Probably the most valuable thing I’ve learned in my long tenure at Beachbody is the importance of efficiency. As an athletic trainer it mattered but you always had leeway. Athletes want to win and care less about how much time and effort it takes to do it. Regular folks have more pressing matters than being fit and time is of the essence. Over the years we’ve gotten better and better at distilling the necessities for being fit into as little time as absolutely necessary. We have it down to a science, literally.
I love seeing articles like the one that popped up last week on Science Daily, showing how short exercise can be more effective than long exercise.
It not only validates where we do it makes it easier for us to “prove” our results on TV. It’s funny—not in a ha-ha way—that we often can’t cite our actual results from our test groups because they’re beyond what the authorities have deemed “possible”. The fact is, if you train smart you don’t need to spend hours a day in the gym in order to keep your body at peak fitness. Sure, you can be fit using that model, but in my experience I’ve found that most people, including athletes, train more than they should.
We've been using both HIT and SIT for years, so the word unique seems a little strange, but that's probably why we run into issues with the FTC and such. Even though it’s not always “accepted”, we’ve proven that if you’re willing to make healthy lifestyle changes we can change your body composition from obese to healthy in as little as 10 minutes a day. With a 30-45 minute investment you can be down right fit, and an hour a day 6 days per week can have you as fit as people who use their bodies to make their living.
Another fact is that most of your super fit friends train more than they should. As your human lab rat I’ll be the first to plead guilty. I’m quite sure I spent most of my prime athletic years in an somewhat-overtrained and undiagnosed state. I now workout far less than I once did and, yet, since I’m smarter, my fitness stays high enough that I can get into competition shape for many different sports with a only few weeks of sports specific training. While I can say that wish I knew this years ago, I'm happy just to be able to pass on the knowledge so that you don’t have to make the same mistakes I did.
Look for a follow-up post, with examples and more in-depth analysis, later this week...
I just got back from an easy morning run. It was slow, almost plodding, ended with a short stretching session, and in total took about 45 minutes. I did it because I need to shed a few pounds quickly and it’s the oldest trick in the book when it comes to fine tuning your weight loss.
I was reminding of this “trick” yesterday when my friend Ben brought up Dave Macleod using this tactic to get ready for his hardest routes. We used to run this tactic in college for track. As for climbing, before the most successful road trip of my life I’d tweaked a finger and had to back off on my training. Without the ability to train for strength I aimed instead for lighter (a roundabout way of getting stronger in gravity sports) by starting 3-4 days per week with 2-10 miles of easy aerobic-paced running. I ended up going into that trip 8 pounds lighter than my average weight, which increased my performance far more than any strength training could have hoped to.
Running in the morning before you eat helps improve your body’s use of fat for energy or, as Macleod puts it, “normally if I run I do it after the overnight fast to get into fat oxidation quicker”. A fasted state, while not optimal for hard training because you quickly run out of stored glycogen (or bonk, a point where your workout goes south quickly), is great for easy to moderate exercise because you can improve your body’s ability to tap into it’s “fat for fuel” process.
In general, light aerobic training has very little effect on your metabolic process. This is why you often hear trainers say things like “cardio only burns calories while you’re doing it where weight training burns calories all day long” and so forth. Aerobic training in a fasted state helps your training in two ways. It heightens your metabolism for a longer period of time than it normally would and it doesn’t break down much muscle tissue so you can utilize it during your hard training.
This is why when we recommend doubles programs one of your two workouts is always easier than the other. It’s not running that’s the magic pill here but aerobic training done in a fasted state. Running is efficient, since even easy running stresses the body more than most things, but any low-intensity exercise that raises your heart rate will work. For example, Cardio X was designed as the P90X doubles workout, which is why it’s much easier than everything else. If I don’t feel like going out, like I do right now because it’s raining so thankfully i'm already done, I’ll pop in a cardio vid instead.
vid: macleod on a 'run'. my runs are often similar. i don't generally (ever) solo 7B in my hiking boots but would guess well over half my runs are explorations that include a lot of off-trail rummaging around looking for rock, or whatever, which often includes technical climbing or, at least, scrambling over rock. you don't need to keep your heart rate at a steady state to get the effects of aerobic training. you just need to keep moving.
This is a great article for those who enjoy geeking out about fitness. For anyone interested in what I do for a living here’s a taste. I’m always evaluating the latest data and techniques looking for ideas we can incorporate into what we do. It’s from an elite climber and strength trainer Rob Miller and titled The Map of Athletic Performance.
Articles like this are what opens the door for training advancements. I can’t say that I learned anything new, exactly, but certainly helped my thought process. I mean, we’re all working off of the same science so new aspects about training tend to come from experience and trying to think outside the box. This is why breakthroughs in training rarely come from scientists and usually from athletes and trainers (Rob is both) who experiment outside of known templates--why we call exercise physiology an “applied science”. This is similar to what Charlie Francis was doing with runners and Paul Rogers is doing with cyclists.
Anyone interested in last week’s articles on customizing P90X should consider investing some time, so bookmark this article for reference. While techie, it summarized a lot junk you’re forced to learn in school and is much more fun to read than most text books. That’s because it stays focused on a subject, which is training for climbing, though its scope if far beyond that particular sport. The theories discussed here can be applied to any type of training.
I’m going to try and break this down a step further for the layman by adding notes and perspective on various sections. Miller begins with the climbing aspect and goes into the general exercise phys stuff later, which I’m reversing for readability in my analysis.
This is a great paragraph but it needs to be noted that Rob is a barbell trainer (how he makes his living). Of course that are others ways to accomplish this, but barbell training is his bread and butter. He knows it very well and can teach is safely, which everyone cannot do. He addresses that fact but he doesn’t explain that there are other ways to safely do compound lifts (he has no reason to) that are easier to learn.
