Showing posts with label workouts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label workouts. Show all posts
Friday, June 4, 2010
One less Rep - It's ok NOT to finish a set. Really. Less is hard but can be more
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Workouts are about work, about sufficient challenge for adapatation, about getting more perfect in each step of our practice. So why so many overuse injuries? Why so many of us getting jacked up? I wonder if it's at least in part from the reluctance to quit when we need to quit? So let me all fellow workout heads ask this quesiton:
when you workout, if you have 10 reps of a set to do, or 5 sets to do, you WILL DO those reps; you will DO those sets. Even if you don't feel perfectly happy with yourself, entirely, especially if there's only three more reps, you're gonna do those reps. Or one more set, you're gonna do that set. Well are you, punk? your inner voice inquires?
Fave example: you're doing viking warrior conditioning - you have your 8 reps per 15 secs to do - ok wait, that's me, let's just own it: i'm doing VWC, these are my reps and sets, the timer is ticking, i have 3 more sets to do, the blister is forming on my hand - i can feel it - but will i quit? NO, because i HAVE TO FINISH MY SETS.
What's the Value of Having to get That Last Rep? Um, question to self: Why? Is this a competition? does someone have a gun to my head? What do i get out of a big fat crap-technique-showing blister except nearly a week off snatch practice? All i get is wow, i finished my sets. great. So what? i'm now looking at a several day hit to my training?
You know, saying this i'm thinking, this is just so obvious, isn't it? Hand starting to blister: stop. Duh. But the Duh has not been there, at least for me in the set, while the set is happening.
At the RKC II cert in Feb, Pavel Tsatsouline, frech off the research for his Power to the People Professional, gave a related lecture on old time strong man training. A big part of that was strong men staying away from 1RM work; staying fresh. This theme is nothing new to Tsatousline's training approach. Stay fresh, gas in the tank, perfect form.
And yet...
Even when i believe i'm focusing on Pavel Tsatsouline's guidance to "stay fresh" - always end the set feeling fresh rather than ever going to failure, see i'm thinking i'm not - or haven't been. Why? Because i have been recovering from what has been called an "overuse injury" - tendinopathy in the shoulder. Painful arc syndrome. What ever.
There are lots of reasons for overuse injuries: lots of reps being one of them, but usually that's lots of use that is beyond the capacity of that tendon. And what wears into overuse? Form issues? And what happens to form on the weaker side when going with the stronger side? Fatigue? And with fatigue comes injury. We know this. This is basic.
Pain is the Last Warning for Change, not the First. The ugly side of overuse injuries is that they don't show up as pain until there's been some damage. Imagine pain being like an oil gage that only tells you when there's a teaspoon of oil left in the engine: there's no funky needle showing you the oil steadily leaking out of the system. And by the time that needle is in the red, well ya know something has likely been hurt in the engine, too.
Another analogy - this time with the human body, but same "if you feel it, it's gone too far" effect is like thirst. Waiting to hydrate till we're thirsty - especially on a hot day out in the sun - is too late. By the time we're thirsty symptoms of sun stroke/dehydration have hit our systems.
Pain is really our LAST warning. And as i've written about before, from the pain literature, pain is a warning (or signal) to change. Figuring out what to change can sometimes be an issue, but in working out with weight
And in working out, it seems we need to get better at developing our early warning system. What is that early warning system? Learning to trust ourselves. How might we do that? Let me offer an example.
Test It. The other day i had a write up to do 10 sets of X for my particular routine that day. By set five i was feeling a bit fatigued. So i thought wow this is too early to quit, surely, but let me test it. So i did a fatigue test (described here) - waited my normal recovery time - and retested. Nope. Not ready. Wait, retest. Good to go. Did the next three sets, and when going to do set 9, i had to own i felt not quite fresh. Like i'd be pushing it. So i didn't push.
What's the difference between 9 sets or 10? Let's see. That's 90% of the workout instead of 100%. 10% less volume. Let's put this in context: 10 fewer reps out of 100. Once in a week. What's the performance difference? My recovering shoulder was not saying the next day "don't do that again," so i was able to go ahead with my next day's plan. Great.
For folks not doing rehab/recovery for an injury, you may be wondering what does this have to do with me? I'm going to push hard. Bien sur. No one is saying don't work hard. We have to work hard for an adaptation. Work smart and hard.
After all, has my body lost anything by those 10 fewer reps in one workout session all week? In terms of absolute total volume, sure, but in terms of adaptation, i *don't* know. My guess is, not likely. Indeed, maybe for me i just optimised my load, doing the best for me at that moment by doing a few less today than what was an arbitrary number on a piece of paper. Ranges are better than absolutes, perhaps; intensional rather than extensional.
Pain is the Last Signal, not the ONLY signal. Every workout since then i've been trying to *listen* to my body to hear the signals that are there before pain happens. Rather than ignoring them as "nothing" i've been asking "what if?" - what if this tiny tiny bit of lost form, or this teeny weeny bit of fatigue may actual be more than i want to give it credit as being?
The cool thing is (and it took me a long time to put together this simple 2+2 is 4) i have a suite of self-assessments i can use to self-test whether or not this is an "ok, just pause the set here - not even quit; just pause, do some recovery and then continue" kind of issue or a "bag it" one.
Now personally i do not test every set, every exercise, and perhaps i'll learn that that is less than optimal. Right now, what i'm testing is simply that set of question marks i would simply have ignored before and carried on to GET MY NUMBERS complete my workout.
Practicing Less(ness) - towards overuse prevention. What's interesting for me at least is that part of this practice is practicing a different perspective: letting go of the last rep. I have been consciously trying even if i feel fine going for X planned reps, just once in a while - usually at the end of the workout - to do X-1. Or one set in the block (if this is a volume day) to do a set that's half or two-thirds the no. of reps for that set.
Why? because i'm thinking it's kinda stupid to be so obsessed with getting in numbers - i'm pretty sure my "overuse shoulder injury" is not practicing a true focus on perfect quality rather than arbitrary numbers.
I may have thought oh ya i'm still fresh my form is still dandy, but my shoulder has told me something else, like "you blew it." I don't want that to happen anywhere else. So gonna listen - and lessen.
Less is Hard. Right now, i have to say, doing a set of 5 rather than 10 (in ten sets), finishing a set of 100's instead as 99's still causes a twinge in my brain. I still kinda clench my teeth, like somehow that means what? my whole workout is toast? i'm not as great as if i'd done the full count? That somehow without that weary adherence to numbers i'm a loser? can't cut it? oh dear. What would i say to someone i was coaching who was expressing such concern?
I guess i just decided i don't want to be that person anymore - who "has to do it" when there's no good reason why to do so and a potential raft of better reasons not to do so, or at least be flexible.
I'm not there yet - i'm not at a place where that less than planned sits well, but i'm working on it.
Take Aways Pain from overuse injuries shows up after the injury has happened. It may help therefore to learn to listen for other signs in the body to help suggest when actions that may contribute to overuse are happening.
There are ways to help hone this awareness - self-tests that we can leanr and practice when wanting to reality check how we're doing - lots of them in the essentials of elite performance dvd. BUT in order to hear something at all to trigger a test, speaking at least for myself, comes a willingness to do LESS than was scheduled for a day. And like any other performance skill, less needs to be practiced.
On the plus side, i'm finding that actually practicing less, learning less, has let me do more and in this recovery phase where doing anything has been a bonus, my better self is pleased with that progress.
How you doing with less is hard, but less can be more?
Related Resources
when you workout, if you have 10 reps of a set to do, or 5 sets to do, you WILL DO those reps; you will DO those sets. Even if you don't feel perfectly happy with yourself, entirely, especially if there's only three more reps, you're gonna do those reps. Or one more set, you're gonna do that set. Well are you, punk? your inner voice inquires?Fave example: you're doing viking warrior conditioning - you have your 8 reps per 15 secs to do - ok wait, that's me, let's just own it: i'm doing VWC, these are my reps and sets, the timer is ticking, i have 3 more sets to do, the blister is forming on my hand - i can feel it - but will i quit? NO, because i HAVE TO FINISH MY SETS.
What's the Value of Having to get That Last Rep? Um, question to self: Why? Is this a competition? does someone have a gun to my head? What do i get out of a big fat crap-technique-showing blister except nearly a week off snatch practice? All i get is wow, i finished my sets. great. So what? i'm now looking at a several day hit to my training?
You know, saying this i'm thinking, this is just so obvious, isn't it? Hand starting to blister: stop. Duh. But the Duh has not been there, at least for me in the set, while the set is happening.
At the RKC II cert in Feb, Pavel Tsatsouline, frech off the research for his Power to the People Professional, gave a related lecture on old time strong man training. A big part of that was strong men staying away from 1RM work; staying fresh. This theme is nothing new to Tsatousline's training approach. Stay fresh, gas in the tank, perfect form.And yet...
Even when i believe i'm focusing on Pavel Tsatsouline's guidance to "stay fresh" - always end the set feeling fresh rather than ever going to failure, see i'm thinking i'm not - or haven't been. Why? Because i have been recovering from what has been called an "overuse injury" - tendinopathy in the shoulder. Painful arc syndrome. What ever.
There are lots of reasons for overuse injuries: lots of reps being one of them, but usually that's lots of use that is beyond the capacity of that tendon. And what wears into overuse? Form issues? And what happens to form on the weaker side when going with the stronger side? Fatigue? And with fatigue comes injury. We know this. This is basic.
Pain is the Last Warning for Change, not the First. The ugly side of overuse injuries is that they don't show up as pain until there's been some damage. Imagine pain being like an oil gage that only tells you when there's a teaspoon of oil left in the engine: there's no funky needle showing you the oil steadily leaking out of the system. And by the time that needle is in the red, well ya know something has likely been hurt in the engine, too.
Another analogy - this time with the human body, but same "if you feel it, it's gone too far" effect is like thirst. Waiting to hydrate till we're thirsty - especially on a hot day out in the sun - is too late. By the time we're thirsty symptoms of sun stroke/dehydration have hit our systems.
Pain is really our LAST warning. And as i've written about before, from the pain literature, pain is a warning (or signal) to change. Figuring out what to change can sometimes be an issue, but in working out with weight
And in working out, it seems we need to get better at developing our early warning system. What is that early warning system? Learning to trust ourselves. How might we do that? Let me offer an example.
Test It. The other day i had a write up to do 10 sets of X for my particular routine that day. By set five i was feeling a bit fatigued. So i thought wow this is too early to quit, surely, but let me test it. So i did a fatigue test (described here) - waited my normal recovery time - and retested. Nope. Not ready. Wait, retest. Good to go. Did the next three sets, and when going to do set 9, i had to own i felt not quite fresh. Like i'd be pushing it. So i didn't push.
What's the difference between 9 sets or 10? Let's see. That's 90% of the workout instead of 100%. 10% less volume. Let's put this in context: 10 fewer reps out of 100. Once in a week. What's the performance difference? My recovering shoulder was not saying the next day "don't do that again," so i was able to go ahead with my next day's plan. Great.
For folks not doing rehab/recovery for an injury, you may be wondering what does this have to do with me? I'm going to push hard. Bien sur. No one is saying don't work hard. We have to work hard for an adaptation. Work smart and hard.
After all, has my body lost anything by those 10 fewer reps in one workout session all week? In terms of absolute total volume, sure, but in terms of adaptation, i *don't* know. My guess is, not likely. Indeed, maybe for me i just optimised my load, doing the best for me at that moment by doing a few less today than what was an arbitrary number on a piece of paper. Ranges are better than absolutes, perhaps; intensional rather than extensional.
Pain is the Last Signal, not the ONLY signal. Every workout since then i've been trying to *listen* to my body to hear the signals that are there before pain happens. Rather than ignoring them as "nothing" i've been asking "what if?" - what if this tiny tiny bit of lost form, or this teeny weeny bit of fatigue may actual be more than i want to give it credit as being?
Now personally i do not test every set, every exercise, and perhaps i'll learn that that is less than optimal. Right now, what i'm testing is simply that set of question marks i would simply have ignored before and carried on to GET MY NUMBERS complete my workout.
Practicing Less(ness) - towards overuse prevention. What's interesting for me at least is that part of this practice is practicing a different perspective: letting go of the last rep. I have been consciously trying even if i feel fine going for X planned reps, just once in a while - usually at the end of the workout - to do X-1. Or one set in the block (if this is a volume day) to do a set that's half or two-thirds the no. of reps for that set.
Why? because i'm thinking it's kinda stupid to be so obsessed with getting in numbers - i'm pretty sure my "overuse shoulder injury" is not practicing a true focus on perfect quality rather than arbitrary numbers.
I may have thought oh ya i'm still fresh my form is still dandy, but my shoulder has told me something else, like "you blew it." I don't want that to happen anywhere else. So gonna listen - and lessen.
Less is Hard. Right now, i have to say, doing a set of 5 rather than 10 (in ten sets), finishing a set of 100's instead as 99's still causes a twinge in my brain. I still kinda clench my teeth, like somehow that means what? my whole workout is toast? i'm not as great as if i'd done the full count? That somehow without that weary adherence to numbers i'm a loser? can't cut it? oh dear. What would i say to someone i was coaching who was expressing such concern?
I guess i just decided i don't want to be that person anymore - who "has to do it" when there's no good reason why to do so and a potential raft of better reasons not to do so, or at least be flexible.
I'm not there yet - i'm not at a place where that less than planned sits well, but i'm working on it.
Take Aways Pain from overuse injuries shows up after the injury has happened. It may help therefore to learn to listen for other signs in the body to help suggest when actions that may contribute to overuse are happening.
There are ways to help hone this awareness - self-tests that we can leanr and practice when wanting to reality check how we're doing - lots of them in the essentials of elite performance dvd. BUT in order to hear something at all to trigger a test, speaking at least for myself, comes a willingness to do LESS than was scheduled for a day. And like any other performance skill, less needs to be practiced.
On the plus side, i'm finding that actually practicing less, learning less, has let me do more and in this recovery phase where doing anything has been a bonus, my better self is pleased with that progress.
How you doing with less is hard, but less can be more?
Related Resources
- The Perfect Rep: revisiting the kettlebell front squat
- The perfect rep quest series
- Why not move through pain?
- What's going on with chronic low back pain - and possible approaches.
- Rannoch's 100
- Should i do this next set?
PDF
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Delight in training: If you ain't had it lately, seek out a Coach.
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When was the last time you were delighted? With the gift-giving season just behind us, w
e should all have multiple examples to feast upon. Do you? Can you name 5? 3? 2? 1? How recently? Has one of those occasions been in the context of a workout? What would you say characterised it as a "delightful" experience rather than say a satisfying one, or a proud one?
Delight is a concept that fascinates me ( i've written about a kind of theory of design & delight here). To cut to the chase, it seems that often delight comes from a few factors: the unexpected - for instance when something is easier than anticipated as well as enjoining pleasure as if someone is hitting something special in you (like ordering a book online and not having to go through 20 steps just to find out how much shipping is; instead it's right up front. wow).
Other forms of delight seem to be in the context of whimsy - again with the unexpected - but where that thing hits a certain point of particularly personal pleasure/desire with that unexpected.
For me, last night, this was being delighted with a workout i had dreaded where applying a new technique turned out to produce such surprisingly new and wonder-ful results that i was well, stunned, and not a wee bit giddy with delight, as the saying goes.
Why was this Practice Session a delightful experience? Qualities of Delight.
Coaching can be Delightful? As i ponder delight/workouts, i think the closest i've seen personally in a physical context is at times the surprise folks have who've seen their movements improve from a coaching session or their pain go down after doing some mobility work with me, remotely or in person. This latter response seems especially to be the case when a person has
rather given up on making meaningful improvements in either context, and then they do. Wow. Perhaps that is a key role of a good coach: able to open up new possibilities
Likewise in my own case, my delight was the result of applying some excellent remote coaching tips on my kettlebell snatch from Randy Hauer RKC TL. Hmm. For me the delight was not only that the tip seems to have solved the specific problem i'd asked Randy about, BUT it then went beyond expectations, helping to address another aspect of performance as well. Exceeding expectations, i'll say.
Nurturing Delight: find your Coach. These moments are precious. I suppose in the physical context the reminder is that we may just be capable of far more than we anticipate. That technique it seems plays a huge role in this, but especially, that a good coach can open that door. Likewise, everyone at any level can benefit from a coach.
Lots of coaches can teach the same technique, but having someone communicate that model in a language that just clicks for YOU so that you can apply it - and then succeed with it, and it's something you, personally, care about, where there's that personally meaningful connection - well, that's delight, eh?
