A question about my article on training efficiently prompted this post, which delves deep into how to efficiently train for longer events. It's a re-post from last year called Training Short for Going Long, which chronicles my training throughout 2011 where I used a year of sub 1 hour training sessions to prepare for the World Sprint Duathlon Championships and parlayed it into three epic days (12-20 hours) in the month of November. It's completely with training schedules and evaluations to what went right and where it could have been better, so for those looking for a deeper analysis of my efficiency post this should keep you busy for a little while. Or you can skip to the end:
One of my themes this year at Summit was “TMI” or too much information when it came to how to best educate coaches. Clichés can be helpful but, when the root is not understood, can also lead to stagnations or regressions in your fitness. One of the worst offenders is the saying “calories in, calories out”.
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.
“Training sucks,” said my friend/mechanic/bike shop owner/climber/drinkin’ buddy Tyson the other day as I was dreading heading out for my first interval session on the bike this year. “Riding bikes is great,” he continued. “But training is terrible.”
“It’s only three weeks,” I countered. “That’s what it always takes to transition to a base of fitness where it’s no longer miserable. But it’s three weeks of hell.”
I’ve been putting off writing this blog—perhaps dreading is a better word—because once it’s published I have to do it. And while I’m often so excited about training that I can barely keep from overtraining out of the gate this is not one of those times. I can’t seem to change my mindset and am not sure exactly why. Maybe I’m more psyched on climbing. Maybe exploring trails sounds more fun than repeated intervals. Maybe I’m just old. But for whatever reason I’m looking forward to the Butte race with about as much enthusiasm as a colonoscopy.
But I stated last week that I’d write up an example so here it is. Besides, I’ve been doing it anyway. And while it hasn’t been pretty, and every morning I wake up feeling as though I was in a bar fight even though I’m ramping up intensity very slowly, I will sally forth and record the results for posterity. ‘Cause that’s my job and, to be honest, I love it even when I hate it because in the big picture it’s another experience to reflect on and learn from.
So here ya go; a glimpse at race build-up from 7-weeks out (while concurrently training for climbing). To understand the reasoning you need to read the backstory here:
Day 1 – Long mtb ride: a little over 3 hrs of saddle time and a few thousand feet of climbing. Felt hard, especially after 2 hrs. Long road ahead. Did easy yoga and a little foam rolling.
Day 2 – 4 X 10 min intervals full-on with 5-7 min rest in between. Did hill repeats on mtb. Felt weak, miserable. Still sucked it up for some NIS stretching and a 20 minute core workout afterward.
Day 3 – 45 min aerobic spin on the fixie and easy yoga. Went climbing all day.
Day 4 – Biking rest. Climbed half a day. Did easy yoga.
Day 5 – Easy 1 hour mtb ride on trails. About 1,000’ of climbing done easily spinning. No hard efforts. Nice ride. Slacked on post-ride stretching.
Day 6 – 2 X 20 minute full-on intervals. 15 min rest in between. Two long hill repeats. Felt horrible and slow but could feel a slight power improvement from previous workout. Abridged stretching session. Easy recovery climbing in the PM. Blew off both foam rolling and planned full body workout session. Dumb but seriously lacking motivation.
Day 7 – 1 hr RUKE (run/hike), no bike. Hard climbing/training session. Asylum Strength. NIS stretching and foam rolling. This is today. Enthusiasm is a bit higher writing it, probably thanks to reading an old Ben Moon training dairy this morning. Remains to be seen how it goes.
Evaluation from week 1. It happened and that’s a start. Need to get much better at restorative stuff: foam rolling/yoga/core/stability work. Hopefully psyche will perk up.
Going forward this is my template. Each week to consist of:
2 hard targeted bike workouts, always some type of intervals. Goal is to slowly increase these to 4 X 15 min and 2 X 30 minute of all out climbing. These workouts are highly stressful and require a lot of recovery so my daily recovery modalities, supplementation, and diet need to improve.
1 long ride. Saddle time is sorely lacking. Bonked after hour 3 on first ride. I need to be able to do 8 hours without a thought because that's probably where Butte really gets started.
2 recovery rides. Hopefully these are nice trail rides. Lots of spinning and work on technique.
Daily mobility work – either foam rolling or yoga, hopefully both. All of my down time (TV, movies, post-ride beer, etc) should be utilized to work on this weakness. Week 1 was not nearly good enough.
Core and stability work – done post climbing workouts, 2 X per week.