This is a challenge faced by any athlete who practices many different sports (hence most weekend warriors). He’s specifically addressing Crossfit and its misguided emphasis when it comes to sports (he has a long history with CF’s founder, discussed at length) but the challenge he’s addressing—-efficient sports specific training to leave time for sports specific work—-is the meat of what all athletes are after.
He’s just defined the concept behind “muscle confusion” from P90X, which we’ve taken to a much deeper level in X2. What’s so important in this paragraph is that you can’t change your genetic potential but within your genetic make-up you can improve your capacity for improvement and efficiency. That is what any trainer’s goal is with an athlete, to maximize their genetic capacity for performance.
The single biggest challenge most of us face, especially when life (job, families, etc) enter the equation. Efficiency is king but, let’s face it, most of us would rather do what we enjoy. Sometimes, especially if you want to maximize your potential, you need to put that aside and make decisions about what is best for you to reach your goals and not just what you like to do.
Obviously, as a barbell coach, this is his opinion. Almost nothing you do with a barbell can’t be done using something else—-though a barbell can be very efficient. What he hasn’t addressed is the injury potential when doing his exercises, which is very high. His angle is that if you learn the moves right they are safe but he also states it took him many years of devoted study and training to do this. Thus...
What’s he’s saying is to take his camps or train differently. I can’t argue. If I can find the time I’ll take one of his camps. If not I’ll train differently. I’ve been around these lifts my entire life but have never devoted near the time Rob has to learning about them, even though...
Very true but he’s talking about elite athletes. The emphasis in their training has been moving this direction now for more than a decade. The exact point is discussed in the X2 guide when addressing why there is no “cardio” in that program.
This is a quick synopsis of a broad topic. In the article he provides a nice discussion of energy systems and how training them applies to everyone. It’s very important to understand that no matter what kind of sport you want to train for.
Interesting in that this is what the Spanish do, and they have the most strong climbers in the world, by far. They call it tranquillo y a muerte (you mostly relax but when you do climb it’s “to the death”) and, I think, many traveling Americans have trouble with such a small volume of climbing—-myself included (we’re on limited holiday time fer crissakes)—-but those who do embrace it generally improve.
This is key. Most of us waste a lot of time like this. It’s why you see people climbing for years and years and never really improving. Maybe they get slightly better when, say, they lose a few pounds for a redpoint but never by much. Focused systematic training out of your comfort zone is the only way to reach your body’s capacity for strength.
What he leaves out, which is important to less serious athletes (most of us) is that “junk miles” (or its sports equivalent) is important for season athletes as a way to condition the body when you haven’t practiced a sport in a while. Skin conditioning of the hands for climbers, feet for runners, and saddle area for cyclists are simple examples. Re-engaging neuromuscular patterns is another. This should not detract us from his main point, which is that creating a strong foundation of fitness minimizes our need for “junk” volume.
Great point, but are different stresses the climbing causes that should be addressed individually depending upon the type of climbing you do, which he gets into...
I think he’s underselling endurance. As any cyclist/triathlete knows it does take a while to bring all of your various “endurance” parameters up to speed. You improve by the week but it takes many weeks to have everything humming along perfectly.
However, his main point, that strength takes the longest to train (he means power or “absolutely strength” or muscular efficiency) is not only valid it’s the one essential key to improving performance even as an endurance athlete. It’s harder to train, takes both focus and specificity, and, mainly, to truly address it you must curtail your endurance training, which is a hard sell for most of us who are addicts, especially true of runners, cyclists, surfers, and climbers.
It’s really the key to the entire article: that we neglect full body strength training in favor of random volume. It’s not a coincidence that Francis and Rogers, who coached a stack of Olympic champions, were thinking along the same lines.
above: note no cyclists on the map. This is because those sports are hard to define this way. A road racer, for example, is an endurance athlete whose entire success is dependent on the anaerobic pathways, or the ability sprint or climb a hill at key points in an otherwise aerobic race. this means both areas must be trained with specific focus on the individual depending on the type of races they want to do well at.
This is a reference post for those looking to use P90X for specific purposes like sports, weight loss, or muscle gain. I also explain how to mix it with other workout programs, like Insanity. There’s a fair bit of reading here but it’s pretty straightforward and very condensed—essentially just the basics of periodizational sports specific training—and well worth your time if you want to tailor P90X to suit individual goals beyond just getting in shape.
The principles here are valid for P90X2 as well. Of course the schedules would change but all the other info is vital for understanding specific uses of these programs.
These are posted in order. If you’re confused skipping ahead, chances are your questions were answered earlier. If not, post a question on the Team Beachbody Message Boards and it will get to me.
Huge props to P90Xer David Akers for tying the NFL field goal record yesterday at 63 yards! Akers was one of the first professional athletes to claim that P90X improved his game. Five years later he’s transformed from a guy near the end of his career to knocking on the door at the Hall of Fame.
Here’s a great article from P3 on their pre-draft camp that doubles as a deep dive into the science behind P90X2. As you probably know, Dr. Marcus Elliott is a major player in X2’s development. Today you get a look at the kind of analysis and logic we used to create the program in P3’s post:
As training becomes more scientific analysis and application become more important. A look back at this program’s history outlines the framework of X2’s development:
Power 90 – The goal to get people moving and eating better. This is the crux for most of us, changing our lifestyle.
P90X – Takes it a step further by applying athletic training principles and methods to create a solid base of fitness.
P90X2 – Uses the latest findings in applying exercise science to improve human movement patterns, which not only creates athletes but reduces injury potential and creates a body that will age slower and function at a high level.