If you're interested in remote movement assessment/kb coaching, shout.
I do virtual house calls.
Related Posts - hope they may move towards delight
e should all have multiple examples to feast upon. Do you? Can you name 5? 3? 2? 1? How recently? Has one of those occasions been in the context of a workout? What would you say characterised it as a "delightful" experience rather than say a satisfying one, or a proud one?Delight is a concept that fascinates me ( i've written about a kind of theory of design & delight here). To cut to the chase, it seems that often delight comes from a few factors: the unexpected - for instance when something is easier than anticipated as well as enjoining pleasure as if someone is hitting something special in you (like ordering a book online and not having to go through 20 steps just to find out how much shipping is; instead it's right up front. wow).
Other forms of delight seem to be in the context of whimsy - again with the unexpected - but where that thing hits a certain point of particularly personal pleasure/desire with that unexpected.
For me, last night, this was being delighted with a workout i had dreaded where applying a new technique turned out to produce such surprisingly new and wonder-ful results that i was well, stunned, and not a wee bit giddy with delight, as the saying goes.
Why was this Practice Session a delightful experience? Qualities of Delight.
- surprise I was taken by surprise;
- unexpected but desired it's a result that i wanted but had more or less given up imagining could happen - so while being open to the possibility, had no expectation of same
- exceed expectations. the experience went beyond my expectations of what such success would be like
- valuable it's something that has non-trivial value to me
Coaching can be Delightful? As i ponder delight/workouts, i think the closest i've seen personally in a physical context is at times the surprise folks have who've seen their movements improve from a coaching session or their pain go down after doing some mobility work with me, remotely or in person. This latter response seems especially to be the case when a person has
rather given up on making meaningful improvements in either context, and then they do. Wow. Perhaps that is a key role of a good coach: able to open up new possibilitiesLikewise in my own case, my delight was the result of applying some excellent remote coaching tips on my kettlebell snatch from Randy Hauer RKC TL. Hmm. For me the delight was not only that the tip seems to have solved the specific problem i'd asked Randy about, BUT it then went beyond expectations, helping to address another aspect of performance as well. Exceeding expectations, i'll say.
Nurturing Delight: find your Coach. These moments are precious. I suppose in the physical context the reminder is that we may just be capable of far more than we anticipate. That technique it seems plays a huge role in this, but especially, that a good coach can open that door. Likewise, everyone at any level can benefit from a coach.
Lots of coaches can teach the same technique, but having someone communicate that model in a language that just clicks for YOU so that you can apply it - and then succeed with it, and it's something you, personally, care about, where there's that personally meaningful connection - well, that's delight, eh?
If you're interested in remote movement assessment/kb coaching, shout.
I do virtual house calls.
Related Posts - hope they may move towards delight
- movement: what's the big deal with movement anyway
- what's z-health (the movement approach i use a lot)
- why not train through pain
- movement efficiency
- another delightful technique tip: pelvis power for the press (or pull) via Lou McGovern
- getting the eyes in the swing or the row
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
P90X Review/Critque Part 3b: Workout Alternatives and Why to Consider Them - or "Life is Short & we're complex"
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Tempus Fugit. Part 3b of this P90X critique/review looks at alternatives to P90X workouts. Three reasons to consider alternatives: length,
variety, quality. A P90X workout week is about 7hours minimum, and, as we saw in part 2, despite what seems like incredible variety, it is all one type of effort: aerobic endurance. The question posed therefore, is, is P90X optimal bang for that 7hour buck? Does it benefit all our muscle fibers? Slow and fast twitch? Does it benefit all our physiological systems, like bones, ligaments, joints, visual, vestibular and proprioceptive systems? All our energy systems? For holistic well being - and fat loss and leaning up, for 7 hours - perhaps not, as we'll see.
Now again, if P90X makes a person happy and they want to spend that time doing lots of various cardio workouts, that's fine (well, see below on how fine). Lots of folks may say (and post) P90X is just fine. And that's fine.
My goal here is to ask about how does one define fine? How assess what's good, why it's good, and what might be missing for both better use of those precious minutes in a day that we never get back and more optimal benefit for our bodies beyond cardio/oxidative strength?
So why do this particular set of hour+ long cardio workouts? what's it doing for the ALL of you in that getting ripped paradigm?
Part 1 of this Review/Critique of P90X looked at concepts like Muscle Confusion.
Part 2 looked at how and for whom P90X might actually deliver on it's "getting ripped" mantra
Part 3b started looking at alternatives to the P90X diet approach and
Part 3b, our final part, looks at alternatives to the P90X workout approach.
What are you working this hard and this long to achieve? My concern motivating this discussion is that many folks think they *have* to put in this kind of time to achieve the P90X goals - getting ripped -- and, if that's the goal, they just don't. Even for cardio/endurance. We just don't. Work smarter not harder. And if we're going to work this long, is it the best long for our fitness goals and well being?
A fast example: lean with ripped abs in an hour/week; endurance in 6 minutes
As we saw in part two, if all a person wants is a six pack, the recipe is diet first to get to 10% bf and an ab hypertrophy program - two were suggested (as ab ripper x actually isn't an hypertrophy program). That's 20mins, 3times a week for effort, and the rest of the effort is diet. That's 1 hour vs 7.
Now sometimes folks just don't believe this is really all one needs to do to get a six pack. It's some kind of no pain no gain ethos perhaps. It can't be that simple. The formula is that simple. Application that's another thing. We'll see below examples of stunning recent research that shows 6mins of intense cardio a week has the same physiological benefits as an hour twenty.
Even if folks believe that a six pack is diet to 10% and 20 mins every other day of ab work, they
may want to move more than 20 mins every other day. But why? well, one reason may be what's often put out as "muscle tone"
Muscle tone is another word for both more activation of existing muscle fibers and more muscle fibers to activate. Muscle fibers are densely packed and very small, so even while not incredibly massive, when lean enough to see, one looks pretty wiry strong.
And that might be another thing to check: muscular hypertrophy works on two angles: getting more *stuff* around muscle fiber bundles (sarcoplasmic) and myofibril. Workout type - especially load and recovery - effect hypertrophy type. Bringing more fibers on board, rather than mainly improving the oxidative capacity of the ones we have is what non-aerobic type training privileges - power or hypertrophy strength training rather than endurance (aka P90X)
Is 7 hours a week of cardio work the best way to lay down more muscle fiber? No. Really. It's not. Yes elite marathoners are wiry. But even endurance runners head to the gym for strength training. We'll get into some of the benefits to that below.
So if the goal is then leanness, 6 pack and muscle tone - and perhaps the consequent benefits of health to working out - then we have the first two covered. The recipe for leanness and 6 pack has been stated.
What Type of Muscle, what Type of Strength? If we're doing mainly fat burning/oxidative workouts, we're usually privileging slow twitch muscle fibers. The fast twitch that come into play for power strength or speed aren't getting taxed/developed. They may even atrophy or convert in favour of the growth of the slow twitch privileged muscle types. Faster take longer to get back, too.
You might think you don't care about going fast, but speed, along with a ready nervous system (we'll come onto proprioception) is also the ability to respond quickly to sudden situations, where moving fast can be critical.
But what about the rest of our physiologic systems beyond Muscle?
If we are interested in full body health, there's more to think about that muscle and muscle type. We have multiple energy systems. P90X privileges training one: the oxidative system. Yes really important for fat burning, but that's just part of us. Like the phosphate, glycolytic and lactate energy systems, too.
We also have bones, joints, ligaments and hormones (like insulin) being affected differently by different effort types. And we have a nervous system - a system that is always on and always adapts to what we practice. Immediately and all the time. What are we doing for these systems?
In this article the focus will then be on
Muscle Tone
I'd like to adjust the title here to "muscle tone and bone"
as both components of our physiology, along with our lungs and heart and nervous system (and innards generally) need to be considered.
To get both muscle tone and bone building in one swoop, we're talking about resistance training. There are a couple approaches to resistance work that will impact both muscle and bone. This means dynamic work with load, pulling heavy, or both. An alternative for bones is playing squash or soccer. Apparently the stop/start nature of squash and soccer have tremendous value for bone growth. But so does axial loading: bringing force down directly in the direction of the bone. Which means lifting heavy, or lifting fast.
Mentioning lifting heavy or fast sometimes freaks people out. Heavy seems scary; moving a heavy object quickly also may seem scary. There's a fear of hurting oneself, or that one is not strong enough. But everything is proportional. Load is progressive: i've worked with seniors who on their first lifts were parallel squatting for 5 resps with soup cans, built up to milk jugs, and from there to real weights. Point is, they were finding potent loads for them, causing their bodies to adapt.
Aside: Insulin Sensitivity. One of the best ways to get insulin sensitivity up (a good thing) is to include lifting heavy in one's program. Here's more on why from Dave Barr.
The difference: The key thing here is perhaps a couple points to distinguish what P90X does with weights and what we're talking about here.
P90X as described in part 2 does not include multiple sets of a single move with recovery between sets and staying fresh. The weights used in the circuits are light enough not just to get through a set but to get through multiple sets in an hour. They also focus on bodybuilding isolation moves rather than foundational strength work.
There are at least Four differences in resistance approaches in p90x and a strength/power/hypertrophy focused lifting program:
Options for Adding Load to Your Routine.
So, suppose you think well, ok, let's try this resistance for real approach, i still don't want to have to go to the gym or get a whole bunch of gear. Far enough.
For the no or low gear desirous, Ross Enemait has the gold standard of body weight work, and home made gear that lets a person achieve any kind of muscular tone goals. Tons of vids on his sight and ideas on how to make strength apparatus to work for you.
TNT bands already used in P90X offer space saving, resistance challenging, forms of work. Jon Hinds who developed this version of band offers and awesome workout routine with a set of the bands. These can be great supplements to some basic weights.
The TRX is another space saving workout system that lets a person use bodyweight in a variety of challenging ways, including supporting pull ups and dips. I personally think that Rings are a gas, though. Elite Rings are awesome and fun. Find room for them and you'll feel like a kid anytime you workout with them.
To get into weights, Powerblocks are great space-saving selectable apparatus. But for that matter, a barbell with a sufficient set of plates can be had cheap regularly on ebay, and will really let you start to pull heavy. The best program for full body fitness with a barbell: two moves, found in Power to the People, always assuming diet (discussed in the last article) is dialed in. Here's a really fast approach to blend all three types of strength with a barbell by Charles Staley, too.
The Kettlebell Confession. What i personally find a very powerful tool for general fitness or wha't also called General Physical Preparedness (GPP - as opposed to Sports Specific training) is
kettlebell work. If you have room to swing a cat, you have room for a kettlebell. Why i like the kettlebell so much is that its core simple move, the swing, lets a person do a range of work, from cardio, to raw strength, to power and vo2max, all with the same tool. I've written about why Enter the Kettebell(ETK) is a fabulous program - especially coming off P90X - because its approach captures both these attributes of fast movement for power and strength work for hypertrophy and dynamic work for endurance. It's a complete package. Can work fast and slow twitch muscles; all energy systems; complements related systems work like bone and endocrine etc.
Kettlebell work as spec'd in ETK satisfies the three advantages to lifting fast/heavy that no amount of aerobic movement confers: putting stress on the bones and ligaments to grow and stay strong; different workouts trigger the carbohydrate energy system to help with insulin sensitivity; the lifting effort causes new (fast or slow depending on work out) muscular tissue to be developed, thus leading to enhanced muscle tone.
Depending on your focus, there are a variety of approaches for kettlebell use. Anthony Di Luglio has developed follow along strength/cardio kettlebell routines (reviewed here). Mike Mahler focuses on Charles Staley's Escalating Density Training (also fabulous) applied to double kettlebell work for size and strength. Pavel Tsatsouline's latest book takes this concept even further for power work.
Inspiring examples of KB work may be found with Tracy Reifkind (story here, with excerpts right) and Andrea u-shi
Chang (story here).
One of the compelling things about Tracy's success is that she combined diet first, the importance of which we saw in the last article, with 20 mins a day of kettlebell work. That's it. Diet first (really. diet first. diet most important) & 20 mins a day. And has continued with that program and transformed herself and her health. And she has fabulous tone. Her blog is a great place to see how her workouts have grown in length to 45-50 mins over several years. That first year of 100lbs significant weight loss, diet, and 20mins of KB's.
Which brings us to time.
But a last few quick notes about resistance workouts: recovery recovery recovery - with volume.
There are LOTS of program options from barbells to kettlebells to nada, pending what kind of gear appeals to you. I have not even begun to touch on the rich variety that's out there that also follow good principles. A few to consider within this to challenge the muscles to lay down new fibers. Power to the People and Greasing the Groove are two; Charles Staley's EDT is another; HST is another particularly focused on hypertrophy for mass/size.
Each of these privileges higher total volume in a workout but with lower rep sets with recovery to stay fresh. EDT for instance takes two moves in 15 min blocks. One knows their 10 rep max for a given move, does only 5 reps, and alternates between the two within the 15 mins. Fresh, never to failure, perfect reps. One of the great appeals of P90X for me was that it had real moves like pull ups and push ups. Imagine applying EDT to these moves rather than going to fatigue with each set, as in P90X? Thus privileging fast twitch muscle work, too.
The other thing about a heuristic for a health and fitness well being program is that in lifting, we're talking whole body. Body builders will do arm curls. Someone concerned with an efficient way to work power speed and strength will snatch or clean and press, or do weighted pull ups and single leg squats. They'll develop great abs, legs and arms without ever doing an arm curl.
Ok one other point: drop going to failure.
That is actually an advanced and specific bodybuilding technique that over the past 20 years has been shown to have minimal benefit overall, and not a whole lot of gain for the general practitioner, and new lifter in particular. It is also only induced in Heavy resistance - which P90X is not. And the down side can be overly taxing one's system. Again, advanced technique, and many hypertrophy techniques for mass (like HST) do NOT use it at all.
That and "the pump" sound great, but this is another finishing technique, not basic muscle development, and it's really speculative as to it's value for strength work. And where there may be a role within something known as occlusion training, it's a deliberate, occasional and specific application - not something for every set, every workout.
What will happen is that one will either feel fatigued after such a workout, and/or sore quite quickly when the pump goes down. One will definitely feel like one has done work. But is this better or more effective than feeling strong and fresh at the end of a workout? It would seem to be a wrong focus and priority for the de-conditioned or less experienced trainee. But perhaps if someone buying this program doesn't feel like this - when they think workouts mean no pain no gain - then they'll think it's a crap workout. Hmm.
The Alternative to endurance/fatigue? Heavier, faster.
In a more balanced approach, a good part of the work in a week is focused on heavy/fast lifting where one has learned what their 1, 5 or 10 rep maximum is for the weight and movement involved, and where one is knowingly and deliberately taking advantage of reps/sets/recovery time and load to challenge the various energy systems and force an adaptation.
The P90X approach at best focuses on endurance, and that in only one way: surviving an hour+ of activity per day. That is missing the benefits of heavy lifting and recovery cycles for hormone efficiency - including insulin - joint health, muscular adaptation and bone mineral density maintenance. IT's just NOT a complete fitness program. And for some people('s partners especially), P90X just takes to long.
On Time
P90X is 7+ hours a week of aerobic work. It may be called, core, kenpo, plyo, arms, shoulders, back, legs, but it's endurance/aerobic/cardio, as seen in part 2, and it's long. Why oh why is it 7 hours of cardio-by-proxy? Again, 7 hours is dandy if that's your informed choice and matches your goals. But there is really nothing optimal for fitness in the design of P90X.
Some recent work showed over 2 years - not 12 weeks - obese gals who had the most success with their weight loss worked out 270-300 mins a week. 4.5-5 hours. Not 7. Those are two more hours a week available to spend with your family or your life than in the gym. This doesn't mean that more hours than that a week working out are bad. Not at all. It's just that one does not HAVE to go at 7hours a week for body comp success or health and strength success. While the study suggests five, i have colleagues who spend 45 minutes every other day working out and report being happy with their body comp. What they do in those 45 minutes is the magic.
As we've seen however,
Intervals compress Time. Another approach that as a side effect shortens workout times is Intervals. P90XPlus (the p90x follow up program) talks about Intervals, but it doesn't really use them. Intervals means working at a particular effort - usually hard - then recovering.
So far, the BEST tested fat loss interval approach with both conditioned and non-conditioned women is 8 secs of HARD pedaling followed by 12 secs of light pedaling - for 20 mins. That's it.
