at least 12 reps per set before you fail.

What’s very important is to do this for the movements of which you can’t do at least 12. This can be hard because you’ve got to use props, and you don’t want to make the moves too easy. We’ll use two examples; you’ll have to figure out the rest based on these, which shouldn’t be too hard to do.

Pull-ups. We tell you to use a chair when you can’t do pull-ups, but it’s how you use the chair that’s important. You need to make sure your upper body is doing most of the work. Placing the chair farther from your body, and only propping one foot on it, is the simplest way to accomplish this. You should move the chair away so you can do at least 12 pull-ups but still fail at your upper target number (we’ll get to what the upper target number is later).

Push-ups. Push-ups are easier because even if you do them on your knees, they’re still hard. However, sometimes we tend to get lazy about this and stay on our knees. Once you can do regular push-ups on your toes, you should begin each set in this position and go until you reach failure, then finish the set on your knees. This will get you the burn you’re looking for.

It may take a little while to get all of the X movements dialed so that you can do high reps until you reach failure. Stick with it. Perhaps you should even go through each workout and practice. Because once you do, you’ll be on the road to lean.

Periodization

No alterations are needed to the periodizational aspects of the program. You have three choices and all of them will work.

Progressive overload

The progressive overload principle is hard at work, but as I said above, the rep schemes should be backward from “normal” in that once you can do a certain number of repetitions, you’ll want to increase them. For example, to begin the program, you’ll target 12 to 16 reps for most exercises. Start with weight that causes failure at around 12 reps minimum, and stay with this weight until you can do 16 before adding more weight. As the program progresses, you’ll want to target up to 25 reps per set, so the overload progression is toward endurance and away from hypertrophy.

Recovery

Recovery is still important, but the more repetitions you do, the less stress you’re placing on your body and the less recovery you need. This means that even though the individual workouts will feel very hard, you can recover from them more quickly than you could if you were using heavier weights.

Putting it all together

High-repetition resistance training may be technically less intense than using heavier weight, but it won’t feel like it. This kind of training induces a wicked pump, and you may be very sore as your body adapts to the training. Also, the individual sets tend to be quite long (you may need to hit pause from time to time), and form can fail you. Make sure you keep good form as you get tired. Don’t be afraid to drop weight in the middle of a set. Sometimes it’s good to have two weights ready before you begin (or lighter bands) so you can switch mid-exercise. It takes getting used to, but hang in there and keep pushing yourself, and soon you’ll be ripping off reps faster than Tony and the gang!

Your diet

Obviously, diet is important if you want to be lean. You’ll be hungry, especially as you adapt, and it’s important that you don’t overeat. It’s probably more important, however, that you don’t undereat. You’ll be churning through the calories, and undereating is a great way to find yourself in a plateau, both mentally and physically.

In general, P90X Nutrition Plan caloric calculations are ample for some weight loss. If you aren’t losing weight, try zig-zagging your caloric intake by eating less on some days and “normally” on others. This forces you into a caloric deficit without depriving your body of the nutrients it needs to recover.

Here is a schedule using P90X classic. Lean has fewer resistance days and less explanation is necessary. But as I said earlier, you can get lean using classic as well.

Block 1 Weeks 1 through 3

* Day 1: Chest & Back, Ab Ripper X

* Day 2: Plyometrics

* Day 3: Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper X

* Day 4: Yoga X

* Day 5: Legs & Back, Ab Ripper X

* Day 6: Kenpo X

* Day 7: Off

Targeted number of reps: 12 to 16 (focus on the higher number)

Recovery Week 4

* Day 1: Core Synergistics

* Day 2: Kenpo X

* Day 3: X Stretch

* Day 4: Core Synergistics

* Day 5: Yoga X

* Day 6: X Stretch

* Day 7: Off

Targeted number of reps: maximum

Block 2 Weeks 5 through 7

* Day 1: Chest, Shoulders, & Triceps, Ab Ripper X

* Day 2: Plyometrics

* Day 3: Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper X

* Day 4: Yoga X

* Day 5: Legs & Back, Ab Ripper X

* Day 6: Kenpo X

* Day 7: Off

Targeted number of reps: 16 to 20

Recovery Week 8

* Day 1: Core Synergistics

* Day 2: Kenpo X

* Day 3: X Stretch

* Day 4: Core Synergistics

* Day 5: Yoga X

* Day 6: X Stretch

* Day 7: Off

Targeted number of reps: maximum

Block 3 Weeks 9 and 11

* Day 1: Chest & Back, Ab Ripper X

* Day 2: Plyometrics

* Day 3: Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper X

* Day 4: Yoga X

* Day 5: Legs & Back, Ab Ripper X

* Day 6: Kenpo X

* Day 7: Off

Weeks 10 and 12

* Day 1: Chest, Shoulders, & Triceps, Ab Ripper X

* Day 2: Plyometrics

* Day 3: Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper X

* Day 4: Yoga X

* Day 5: Legs & Back, Ab Ripper X

* Day 6: Kenpo X

* Day 7: Off

Targeted number of reps for weeks 9 and 10: 20 to 25

Targeted number of reps for weeks 11 and 12: 25 (try to max out each exercise)