Of course with X2 we can’t do individual analysis you see here. But we use this analysis to find commonalities across the broadest demographics in order to create specific workouts. This is where and how it begins, by looking at human potential with open eyes and using a broad scientific template to improve areas that were once thought impossible to fix. It’s fascinating to see this process unfold, from the technical aspects:
Those of you into techie details are going to dig this, but it’s also a reminder of why you should keep working on difficult balance movements or go 100% on your complexes in PAP. All in all, it should help you realize that when you do P90X2 you’re in the rare company of those who use their bodies to make a living. And since we at Beachbody feel that living means a lot more than making money, access to this information becomes invaluable.
Body Beast, Beachbody’s new bodybuilding program, can be an effective part of a training program for people with many different goals. This is an excerpt from an article I’m working on for the Beachbody newsletter, which will cover all considerations for those who want to use Body Beast but don’t have an end goal of becoming a bodybuilder. Today’s post is to point out the major differences in Beast vs our other exercise programs so you’ll have a clearer idea of how to work it into your training. I'm posting this now to create some discussion about what you’d like to see covered in the larger article so it becomes go-to reference point for everything Beast.
Make Beast Its Own Training Block
The best way to use Beast is alone, as a phase targeting hypertrophy (muscle growth), in the scope of your larger program. You can also mix it in with workouts from other programs but this will end up diluting both Beast and the other program’s effectiveness. Here’s an explanation of why.
“Power and endurance. Ne’er the twain shall meet.” – Dr. Fred Hatfield, powerlifting champion and fitness trainer
What Dr. Hatfield is talking about is periodization. Physical components should be trained separately for best results when that is possible. There are many good reasons to combine them, mostly time efficiency, which is why almost every Beachbody program does it, but every time you mix a training style with another it detracts from the effect you could get by training one thing at a time. That compromise is acceptable for most of us, most of the time, but if gaining muscle is your priority you’ll be best served by utilizing the specificity Beast offers.
Beast is a mass program. By contrast P90X targets all areas of performance: anaerobic endurance, muscle cell motor unit recruitment, proprioceptive awareness, static strength, functional strength, stability, balance, aerobic efficiency, mobility as well as hypertrophy.
this is not insanity
While some of those other physiological components will likely improve during Beast as a by-product of daily exercise, it’s not the focus of the program. In P90X, as you know, you can gain muscle mass. But all that other training puts a limit on it. Beast’s more targeted schedule eliminates those “distractions” to hypertrophy, making it a better program for muscle building.
Therefore, when you want to gain some muscle size you’re best option is to do a phase or two of Beast by itself, targeting muscle growth, and then use your favorite program to bring the rest of your physiological parameters back up to speed...
To me, by far the most interesting storyline in this year’s Tour de France involves Bradley Wiggins. On the road he might be deemed a boring racer but when you lift the hood and see how’s he’s prepared for this year’s race it’s a fascinating story that brings back memories of creating P90X.
I’m inspired by training systems. Not just the day-to-day efforts that athletes use to prepare for events but the entire scope of training for a goal. During our P90X development Tony was generally focused on making the hardest and most creative workouts he could while I was strategizing how we’d integrate them into a system. A lot of how it came to fruition was stuff I’d learned from the Tour.
In fact, I have a memory intrinsically linking the two. While Tony was putting the hurt on the first 90X test group in LA I was in a hotel in France digging through data I’d been compiling from un-official test groups through our Message Board community attempting to do the opposite. I vividly recall a conversation with my colleague Isabelle, about stress tolerances of athletes vs lay people. We were both in Europe on different agendas but each had Beachbody projects foremost on our minds. She was there working with some Olympic athletes in Italy, but also had a program she was working on for us. I was there for the Tour, to witness Lance Armstrong attempt tp re-write history while trying to create a fitness program that might do the same.
Armstrong won his Tours by forever alerting the template cyclists used to train. Instead of logging thousands and kilometers and then racing into shape, his team devised a periodizational training plan focused around one big peak, the Tour de France. In his mind, no other race really mattered.
This is exactly what we were trying to do with P90X, alter the template for home fitness. Instead of making another sweat-fest cardio program, the idea was to systematically break down your body and build it back up over time, targeting all of your physiological factors in one program. On this balmy night in Grenoble my challenge was how to modify the training system we’d created for the broadest demographic. This required some hedging on the tolerance levels of regular folks vs athletes to accommodate the greatest number of people without injuring or overtraining them.
iconic climbs/iconic no helmet fashion
The results of that trip were that Armstrong made history, I wrote a couple of articles on the Tour, cancellation of Isabelle’s proposed Beachbody program leading to her wedding our CEO, and P90X Lean. All of which comes full circle around a guy called Wiggo.
Maybe he’s the P90X2 of cycling. Riffing off of Armstrong’s template only took Wiggins to the podium of a grand tour. Not satisfied, he’s re-shuffled the deck of cyclist training card with an audacious new plan using a coach with a swimming background. Like P90X did with home fitness, they’ve scrapped pretty much every traditional notion of how to train for bike racing. No “base miles”. No “racing into shape”. Not even Armstrong’s throw away races. Just blocks of training followed by a test race taken seriously, periodizided to include a few minor peaks leading to a major one.
Preliminary results are stunning. He’s won every race he’s targeted as a test, something even Armstrong never managed. And if he can indeed parlay that into a Tour victory he’ll have once again altered the training template for those harboring Tour dreams. And while he still has many detractors who dig up his past failures or say he’s peaked too soon, most of the industry “experts” said we’d never sell P90X.
Of course he hasn’t done it yet. That’s precisely while I’m watching. The first big test is tomorrow. For me, the drama will be more than what we see on the grimacing faces of men pushing their bodies to the limit. It will be the validation or failure of a new training system, which is something that excites me even more than sport.