With intervals, one burns more calories overall than with steady state cardio, that's one thing,. But the interval also entices other benefits for the physiology, including enhancing the sensitivity and effectiveness of our hormonal systems (from insulin to endorphins), nervous system, energy systems.
While 8/12 for 20 sounds great compared to 60+ mins of slog, here's another study where the focus was on aerobic/endurance fitness. 6mins. A WEEK. resulted in the equivalent physiological benefit of 4.5 HOURS of normal cardio a week - p90x type effort. 6mins vs 390.
We just don't have to go long to get physiological benefits; we have to go hard and recover and hard and recover and hard and recover.
Now it's all fine to go long if we're doing something we enjoy. My fat loss hero Lyle McDonald talks about the total comparative benefits of intervals to steady state cardio where going for an hour of steady state burns more total calories than 30 mins of intervals. That's true. When looking at the raw numbers from the specific session. And there is a role for both. McDonald does not talk about the physiological/energy system differences between the two approaches (he starts to in follow ups); just immediate calories burned. And there's more to us than calories burned (as the 8/12 for 20 study shows). We're complex interconnect systems. Optimal approaches to fitness respect this.
And that's why variety in our workout lives means more than going through a bunch of exercises that are all cardio/endurance based, but variety in terms of systems worked.
So we might ask, do least some of our sessions in a week include optimizing benefit for bone, muscle and the rest of our physiology? is this all time well spent for our whole health? Less can be more, with the right less optimized for all the mores. One approach is a third resistance, a third intervals and a third cardio. And also NEPA's
On Practice: Quality and Quantity. Not either/or
I've said throughout this series that P90X is fine if it makes you happy, and as long as you know that it's an endurance program, is that all you want; it takes far longer than it needs to to deliver the lean effects it advertises. But actually, there is one place where i'd suggest one might want to reconsider P90X and might even say it's flawed. P90X is sloppy. Let me explain.
Skill is not mentioned in P90X. And that's understandable in terms of selling a product for the widest appeal. If one needed training to carry out any of the work in P90X that would detract from its immediate do-ability. And as said, that's fine for someone trying to sell something.
But what about the human being buying it? What have we learned we can apply?
We endure beyond the 90 days, and what do we learn? Any transferable performance skills? Perhaps a person doesn't care about learning any athletic skills: the goal is to kill calories; burn fat. But have we therefore potentially compromised movement quality?
Let's consider possible skills that could be addressed in some of the programs if we cared about their value rather than endurance from faux verions:
For folks doing Yoga-x, one might assume the tree pose with eyes closed. How stable does the person feel? In that position, eyes closed, turn the head quickly to the left. Is the person still standing?
The image is of Kettlebell Master Trainer Mark Reifkind, former gymnast and powerlifter, whose main activities now are kettlebells, bikram yoga and z-health mobility. See his blog for blending strength, power, endurance, mobility - and yoga.
Actual yoga, as seen in Part 1 is also about breathing first, is also not about gratuitously holding isometric poses - which is just more (non-transferable static) endurance work. What do we learn about breathing techniques that we might use from yoga to lift heavier weight?
Kenpo is an art that uses kicking and punching. Both the kick and the punch have more going on in them - such as timing of forces - than simply looking like a kick or a punch. What is the benefit of risking putting one's back out or throwing a shoulder in this de-skilled version of Kenpo looking moves, other than another attempt at entertaining cardio? Wouldn't it be cool to actually learn a kick, how to harmonize the forces, and do those high quality kicks? Or punches. How do you know if your upper cut is effective or bleeding energy? Dunno here.
Plyometrics as discussed in part 1 is usually used to enhance speed and power, very much not endurance, as it's used in P90X, but speed or power aren't tested in this program, so hard to say if a person has gained any speed skills. IT's also very very much about form, where the deceleration is a key part of acceleration: plyometrics is about developing rapid conversion of stored elastic energy into force. So depth jumps and kettlebell overspeed eccentrics work this property (see the Elastic section of this article on Plastic/Elastic in human performance). Getting as many joints involved as possible, in the right way, is key to that energy conversion.
While bounding is great, and hopping on one foot can seem taxing, because these moves are done largely to a kind of fatigue, the notion of developing fast eccentric use of the stored energy goes away - the energy stored by a little hop has already dissipated by the time of the conversion. And so what can be a great speed/power strength effect becomes another endurance effect, fighting fatigue. Likewise, the skill of moving even in the hop to a good landng and from there up into a new hop is never discussed. So what's the point of jumping about in the P90X context called plyo? Another version of cardio?
Even the humble pull up and push up have particular biomechanical features that, when taught, make the performance of the exercise easier but also leverage better use of the body and so better transfer of capacity from one movement to another that use the same muscle groups.
As an example of the degree of attention a simple move can require, the one arm pushup, rushed through one part of one disk in P90X, is the subject of half a book for coordinating muscular activity along the core; speed of shoulder joint to elbow joint is a technique called bone rhythm that assures the physics of the body is working together for optimal efficiency.
In resistance sections, quality of movement is mentioned from time to time, but the notion of quality seems at best very not old but dated school.
In the resistance parts, quality (as poster Brad points out) is quitting a set before "things get squirrelly." And that really feeling the last three reps is what you're going for. Hmm. So kind of going to failure in long *endurance* sets. Why? We know from well the best we know of hypertrophy and strength training that we can get tremendous effect by doing lots of volume with higher quality sets not going near fatigue ( ie where one really feels those "last three reps.") As pointed to, Staley's approach (and HST) is quality short sets with increasing volume.
In the Staley/Tsatsouline seminar DVD, Staley demonstrates convincingly that the most power is in the first three reps of a set. Why not recover to be able to continue to produce best power and force most adaptation? Actually staying fresh and NOT feeling it, and going long (volume) has greater benefit for strength and power - and adjusted appropriately - hypertrophy.
But such sets with lots of breaks perhaps is not providing the variety, entertainment and boredom fighting of changing to a different move every minute, and *feeling* well worked out. Instead such a focused approach says one or two moves done very well for reps with appropriate attention to quality and recovery lead to fabulous health rewards. The focus required to consider the whole movement does not allow boredom, when every rep is a practice of achieving perfection. Our bodies practice and remember what we do (see the SAID principle below). Imagine the benefit of remembering and practicing optimal reps rather than fatigue?
It's not complicated. It's not confusing. But it is important. Because at the end of the day - whether day one or day 91 - quality is always important.
Now some folks have said - me too - that some movement is better than no movement, and isn't it better that folks do something than nothing and didn't i write a positive review a few years back about P90X? Well, ignorance is bliss. We do the best we can with what we know. But what about knowing better?
Analogy: Radial Confusion (or why not start with quality?) To use the oft cited analogy of fitness, the car: suppose we have a car and it's not tuned up - one of the things wrong with it is the pressure in the tires is uneven and the tires haven't been rotated in awhile. But also the timing's off; the seals need to be checked and possibly some replaced, fluids replaced, belts checked or replaced, alignment done, sparks done, air filter done, break seals and fluid checked, rad level checked, etc. There may even be some better types of fuel available for the engine, or better oil for the conditions. The exhaust pipe may be starting to rot through. We don't know any of this; we just know that the car feels abit sluggish. and seems to go through gas quicker than previously. We seek out Someone Who Knows This Stuff.
And we come upon a mechanic that says boy, i know exactly what you mean: the thing used to run great, it doesn't now, but have i got something great for you that's gonna heal this machine. Change the fuel to this great of octane and rotate the tires and you're gonna be so happy. And you'll be even more happy if you wash the windows every time you fill up with gas and be sure to keep the engine really clean. Get under the hood and degunk it. That's a big part of good care.
And that's what we do. And lo and behold! a performance increase: the mileage has improved, it's nice to see better, and the car doesn't feel like it's pulling quite so much to one side. Super duper.
Isn't that great? Plainly we now have the solution to car well being. That mechanic is a genius. We're going to tell everyone that this is the best mechanic around and to get his radial confusion program.
Is rotating the tires - doing something better than nothing? Is it a false sense of security too?
The point of this series has been to help folks make informed choices. I think, based on what we do know about how we work, that we can do better for ourselves right out of the gate in terms of quality and quantity of practice, and we do ourselves a disservice not to treat our bodies as the incredible systems we are.
And our systems adapt immediately to whatever we do with them.
Our nervous systems, as modeled in the SAID principle (see Plastic section of this article), adapt immediately to exactly what we're doing. If we move poorly our nervous system practices that pattern. Going for 60minutes of crappy reps is a lot of reps, reinforcing a lot of poor movement.
Part of the point of showing that shorter workouts can be just as or more effective than hour long ones is also to support the capacity to do quality work. Always going to sweaty fatigue is not actually a sign of strength success. Leaving a strength workout feeling fresh, like there is more in the tank, is also a very good strategy. Pushing to the limit, testing that 1 rep maximum, is a cyclical not constant thing.
Mobility Work and the VVP
So here's one other alternative to P90X or at the very least an important complement - joint mobility. Far better than faux yoga would be 10 or 20 mins of mobility work combined with 10 or 20 mins of progressive balance work (see middle of this post on balance work).
There are loads of mobility programs available Qi Gong is an ancient form of such. The one
approach i prefer is z-health because it is very precisely and deliberately focused on improving the visual, vestibular and proprioceptive systems (vvp). VVP is how our bodies know where we are in space when standing still or moving. These systems are trainable. The pay off of working with the VVP directly is that it seems we also enhance the nervous system's information channels, and that has benefits for feeling better and moving better. I've written a lot about this approach to health, and why it's particularly great in an athletic awareness context. Practicing z-health is also applicable in a sports movement context to help get that precision of movement for quality of movement.
P90X Critique(s) Confession
So yes, i confess, that is actually my third big criticism of P90X: it's drive i suppose for entertainment, to make sure things pop pop pop that results in movement slop. And there are costs to reinforcing poor movement.
My first criticism is that diet is second in importance and my second criticism is that it's dressing up endurance work as plyo, yoga, hypertrophy etc etc etc. All these amazing forms of activity have been stripped of their skill component and particular benefits, and translated into cardio circuits entertainment. It's selling folks words like plyo, yoga, kenpo, resistance so folks feel like they're doing all these various forms of exercise when we're just not.
Examples of Success in Reasonable Contexts.
Sometimes it's useful to see success stories from *other* places than a routine we're considering and look at the differences.
Here's some folks who are blending diet and some hypertrophy training over 6 months, not 90 days, and not working out 7 hours of endurance a week. These are mainly young lads, but you get the idea. Scooby also has a free alternative plan to p90x. His recipe and mine (and others) for a six pack is slightly different, but not hugely.
Likewise i've pointed to these before, here's some 16 week success stories of real and reasonable people combining diet and workouts for real and reasonable results. With real before and after pictures.
Coda
Ignore the label; what's really in the Tin. My hope is that, by the end of this three part series, folks considering a program like P90X know to ask of the workouts, no matter what someone says they are, can look at what's going on in them to see what kind of workout they REALLY are, and this can be assessed by looking at load, reps, recovery and quality.
Less Can be So Much More. Likewise a take away from this article in particular is that workouts to be effective do not have to be long. Intensity can be used effectively whether the goal is fat loss and cardio well being, or getting toned (getting more muscular density).
Real Resistance Training. While one does develop a certain kind of tone from aerobic effort, i have also suggested complementing that with heavy/fast lifting practice because this kind of effort works other systems that are part of us that straight endurance work does not. A whole athlete/person trains the whole system. You may want to privilege one, but learning how to work with all of them can only be a Good Idea.
Quality and Mobility. The unlooked at aspect of these programs is the skill level, and the benefit of better movement form and quality. Here's a quick note on the benefit of movement quality looking at the deceptively simple front squat by way of example. And here's a general related tip about knowing a bit about mobility and movement, with the arthrokinetic reflex - aspects missing from P90X and most 12 weeks type programs that sacrifice quality for non-stop variety.
Summary for Workouts
I gave a lot of possible nutrition/diet approaches in part 3a. Here, in 3b considering workouts, these are some heuristics i'd suggest for choosing a life time general physical preparedness (gpp) program.
And to take a page from Pavel Tsatsouline, may i suggest think of workouts as Practice to value the skill of what you're doing with a most precious resource: yourself.
And as a finale, here's an example of putting everything together in the real:
Thanks to RKC Team Lead Franz Shneiderman (his blog) for sharing this video.
Related Posts
variety, quality. A P90X workout week is about 7hours minimum, and, as we saw in part 2, despite what seems like incredible variety, it is all one type of effort: aerobic endurance. The question posed therefore, is, is P90X optimal bang for that 7hour buck? Does it benefit all our muscle fibers? Slow and fast twitch? Does it benefit all our physiological systems, like bones, ligaments, joints, visual, vestibular and proprioceptive systems? All our energy systems? For holistic well being - and fat loss and leaning up, for 7 hours - perhaps not, as we'll see.Now again, if P90X makes a person happy and they want to spend that time doing lots of various cardio workouts, that's fine (well, see below on how fine). Lots of folks may say (and post) P90X is just fine. And that's fine.
My goal here is to ask about how does one define fine? How assess what's good, why it's good, and what might be missing for both better use of those precious minutes in a day that we never get back and more optimal benefit for our bodies beyond cardio/oxidative strength?
So why do this particular set of hour+ long cardio workouts? what's it doing for the ALL of you in that getting ripped paradigm?
Part 1 of this Review/Critique of P90X looked at concepts like Muscle Confusion.
Part 2 looked at how and for whom P90X might actually deliver on it's "getting ripped" mantra
Part 3b started looking at alternatives to the P90X diet approach and
Part 3b, our final part, looks at alternatives to the P90X workout approach.
What are you working this hard and this long to achieve? My concern motivating this discussion is that many folks think they *have* to put in this kind of time to achieve the P90X goals - getting ripped -- and, if that's the goal, they just don't. Even for cardio/endurance. We just don't. Work smarter not harder. And if we're going to work this long, is it the best long for our fitness goals and well being?
A fast example: lean with ripped abs in an hour/week; endurance in 6 minutes
As we saw in part two, if all a person wants is a six pack, the recipe is diet first to get to 10% bf and an ab hypertrophy program - two were suggested (as ab ripper x actually isn't an hypertrophy program). That's 20mins, 3times a week for effort, and the rest of the effort is diet. That's 1 hour vs 7.
Now sometimes folks just don't believe this is really all one needs to do to get a six pack. It's some kind of no pain no gain ethos perhaps. It can't be that simple. The formula is that simple. Application that's another thing. We'll see below examples of stunning recent research that shows 6mins of intense cardio a week has the same physiological benefits as an hour twenty.
Even if folks believe that a six pack is diet to 10% and 20 mins every other day of ab work, they
may want to move more than 20 mins every other day. But why? well, one reason may be what's often put out as "muscle tone"Muscle tone is another word for both more activation of existing muscle fibers and more muscle fibers to activate. Muscle fibers are densely packed and very small, so even while not incredibly massive, when lean enough to see, one looks pretty wiry strong.
And that might be another thing to check: muscular hypertrophy works on two angles: getting more *stuff* around muscle fiber bundles (sarcoplasmic) and myofibril. Workout type - especially load and recovery - effect hypertrophy type. Bringing more fibers on board, rather than mainly improving the oxidative capacity of the ones we have is what non-aerobic type training privileges - power or hypertrophy strength training rather than endurance (aka P90X)
Is 7 hours a week of cardio work the best way to lay down more muscle fiber? No. Really. It's not. Yes elite marathoners are wiry. But even endurance runners head to the gym for strength training. We'll get into some of the benefits to that below.
So if the goal is then leanness, 6 pack and muscle tone - and perhaps the consequent benefits of health to working out - then we have the first two covered. The recipe for leanness and 6 pack has been stated.
What Type of Muscle, what Type of Strength? If we're doing mainly fat burning/oxidative workouts, we're usually privileging slow twitch muscle fibers. The fast twitch that come into play for power strength or speed aren't getting taxed/developed. They may even atrophy or convert in favour of the growth of the slow twitch privileged muscle types. Faster take longer to get back, too.
You might think you don't care about going fast, but speed, along with a ready nervous system (we'll come onto proprioception) is also the ability to respond quickly to sudden situations, where moving fast can be critical.
But what about the rest of our physiologic systems beyond Muscle?
If we are interested in full body health, there's more to think about that muscle and muscle type. We have multiple energy systems. P90X privileges training one: the oxidative system. Yes really important for fat burning, but that's just part of us. Like the phosphate, glycolytic and lactate energy systems, too.
