I’ve officially decided to recommend flipping phases one and two of P90X2 for most outdoor athletes. I also think you should practice some of the phase one workouts during your rest phase at the end of the season before you begin training.
My rationale is that it’s better to avoid doing a lot of sport-specific training when you’re gaining muscle and phase II targets hypertrophy. In a perfect world you’d do the phases in order but most cyclists, runners, and climbers are lucky to take a month away from their sports, and those are the ones who get paid. Recreational athletes—who play sports for fun—have a very hard time stepping away from their sports at all. Bringing phase II to the fore lessens the chance of overuse injury because sports-specific training should, at worst, be base fitness and nothing your body can’t handle while it’s gaining muscle.
Without further ado, here’s what I’m doing this off-season.
I 2 “practice weeks"
II Phase II for 4 weeks.
Auxiliary training will be hang board training also based on hypertrophy (details later). The bikes will stay out of sight and I’ll ski for fun and aerobic conditioning. I’ll attend the Ritte training camp at the end of January (get destroyed) and then move into...
Phase I for 3 weeks.
Auxiliary training will be climbing on my wall and other more intense climbing training and a few cycling sessions, mainly on the trainer, as well as skiing.
Phase III for 4 weeks.
Since this phase is so intense all other training will be based around how well I recover from the workouts. Hopefully I’ll be testing (again) some PAP training for climbing. I’d like to have a climbing peak in April/May as I’m also building my cycling fitness.
So that is the overview and, of course, it will change somewhat as it goes down as that’s what programs inevitably do. I’m excited about it. Base fitness was excellent last year and I’m thinking it’ll be even better in 2012.
pic: a preview of ritte's winter training camp.
7 comments:
Hi Steve,
X2 arrived in the mail yesterday -- unbelievably excited, although I wanna stick to this current round of P90X and jump into X2 thereafter.
However....I've heard so many great things about the Rumble Roller. I was wondering if you thought I could substitute X-Stretch from P90X with the recovery disc from X2. I just really wanna try the Roller out properly. But, if you think that, since the X-Stretch is tailored for P90X, I should just be patient and wait for X2 to start using the Roller, then I can wait another couple of months.
Thanks for all the info,
Chris
Break out the roller. I'd sub X2 Mobility for X Stretch anytime.
If you don't have the any type of roller. Which version would go with: the P90X stretch or the P90X2 stretch?
If you are doing Phase 2 first what do yo also recommend the Plan two nutrition level as well?
Sweet. I'm excited. I actually did break it out, and tried a few of the spots in the roller's manual. My initial thoughts were, "This hurts...but I wouldn't call it pain, or say that it feels bad..."
Not sure that makes sense. :)
Thanks for the advice!
These are great tips. Thanks for the post! I'm looking forward to my P90x2 arriving in the mail soon.
Great blogs
Have been doing the phase 1 of X2 (foundation) without modification (except for plyocide due to tibia stress fracture. I had been off of running for 8 weeks before starting. Recent MRI indicates it has not improved and may get a "boot" for 6 more weeks. Question is what modifications for x2 should I make (seems like maybe too many weight bearing and jumping moves for me to do) or should I just punt and go back to a round of regular X or the 1 on 1's that don't require as much "plyo".
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