This is not an untrue statement. The problem is that no watch made records the information you need to know. People are constantly rattling off numbers to me that they’ve used to assess their training that are not only wrong, but crippling their ability to evaluate the program.
In the name of the free market, you can now purchase all sorts of training apparatus that provide TMI when it comes to evaluating your training program. There are many important physiological responses at work that aren’t recorded by your Polar. To ignore them in the name of numbers will lead to an exercise plateau or worse. A deeper explanation will help you understand why we create fitness programs the way that we do.
In order to keep this short and simple I’m going to gloss over some science in the name of clarity. “Calories in, calories out” is correct in that it’s how you calculate weight loss or gain. The issue is that your monitor can’t see most of the factors involved. It cannot assess hormonal and nervous system responses to training or nutritional factors that affect recovery and all three things are arguably the most important aspect of your training.
Nutritional factors are the easiest to understand. Proper foods and nutrient timing, as you’ve heard in any spiel about Recovery Formula or Shakeology, enhance the body’s recovery process. The faster you recover the harder you can train. As those of you who are P90X Certified know results are based on adaptation to stimulus, and the only place you might be able to gauge this on a watch is with morning resting heart rate.
just some of the stuff your watch doesn't understand
Even more important are hormonal factors. If you’ve read the guidebook for Turbo Fire you’ll see something that we call the AfterBurn Effect, which is your body’s metabolic adaptations to high intensity training. As our training programs get more advanced one of the main factors we’re targeting is hormonal response. In a nutshell, as we age our body shuts down its hormone production (eventually leading to death). Intense exercise is one of the few things that force you to keep producing these. Intensity is relative, of course, which is why we progress from say, squats to squat jumps to X jumps as you move up the Beachbody food chain of programs. But what’s called a “hormonal cascade” in response to training is even more important than what your heart is doing during exercise, and it’s something else you can’t see on your monitor.
adaptive stress that leads to overtraining that only can be guessed at by close evaluation of morning resting heart rate
Hormonal cascades are triggered by your central nervous system, which is the hardest training factor to gauge (why most overtraining comes from breakdown at this level). When you dissect a program like P90X2 or Asylum, one of the main things we focus on is nervous system function. All of those “weird” things like Holmsen Screamer Lunges or Shoulder Tap Push-ups work on something we call proprioceptive awareness. And while it might seem hard to understand, since it doesn’t lead directly to more sweat, the neuromuscular action of these movements force deep adaptations by your body. These changes can take a long time to register but force a massive adaptive response that lead to long-term increased changes in movement patterns that trigger hormonal responses and, thus, metabolic change. Needless to say that stuff ain’t getting registered by a chest strap or pedometer.
Sure, the cumulative effect of all these can be calculated and the number at the end would equate to calories in, calories out. But since there’s no way to measure these numbers without doing a ton of fancy testing in a lab setting you can see why doing one of our diet and exercise programs and trusting us is a better option than scarfing an “Extra Value Meal” and then walking around the neighborhood until your heart rate monitor says you’ve burned 1,500 calories.
I’ll be doing two presentations at the Beachbody Summit next week. If you’re around on Thursday, stop by the Core area at either 12 or 5 to catch the act. These two sessions will preemptively answer a lot of questions about our products and, basically, help you become a more efficient coach.
I’ll also be at the usual venues, parties, etc, as well as Certification the two days prior to Summit’s official start. You can catch me anytime for a chat but, given there
will be more than 5,000 of you this year, that’s going to be more problematic than in years past. So come by Core on Thursday or, better yet, come early and get P90X Certified and I’ll load you up with information that will take your coaching to a higher level.
Here is some information on my two presentations. Click on the highlights for more:
I can state how much easier this will make your job. With the right program you’ll get results as easily as A, B, C. With the wrong one you can struggle and get frustrated and spend a lot of time looking for answers. Choosing the right program is step 1 in getting the best results.
How to recommend the right supplements for the right program.
Supplementation are a key part of your tool kit for results. They aren’t magic but can seem like it when used correctly. Every supplement has a purpose and understanding what it is and how it fits with a customer’s goals is a key part of finding success. I'll also be going over some of our newer supplements, like E & E and the new line designed for Beast, which can be utilized elsewhere to help maximize your training.
Learning where all of Beachbody’s resources to help you educate and motivate your customers are located and how to use them will not only ensure your customers reach their goals but save you valuable time.
Finally, consider getting certified. The more you know about the science behind the creation of an exercise program, the more effective you'll be at teaching it. This is particularly true for P90X , which is both versatile and complex, and can be utilized and structured various ways based on the needs of the individual client. You’re coming to town anyway, so why not add this to your coaching arsenal?
See you next week!
pic: summit's always rife with photo ops but this pic, from a coach trip in france, is posted for another reason. i'll have both road and mtn bikes in tow and need to train so hit me up if dawn patrol intervals sound fun. i'll go climbing at least once during the week, too, if you want to pack yer boots.
“I can’t know all this stuff so I let you guys do it for me.”
- Superstar Beachbody Coach Tommy Mygrant
Every time I speak with a group of coaches I’m reminded that many aren’t aware of Beachbody’s vast array of educational resources that can help you train your customers more efficiently. As a coach you’ve got plenty of things that take up your time without having to try and also be a personal fitness trainer or nutritionist. Beachbody already has a bunch of those so why not use them?
Of course you can’t call or email us personally (which you know if you’ve tried to email me). With millions of customers our trainer customer ratio is decidedly low. But we can still help. A lot.
Over the years we’ve probably experienced every scenario that you’ll encounter as a coach, and many many more, all of which have been answered somewhere in written format. Once you learn where to search you can become the coach with all the answers, most likely spending less time than you do now. By following this quick reference guide to smarter coaching the above pic can be you!