We also have bones, joints, ligaments and hormones (like insulin) being affected differently by different effort types. And we have a nervous system - a system that is always on and always adapts to what we practice. Immediately and all the time. What are we doing for these systems?
In this article the focus will then be on
- Muscle tone - laying down new muscle fibers - is what we'll look at to consider alternatives to P90X.
- General well being including more of the body's systems
- checking time
- and the role of checking quality of movement and mobility
Muscle Tone
I'd like to adjust the title here to "muscle tone and bone"
as both components of our physiology, along with our lungs and heart and nervous system (and innards generally) need to be considered.To get both muscle tone and bone building in one swoop, we're talking about resistance training. There are a couple approaches to resistance work that will impact both muscle and bone. This means dynamic work with load, pulling heavy, or both. An alternative for bones is playing squash or soccer. Apparently the stop/start nature of squash and soccer have tremendous value for bone growth. But so does axial loading: bringing force down directly in the direction of the bone. Which means lifting heavy, or lifting fast.
Mentioning lifting heavy or fast sometimes freaks people out. Heavy seems scary; moving a heavy object quickly also may seem scary. There's a fear of hurting oneself, or that one is not strong enough. But everything is proportional. Load is progressive: i've worked with seniors who on their first lifts were parallel squatting for 5 resps with soup cans, built up to milk jugs, and from there to real weights. Point is, they were finding potent loads for them, causing their bodies to adapt.
Aside: Insulin Sensitivity. One of the best ways to get insulin sensitivity up (a good thing) is to include lifting heavy in one's program. Here's more on why from Dave Barr.
The difference: The key thing here is perhaps a couple points to distinguish what P90X does with weights and what we're talking about here.
P90X as described in part 2 does not include multiple sets of a single move with recovery between sets and staying fresh. The weights used in the circuits are light enough not just to get through a set but to get through multiple sets in an hour. They also focus on bodybuilding isolation moves rather than foundational strength work.
There are at least Four differences in resistance approaches in p90x and a strength/power/hypertrophy focused lifting program:
By balancing load, rep, recovery and quality, we can dial in the kind of strength program best suited to support true general physical preparedness.
Compound Moves rather than Isolation Moves. A fundamental power/hypertrophy program would scrap the arm/shoulders/chest isolation work entirely and favour whole body "compound" movements. Bigger bang for the bone and muscle buck. Picking up something heavy; pushing something heavy (relatively speaking) means bringing the whole body into play. P90X has a few of these: pull ups and push ups are awesome. They engage everything. Other examples of such compound moves are deadlifts, squats, renegade rows and the amazing turkish get up as demo'd in Kalos Sthenos.
More Load; Fewer Reps. Getting to know the 1, 5 or 10 rep load maximum for a given move is a valuable thing. That way a person can plan sets to be a certain percentage of a maximal rep, understand that the best no. of reps at that percentage will favour a particular kind of strength building.
Actual Recovery for hypertrophy/power. Like understanding percentage of maximal load for effort, understanding recovery periods - and taking them (seriously) is an often overlooked fact of strength development.
Learn quality moves The above assumes that one seeks the instruction to learn how to perform compound moves well.
Options for Adding Load to Your Routine.
So, suppose you think well, ok, let's try this resistance for real approach, i still don't want to have to go to the gym or get a whole bunch of gear. Far enough.
For the no or low gear desirous, Ross Enemait has the gold standard of body weight work, and home made gear that lets a person achieve any kind of muscular tone goals. Tons of vids on his sight and ideas on how to make strength apparatus to work for you.
TNT bands already used in P90X offer space saving, resistance challenging, forms of work. Jon Hinds who developed this version of band offers and awesome workout routine with a set of the bands. These can be great supplements to some basic weights.
The TRX is another space saving workout system that lets a person use bodyweight in a variety of challenging ways, including supporting pull ups and dips. I personally think that Rings are a gas, though. Elite Rings are awesome and fun. Find room for them and you'll feel like a kid anytime you workout with them.
To get into weights, Powerblocks are great space-saving selectable apparatus. But for that matter, a barbell with a sufficient set of plates can be had cheap regularly on ebay, and will really let you start to pull heavy. The best program for full body fitness with a barbell: two moves, found in Power to the People, always assuming diet (discussed in the last article) is dialed in. Here's a really fast approach to blend all three types of strength with a barbell by Charles Staley, too.The Kettlebell Confession. What i personally find a very powerful tool for general fitness or wha't also called General Physical Preparedness (GPP - as opposed to Sports Specific training) is
kettlebell work. If you have room to swing a cat, you have room for a kettlebell. Why i like the kettlebell so much is that its core simple move, the swing, lets a person do a range of work, from cardio, to raw strength, to power and vo2max, all with the same tool. I've written about why Enter the Kettebell(ETK) is a fabulous program - especially coming off P90X - because its approach captures both these attributes of fast movement for power and strength work for hypertrophy and dynamic work for endurance. It's a complete package. Can work fast and slow twitch muscles; all energy systems; complements related systems work like bone and endocrine etc.Kettlebell work as spec'd in ETK satisfies the three advantages to lifting fast/heavy that no amount of aerobic movement confers: putting stress on the bones and ligaments to grow and stay strong; different workouts trigger the carbohydrate energy system to help with insulin sensitivity; the lifting effort causes new (fast or slow depending on work out) muscular tissue to be developed, thus leading to enhanced muscle tone.
Depending on your focus, there are a variety of approaches for kettlebell use. Anthony Di Luglio has developed follow along strength/cardio kettlebell routines (reviewed here). Mike Mahler focuses on Charles Staley's Escalating Density Training (also fabulous) applied to double kettlebell work for size and strength. Pavel Tsatsouline's latest book takes this concept even further for power work.
Inspiring examples of KB work may be found with Tracy Reifkind (story here, with excerpts right) and Andrea u-shi
Chang (story here).
One of the compelling things about Tracy's success is that she combined diet first, the importance of which we saw in the last article, with 20 mins a day of kettlebell work. That's it. Diet first (really. diet first. diet most important) & 20 mins a day. And has continued with that program and transformed herself and her health. And she has fabulous tone. Her blog is a great place to see how her workouts have grown in length to 45-50 mins over several years. That first year of 100lbs significant weight loss, diet, and 20mins of KB's.
Which brings us to time.
But a last few quick notes about resistance workouts: recovery recovery recovery - with volume.
There are LOTS of program options from barbells to kettlebells to nada, pending what kind of gear appeals to you. I have not even begun to touch on the rich variety that's out there that also follow good principles. A few to consider within this to challenge the muscles to lay down new fibers. Power to the People and Greasing the Groove are two; Charles Staley's EDT is another; HST is another particularly focused on hypertrophy for mass/size.
Each of these privileges higher total volume in a workout but with lower rep sets with recovery to stay fresh. EDT for instance takes two moves in 15 min blocks. One knows their 10 rep max for a given move, does only 5 reps, and alternates between the two within the 15 mins. Fresh, never to failure, perfect reps. One of the great appeals of P90X for me was that it had real moves like pull ups and push ups. Imagine applying EDT to these moves rather than going to fatigue with each set, as in P90X? Thus privileging fast twitch muscle work, too.
The other thing about a heuristic for a health and fitness well being program is that in lifting, we're talking whole body. Body builders will do arm curls. Someone concerned with an efficient way to work power speed and strength will snatch or clean and press, or do weighted pull ups and single leg squats. They'll develop great abs, legs and arms without ever doing an arm curl.
Ok one other point: drop going to failure.
That is actually an advanced and specific bodybuilding technique that over the past 20 years has been shown to have minimal benefit overall, and not a whole lot of gain for the general practitioner, and new lifter in particular. It is also only induced in Heavy resistance - which P90X is not. And the down side can be overly taxing one's system. Again, advanced technique, and many hypertrophy techniques for mass (like HST) do NOT use it at all.
That and "the pump" sound great, but this is another finishing technique, not basic muscle development, and it's really speculative as to it's value for strength work. And where there may be a role within something known as occlusion training, it's a deliberate, occasional and specific application - not something for every set, every workout.
What will happen is that one will either feel fatigued after such a workout, and/or sore quite quickly when the pump goes down. One will definitely feel like one has done work. But is this better or more effective than feeling strong and fresh at the end of a workout? It would seem to be a wrong focus and priority for the de-conditioned or less experienced trainee. But perhaps if someone buying this program doesn't feel like this - when they think workouts mean no pain no gain - then they'll think it's a crap workout. Hmm.
The Alternative to endurance/fatigue? Heavier, faster.
In a more balanced approach, a good part of the work in a week is focused on heavy/fast lifting where one has learned what their 1, 5 or 10 rep maximum is for the weight and movement involved, and where one is knowingly and deliberately taking advantage of reps/sets/recovery time and load to challenge the various energy systems and force an adaptation.
The P90X approach at best focuses on endurance, and that in only one way: surviving an hour+ of activity per day. That is missing the benefits of heavy lifting and recovery cycles for hormone efficiency - including insulin - joint health, muscular adaptation and bone mineral density maintenance. IT's just NOT a complete fitness program. And for some people('s partners especially), P90X just takes to long.
On Time
P90X is 7+ hours a week of aerobic work. It may be called, core, kenpo, plyo, arms, shoulders, back, legs, but it's endurance/aerobic/cardio, as seen in part 2, and it's long. Why oh why is it 7 hours of cardio-by-proxy? Again, 7 hours is dandy if that's your informed choice and matches your goals. But there is really nothing optimal for fitness in the design of P90X.
Some recent work showed over 2 years - not 12 weeks - obese gals who had the most success with their weight loss worked out 270-300 mins a week. 4.5-5 hours. Not 7. Those are two more hours a week available to spend with your family or your life than in the gym. This doesn't mean that more hours than that a week working out are bad. Not at all. It's just that one does not HAVE to go at 7hours a week for body comp success or health and strength success. While the study suggests five, i have colleagues who spend 45 minutes every other day working out and report being happy with their body comp. What they do in those 45 minutes is the magic.
As we've seen however,
- consistent diet and 20 mins a day of one routine - Tracy Reifkind's kettlebell work - has been powerfully transformative.
- Charles Staley's EDT program starts with 15 min blocks every other day, with only two moves in a single block, buidling up to 3, 15 min blocks, and they are killer. The approaches take advantage of varying intensity and including real recovery. They leverage the science of our physiology to effect adaptation.
Intervals compress Time. Another approach that as a side effect shortens workout times is Intervals. P90XPlus (the p90x follow up program) talks about Intervals, but it doesn't really use them. Intervals means working at a particular effort - usually hard - then recovering.
So far, the BEST tested fat loss interval approach with both conditioned and non-conditioned women is 8 secs of HARD pedaling followed by 12 secs of light pedaling - for 20 mins. That's it.
The group which did around eight seconds of sprinting on a bike, followed by 12 seconds of exercising lightly for twenty minutes, lost three times as much fat as other women, who exercised at a continuous, regular pace for 40 minutesQuick note: the study tested with women, not guys, but there's good reason to think this will be effective for men, too, based on the results of other interval protocols studies.
With intervals, one burns more calories overall than with steady state cardio, that's one thing,. But the interval also entices other benefits for the physiology, including enhancing the sensitivity and effectiveness of our hormonal systems (from insulin to endorphins), nervous system, energy systems.
While 8/12 for 20 sounds great compared to 60+ mins of slog, here's another study where the focus was on aerobic/endurance fitness. 6mins. A WEEK. resulted in the equivalent physiological benefit of 4.5 HOURS of normal cardio a week - p90x type effort. 6mins vs 390.
We just don't have to go long to get physiological benefits; we have to go hard and recover and hard and recover and hard and recover.
Now it's all fine to go long if we're doing something we enjoy. My fat loss hero Lyle McDonald talks about the total comparative benefits of intervals to steady state cardio where going for an hour of steady state burns more total calories than 30 mins of intervals. That's true. When looking at the raw numbers from the specific session. And there is a role for both. McDonald does not talk about the physiological/energy system differences between the two approaches (he starts to in follow ups); just immediate calories burned. And there's more to us than calories burned (as the 8/12 for 20 study shows). We're complex interconnect systems. Optimal approaches to fitness respect this.
And that's why variety in our workout lives means more than going through a bunch of exercises that are all cardio/endurance based, but variety in terms of systems worked.
So we might ask, do least some of our sessions in a week include optimizing benefit for bone, muscle and the rest of our physiology? is this all time well spent for our whole health? Less can be more, with the right less optimized for all the mores. One approach is a third resistance, a third intervals and a third cardio. And also NEPA's
On Practice: Quality and Quantity. Not either/or
I've said throughout this series that P90X is fine if it makes you happy, and as long as you know that it's an endurance program, is that all you want; it takes far longer than it needs to to deliver the lean effects it advertises. But actually, there is one place where i'd suggest one might want to reconsider P90X and might even say it's flawed. P90X is sloppy. Let me explain.
Skill is not mentioned in P90X. And that's understandable in terms of selling a product for the widest appeal. If one needed training to carry out any of the work in P90X that would detract from its immediate do-ability. And as said, that's fine for someone trying to sell something.
But what about the human being buying it? What have we learned we can apply?
We endure beyond the 90 days, and what do we learn? Any transferable performance skills? Perhaps a person doesn't care about learning any athletic skills: the goal is to kill calories; burn fat. But have we therefore potentially compromised movement quality?
Let's consider possible skills that could be addressed in some of the programs if we cared about their value rather than endurance from faux verions:
For folks doing Yoga-x, one might assume the tree pose with eyes closed. How stable does the person feel? In that position, eyes closed, turn the head quickly to the left. Is the person still standing?The image is of Kettlebell Master Trainer Mark Reifkind, former gymnast and powerlifter, whose main activities now are kettlebells, bikram yoga and z-health mobility. See his blog for blending strength, power, endurance, mobility - and yoga.
Actual yoga, as seen in Part 1 is also about breathing first, is also not about gratuitously holding isometric poses - which is just more (non-transferable static) endurance work. What do we learn about breathing techniques that we might use from yoga to lift heavier weight?
Kenpo is an art that uses kicking and punching. Both the kick and the punch have more going on in them - such as timing of forces - than simply looking like a kick or a punch. What is the benefit of risking putting one's back out or throwing a shoulder in this de-skilled version of Kenpo looking moves, other than another attempt at entertaining cardio? Wouldn't it be cool to actually learn a kick, how to harmonize the forces, and do those high quality kicks? Or punches. How do you know if your upper cut is effective or bleeding energy? Dunno here.
Plyometrics as discussed in part 1 is usually used to enhance speed and power, very much not endurance, as it's used in P90X, but speed or power aren't tested in this program, so hard to say if a person has gained any speed skills. IT's also very very much about form, where the deceleration is a key part of acceleration: plyometrics is about developing rapid conversion of stored elastic energy into force. So depth jumps and kettlebell overspeed eccentrics work this property (see the Elastic section of this article on Plastic/Elastic in human performance). Getting as many joints involved as possible, in the right way, is key to that energy conversion.
While bounding is great, and hopping on one foot can seem taxing, because these moves are done largely to a kind of fatigue, the notion of developing fast eccentric use of the stored energy goes away - the energy stored by a little hop has already dissipated by the time of the conversion. And so what can be a great speed/power strength effect becomes another endurance effect, fighting fatigue. Likewise, the skill of moving even in the hop to a good landng and from there up into a new hop is never discussed. So what's the point of jumping about in the P90X context called plyo? Another version of cardio?
Even the humble pull up and push up have particular biomechanical features that, when taught, make the performance of the exercise easier but also leverage better use of the body and so better transfer of capacity from one movement to another that use the same muscle groups.As an example of the degree of attention a simple move can require, the one arm pushup, rushed through one part of one disk in P90X, is the subject of half a book for coordinating muscular activity along the core; speed of shoulder joint to elbow joint is a technique called bone rhythm that assures the physics of the body is working together for optimal efficiency.
In resistance sections, quality of movement is mentioned from time to time, but the notion of quality seems at best very not old but dated school.
In the resistance parts, quality (as poster Brad points out) is quitting a set before "things get squirrelly." And that really feeling the last three reps is what you're going for. Hmm. So kind of going to failure in long *endurance* sets. Why? We know from well the best we know of hypertrophy and strength training that we can get tremendous effect by doing lots of volume with higher quality sets not going near fatigue ( ie where one really feels those "last three reps.") As pointed to, Staley's approach (and HST) is quality short sets with increasing volume.
