P90X, High Expectations

Things have been excit­ing with my fam­ily as of late. My lit­tle niece is a per­fect lit­tle addi­tion to the fam­ily. I’ve been tak­ing the time to enjoy these great times with the fam­ily and as I said with my last update I’m tak­ing a bit of a break. I’ve been work­ing out lightly so I can main­tain the gains I’ve seen so far with P90X, but it’s nowhere near as intense as P90X. Life is slowly return­ing to nor­mal and I’ll be back to Bring It very soon. I’ve still got the drive and I’ll be shar­ing it again.

This break has also given me a chance to reflect on the progress I’ve made and what my goals are. I also saw a great arti­cle over on FITBOMB, from another P90X blog­ger. I asked myself, can I really “get ripped” in 90 days or are those expec­ta­tions too high?

Now, I’ve not hid­den the fact that I essen­tially gave up on P90X before. Well, given up may be too strong. Frus­trated and slack­ing may be bet­ter terms. Here’s a quick his­tory les­son, I bought P90X in August of 2008. At that time I hit the gym rou­tinely. I knew that I wasn’t in the best of shape, but thought I was in bet­ter shape than I really was a start­ing P90X showed me that very quickly. I strug­gled with many of the work­outs, but kept up as best as I could. But of course life got in the way and I also found excuses to cut cor­ners. Through the early part of this year, I blended some of my own work­out rou­tines with those in P90X.

It wasn’t until July that I had the drive again to go full board. I started the pro­gram about 50 pounds over my goal weight. Can some­one like that “get ripped” in 90 days? Prob­a­bly not. 180? 270 days? Maybe, probably.

Now have I seen improve­ments? Absolutely! Rou­tines like Ply­o­met­rics and Legs and Back don’t beat me up like they used to. They are still intense, but they don’t kill me. I’ve seen increases in the amount of reps I can do and the amount of weight I use. My strength and flex­i­bil­ity have sig­nif­i­cantly improved and I’ve lost over 20 pounds.

I’ve pre­vi­ously writ­ten about why I got frus­trated before and there are a few. I set very high goals for a short period of time. I didn’t see huge gains right away and failed to rec­og­nize the smaller wins. I had very high expectations.

For those just start­ing out, those on day 1 of P90X, it’s going to hard, it’s going to push you, and depend­ing on the shape you are in when you start, may take you longer than 90 days to reach your goals. For peo­ple like me, who try to get into shape and lose a good deal of body fat, 90 days may not be enough. I don’t work for Beach­body and I’m not one of their “Coaches”. I’m just one of their cus­tomers who also likes to share his expe­ri­ences with others.

But that won’t stop me from say­ing that P90X is the best work­out I’ve ever done. A few years ago I spent some money on a per­sonal trainer at the gym. It was a lit­tle pricey but I needed to shake things up and I def­i­nitely learned a few things. With­out a doubt, Tony Hor­ton has been the best trainer I’ve ever “worked” with.

It’s been a great ride so far with P90X and the jour­ney isn’t over yet.

Related Posts:

• P90X, Day 92 – X Stretch
• P90X, Day 79 – Plyometrics
• P90X, Day 72 – Plyometrics
• P90X, Days 64 – 70, Week 10
• P90X, Days 57 – 63, Week 9
• P90X, Days 43 – 49, Week 7
• P90X, Days 36 – 42, Week 6
• P90X, Day 30 – Back to Plyometrics