This should be your home page. It’s populated with popular subjects and content is rotated regularly. As opposed to, say, digging around Yahoo health or some other popular site, the information on this page is directly placed to help guide and motivate Beachbody coaches.
If you aren’t signed up for the newsletters than you’re missing out. Over the last 12 years our content has been praised again and again to the point we’ve had letters from people stating we are the only fitness resource they use. This is because our articles are written specifically to you. When we strategize what goes into each newsletter our primary concern is what our customers have been asking about on the Message Boards. Essentially our newsletter archives are one giant FAQ.
Unfortunately they can be hard to search and 12 years is a lot of pages to scroll through. Here’s the trick that works best for us when we need to find them for reference. Google “Beachbody newsletter and the subject you are looking for”. If you know who wrote an article, like me or Denis Faye, you can add an author for more specificity but Beachbody newsletter generally is enough to weed out the masses.
Blogs
A Team Beachbody blog will be up and running shortly but, for now, we’ve got some more specific blogs that should be on your radar. Carl Daikeler‘s will keep you up to date on the latest happenings at Beachbody. Denis Faye’s “The Real Fitness Nerd” casts a critical eye on what’s going on both good and bad in the nutrition world. And where you are right now, The Straight Dope, is what I call tertiary information—meaning it’s advanced reading for those who want a deeper understanding of fitness and nutrition than what you’ll get in our diet guides and newsletters. And, while less frequently updated, Chalene Johnson and Tony Horton’s blog, as well as Tony's Huffington Post site is always worth a read. All of these should be on your favorites list and checked regularly.
If you’re not using the Team Beachbody Message Boards where have you been? Once the hub of everything Beachbody, this is the place where we’ve specifically answered all of those weird questions your customers hit you with. No matter how bizarre you may think a question is there is a very good chance we’ve heard it, and answered it, before. Our staff has cataloged these answers so they’re at their fingertips, meaning they can shoot you an answer a lot faster than it would take you to search PubMed and try and make sense out of a bunch of hard to decipher abstracts.
Another big plus of the Boards is that it puts us all on theme. Re-purposing FAQs to your customers keeps your coaching message consistent. As Beachbody grows our messaging grows too. The more consistent it is the easier everyone’s job gets.
For the most actively monitored Forums go to Info and Education. That's where the experts spend most of their time.
It should be noted that the boards' popularity once took a hit when coach phishing was rampant in the early days of TBB. That issue is now praciclly nonexistent as we monitor heavily for trolls.
To add more to Tommy Mygrant’s above quote, he also told me that the Boards were a massive time saver for his coaching, enabling him to focus motivating and selling instead of trying to fix issues that were better handled by others. He summed up by saying “I don’t know how any coach gets by without them.”
In my last chat I was asked why P90X2 wasn’t as good for weight loss as P90X. Ironically that same week Tony Horton hosted some coaches for a workout at his house where they burned over 1,200 calories in an hour doing an X2 workout. This doesn’t mean the question was dumb. It means it requires a longer answer than I could give at that time because it starts new topic; how to choose the right exercise program.
If everyone burned 1,200 calories during an X2 workout it would be amazing for weight loss. But many people do not because P90X2 is what we call at Beachbody a post-graduate program. Its predecessor, P90X, is a graduate program and the series original, Power 90, is an intro program. Trying to do P90X2 before you’re ready is like walking into French IV when you haven’t taken French 1. You’re not ready and, thus, won’t be able get the most out of it. In fact you’ll probably feel lost.
At Beachbody we’re creating fitness solutions for the entire planet, and most of this planet doesn’t play in the NBA or NFL. P90X2 was created specifically for our customers who’ve become so fit they require an elite program on the level of the professional athlete. If someone lets you borrow a surfboard are you going to paddle into Pipeline and attempt to catch your first wave? Probably not. Choosing the wrong fitness program will drown your results just as fast. A brief rundown of the Beachbody line-up will help you understand why.
"hmm, maybe i should have started on a beach break..."
P90X2 and Insanity: The Asylum are currently Beachbody’s only post-graduate programs. They were designed for our customers who’d mastered P90X and Insanity. If you can’t do those programs it doesn’t make sense to begin something harder because you won’t have the fitness base to complete the individual exercises, much less the workouts. And if you can’t do the workouts you won’t get very fit.
As an example let’s take the workout P90X Chest & Back. I’ve had people tell me they only burned 150 calories in this workout. I’ve burned over a thousand. The difference is when you can’t do push-ups and you can’t do pull-ups and don’t modify correctly so that you fail at 10 reps or more per exercise than the difference in that workout is night and day. I’m completely pumped from my very first set to the last, 45 straight minutes pushing my anaerobic threshold—it’s everything I can do to not puke! But someone who can’t do the exercises won't get pumped will likely max their caloric burn during the warm-up! This is exactly why we have you do a fit test before you begin: to see if you belong in P90X in the first place.
For X2 we expect you to be able to do P90X. If you can’t do, say, Warrior 3 in Yoga X you’re not going to be able to do Warrior 3 curls or kickbacks--just one of numerous examples. We do offer exceptional modifications in X2 but, like X, they still require you to find a point where you fail at the required number of repetitions to work their magic. As I said in another post, you can’t claim X2 workouts mastered until you can use the same amount of weight (in its difficult positions) as you can with P90X.
In Asylum, Shaun yells at his cast that “this is not Insanity, people!” as if that program is light cardio. Most of you know that Insanity is anything but so it shouldn’t surprise you that if you can’t do Insanity you might not make it through the warm-ups of Asylum.
Beachbody’s graduate programs include: 90X, Insanity, Turbo Fire, P90X+, and Debbie Siebers’ Slim Series. These programs were based off of intro programs that are similar in style but accessible to almost anyone: Power 90, Hip Hop Abs/Rockin’ Body, Slim in 6. If you’re inspired by P90X but can’t do the fit test, a round of Power 90 will give you much better results and will ultimately have you mastering X and X2 a lot quicker than beginning with the harder program.