In the Staley/Tsatsouline seminar DVD, Staley demonstrates convincingly that the most power is in the first three reps of a set. Why not recover to be able to continue to produce best power and force most adaptation? Actually staying fresh and NOT feeling it, and going long (volume) has greater benefit for strength and power - and adjusted appropriately - hypertrophy.
But such sets with lots of breaks perhaps is not providing the variety, entertainment and boredom fighting of changing to a different move every minute, and *feeling* well worked out. Instead such a focused approach says one or two moves done very well for reps with appropriate attention to quality and recovery lead to fabulous health rewards. The focus required to consider the whole movement does not allow boredom, when every rep is a practice of achieving perfection. Our bodies practice and remember what we do (see the SAID principle below). Imagine the benefit of remembering and practicing optimal reps rather than fatigue?
It's not complicated. It's not confusing. But it is important. Because at the end of the day - whether day one or day 91 - quality is always important.
Now some folks have said - me too - that some movement is better than no movement, and isn't it better that folks do something than nothing and didn't i write a positive review a few years back about P90X? Well, ignorance is bliss. We do the best we can with what we know. But what about knowing better?
Analogy: Radial Confusion (or why not start with quality?) To use the oft cited analogy of fitness, the car: suppose we have a car and it's not tuned up - one of the things wrong with it is the pressure in the tires is uneven and the tires haven't been rotated in awhile. But also the timing's off; the seals need to be checked and possibly some replaced, fluids replaced, belts checked or replaced, alignment done, sparks done, air filter done, break seals and fluid checked, rad level checked, etc. There may even be some better types of fuel available for the engine, or better oil for the conditions. The exhaust pipe may be starting to rot through. We don't know any of this; we just know that the car feels abit sluggish. and seems to go through gas quicker than previously. We seek out Someone Who Knows This Stuff.
And we come upon a mechanic that says boy, i know exactly what you mean: the thing used to run great, it doesn't now, but have i got something great for you that's gonna heal this machine. Change the fuel to this great of octane and rotate the tires and you're gonna be so happy. And you'll be even more happy if you wash the windows every time you fill up with gas and be sure to keep the engine really clean. Get under the hood and degunk it. That's a big part of good care.
And that's what we do. And lo and behold! a performance increase: the mileage has improved, it's nice to see better, and the car doesn't feel like it's pulling quite so much to one side. Super duper.
Isn't that great? Plainly we now have the solution to car well being. That mechanic is a genius. We're going to tell everyone that this is the best mechanic around and to get his radial confusion program.
Is rotating the tires - doing something better than nothing? Is it a false sense of security too?
The point of this series has been to help folks make informed choices. I think, based on what we do know about how we work, that we can do better for ourselves right out of the gate in terms of quality and quantity of practice, and we do ourselves a disservice not to treat our bodies as the incredible systems we are.
And our systems adapt immediately to whatever we do with them.
Our nervous systems, as modeled in the SAID principle (see Plastic section of this article), adapt immediately to exactly what we're doing. If we move poorly our nervous system practices that pattern. Going for 60minutes of crappy reps is a lot of reps, reinforcing a lot of poor movement.
Part of the point of showing that shorter workouts can be just as or more effective than hour long ones is also to support the capacity to do quality work. Always going to sweaty fatigue is not actually a sign of strength success. Leaving a strength workout feeling fresh, like there is more in the tank, is also a very good strategy. Pushing to the limit, testing that 1 rep maximum, is a cyclical not constant thing.
Mobility Work and the VVP
So here's one other alternative to P90X or at the very least an important complement - joint mobility. Far better than faux yoga would be 10 or 20 mins of mobility work combined with 10 or 20 mins of progressive balance work (see middle of this post on balance work).
There are loads of mobility programs available Qi Gong is an ancient form of such. The one
approach i prefer is z-health because it is very precisely and deliberately focused on improving the visual, vestibular and proprioceptive systems (vvp). VVP is how our bodies know where we are in space when standing still or moving. These systems are trainable. The pay off of working with the VVP directly is that it seems we also enhance the nervous system's information channels, and that has benefits for feeling better and moving better. I've written a lot about this approach to health, and why it's particularly great in an athletic awareness context. Practicing z-health is also applicable in a sports movement context to help get that precision of movement for quality of movement.P90X Critique(s) Confession
So yes, i confess, that is actually my third big criticism of P90X: it's drive i suppose for entertainment, to make sure things pop pop pop that results in movement slop. And there are costs to reinforcing poor movement.
My first criticism is that diet is second in importance and my second criticism is that it's dressing up endurance work as plyo, yoga, hypertrophy etc etc etc. All these amazing forms of activity have been stripped of their skill component and particular benefits, and translated into cardio circuits entertainment. It's selling folks words like plyo, yoga, kenpo, resistance so folks feel like they're doing all these various forms of exercise when we're just not.
Examples of Success in Reasonable Contexts.
Sometimes it's useful to see success stories from *other* places than a routine we're considering and look at the differences.
Here's some folks who are blending diet and some hypertrophy training over 6 months, not 90 days, and not working out 7 hours of endurance a week. These are mainly young lads, but you get the idea. Scooby also has a free alternative plan to p90x. His recipe and mine (and others) for a six pack is slightly different, but not hugely.
Likewise i've pointed to these before, here's some 16 week success stories of real and reasonable people combining diet and workouts for real and reasonable results. With real before and after pictures.
Coda
Ignore the label; what's really in the Tin. My hope is that, by the end of this three part series, folks considering a program like P90X know to ask of the workouts, no matter what someone says they are, can look at what's going on in them to see what kind of workout they REALLY are, and this can be assessed by looking at load, reps, recovery and quality.
Less Can be So Much More. Likewise a take away from this article in particular is that workouts to be effective do not have to be long. Intensity can be used effectively whether the goal is fat loss and cardio well being, or getting toned (getting more muscular density).
Real Resistance Training. While one does develop a certain kind of tone from aerobic effort, i have also suggested complementing that with heavy/fast lifting practice because this kind of effort works other systems that are part of us that straight endurance work does not. A whole athlete/person trains the whole system. You may want to privilege one, but learning how to work with all of them can only be a Good Idea.
Quality and Mobility. The unlooked at aspect of these programs is the skill level, and the benefit of better movement form and quality. Here's a quick note on the benefit of movement quality looking at the deceptively simple front squat by way of example. And here's a general related tip about knowing a bit about mobility and movement, with the arthrokinetic reflex - aspects missing from P90X and most 12 weeks type programs that sacrifice quality for non-stop variety.
Summary for Workouts
I gave a lot of possible nutrition/diet approaches in part 3a. Here, in 3b considering workouts, these are some heuristics i'd suggest for choosing a life time general physical preparedness (gpp) program.
- Lift heavy and Lift Compound, full body several times a week
- Ramp in aerobic training with intervals on some days; sports or spots/steady state cardio on others as you feel you wish to do so.
- stay fresh - not failed: use recovery wisely
- include some joint mobility work into your daily practice for the neurological benefits as well as musclo-tendinous ones.
- Give yourself a chance to adapt: it takes more than 90days to become conditioned, but that's a great start. We have the rest of our lives to practice; why not begin as we mean to go on?
And to take a page from Pavel Tsatsouline, may i suggest think of workouts as Practice to value the skill of what you're doing with a most precious resource: yourself.
And as a finale, here's an example of putting everything together in the real:
Thanks to RKC Team Lead Franz Shneiderman (his blog) for sharing this video.
Related Posts
- Part 1 of this Review/Critique of P90X looked at concepts like Muscle Confusion.
- Part 2 looked at how and for whom P90X might actually deliver on it's "getting ripped" mantra
- Part 3b started looking at alternatives to the P90X diet approach
- Athletic Bodies: which one is yours? could your train to be closer to your?
- on steady state cardio and its value (vs Intervals) - using kettlebells and lot on mitochondria
- Does cardio work interfere with strength training? how 'bout no.
- Vo2Max with Viking Warrior Conditioning (VWC)
- cardio steady state/interval blend with kettlebells: running the bells.
- tuning form: arthrokinetic reflex demo
- supporting recovery - with headphones
- mobility and mechanoreception - loads of info and reviews of Z-Health neuromuscular approaches
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
P90X Critique Part 2 0f 3 - WIll you really "get ripped"?
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Does P90x work - when measured against its own claimes: does P90x get one "ripped" in 90 days? This article reviews the exercise and diet plan of P90X to get at that question - but really it's about providing a way to assess any "body transformation" or "12 week" program to see (a) if what's on the label is what's in the tin and (b) if what's in the tin matches what your goals for a program. You'll find criteria about two key components of such programs, diet, and nutrition, and how to assess the degree to which each of these components is likely to deliver the claims a program promises to deliver, and for whom.
The following therefore is more or less a worked example of applying/deriving this assessment via a critique of P90x - a program billed as an "extreme" workout (+ diet) specifically designed for practitioners to 'get ripped.' It's pretty detailed, so long. It looks at the exercise program first and then the nutrition program in the context of its promised results.
Context
In Part 1 of this reflection/critique of P90x we looked at the core P90x concept of "muscle confusion". We also poked at the rationale behind a few of the "bring it" program's routines within this "muscle confusion" context. The conclusion was, based on what's known about physiological adaptations that occur in a 12 week program by novices/deconditioned athletes - P90X's target market - muscle confusion is basically a marketing gimmick.
In this second of this three part series, i'd like to look at the concept of "getting ripped" that is a key part of the P90X delivery promise.
In Part 3 we'll look at alternatives to the two core parts of P90X, but in the right order (a) diet (from places one doesn't usually think about diet - it's not just about the food) and (b) workout practices (they're both practices)
As i said in part 1 and will say so again here, there's nothing wrong with anyone wanting to do - or actually doing - P90X or similar- the routines are "not considered harmful," to draw on a computer science trope (at least not too harmful - we'll see more in part 3b).
What we might ask about P90X is does it deliver what's on the tin? Will anyone who passes the P90X fit test and is therefore deemed "ready" to do P90X "get ripped"? - and in P90X's definition, that pretty much means, at a minimum, have a six pack.
P90X suggests that if you follow it's program, you will be "transformed" from "regular to ripped" in 90 days. That's its formula: do the workouts; follow the diet. So we're going to look at each part of that formula against some objective criteria for ripped-ness.
Basic necessities of Getting Ripped by which to assess P90X capacity to deliver:
There are fortunately only two things involved in getting ripped, level of importance listed here:
RECIPE/FORMULA ASIDE for 6 Pack
If you want to skip the rest of the article here's the recipe for 6 pack abs:
As to why this is the recipe, well that's in the rest of this article.
Results from this article:
First, there are tons of 12 week programs out there, all promising grand things. Where do we get our information about what works in these programs? Usually from the programs themselves. But we saw in the first part of this series that P90X's key concept "muscle confusion" is more marketing than fact, especially in the context of deconditioned or novice trainees. So are the before and after shots for P90X's amazing transformations that seem to be portrayed also a gimmick? How can we make this assessment.
Second, i'm guessing that folks who choose to do P90X or other 12 week transformations may know about as much about how fat loss and hypertrophy really work as i did when i started the program: less than i thought i did, and so pretty accepting of the way P90X presents each of these: exercise first, diet second, bf% is just a measure of progress.
The reality, as we'll see, is very much different: diet has to be first, exercise is second and bf% is, in the context of "getting ripped" a very specific target, and one that can be reasonably calculated to determine the length and intensity of a program to deliver desired results.
So to begin, let's begin with where P90X puts its energy first: exercise.
o Muscle Building Very Basic Basics.
P90X doesn't come out and say that it's a muscle building program - and that's good, cuz it's not (more on that in a moment) - but most of us think that the term "getting ripped" implies building muscle.
Likewise, those men's before and after pictures in P90X (like the ones fo JonC, left) seem to imply that muscle mass will accompany the program. Hmm.
There's a lot we don't know about how muscle growth works, but there's a couple of things we do know: to build muscle we need two things: caloric surplus and appropriate muscular stimulation to force an adaptation. In this case, that adaptation means laying down new muscle fiber and so getting some muscle growth. Muscle growth also pretty much requires eating more rather than less: we want more body mass - in these case muscle tissue - the resources for that tissue have to come from somewhere. For us, that's the right nutrients - i.e. food.
Muscle in Two Parts:
That said, here's a factoid from Christian Thibaudeau's excellent and recommended discussion of mass building: with someone (read male in this case) totally committed to muscle building, getting diet and workouts just so, the range of muscle building to expect is .25 to .5lbs of *dry* muscle per week. In the real world that non-fat weight would show up with an additional 40% from additional water/gylcogen. So ten pounds of muscle shows up more like 14lbs on the scale. But whether 10 or 14 pounds of fat free mass let's call it, at .5+ pounds a week, 2 pounds a month, that also means five to ten perfect months to get that 14 pounds.
Here's another factoid from that article - a person sitting at say 120lbs of lean mass (weight minus fat) would need to eat 2440 calories a day to start growing mass with those optimized workouts.
Even before we get to the type of workouts, a basic question we might ask is, is the diet in the program one of caloric surplus or caloric deficit? So whether you gain muscle on P90X or not will largely depend on how much of a caloric deficit - or not - you're in during the program. That discussion is below.
Generally, P90X aims to have a person in caloric deficit - without which fat loss will not occur. Period. So here's a potential contradiction, not unique to P90X, but certainly rather brushed under the carpet in this case: if muscle mass building requires caloric surplus, but the program keeps someone in caloric deficit throughout, how can muscle be built? This isn't a Zen Koan. The inverse may help: if one is eating enough for muscle building, what kind of caloric deficit is going on and what kind of fat loss is occurring?
Another question: if P90X runs a person into caloric deficit, how explain those before and after pictures that *seem* to show more muscle mass at the end of 90 days?We'll come back to these questions. First, let's look at how we might understand what kinds of muscular adaptations P90X promotes.
Kind of Strength Foregrounds Kind of Muscle
Another part of the muscle building adaptation is type of load, rest, volume and recovery. As we said above, to get new muscle fibers to be laid down, there has to be a demand for that kind of growth. As we saw in part 1, also, the type of adaptation in the first 8 - 12 weeks of a resistance program for a neophyte is mainly neurological. That means muscle that already exists is learning how to support the loads. Only once the challenge goes beyond that initial adaptation, effectively, does new muscle get laid down IF the challenge requires that adaptation. Does P90X require that hypertrophy adaptation?
o P90X: endurance training disguised with weights.
In the P90X program, 3 out of the 6 days a week are "resistance" oriented workouts (the other three are "cardio" oriented). But what kind of resistance training are we talking about? Turns out they're something known as circuits.
Circuits in general are usually about putting several exercises together, doing one set of each exercise with little rest between moves. The weights used in each of these sets has to be sufficiently light to be able to move between exercises with limited rest.
Indeed, in P90X resistance workouts, the rep ranges are anywhere from 7 to 12. The only instruction on how to pick a weight is so that one will "feel the burn" in the last couple of reps.
Based on the above template, we get the following in the resistance routines: 20+ minute circuits, 1 set per move, mid to high reps, critically: no rest between sets. At most, there is 60 seconds active recovery between circuits 2-3 circuits.
We've said these workouts are circuits but when rest between sets is taken out of the equation for this kind of period, we're looking at endurance or stamina training rather than muscular strength.
Let's look at how "strong" is used as a term in P90X. "Stronger" throughout the P90X program is largely defined by being able to endure, keep up, do as many reps of a move as Horton and Co perform with as little rest as possible over the course of the hour. That's endurance strength. The adaptations developed in the muscles are mainly aerobic in nature, which means that the muscles get,
Foundational. Basic. Upping oxidative capacity. Not building mass, but improving the muscle's capacity to use oxygen which means greater work capacity for longer. That sounds great for health but doesn't sound like a "getting ripped" program, though, does it? And saying that, are circuits the best way to build this capacity?
Here's an assessment of the kinds of circuits P90X uses for training:
The above Goal 3 Sounds like P90X's "resistnace" workouts (and all the other P90X workouts, too, for that matter). That latter point then is as close as P90X comes to having an effect, and it's not strength per se or muscle building. It's endurance: keep the movement going to keep the heart rate up for periods longer than 4 minutes; improve oxidative capacity (ability to burn fat).
Recap on P90X Circuits
SO what have we learned? Circuits are, at best, novice routines, or for sick or rehabbing, or obese. THis doesn't sound like the deconditioned x-jock population P90X is supposedly targeting. So, P90X, as point 3 above, has tuned the workouts for what? Fat burning. Not muscle building.