Article by Steve Edwards

"Sheryl Crow Stays in Shape with P90X"

In today’s installment of customizing P90X, we’ll address endurance athletes. As you might have surmised, doing the Back & Biceps workout isn’t going to improve your marathon time. And no week of P90X leaves you feeling ready to take on an Ironman triathlon over the weekend. So what’s the deal? The question we most often get is whether the X is going to improve your finish times, or should you skip it in favor of more sports-specific training?

Endurance Athletes Swimming, Biking, and Running

The short answer is that P90X can improve every aspect of your endurance sport. However, it’s important to ask yourself a few questions before you begin, because if you go about it the wrong way you can hurt your performance.

1: What are my goals in my chosen sport?

This question is vital because some of you likely do endurance events only to improve your fitness. When this is the case, you’re best off doing P90X the way it’s designed and suspending your sports-specific training.

Because you probably already have a decent aerobic base, you should respond quickly to the rigors of P90X. And while you’ll be sore and tired in the short term, and lose some of your endurance fitness, you’ll also make rapid body composition changes. These changes will help you should you choose to get back into your sport. However, with fitness as your measuring stick, doing rounds of P90X between rounds of endurance sports training will help you keep your fitness level high.

Things get trickier when sports performance is important. If PRs (personal records) are your ultimate goal, you’ll want to consider how P90X can help you make it happen.

Working Out with B-LinesIn the strictest sense, you should do P90X in the off-season. Most endurance athletes would benefit from a period each year where they stopped (or mostly stopped) their sports-specific training and did a good fitness program. This is especially true if you need to lose weight, or you have weakness because it’s likely your fitness results have hit a plateau after a long season where you did the same things over and over.

2: Which version of P90X should I do?

Your next decision is which schedule of P90X to do: Lean, Classic, Doubles, or some hybrid version. Here are some scenarios to consider.

If you’re an overweight person who has a high percentage of body fat, choose the Classic schedule, because resistance training and gaining muscle are the quickest way to slim down and change your body composition to more muscle and less fat, which will help you more than any other type of training.

If you’re fit with a lot of muscle mass, choose the Lean schedule. You’ll benefit from strength training and explosive cardio (which put different stress loads on the body than running, riding, swimming, etc.) but you won’t add more mass, which is good because strength-to-weight ratio is paramount in endurance sports.

Someone in between might choose a hybrid schedule, the simplest of which would be a program that begins with the Classic schedule and transitions to the Lean schedule.

The last example could also be used by anyone who’s closer to their race program and still wants to try some outside training. In these cases, you could start with the Classic P90X schedule for a phase or so (time will dictate this), then transition to the Lean schedule for a phase, and then perhaps transition to a customized schedule to accommodate your sports-specific training needs.

In the off-season, I wouldn’t recommend the Doubles schedule, which doubles up workouts, because the off-season is when you should make body composition changes, and also when you should rest. Endurance training is intense once you begin racing; when you begin to add miles into your program again, you want to be rested.

3: What if it’s close to my race season?

Most race seasons are long, taking up around nine months of the year on average. Since no one—even a professional—can peak for the entire season, you should set up your schedule with early-season objectives you train through and late-season objectives where you want to set your PRs. Remember, the actual season doesn’t matter—only your schedule does. You should choose to peak around times when you can focus and devote yourself to training, not an arbitrary date on the calendar.

Early season (your early season) is a time when you should be combining sports-specific training along with off-season training. These transition seasons are when you’ll want to incorporate a Doubles-style training schedule.

As an athlete, your Doubles schedule should have sports-specific work. This means you’ll want to alter the P90X schedule of your choice to incorporate your sport. As an endurance athlete, the general place you’ll add this training is the cardio slot on the calendar. Remember that one of the two daily workouts is always an easy cardio workout, which is a perfect slot to do your early-season aerobic conditioning.

As we get closer to the actual racing season, there are many other considerations. We’ll take these on per sport. Next time we’ll look at scheduling P90X with running. Then we’ll focus on triathlons and P90X.

Article by Steve Edwards