In addition, our intro line has many other options to fit your personality. We now have what I call gentle, moderate, and hard into programs. Our goal is to have workouts for every single demographic. We want to eliminate all possible excuses for not getting healthy.
added bonus of power 90: retro chic
If you’ve never exercised or are coming off an injury that’s impaired your ability to move you might consider Tai Cheng because it will retrain your movement patterns. Love the idea of martial arts training but want something more challenging, try Rev Abs. If you hate to exercise but love to dance you might try Hip Hop Abs, Turbo Jam, Body Gospel or Yoga Booty Ballet. Conversely those who are challenged by coordinating their moves might prefer Slim in 6 or Kathy Smith’s Project You, which use simple exercises to great effect. Those who like pumping iron should consider Power 90 or Chalean Extreme. And if you’re ultra-time crunched we’ve got 10 Minute Trainer to get you in the habit of daily exercise.
As for results; all of our programs work exactly the same. Seriously, our test groups get similar results in every program we make (we don’t release them until the do). We screen the test groups to make sure the right people are doing the right program and you should too. Of course X2 graduates are ultimately fitter than Power 90 graduates but that’s because they’ve done more homework. Just like a French IV graduate is more fluent than a French 1 there is a logical progression to getting fit and it’s much easier and quicker if you’re taking the right class.
Tony’s famous saying “don’t break your face” is an almost perfect analogy for showing the evolution of P90X. Back in the Power 90 days, when our goal was to get people moving and “Just Press Play” was the Beachbody motto, he literally meant that you shouldn’t drop weight on your head. In P90X2, it’s a slogan for staying cool under fire, because the more relaxed your face is the more you can focus energy on your training.
He still jokes about dropping weight but he also talks about face control. It's a hard lesson for many people to get. When we get tired we get tight. We contract. We scream. We hold stress in places, like our face, when that energy would better serve us elsewhere. Calm, relaxed, and focused on nothing but breath and movement is how we perform best, especially under duress. In Power 90, and to some degree P90X, it was enough to simply show up and try. As you’ve become fitter we now want to coax more performance out of your body and need to evolve our techniques. It starts with your face.
In the above photo I’ll be the poster child of poor form. My screaming looks cool and sells magazines but it’s not efficient. “Focus on pulling with your arms instead of your neck,” was my congratulatory note from distinguished climbing/gymnastics coach Rob Candelaria. In contrast check out the other photos of climbers who are contemplating moves at their physical limits with the serenity of a zen monk. The one in the first shot looks about ready to take a nap.
Don’t get me wrong; screaming at the right time is helpful, even important. The old karate “kee-yaw” has a place but it’s calculated. When you lose control the end it near. The goal is to control your body, saving outbursts for when you absolutely need them.
P90X2 forces you to stay calm. Try screaming during Warrior 3 kickbacks and you’ll fall, or least teeter. You’ll handle heavier weight if you’re under control, which is our grand design. By the time to get to the PAP training your form should be so solid that you’ll know when it’s time to use a calculated outburst to your advantage. Calming your face is the first step to getting the most out of your workouts; at least it is once whether or not you actually do the workout is no longer a question.
This year’s fitness retreat will be May 26 to June 2. Join us and kick start your summer with a week of fitness, culture, and world-class outdoor sports in a postcard-like setting. It’s going to be fantastic and, as usual, is extremely affordable.
My version of fitness camp might not be what you’re envisioning if you look at my athlete/trainer profile. While I train hard, recreate at a higher standard than most, and occasionally compete in a national or world-level event, the main reason I do it all is that I believe in enjoying life to its fullest and I just happen to find this stuff fun. So when we say this is a fitness camp in France, particular emphasis should be placed on the France part of that. The main goal of these camps is to have a unique cultural experience. It’s not fat camp. It’s life camp. And hence the reason last year’s retreat theme was ‘la bonne vie’, or the good life.
meals are decidedly french (relaxed)
with nothing but fresh foods that we procure locally
This isn’t to say you won’t get much exercise. We’ll earn our meals for sure. Those who choose to participate in all the activities will get 4-6 hours of exercise daily, not counting sight-seeing, shopping, wine-induced night swims and such. Each workout and activity will have various levels to allow you to choose your own personal intensity setting. The emphasis will be on education. Our retreat is only a week but the goal is for you to take away knowledge that you’ll put to use for the rest of your life.
"That was a lifesaving exercise for me. Whatever werid muscle it's designed to stretch had been bothering me for over a year and hasn't hurt since:) Thank you Steve!"
- Michelle Beronja Wilkins
kayaking in the aveyron gorge
We’ve capped of people so that there will be ample one on one time for any personal issues to get addressed in as much depth as you’d like. You’ll have the option of a pre and post camp fitness assessment we’re you’ll get a good idea of both your strengths and weaknesses so you can leave with a fitness plan in mind.
Since I’m an outdoor athlete you’ll have this option too. How much you participate is voluntary but, since we’ll be surrounded by world class climbing, cycling, kayaking, and hiking terrain, there will be a daily outdoor sports component. We’re professional guides, so no experience is necessary. You’ll be missing out if you don’t take part.
the riding tends to be picturesque
But mainly it’s about fun. You can live hard and play hard. In fact, when I’m balancing both is when I’m the most relaxed. "A sante!", to heath, as they say in France, which will be our theme. We’ll challenge ourselves, learning something new, and then reward ourselves with the amenities of rural France. La bonne vie!
the castle village of najac also has epic mtn bike riding
"I feel better than I have in years. It's been, by far, the best I've ever eaten in my life." - Dave Talsky, Mammoth Lakes, Ca.