Our question at this point might be, are these kinds of circuits the best way to burn fat for a deconditioned jock AND add "lean muscle" that the diet guide says will make up for not seeing much of a change on the scale?
Consider this: in a 24 week program study designed specifically to look at the effects of single set style circuit training vs periodized multi-set program, the lean mass changes for women were 2% lean mass gain over that 6 month period vs 8% gain with the alternative protocol. Likewise percentage body fat went down by 10% in 6 months (eg, someone at 24% went to 21.6%) vs 25% with the alternative protocol (that 24% person wend to 18%).
So, these workouts are *mainly* fat burners/endurance builders, and don't seem to be necessarily the best approach to optimize fat burning or lean mass building. In part 3 we'll look at some of these alternatives in more detail.
Aside: P90X+ Let me cue up here that the P90X+ program is very similar in kind to P90X: 5 more P90X style workouts, but with fewer people on the set. These workouts are to mix into P90X. So one effectively re-does P90X, swapping out some P90X routines for the new ones. So, once more into the breach: more circuits, more little rest between moves. So, effectively, more of the P90X endurance same.
P90X - resisting muscle growth?
We now have a sense of what it takes to build muscle: caloric surplus - we need more to build more; and we need specific types of load/recovery/volume for muscles to grow. In looking at P90X, we see that the type of strength it's geared to building is endurance, not hypertrophy. The muscular adaptations are around fuel consumption - better oxidative/fat burning capacity - rather than mass building.
In sum, based on their design, P90X workouts - including the "resistance" workouts - are circuits, tuned for fat burning rather than muscle building.
Questions a person considering P90X might have at this point are therefore
Another question might be "but what about getting ripped? doesn't P90X deliver at least on that?"
At the top of this article we looked at getting ripped as body fat percentage first and muscle growth second. Ok, it's not delivering on muscle growth per se, so time to look at the diet side of P90X and we'll come back to its fat burning disguised as resistance training.
o The simple formula for a 6 pack? Body Fat Percentage
While i don't think he coined the term, colleague Rannoch Donald of Simple Strength may often be heard to say "there are no secrets." So here's a big non-secret to 6 pack abs: body fat percentage.
What P90X does not come out and say ever, anywhere, is that for a guy to begin to see his abs, he has to be at about 10% BF (in my experience of the guys i've worked with, it's actually below 10%); for gals, we have to be at about 15% or less. It's really that simple.
I wish i had known this at the time i was doing P90X. Rather than focusing on dropping 10 pounds, i might have looked into how feasible/healthy it would be to drop 10% body fat in 90 days, and how to optimize that. That *might* have helped me figure out right there if Kenpo-X and Plyo-X were the best ways to achieve that goal, or if maybe looking into diet-x might have been more profitable.
Indeed, what more and more research shows is that the only way to get to that ripped level BF% is calorie restriction. Calorie restriction (ie, diet) comes first; exercise is second. P90X of course doesn't say this fact either. It's selling "muscle confusion" first; nutrition way second.
o P90X Diet Math
This is not to say that PN doesn't get diet. PN has a diet book. And it's a corker.
What the Nutrition Plan for P90X says about the role of nutrition in getting ripped is as follows:
Please let me note again that one can gain lean mass while in caloric deficit. It's just not a lot. If one is gaining .25 lbs by eating for gain, and working out for muscular growth, how much fiber can be built when eating for loss and doing endurance not hypertrophy workouts? It's a real challenge.
So what's the P90X diet advice?
IT's amazing. Every 4 weeks, the macronutrient ratio changes - to match the demands of this incredible program:
Phase I: Fat Shredder - Days 1-28
Phase II: Energy Booster - Days 29-56
Phase III: Endurance Maximizer - Days 57-90
The above phases map to the following macronutrient ratios:
Macronutrient Goals in Each Phase
Phase I - Protein 50%, Carbs 30%, Fat 20%
Phase II - Protein 40%, Carbs 40%, Fat 20%
Phase III - Protein 20%, Carbs 60%, Fat 20%
How are these ratios achieved? By one of two ways: either follow the portion suggestions of how many portions of each type of macro nutrient to have, or by following the meal plans so even less to think about. Just eat exactly what it in the book, when it says to eat it.
Indeed, the portion approach is not unique to P90X but it is complex: Have X portions from the Protein group; Y portions from the Carbs and Z from fats.
This number of portions approach is to help avoid calorie counting. But the result also means that there are only three "sizes" of menu to fit everyone. Not exactly optimized for fat loss. Consider the following.
Calories Per Day - Three Sizes fits All
Here's how a person determines how many calories they're going to eat a day - what their Total X+Y+Z portions will equal.
Nutrition Level Chart
EA = 1800-2399 = Level I 1800 calories per day
EA = 2400-2999 = Level II 2400 calories per day
EA = 3000+ = Level III 3000 calories per day
Who is losing anything here and by how much? Hmm. This means someone who requires 2399 calories for maintenance in Level 1 will suddenly be on a 600 calorie a day deficit. In 6 days of workouts, that's 3600 calories - a little better than a fat pound. Someone who's closer to 1800 cals for maintenance will be losing far less in that week. Maybe nothing following this meal plan. And indeed, there's a real potential Achilles heal to this approach. IT's how one's Level is calculated: it assumes that ALL P90X workouts burn 600 calories.
Let's look quickly at how one figures out their energy level.
Determining Your Nutrition Level
1. Calculate your RMR
Your Body Weight x 10 = RMR
2. Calculate your Daily Activity Burn
RMR x 20% = DAB
3. Calculate your Energy Amount
RMR + DAB +600 CALS for p90x workouts = EA
Now, RMR stands for resting metabolic rate, and i have yet to find anywhere where it is simplified to body weight times 10, since it regularly takes into account height and other constants, etc, but let's set that aside and just go with this formula.
Here's an example:
1. a 140 lb gal of unknown height has an "RMR" of 1400
2. 20% is 280
3. 1400 + 280 + 600 = 2280 calories.
So that puts the person in EA of Level 1, 1800 calories a day. That would be, all things being equal, a 480 calorie a day deficit, which over 6 days, is 2880 calories, not quite a pound.
A gal at 130 is also in EA Level 1, and also told to eat 1800 calories, and that's only
1300+260+600= 2160, a difference of 360 cals a day, which in 6 days is 2160 - even further away from a pound a week.
A smaller gal at 120, 1200+240+600 = 2040 calories now at 1800, is eating only a 200 calorie a day deficit.
That's 1200 in a week, three weeks to lose a pound.
And that's IF those workouts are really 600kcals a piece. They are not. Or let's put it this way: it depends. Yoga X at about 80-90 mins is 200 calories; Kenpo-X, at 45 mins, is maybe 275 - 435. If you're totally "bringing it" maybe a bit more. So your heart rate is pushing it's aerobic envelop.
This math begins to explain the 6 pounds total i took off during my religious observation of P90X doubles - where i was keenly going for 600 cals a day from double workouts.
Special Case:
If someone is in the EA Level 3 of "3000+" of course potentially coming down from say 4250 a day to 3000, the possibility is that, all things being equal, one will be losing 2.5 ish pounds a week, 30 pounds over the 12 weeks.
o Body Fat X
P90X says that weight of course is "relatively meaningless" since a better measure is body fat percentage. Why? P90X doesn't explain in this guide why body fat percentage is more important than what's on the scale. We're simply told body fat % is the measure of progress.
So how does P90X use body fat %?
In the "relatively meaningless" way one uses weight? that it goes down? That's pretty much it. With one sweetener. It provides three body fat ranges for folks to feel really successful after completing the program:
But there's no correlation between Body Fat % and ripped. It does not come out and say that unless you hit that "Elite Athlete" bf% range, you will not be seeing that 6 pack. It's that simple.
BF% - supposedly important to P90X, but based on who and what army? A few questions a person may have at this point about a program claiming that bf% change is critical may be:
Other than just maybe/maybe not caloric restriction, the P90X diet guide seems to reflect Nutrition Confusion, perhaps to match the exercise program's muscle confusion, discussed in part 1. Over the course of 12 weeks, as said, the macronutrient ratio of the program changes 3 times. There are arguments in the data about why a person would want to start with higher protein and lower carbs and then by the end of the program invert this, but not really.
Here, the idea seems to be (it's not explicit), is that to kick starting the diet, bringing up protein and reducing carbs, will fire up fat loss. Hmm. But after that first month, because people will have been working so hard, they'll need to keep brining up the carb level to have the energy to survive it. There's a few notices about extending a given phase if one wishes, but the guidance is pretty much stick to the plan, stan.
Haven't seen the studies to support this kind of short term mix-it-up. Nutrition is complex. But a higher level fact we do have the resources to say is that fat loss happens with caloric deficit. Is that really achieved in the P90X diet plan?
And let's look at those figures again: the predicted weight loss on this program is 6-12 pounds. A half pound to a full pound a week. That's it. Unless you're in the 3000+ a day with a serious + a day. Honey, i can get you on a diet tomorrow with NO exercise involved that will guarantee to meet or double those numbers. No sweat. Literally. So what is someone doing on P90X if the goal is to get lean, to "get ripped"?
o Is What's on the Label What's in the Tin? Is this a Getting Ripped Diet?
P90X promises "getting ripped" as part of its objective.
If we can accept the premise that caloric deficit is required to reduce fat in order to see one's 6 pack, a key part of the "getting ripped" concept, we have to ask if P90X will really deliver this result?
Based on looking at the differences in caloric deficits to be achieved of just a few points of the Level I scale, for instance, it's pretty clear that the amount of caloric deficit to be achieved in following this program is likely to be highly variable, and likely at most about a pound a week for the people at the outside of the Level, and likely considerably less given that the caloric burn calculated for each workout is exaggerated.
Who will get Ripped on P90X?
Knowing that we need to get to a low body fat % to get the "get ripped" look, and knowing how much caloric deficit we need to burn FAT (as opposed to just lose weight), and knowing that there's such variation of caloric deficit with P90X and that at the most it's calculated to drop about a pound a week of fat for anyone who starts at eating 2999kcals a day, AT BEST, what does this tell us about the likelihood of getting ripped on P90X?
IF all the person needs to lose is 6-12 pounds to achieve the ripeed body fat percentage, then it's possible to get to the Ripped Place in the 90 days.
Otherwise, how can it happen?
Now, we know that *if* one gains lean mass and doesn't lose ANY body fat, their BF% goes down. True enough. But how much lean mass can one reasonably gain in 12 weeks with P90X such that it will effectively overwhelm X% of fat? So let's just put that one to bed.
Effectively, unless you're already close to that goal percentage can P90X deliver "ripped" or just the "getting" part of getting ripped?
And if the best it can deliver for the majority is the "getting" towards ripped, again, a person might ask, is P90X the best way to do it?
o Those Before and After Pictures
Given everything we've looked at above, let's come back to a few of those before and after pictures.
For Women, let's take Amanda for example.
We don't know her stats. That is we don't know her starting BF% or her final one, but what's changed in this photo? What don't we see? A six pack. The abs are angled. Is there less fat? yes. Is there more definition. Yes. Does it look like she's lost more than the 6-12 pounds? No. Has anything else, beside the expression on her face, and the sucking in of the gut changed visibly? No.
Then there is KatieV. Again, what's changed?
IS katie sucking in her gut in the day 1 photo? How about on day 90? Is she already pretty lean? Look at the waist circumference at the hips. Much change? So while the photo looks really cool, the *actual* change is not incredible. And since the arms haven't seemed to have changed, i'm guessing weight loss, a good base of fitness already, and with three days a week of endurance abs on top of all the rest of the workouts, the abs will show. Congratulations! This participant hit the sweet spot.
Is this result what any gal who passes the P90X fit test can expect? As we've seen, realistically, that would depend on a number of factors, particularly starting BF% and realistic expectation of caloric deficit over the 12 weeks. If one starts at 24% bodyfat, will P90X take a person to 14%? No. Remember in the research above 6 months of a slightly more intense workout regimen than P90X net 2% lean mass improvement, 10% bf% reduction. That's 21.4% in 24 weeks, not 12.
And with the guys?
What about their before and after photos?
Really look at the photos. From angle, to lighting, to mass, what's going on? Mainly body fat changes?
Without having access to the actual measurements from before an after we don't really have anything concrete to go on about the degree of change. What we can see is that most of the guys posted as P90X success stories already have some muscular definition in their before shots, even though pose and lighting is not optimized to show this before aspect. Look at the second gentleman in the picture above. He's plainly experienced at workouts and is already at a lower body fat %; he will likely be building lean mass out of the gate, and trimming body fat by the little he needs for the lighting in the after photo to create an effect. Nice lat flare.
The above photo crit is not to take away from anyone's accomplishments on P90X, but to put the results - and expected results - in context, and to look at these photos with a greater reality lens, based on the little detail we actually have.
Not that there aren't some rather wild whoppers on the P90x site.
"Lost 30% body fat" sounds fabulous in this picture, doesn't it? But let's put it in context. We can see some of DavidC's abs - so there's a fat level of 10% or a bit less. That means that a guy who is already skinny, as he seems to be - say at 12% minus 30% of that = 8.4 percent. Definitely in ab-seeing zone. That seems like a very high result to me for someone who's already skinny, but let's take it as true. The point is that he begins the program already close to a Ripped bf%. All the guys in the success stories seem to do so. Well they have to, don't they?
So what's going on with his shoulders that do look bigger? Gotta love all those pull ups.
As we've seen, based on what we know about muscle building, it usually requires caloric surplus AND it requires a program designed to facilitate muscle building adaptation and P90X is mainly an endurance program with a wee bit of hypertrophy-oriented training thrown in.
Since what we see is mainly in the shoulder and arms, and some fat off the waist, well, the diet might also just be at that right place where the caloric deficit was minimal to support muscular growth from the most repeated moves in the "resistance" section: pull ups and push ups (we'll come back to this in part 3). Again, well done. Unusual, but well done. Why do we so rarely see people's legs in these shots, hmm?
In general, what we do know, when we really look at these photos is that we are not seeing people make super weight loss changes OR muscle mass changes. These are relatively close to lean people, getting more lean.
Another question might be: if one is in this happy position of being within sight of lean-ness, is P90x the best way to get there?
o Summing Up: P90X and getting Ripped.
If we start with the simple premise that the main ingredient of of "getting ripped" - signified by 6 pack abs - is first to achieve a particular bodyfat% and second to have some hypertrophy of muscles to show through the skin, then we can assess P90X.
We've seen that P90X is *primarily* a circuit training program that's been tuned for fat burning, not hypertrophy - even it's Ab Ripper X program is endurance rather than hypertrophy. As such, despite the X and extreme labels, P90X workouts are conservative: rehab, novice, obese friendly. Surprising, isn't it? The very stuff of fat fit boot camps.
We've also seen that its diet plan is *very* conservative in terms of weight loss. 6-12 pounds total in 12 weeks.
Thus, we might ask,
To the first question we already have the answer: people already close to that target body fat percentage.
To the second question, we've already had some sense that P90X may not be the best way to get the results in promises. Part three will look at alternatives, which will include nutrition alternatives, as the short answer is yes, there are other what one may even call more balanced alternatives to P90X.
To the third question, well, answer two does here as well.
So what do we have?
Program assessments:
My hope is that with the above information, folks are better able not only to assess the claims and supposed results of P90X with a critical eye, but ANY workout program.
So, next time an infomercial promises you'll lose fat in just a few weeks and it's promoting a device or an exercise routine, look at where the diet plan is hiding. It's usually something like "combined with diet and rest" or something similar.
If the device or program promises muscle gains, again, look for the diet plan AND look at the type of routines being promoted. Are they hypertophy inducing, strength and power or are they, like P90X, safe, novice, fat burners, dressed up as hypertrophy or strength or power?
o Alternatives?
At the end of the day, while P90X is fine for what it is - a novice boot camp type endurance/foundation workout - it's a 12 week program. It's a package that uses bells and whistles around marketing illusions like muscle confusion, nutrition confusion, lots of moves, lots of workouts, and lots of diet changes. It seems it's got all these components to keep us busy, entertained, and hooked enough to buy the product: there's a lot of stuff in here; it must be great.
And then if we actually use the program (most people buy health dvds and don't use them, apparently), that variety is there, perhaps not only to keep us engaged but again to think we must be doing something great to achieve our goals.