Full body training – One Asylum/P90X2-type workout each week to stay sharp. One hard resistance/agility/plyometric workout during the week helps hormonal production stay high provided recovery is going okay, so this is evaluated on the fly.
Climbing – 3 sessions per week, 2 of them hard. Either outside or in the Coop. Currently climbing outside a fair amount but might move towards hangboard training as bike volume gets high because it takes less total energy output—plus is better training than climbing anyway.
2 weeks away from the race I’ll do a big test, then taper towards race day. The general pattern is 3 weeks of hell followed by a shift in mindset and inspired training. But we’re not machines and things always go a little different, and that’s where all this training stuff gets interesting. I’ll report back after Butte with the results.
One of the biggest challenges a weekend warrior faces is how to prepare for ultra endurance events when you don’t have time for long training days. Last year I experimented with this by training for Duathlon Worlds until Sept, a 1-hour race, and then targeting 3 ultra challenges in November. I primarily used P90X2, Insanity: The Asylum, and sports specific training that rarely exceeded 1.5 hrs a day. To help you create your own training program, here's a recap on how it went.
As usual, the year began with a broad stroke training plan in December. With no goals until April, the off-season was spent with a periodizational approach focused on weaknesses. I used a lot of what was to become P90X2 during this time (above is a shot of X2 rehearsals, which went under the working title of mc2), with minimal sports specific training.
Training became targeted with more sports specific work, along with Insanity: The Asylum, for the first peak, Nats in April. Despite the worst spring weather in history, it went well and World’s was officially on. Here’s what I wrote about it:
A long “recovery” period allowed me to train more outside and build-up sports specific strength for the next phase of training that would specifically focus on the world’s race. I managed a few long-ish days during this time (6-8 hours) and they went pretty well, a testament to how much having a solid fitness foundation matters. Here's some of what I said at the time. Click on it for a more in depth explanation.
After this I became focused on November’s ultra goals: all challenges that would take between 12 and 20 hours of effort. Since one month isn’t long enough to stress and adapt effectively I had to rely on my fitness base to see me through these challenges. All training was specifically focused on other factors that can be changed quickly, such as building up skin needed in sensitive areas and getting used to eating and hydration protocols of endurance racing.
Though an early test (big climbing day) was grim a month later the results were surprisingly positive. Three big events in a month is a lot, even if you’ve trained specifically for them. As I said at the outset:
And while I’m certain I could have been better (faster--though we finished 3rd in a 24-hr race and beat the prior year's winning time) with more focused training my body handled these with relative ease, especially the recovery aspect. Even though the final event, the birthday challenge, wasn’t as hard as planned I was very well rested after it-—birthday challenges that have me digging deep (like this one or this one) often take months to recover from.
In conclusion, if you build a strong base and are smart about your specific training you can definitely compete in ultra events without having a lot of free time to train. Certainly longer sessions increase your ability to go fast. However, the risk of too much free time is overtraining, which is exceedingly common with amateur athletes and that can sink your results faster than being undertrained. This means that, for most of us, having “too little” time to train is probably preferable and, if done smart, will actually increase your odds of success. Finally, there is simply no doubt that P90X2 and Insanity: The Asylum are effective training programs for outdoor athletes. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find anything better.
“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.
Sitting here working on the next round of Insanity: Asylum workouts inspired me to post this video for the Friday Psyche. It was made by one of our coaches highlighting the results from a group challenge. It’s pretty amazing what a few psyched individuals can achieve in 30 days.
As an athlete Asylum workouts resonate more than anything else in our line-up for pure fun factor. It’s probably because they’re a lot like sports practice was back in the day. And even though I’m sure I complained about miserably-hard practice like these as much as my teammates, in retrospect it was a rollicking good time.
I always used to describe the P90X/Insanity relationship as X being training for the sport of Insanity. This is doubly true for the X2/Asylum relationship. P90X2 is what you’d do in the deep off-season to change your body and specifically target weaknesses. Asylum is like Hell Week; what you’d do just before the start of the season to bring your fitness to a peak. And as nasty as Hell Week felt at the time in my memory all they conjure up are smiles.
Get busy people. You can re-live your youth with Asylum.
This week’s Psyche offers some reflection in the wake of part II of my November trilogy of pain, along with a couple of short videos that are follow-ups to earlier posts. First, I’ve cancelled this weekend’s trip south because moving is such a chore that I doubt its training effects would have been positive. In the last 7 days I’ve completed two big days that offered up completely different experiences. Here’s a little comparison.