Sample itinerary:
7am - wake up yoga
7:30 - 8:30 aerobic ruke (run/ hike to get your metabolism going)
8:30 - 8:45 eye opener workout (optional - high intensity interval session)
9:00-9:30 breakfast
11:00- 1:00 pm daily activity (run, adventure ruke, bike, kayak, climb)
1:00 - 2:00 lunch
3:00 - 5:30 Free time (sight see, shop, chill...)
5:30 - 6:30 evening workout (progressive difficulty, drop out when you feel like it)
7:00 -8:00 dinner
8:00 post dinnner training digestion session (sunset hike, mobility training)
8:30 apres social
Looking back on my 2011 training chart puts perspective on the importance of taking on life one day at a time. I train a lot but, still, when you add it all up I’m not getting a lot of chances per year at each of my pursuits, much less each individual workout. The other day, during Plyocide, I was being lazy about working on an exercise I’m weak at when it dawned on me that I was only going to get a few chances at it in the course of the program, which inspired a vision Oregon’s football slogan, Win the Day.
One of the first things taught to Oregon players is the importance of each day. It’s a play on “live each day as though it were your last” but tailored to competition. I find it a great reminder to help get after it during the P90X2 workouts because, as Ducks coach Chip Kelly knows, once you make winning each day a practice it leads to better performance, period.
Why is each day so important? Looking back through my calendar I noted that I had only 6 full climbing days 2011, my preferred sport. My favorite workout of last year, Asylum Strength, I only did 5 times. PAP sessions: 12. When you have a full schedule and begin to analyze how it’s broken down the importance of each workout becomes clear; each time you slack off is missing an opportunity to improve yourself. If you lay each workout on a graph you will see exactly how a bit more effort or concentration here and there would have yielded greater overall improvements. Over time it’s the difference between champions and everyone else.
The X2 workouts are hard in a unique way. My favorite quote about the program, so far, has been “as I get better at the workouts they just get harder.” Conversely a complaint was that they were too slow. P90X2 is not step aerobics. It’s not simply about moving or getting your heart rate up. It’s about winning each encounter with something that’s going to challenge you. Once your body adapts to the subtleties of each movement you then add weight, or speed, or height or range of motion.
If Plyocide isn’t hard then you didn’t jump high enough, far enough, fast enough or use enough control to hit every square, touch the ball with your foot each movement, etc. If PAP doesn’t hurt you simply aren’t giving it enough effort because I’ve seen some of the most athletic people on the planet literally begging for mercy during those complexes. You can’t say you’ve mastered X2 until you can do all the exercises in perfect form with the same weight you can use from a stable platform; and if you think that’s impossible then you’re starting to get the picture. There is room for improvement and winning each day is the essence of what P90X2 is about.
To be fair, daily winning isn’t necessary or required. It’s about the effort. Bad days are a reality. Not to mention that if we never lost then winning would lose its luster. It’s fine to have off days, or lazy days. Days when you choose something over nothing, even when you don’t have the energy to bring it, are an important part of the process. But as you move up the pyramid of fitness to the point where you’re trying to do something special you’re going to run into an adversary. And whether it’s you, or an opponent, how you react to it will ultimately define your success.
On 11/11/11 I’ll be living a historical tour of Beachbody by doing 11 workouts that date back 11 years. If you play along, even just in part, you stand a chance to win $1,111 by logging into the WOWY Supergym during the hour of 11:11 PST. It’s only going to be 11/11/11 once in your life. You might as well do something special.
jon and carl in 1999
Besides trying to set a daily record for Supergym attendance this date has some personal significance. One year ago tomorrow we lost Tuco the Rat and the outside portion of my challenge is dedicated to him (oh, yes, there’s more). I also did challenges on 8/8/8, 9/9/9, and 10/10/10 so this is a tradition. Finally, it’s part II of my November endurance trifecta that began last weekend with a 24 hour mtn bike race (3rd place) and will finish with a birthday challenge Thanksgiving weekend.
I’ve tried to choose workout that make physiological sense for the challenge. Not getting injured is paramount and this should be a good overall workout, even though it’s excessive. Admittedly PAP at the end is silly stupid but it’s too important to leave out. That’s because I’m also telling a story, which is my own personal history working at Beachbody.
#1 Power 90 Sculpt 1/2 (2000)
While not the first Beachbody workout released (which was Great Body Guaranteed) it was the first hit and first workout that I did to evaluate whether or not I wanted to work with the company. I was currently working as a fitness columnist and wasn’t going to shuck for an infomercial company unless their products made sense. Carl and Jon assured me that if their products didn’t live up to my standards they would improve them until they did. Not only was Power 90 solid but it was being led by a guy with charisma to spare. This had potential, I thought, to revamp home fitness. I signed on and the rest, as they say, is history that’s about to pay me back in a very painful way. “Things are startin’ to happen.”