As we've seen however, P90X, despite all the hoopla, is actually a conservative program. Circuits are safe; the nutrition program is safe. No major changes; no law suits from health risks. Is it the optimla approach to achieve "getting ripped" - safely?
Let's put it this way, if after looking at what's on the label and comparing it with what's in the tin, and you decide you might not want to do P90X but you still want to get lean, add some muscle, get strong etc, you may want to consider some alternatives.
In part three, i'll go over a few examples of programs and approaches both for workouts (part 3b) and nutrition (part 3a let me know what you think of this one - i'm kinda happy about it) so again, a person looking for an approach will have more information with which to assess whether a program is right for them.
See ya next time.
Related Posts:
The following therefore is more or less a worked example of applying/deriving this assessment via a critique of P90x - a program billed as an "extreme" workout (+ diet) specifically designed for practitioners to 'get ripped.' It's pretty detailed, so long. It looks at the exercise program first and then the nutrition program in the context of its promised results.
ContextIn Part 1 of this reflection/critique of P90x we looked at the core P90x concept of "muscle confusion". We also poked at the rationale behind a few of the "bring it" program's routines within this "muscle confusion" context. The conclusion was, based on what's known about physiological adaptations that occur in a 12 week program by novices/deconditioned athletes - P90X's target market - muscle confusion is basically a marketing gimmick.
In this second of this three part series, i'd like to look at the concept of "getting ripped" that is a key part of the P90X delivery promise.
In Part 3 we'll look at alternatives to the two core parts of P90X, but in the right order (a) diet (from places one doesn't usually think about diet - it's not just about the food) and (b) workout practices (they're both practices)
As i said in part 1 and will say so again here, there's nothing wrong with anyone wanting to do - or actually doing - P90X or similar- the routines are "not considered harmful," to draw on a computer science trope (at least not too harmful - we'll see more in part 3b).
What we might ask about P90X is does it deliver what's on the tin? Will anyone who passes the P90X fit test and is therefore deemed "ready" to do P90X "get ripped"? - and in P90X's definition, that pretty much means, at a minimum, have a six pack.
P90X suggests that if you follow it's program, you will be "transformed" from "regular to ripped" in 90 days. That's its formula: do the workouts; follow the diet. So we're going to look at each part of that formula against some objective criteria for ripped-ness.
Basic necessities of Getting Ripped by which to assess P90X capacity to deliver:
There are fortunately only two things involved in getting ripped, level of importance listed here:
- bodyfat percentage - known bf% level for being able to see muscle definition
- muscle density/mass - what will be seen beneath the skin once at that bf%
RECIPE/FORMULA ASIDE for 6 Pack
If you want to skip the rest of the article here's the recipe for 6 pack abs:
- Get a diet that will get you below 10% body fat if a guy and below 15% if you're a gal. See part 3a for nutrition approach suggestions
- Do either this abs hypertrophy routine as prescribed, or get this book, bullet proof abs, and do its routines. Both have been tested. But NOTHING will show without getting down to that bodyfat %.
As to why this is the recipe, well that's in the rest of this article.
Results from this article:
- Based on this assessment criteria, at the end of this article a person will have some tools with which to assess the claims of an exercise / diet program to deliver the promised results.
- With these tools the person will be able to make an informed choice about whether that program suits their goals.
First, there are tons of 12 week programs out there, all promising grand things. Where do we get our information about what works in these programs? Usually from the programs themselves. But we saw in the first part of this series that P90X's key concept "muscle confusion" is more marketing than fact, especially in the context of deconditioned or novice trainees. So are the before and after shots for P90X's amazing transformations that seem to be portrayed also a gimmick? How can we make this assessment.
Second, i'm guessing that folks who choose to do P90X or other 12 week transformations may know about as much about how fat loss and hypertrophy really work as i did when i started the program: less than i thought i did, and so pretty accepting of the way P90X presents each of these: exercise first, diet second, bf% is just a measure of progress.
The reality, as we'll see, is very much different: diet has to be first, exercise is second and bf% is, in the context of "getting ripped" a very specific target, and one that can be reasonably calculated to determine the length and intensity of a program to deliver desired results.
So to begin, let's begin with where P90X puts its energy first: exercise.
o Muscle Building Very Basic Basics.
P90X doesn't come out and say that it's a muscle building program - and that's good, cuz it's not (more on that in a moment) - but most of us think that the term "getting ripped" implies building muscle.Likewise, those men's before and after pictures in P90X (like the ones fo JonC, left) seem to imply that muscle mass will accompany the program. Hmm.
There's a lot we don't know about how muscle growth works, but there's a couple of things we do know: to build muscle we need two things: caloric surplus and appropriate muscular stimulation to force an adaptation. In this case, that adaptation means laying down new muscle fiber and so getting some muscle growth. Muscle growth also pretty much requires eating more rather than less: we want more body mass - in these case muscle tissue - the resources for that tissue have to come from somewhere. For us, that's the right nutrients - i.e. food.
Muscle in Two Parts:
- We create a demand for adaptation (more myofibrils) by the right type of stimulus: hypertrophy inducing effort.
- We then need to provide the the building blocks to support the adaptation.
- we can eat all we want to support muscular adaptation, but if we're not pushing our muscles appropriately to adapt, then they have no reason to change (grow/get bigger). The result is we'd just get fat.
- The converse is also true: even with the best hypertrophy program going, if we're not providing the right material to feed the growth, muscle building will be stymied.
That said, here's a factoid from Christian Thibaudeau's excellent and recommended discussion of mass building: with someone (read male in this case) totally committed to muscle building, getting diet and workouts just so, the range of muscle building to expect is .25 to .5lbs of *dry* muscle per week. In the real world that non-fat weight would show up with an additional 40% from additional water/gylcogen. So ten pounds of muscle shows up more like 14lbs on the scale. But whether 10 or 14 pounds of fat free mass let's call it, at .5+ pounds a week, 2 pounds a month, that also means five to ten perfect months to get that 14 pounds.
Here's another factoid from that article - a person sitting at say 120lbs of lean mass (weight minus fat) would need to eat 2440 calories a day to start growing mass with those optimized workouts.
UPDATE Sept 28 '09 - Dustin in the comments below asks why does one have to be in caloric surplus? Let me bring the reply up here. First, read Thibadeau's article above with the reference to a construction analogy for how muscle gets built.Assuming that P90X was designed to promote muscle mass gains (it isn't), at the best, a normal guy would put on 3-6 lbs of muscle plus another 1-2 ish of water/glycogen. So 5-8'ish pounds. And that's in a program where one is eating to GAIN mass combined with workouts to produce mass. Is that P90X? No.
Again, a lot about muscle building is still being worked out, but there are some basics: doing sufficient work to cause hypertrophy of whatever kind means that muscle fiber is getting damaged - torn down in the body building lexicon. That damage triggers muscle cells to signal to related cells to say we need to expand the capacity of some of these muscle fibers cuz they're being asked to do more. Without the right fuel in the system for that growth to happen, it doesn't happen. So let me continue Thibaudeau's analogy now:
Perhaps you just decide you want a bigger garage, so step 1, you knock down a wall of your garage (like what workouts do to muscle - they really do wreak havoc with muscle fibers). Now what? Perhaps that wasn't the best first step, but now you need more bricks (protein) and you need some funds (carbs) to hire workers and expertise to get the space rebuilt.
Turns out, perhaps without the best planning, you only have a set amount of bricks to do do the job - and you only have a set amount of cash right now to pay for the labour.
So effectively, you're short on cash and your short on bricks, so your project manager says "this is the best i can do" and rebuilds the wall more or less to its former level and gives you a bit more room at one end of the shed with clever use of storage and a few extra bricks it was able to scrounge.
Please NOTE. I'm not saying one can't build SOME muscle in caloric deficit. I'm saying it's NOT OPTIMAL. All things being equal it is sometimes possible to build lean mass when in a caloric deficit but it is really sub optimal.
Why should be clearer now: if our focus is to burn fat, we're going into caloric deficit, and our system is working to maintain energy levels and keep systems going. It's not going to have the resource to give over to a big construction job at the same time, when a lot of those resources that would in surplus be used for building are being used for maintenance and fuel.
Even before we get to the type of workouts, a basic question we might ask is, is the diet in the program one of caloric surplus or caloric deficit? So whether you gain muscle on P90X or not will largely depend on how much of a caloric deficit - or not - you're in during the program. That discussion is below.
Generally, P90X aims to have a person in caloric deficit - without which fat loss will not occur. Period. So here's a potential contradiction, not unique to P90X, but certainly rather brushed under the carpet in this case: if muscle mass building requires caloric surplus, but the program keeps someone in caloric deficit throughout, how can muscle be built? This isn't a Zen Koan. The inverse may help: if one is eating enough for muscle building, what kind of caloric deficit is going on and what kind of fat loss is occurring?
Another question: if P90X runs a person into caloric deficit, how explain those before and after pictures that *seem* to show more muscle mass at the end of 90 days?We'll come back to these questions. First, let's look at how we might understand what kinds of muscular adaptations P90X promotes.
Kind of Strength Foregrounds Kind of Muscle
Another part of the muscle building adaptation is type of load, rest, volume and recovery. As we said above, to get new muscle fibers to be laid down, there has to be a demand for that kind of growth. As we saw in part 1, also, the type of adaptation in the first 8 - 12 weeks of a resistance program for a neophyte is mainly neurological. That means muscle that already exists is learning how to support the loads. Only once the challenge goes beyond that initial adaptation, effectively, does new muscle get laid down IF the challenge requires that adaptation. Does P90X require that hypertrophy adaptation?
o P90X: endurance training disguised with weights.
In the P90X program, 3 out of the 6 days a week are "resistance" oriented workouts (the other three are "cardio" oriented). But what kind of resistance training are we talking about? Turns out they're something known as circuits.
Circuits in general are usually about putting several exercises together, doing one set of each exercise with little rest between moves. The weights used in each of these sets has to be sufficiently light to be able to move between exercises with limited rest.
Indeed, in P90X resistance workouts, the rep ranges are anywhere from 7 to 12. The only instruction on how to pick a weight is so that one will "feel the burn" in the last couple of reps.
Based on the above template, we get the following in the resistance routines: 20+ minute circuits, 1 set per move, mid to high reps, critically: no rest between sets. At most, there is 60 seconds active recovery between circuits 2-3 circuits.
We've said these workouts are circuits but when rest between sets is taken out of the equation for this kind of period, we're looking at endurance or stamina training rather than muscular strength.
Let's look at how "strong" is used as a term in P90X. "Stronger" throughout the P90X program is largely defined by being able to endure, keep up, do as many reps of a move as Horton and Co perform with as little rest as possible over the course of the hour. That's endurance strength. The adaptations developed in the muscles are mainly aerobic in nature, which means that the muscles get,
Endurance is an important capacity for an athlete - the ability to keep going in an activity is pretty critical. Indeed, for someone just starting out on an exercise program, endurance strength is often the first phase of a program that will eventually get to other kinds of strength, like hypertrophy, speed and power. It's foundational.
* Increased aerobic enzymes
* Increased mitochondrial density
* Increased capillaries
* More efficient contractions
* Possible changes in fiber type (e.g., fast twitch to slow twitch.
Foundational. Basic. Upping oxidative capacity. Not building mass, but improving the muscle's capacity to use oxygen which means greater work capacity for longer. That sounds great for health but doesn't sound like a "getting ripped" program, though, does it? And saying that, are circuits the best way to build this capacity?
Here's an assessment of the kinds of circuits P90X uses for training:
We can draw several conclusions from the analysis of groups of individuals who have participated in studies involving prescribed circuit training for a prolonged period of time.
* Circuit training is not optimal for increasing cardiovascular fitness when compared to High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
* Circuit training is not optimal for increasing cardiovascular fitness when compared to cardiovascular training when the heart rate is at the target heart rate
* Circuit training is not optimal for forcing anaerobic adaptation when compared to a strength training program
* Circuit training is not optimal for forcing aerobic adaptation when compared to an aerobic training program
* Circuit training is not optimal for increasing muscle size when compared to a hypertrophy-based training program
* Circuit training is not optimal for increasing strength when compared to HIIT or a regular resistance training program
* Circuit training is useful for burning additional calories and stimulating blood flow to the limbs
* Circuit training is useful for squeezing lots of exercise into a short time frame
In light of everything you just read, can anyone actually benefit from circuit training? The answer is yes, but obviously the benefits are not optimal for experienced athletes. Subgroups of trainees such as the elderly, young, rehabbing, novice, or obese athletes might do well circuit training optimized in the following ways:...
# Goal #3: burning calories and fat.
Since we are not able to burn fat unless we are working aerobically, most circuit training programs will not suffice unless each exercise is performed for a duration of at least 4 minutes. In this case we can only hope to burn calories, and possibly a little fat, by moving rapidly to each exercise station and maintaining a steady rhythm. Ultimately the client will be exercising not at, but close to, the anaerobic threshold.
The above Goal 3 Sounds like P90X's "resistnace" workouts (and all the other P90X workouts, too, for that matter). That latter point then is as close as P90X comes to having an effect, and it's not strength per se or muscle building. It's endurance: keep the movement going to keep the heart rate up for periods longer than 4 minutes; improve oxidative capacity (ability to burn fat).
Recap on P90X Circuits
SO what have we learned? Circuits are, at best, novice routines, or for sick or rehabbing, or obese. THis doesn't sound like the deconditioned x-jock population P90X is supposedly targeting. So, P90X, as point 3 above, has tuned the workouts for what? Fat burning. Not muscle building.
Our question at this point might be, are these kinds of circuits the best way to burn fat for a deconditioned jock AND add "lean muscle" that the diet guide says will make up for not seeing much of a change on the scale?
Consider this: in a 24 week program study designed specifically to look at the effects of single set style circuit training vs periodized multi-set program, the lean mass changes for women were 2% lean mass gain over that 6 month period vs 8% gain with the alternative protocol. Likewise percentage body fat went down by 10% in 6 months (eg, someone at 24% went to 21.6%) vs 25% with the alternative protocol (that 24% person wend to 18%).
So, these workouts are *mainly* fat burners/endurance builders, and don't seem to be necessarily the best approach to optimize fat burning or lean mass building. In part 3 we'll look at some of these alternatives in more detail.
Aside: P90X+ Let me cue up here that the P90X+ program is very similar in kind to P90X: 5 more P90X style workouts, but with fewer people on the set. These workouts are to mix into P90X. So one effectively re-does P90X, swapping out some P90X routines for the new ones. So, once more into the breach: more circuits, more little rest between moves. So, effectively, more of the P90X endurance same.
P90X - resisting muscle growth?
We now have a sense of what it takes to build muscle: caloric surplus - we need more to build more; and we need specific types of load/recovery/volume for muscles to grow. In looking at P90X, we see that the type of strength it's geared to building is endurance, not hypertrophy. The muscular adaptations are around fuel consumption - better oxidative/fat burning capacity - rather than mass building.
In sum, based on their design, P90X workouts - including the "resistance" workouts - are circuits, tuned for fat burning rather than muscle building.
Questions a person considering P90X might have at this point are therefore
- a) does the P90X workout focus on fat burning match one's goals?
- b) if so, is the P90X circuit approach the best way to achieve these goals?
Another question might be "but what about getting ripped? doesn't P90X deliver at least on that?"
At the top of this article we looked at getting ripped as body fat percentage first and muscle growth second. Ok, it's not delivering on muscle growth per se, so time to look at the diet side of P90X and we'll come back to its fat burning disguised as resistance training.
o The simple formula for a 6 pack? Body Fat Percentage
While i don't think he coined the term, colleague Rannoch Donald of Simple Strength may often be heard to say "there are no secrets." So here's a big non-secret to 6 pack abs: body fat percentage.
What P90X does not come out and say ever, anywhere, is that for a guy to begin to see his abs, he has to be at about 10% BF (in my experience of the guys i've worked with, it's actually below 10%); for gals, we have to be at about 15% or less. It's really that simple.
I wish i had known this at the time i was doing P90X. Rather than focusing on dropping 10 pounds, i might have looked into how feasible/healthy it would be to drop 10% body fat in 90 days, and how to optimize that. That *might* have helped me figure out right there if Kenpo-X and Plyo-X were the best ways to achieve that goal, or if maybe looking into diet-x might have been more profitable.
Indeed, what more and more research shows is that the only way to get to that ripped level BF% is calorie restriction. Calorie restriction (ie, diet) comes first; exercise is second. P90X of course doesn't say this fact either. It's selling "muscle confusion" first; nutrition way second.
o P90X Diet Math
This is not to say that PN doesn't get diet. PN has a diet book. And it's a corker.