#2 Ho Ala ke Kino (2001)
I’m testing everyone’s dedication to Beachbody with this obscurity. We once doubled as a travel company and had a trip called Power Kauai. Tony Horton and Debbie Siebers would lead workouts for the clients and one morning Tony did a workout on the beach that got filmed and voila! Or something like that. This is a funny low budget feature that still holds up as great workout. “You guys ever do this workout?” said Carl to the staff one day (when you could address the entire company without raising your voice). “Man, if you ever want to feel good check it out.”
pretty sure i have some short shorts to wear for this
#3 Slim in 6 Start It Up (2002)
Our second big hit was a low impact program that subtly breaks you down until you’re begging for mercy. It’s by design but also might have something to do with the fact that Debbie doesn’t always know her own strength. She can do squats as easily as most of us sit in a chair. In one of the Slim Series workouts she’s actually still squatting while telling the audience “we’re taking a little break here.” I’m using Start It Up because, well, I’m not in such specific squat shape and we’re still kind of warming up. But I’ve got the original version, which we had to tone way down because it was destroying people out of the gate, so it’s going to hurt. Btw, the long version of Slim Series is Beachbody’s first graduate program and probably not in your collection. These workouts still hold up—and feel very hard—even after the Insanity years.
debbie taking a rest
#4 Power Half Hour Arms (2003) “Bam!” This super intense set of 30 minute workouts was the cornerstone of many unofficial test groups I used with our customers to try and sort out how hard they were going to be willing to work in P90X. Because of this they will always have a fond place in my heart and, while decidedly low budget, they stand the test of time and remain in my arsenal. We didn’t shoot these in 2003 but we did launch one of our only failed infomercials that year about PHH. This is unfortunate because it was amazing. It’s also really weird because the entire company (now big enough you had to raise your voice a little) agreed it was the best infomercial they’d ever seen. Carl and Jon decided to chuck that standard format and go legit, using nothing by real people and stories without any glitz whatsoever. We found it incredibly powerful. When it didn’t hit we focus grouped it where the main complaint was “the people don’t seem real.” Go figure.
its time has still yet to come
#5 P90X Core Synergistics (2004)
P90X would eventually change the entire fitness landscape but not in 2004. When it launched our customer base ate it up but the rest of America was, like, “Wtf?! Dude, give me back my Ab Lounger!” Eventually we were able convey the basic science that human bodies require hard work in order to look like Tony Horton. And once converted, it seems like all you wanted was more. And this made my job a lot more fun. “Bring it!”
#6 Yoga Booty Ballet Pure & Simple Yoga (2005)
I’m not sure what year we shot this, actually, but from here on out the challenge is going to be a fight to the finish and pulling the yoga card from YBB means that I don’t have to do it for a harder program. I also wanted to throw some love Gill and Teigh’s way since they’re great people. Wildly popular on the west side of LA, YBB never struck a consistent chord with our customers. But that doesn’t mean the workouts are any less effective. If you’re looking for something different to simulate your training give it a shot.
#7 Chalean Extreme Push Circuit 3 (2006)
The first time I met Chalene Johnson I felt she’d be our next superstar trainer. Obviously I didn’t know since I was still waiting for the PHH show to hit but, anyway, she had the it quality Hollywood types are always yappin about. Like Tony Horton, only different. And while we had a lot of success with Turbo Jam her next program, Chalean Extreme, never quite took off. This is too bad because it’s a great program. The problem could be the title. It’s an intro program and perhaps Extreme is scaring off part of its audience. But like Slim in 6, just because anyone can start it doesn’t mean fit folks will find it easy. The workouts, especially as the program progresses, will challenge anyone. Of course it still might take off. It took a few years for P90X to find traction and I’m still thinking Power Half Hour's ascendency is on the cusp.
#8 Insanity, The Asylum’s Game Day (2007)
I’m cheating here because Asylum launched in 2011 but I was only going to get one representative from the Insanity series and Game Day fits the bill perfectly. At least if it doesn’t kill me. Apparently P90X wasn’t enough for you guys so we offered up a stiffer challenge, which you went after like Fluffy on catnip. I wonder what the people who said we were nuts while filming P90X would have thought watching Shaun drop mega fit trainers during the filming of Insanity like Brock Lesner with an overhand right? Then we went even bigger with Asylum, which is my personal favorite workout series at the moment (at least until P90X2 comes out). Game Day is its pinnacle and it’s an absolute blast. So painful; but with a 4th quarter with the game on the line kind of way that takes me back to my youth. “This is not Insanity, people. It’s the Asylum. I’m not messin’ with you today.”
definitive asylum shot: it's a fine line between resting and vomiting
#9 RevAbs Strength & Endurance (2008)
Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Most Beachbody customers are now well aware that to get a six-pack you need to train your entire body. The public, perhaps, is not and maybe they think RevAbs is a workout series done on the Ab Lounge and that's why it's yet to spend any time at number one. This full body program based around Capoeira is led by one of our most intellectual trainers, Brett Hoebel, whom I love working with because I don’t have to edit anything he writes. So buy RevAbs if for no other reason than you’ll make my job easier. Thank you.
#10 Turbo Fire HIIT 15 (2009) “Ya gotta dance with the one that brung ya,” said Darrell Royal and we listened, putting Chalene back in front of a class and shooting verite style to create Turbo Fire. In actuality development was more scientific than that but TF is like going to class down at the gym. Except you don’t have to go to the gym or choose which class you need to get the quickest results. It’s kind of like going dancing except there are scientists in the background making sure each move you do strategically benefits your physiology. On HIIT days the band is particularly enthusiastic.
#11 P90X One on One PAP (2010)
This is a P90X2 preview and a great example of the full circle world of Beachbody. I came to Beachbody after mainly working with athletes. And while I found the non-athletic community great to work with—both easier to train and far more appreciative—sports performance is my forte and in my roots (both dad and I were coaches). Getting back to, as the old coach said above, what brung me has been my most interesting as well as greatest challenge yet at Beachbody. And while you’ve read plenty about PAP, my buddy Marcus and his training facility P3, here on my blog over the last few years you’ve never seen it implemented like this. I’m sure I’ll learn a little more by the day’s end. Assuming I survive as Marcus, nor any other trainer worth their schooling, would recommend PAP at the end of this kind of day.
tonys shows the it compared to my decidedly not it star quality as we banter about pap
But wait, there’s more! In honor of the best dog ever I’m adding 111 minutes of outside activity, either running or riding depending on the weather. During this time I’ll throw 111 rocks for Finnegan. At least I’ll be warmed up after Game Day.