What the Nutrition Plan for P90X says about the role of nutrition in getting ripped is as follows:
Why Diet Matters P90X® Nutrition Plan A large body of scientific evidence shows that diet and exercise work hand-in-hand to promote fitness and physical performance. One reason for this symbiotic relationship is the energy equation. When you expend more calories than you consume, you burn body fat (aka "stored energy") and build lean body mass—but because you need energy to exercise, every calorie you eat must be of the highest quality to get you over the hump.:Well, as we've seen, ya don't always build lean body mass just because you're burning more calories than you consume; and as we've seen, ya don't always build lean body mass when you're working out and reducing caloric intake, either. .25 - .5 pounds a week if EATING to gain that muscle.
Please let me note again that one can gain lean mass while in caloric deficit. It's just not a lot. If one is gaining .25 lbs by eating for gain, and working out for muscular growth, how much fiber can be built when eating for loss and doing endurance not hypertrophy workouts? It's a real challenge.
So what's the P90X diet advice?
IT's amazing. Every 4 weeks, the macronutrient ratio changes - to match the demands of this incredible program:
Phase I: Fat Shredder - Days 1-28
Phase II: Energy Booster - Days 29-56
Phase III: Endurance Maximizer - Days 57-90
The above phases map to the following macronutrient ratios:
Macronutrient Goals in Each Phase
Phase I - Protein 50%, Carbs 30%, Fat 20%
Phase II - Protein 40%, Carbs 40%, Fat 20%
Phase III - Protein 20%, Carbs 60%, Fat 20%
How are these ratios achieved? By one of two ways: either follow the portion suggestions of how many portions of each type of macro nutrient to have, or by following the meal plans so even less to think about. Just eat exactly what it in the book, when it says to eat it.
Indeed, the portion approach is not unique to P90X but it is complex: Have X portions from the Protein group; Y portions from the Carbs and Z from fats.
This number of portions approach is to help avoid calorie counting. But the result also means that there are only three "sizes" of menu to fit everyone. Not exactly optimized for fat loss. Consider the following.
Calories Per Day - Three Sizes fits All
Here's how a person determines how many calories they're going to eat a day - what their Total X+Y+Z portions will equal.
Nutrition Level Chart
EA = 1800-2399 = Level I 1800 calories per day
EA = 2400-2999 = Level II 2400 calories per day
EA = 3000+ = Level III 3000 calories per day
Who is losing anything here and by how much? Hmm. This means someone who requires 2399 calories for maintenance in Level 1 will suddenly be on a 600 calorie a day deficit. In 6 days of workouts, that's 3600 calories - a little better than a fat pound. Someone who's closer to 1800 cals for maintenance will be losing far less in that week. Maybe nothing following this meal plan. And indeed, there's a real potential Achilles heal to this approach. IT's how one's Level is calculated: it assumes that ALL P90X workouts burn 600 calories.
Let's look quickly at how one figures out their energy level.
Determining Your Nutrition Level
1. Calculate your RMR
Your Body Weight x 10 = RMR
2. Calculate your Daily Activity Burn
RMR x 20% = DAB
3. Calculate your Energy Amount
RMR + DAB +600 CALS for p90x workouts = EA
Now, RMR stands for resting metabolic rate, and i have yet to find anywhere where it is simplified to body weight times 10, since it regularly takes into account height and other constants, etc, but let's set that aside and just go with this formula.
Here's an example:
1. a 140 lb gal of unknown height has an "RMR" of 1400
2. 20% is 280
3. 1400 + 280 + 600 = 2280 calories.
So that puts the person in EA of Level 1, 1800 calories a day. That would be, all things being equal, a 480 calorie a day deficit, which over 6 days, is 2880 calories, not quite a pound.
A gal at 130 is also in EA Level 1, and also told to eat 1800 calories, and that's only
1300+260+600= 2160, a difference of 360 cals a day, which in 6 days is 2160 - even further away from a pound a week.
A smaller gal at 120, 1200+240+600 = 2040 calories now at 1800, is eating only a 200 calorie a day deficit.
That's 1200 in a week, three weeks to lose a pound.
And that's IF those workouts are really 600kcals a piece. They are not. Or let's put it this way: it depends. Yoga X at about 80-90 mins is 200 calories; Kenpo-X, at 45 mins, is maybe 275 - 435. If you're totally "bringing it" maybe a bit more. So your heart rate is pushing it's aerobic envelop.
This math begins to explain the 6 pounds total i took off during my religious observation of P90X doubles - where i was keenly going for 600 cals a day from double workouts.
Special Case:
If someone is in the EA Level 3 of "3000+" of course potentially coming down from say 4250 a day to 3000, the possibility is that, all things being equal, one will be losing 2.5 ish pounds a week, 30 pounds over the 12 weeks.
o Body Fat X
P90X says that weight of course is "relatively meaningless" since a better measure is body fat percentage. Why? P90X doesn't explain in this guide why body fat percentage is more important than what's on the scale. We're simply told body fat % is the measure of progress.
So how does P90X use body fat %?
In the "relatively meaningless" way one uses weight? that it goes down? That's pretty much it. With one sweetener. It provides three body fat ranges for folks to feel really successful after completing the program:
Fit, Athlete, Elite Athlete.Nice correlation implied: if you have a BF% at the third level, maybe you're an "elite athlete" (No question asked of course that if you have that BF% and you're not an elite athlete what else might you be?)
But there's no correlation between Body Fat % and ripped. It does not come out and say that unless you hit that "Elite Athlete" bf% range, you will not be seeing that 6 pack. It's that simple.
BF% - supposedly important to P90X, but based on who and what army? A few questions a person may have at this point about a program claiming that bf% change is critical may be:
- If body fat percentage is so important, and the meaningful way to measure progress, what are the expected body fat % changes on this program for men and women?
- IF it is that important why is it so cavalier about how to take these measures? The guides don't actually tell anyone how to do this - the closest it comes is to say "get a caliper"from their web site.
Other than just maybe/maybe not caloric restriction, the P90X diet guide seems to reflect Nutrition Confusion, perhaps to match the exercise program's muscle confusion, discussed in part 1. Over the course of 12 weeks, as said, the macronutrient ratio of the program changes 3 times. There are arguments in the data about why a person would want to start with higher protein and lower carbs and then by the end of the program invert this, but not really.
- Fact: we know that if you're in caloric deficit, you will lose weight.
- Fact: we know that in short term programs (8-12 weeks) that higher protein diets *throughout* the program tend to have slightly faster higher initial weight loss than other programs, but that after that period, loses level out.
Here, the idea seems to be (it's not explicit), is that to kick starting the diet, bringing up protein and reducing carbs, will fire up fat loss. Hmm. But after that first month, because people will have been working so hard, they'll need to keep brining up the carb level to have the energy to survive it. There's a few notices about extending a given phase if one wishes, but the guidance is pretty much stick to the plan, stan.
Haven't seen the studies to support this kind of short term mix-it-up. Nutrition is complex. But a higher level fact we do have the resources to say is that fat loss happens with caloric deficit. Is that really achieved in the P90X diet plan?
And let's look at those figures again: the predicted weight loss on this program is 6-12 pounds. A half pound to a full pound a week. That's it. Unless you're in the 3000+ a day with a serious + a day. Honey, i can get you on a diet tomorrow with NO exercise involved that will guarantee to meet or double those numbers. No sweat. Literally. So what is someone doing on P90X if the goal is to get lean, to "get ripped"?
o Is What's on the Label What's in the Tin? Is this a Getting Ripped Diet?
P90X promises "getting ripped" as part of its objective.
If we can accept the premise that caloric deficit is required to reduce fat in order to see one's 6 pack, a key part of the "getting ripped" concept, we have to ask if P90X will really deliver this result?
Based on looking at the differences in caloric deficits to be achieved of just a few points of the Level I scale, for instance, it's pretty clear that the amount of caloric deficit to be achieved in following this program is likely to be highly variable, and likely at most about a pound a week for the people at the outside of the Level, and likely considerably less given that the caloric burn calculated for each workout is exaggerated.
Who will get Ripped on P90X?
Knowing that we need to get to a low body fat % to get the "get ripped" look, and knowing how much caloric deficit we need to burn FAT (as opposed to just lose weight), and knowing that there's such variation of caloric deficit with P90X and that at the most it's calculated to drop about a pound a week of fat for anyone who starts at eating 2999kcals a day, AT BEST, what does this tell us about the likelihood of getting ripped on P90X?
IF all the person needs to lose is 6-12 pounds to achieve the ripeed body fat percentage, then it's possible to get to the Ripped Place in the 90 days.
Otherwise, how can it happen?
Now, we know that *if* one gains lean mass and doesn't lose ANY body fat, their BF% goes down. True enough. But how much lean mass can one reasonably gain in 12 weeks with P90X such that it will effectively overwhelm X% of fat? So let's just put that one to bed.
Effectively, unless you're already close to that goal percentage can P90X deliver "ripped" or just the "getting" part of getting ripped?
And if the best it can deliver for the majority is the "getting" towards ripped, again, a person might ask, is P90X the best way to do it?
o Those Before and After Pictures
Given everything we've looked at above, let's come back to a few of those before and after pictures.
For Women, let's take Amanda for example.
We don't know her stats. That is we don't know her starting BF% or her final one, but what's changed in this photo? What don't we see? A six pack. The abs are angled. Is there less fat? yes. Is there more definition. Yes. Does it look like she's lost more than the 6-12 pounds? No. Has anything else, beside the expression on her face, and the sucking in of the gut changed visibly? No.
Then there is KatieV. Again, what's changed?
IS katie sucking in her gut in the day 1 photo? How about on day 90? Is she already pretty lean? Look at the waist circumference at the hips. Much change? So while the photo looks really cool, the *actual* change is not incredible. And since the arms haven't seemed to have changed, i'm guessing weight loss, a good base of fitness already, and with three days a week of endurance abs on top of all the rest of the workouts, the abs will show. Congratulations! This participant hit the sweet spot.Is this result what any gal who passes the P90X fit test can expect? As we've seen, realistically, that would depend on a number of factors, particularly starting BF% and realistic expectation of caloric deficit over the 12 weeks. If one starts at 24% bodyfat, will P90X take a person to 14%? No. Remember in the research above 6 months of a slightly more intense workout regimen than P90X net 2% lean mass improvement, 10% bf% reduction. That's 21.4% in 24 weeks, not 12.
And with the guys?
What about their before and after photos?
Really look at the photos. From angle, to lighting, to mass, what's going on? Mainly body fat changes?
Without having access to the actual measurements from before an after we don't really have anything concrete to go on about the degree of change. What we can see is that most of the guys posted as P90X success stories already have some muscular definition in their before shots, even though pose and lighting is not optimized to show this before aspect. Look at the second gentleman in the picture above. He's plainly experienced at workouts and is already at a lower body fat %; he will likely be building lean mass out of the gate, and trimming body fat by the little he needs for the lighting in the after photo to create an effect. Nice lat flare.
The above photo crit is not to take away from anyone's accomplishments on P90X, but to put the results - and expected results - in context, and to look at these photos with a greater reality lens, based on the little detail we actually have.
Not that there aren't some rather wild whoppers on the P90x site.
"Lost 30% body fat" sounds fabulous in this picture, doesn't it? But let's put it in context. We can see some of DavidC's abs - so there's a fat level of 10% or a bit less. That means that a guy who is already skinny, as he seems to be - say at 12% minus 30% of that = 8.4 percent. Definitely in ab-seeing zone. That seems like a very high result to me for someone who's already skinny, but let's take it as true. The point is that he begins the program already close to a Ripped bf%. All the guys in the success stories seem to do so. Well they have to, don't they?
So what's going on with his shoulders that do look bigger? Gotta love all those pull ups.
As we've seen, based on what we know about muscle building, it usually requires caloric surplus AND it requires a program designed to facilitate muscle building adaptation and P90X is mainly an endurance program with a wee bit of hypertrophy-oriented training thrown in.
Since what we see is mainly in the shoulder and arms, and some fat off the waist, well, the diet might also just be at that right place where the caloric deficit was minimal to support muscular growth from the most repeated moves in the "resistance" section: pull ups and push ups (we'll come back to this in part 3). Again, well done. Unusual, but well done. Why do we so rarely see people's legs in these shots, hmm?
In general, what we do know, when we really look at these photos is that we are not seeing people make super weight loss changes OR muscle mass changes. These are relatively close to lean people, getting more lean.
Another question might be: if one is in this happy position of being within sight of lean-ness, is P90x the best way to get there?
o Summing Up: P90X and getting Ripped.
If we start with the simple premise that the main ingredient of of "getting ripped" - signified by 6 pack abs - is first to achieve a particular bodyfat% and second to have some hypertrophy of muscles to show through the skin, then we can assess P90X.
We've seen that P90X is *primarily* a circuit training program that's been tuned for fat burning, not hypertrophy - even it's Ab Ripper X program is endurance rather than hypertrophy. As such, despite the X and extreme labels, P90X workouts are conservative: rehab, novice, obese friendly. Surprising, isn't it? The very stuff of fat fit boot camps.
We've also seen that its diet plan is *very* conservative in terms of weight loss. 6-12 pounds total in 12 weeks.
Thus, we might ask,
- for whom is P90X likely to be a "get ripped" success story?
- is P90X the best way to achieve this result for this group?
- what are other people supposed to do who want to 'get ripped'
To the first question we already have the answer: people already close to that target body fat percentage.
To the second question, we've already had some sense that P90X may not be the best way to get the results in promises. Part three will look at alternatives, which will include nutrition alternatives, as the short answer is yes, there are other what one may even call more balanced alternatives to P90X.
To the third question, well, answer two does here as well.
So what do we have?
Program assessments:
- - Where is the Diet plan? what are its predicted deliverables?
- - how is progress measured?
- - what are the predicted changes in these measures over what period?
- - what kind of workouts/rest periods are being presented? - endurance/power/hypertrophy
- - what kind of transformations are predicted from these workouts? what are the measures?
My hope is that with the above information, folks are better able not only to assess the claims and supposed results of P90X with a critical eye, but ANY workout program.
So, next time an infomercial promises you'll lose fat in just a few weeks and it's promoting a device or an exercise routine, look at where the diet plan is hiding. It's usually something like "combined with diet and rest" or something similar.
If the device or program promises muscle gains, again, look for the diet plan AND look at the type of routines being promoted. Are they hypertophy inducing, strength and power or are they, like P90X, safe, novice, fat burners, dressed up as hypertrophy or strength or power?
o Alternatives?
At the end of the day, while P90X is fine for what it is - a novice boot camp type endurance/foundation workout - it's a 12 week program. It's a package that uses bells and whistles around marketing illusions like muscle confusion, nutrition confusion, lots of moves, lots of workouts, and lots of diet changes. It seems it's got all these components to keep us busy, entertained, and hooked enough to buy the product: there's a lot of stuff in here; it must be great.
And then if we actually use the program (most people buy health dvds and don't use them, apparently), that variety is there, perhaps not only to keep us engaged but again to think we must be doing something great to achieve our goals.
As we've seen however, P90X, despite all the hoopla, is actually a conservative program. Circuits are safe; the nutrition program is safe. No major changes; no law suits from health risks. Is it the optimla approach to achieve "getting ripped" - safely?
Let's put it this way, if after looking at what's on the label and comparing it with what's in the tin, and you decide you might not want to do P90X but you still want to get lean, add some muscle, get strong etc, you may want to consider some alternatives.
In part three, i'll go over a few examples of programs and approaches both for workouts (part 3b) and nutrition (part 3a let me know what you think of this one - i'm kinda happy about it) so again, a person looking for an approach will have more information with which to assess whether a program is right for them.
See ya next time.
Related Posts:
- P90X critique, part 1: "muscle confusion" real? yoga-x or plyo-x to be x'd out?
- P90X alternatives: part 3a: nutrition for fat burning, ripping and building
- p90X alternatives: part 3b: workout alternatives for time, variety of systems and quality
- MAKE PULL UPS FUN - rings review - they're a gas
- Athletic Bodies: what do athletes in different sports look like under their shirts?
- Cardio and Strength work: research showing they complement each other.
- Nutrition: ten habits for better eating (pdf download)
- perfect reps: not exactly a P90X concept - but huge benefit from thinking about each rep
- shorter workouts: six minutes to fitness part 1 and part 2
- help putting it together? - online training/nutrition consulting available with mc
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