The 25 Hours of Frog Hollow – Spending 12.5 on the bike in a day in every-other-lap fashion is a strange lesson in suffering. The down time between each lap is mainly spent refueling and arranging things for your next lap. You end up with about 15 minutes to relax before you need to get moving again. While it’s less painful than soloing, because you get some rest, you also can’t cash it in and nap when you’re tired because you know you’ve got a partner counting on you to show up every hour and ten minutes or so. Sitting on a bike for this long is simply painful, especially for your butt, feet, and hands. The latter got so pounded on the rocky descents that Jeff, my partner, switched to his suspension bike during the last few laps. And while you’re very tired at the end recovery is quick. I was back on my bike feeling decent (though not strong) in a few days.
11 Beachbody workouts – I’d stacked Beachbody workouts together before but nothing like this. The first four felt good but all of our workouts (unless you only chose recovery workout which wouldn’t be very interesting) break you down. I was slightly surprised that Power 90 and Slim in 6 still felt like exercise at their easiest level even though I’m fairly fit at the moment. These workouts shouldn’t be discounted. They’re the real deal. Reversing the order would have made sense but I was also after a chronological experience and, unfortunately, our workouts have been getting harder over the years.
And so Asylum Game Day (and last-minute addition Overtime) at the end were a fantastic trip to the pain exchange. Not surprising, since these workouts are extremely difficult and painful when done fresh, it was simply a bizarre experience to be screaming to keep up after many hours of training featuring workouts designed to be your only activity of the day. And while my explosiveness was kaput I managed to hit Shaun’s number benchmarks for “winning” (I think it’s 40 jump shots and 50 home runs) meaning that I never slacked off. In Overtime I hit a wall, big time, struggled mightily not to puke but this didn’t surprise me at all since that is certainly the hardest 12 minutes of exercise ever put on video.
By comparison the gym training is somewhat easier in that it’s got no outside elements such as cold and wind and no single points of overuse where your skin becomes a limiting factor. You can always turn down the intensity a notch and minimize the pain. However, because the workouts (by my designed line up of choice) systematically targeted all elements of body movement and fitness the overall breakdown factor was far more complete. Last night, trying to sit through a symphony, I could feel every muscle competing for limited resources for recovery and it was a struggle to stay awake. This morning, with the healing process still in its infancy, it took a big commitment to force my body out of bed. And while, in contrast to the 24 hour race when I had hot spots of pain, nothing really hurts; it just refuses to work. Translation (which should not be a surprise): the home training is better for you than playing a sport. Also, because the breakdown is specific the process of replenishing full body strength is going to take a lot longer.
And with that, here’s your weekend entertainment, both in the form of trailers. First (top), we have a video on the El Cap races. I’ve written about this a lot but this year, Hans again got himself fit enough (at 47 with a full time job) to have a go. In three tries with young hot shot Alex Honnald he’s come within 45 seconds of the record set last year by Sean O’Leary and Dean Potter. He says he’s now got the fitness to break it but the duo is waiting for the weather to improve and may not get another attmept 'til spring.
I’m saving my Wideboyz follow up for a training Psyche in the depths of winter but those interested know what they’ve done. Here is another trailer for what promises to be a cracking good time at the movies (silly pun not intended. I'm tired). And you want to take about pain? Well nothing I’ve described in the post comes close to this.
Remember back to the very first day you tried P90X? Unless you couldn’t do pull-ups this was likely one of the more devastating physical experiences of your life. The P90X Chest & Back workout was nearly impossible to be ready for. When Tony first proposed this workout I showed it to a friend of mine, who practically does pull-ups in his sleep (“I could do 100 pull-ups a day for the rest of my life and I wouldn’t count it as exercise”), who said that he didn’t think he could finish it in good style. My first attempt had me hyperventilating in order to keep my lunch down.
P90X2 opens with a similar proposition. Day 1, as I went into last time, is going to challenge you in ways you’ve not seen before but the real nastiness hits on day 2. Plyocide is so much harder than the original that P90X master and superstar Beachbody coach and all-around master of fitness Mark Briggs looked as though he was going to pass out during the Plyocide rehearsal. “I just wasn’t ready for that,” said the guy who devises some of the most intense P90X/Insanity hybrids out there. You have been warned.
Luckily the warning comes with some advice. Block I of our prep focused on balance. Block II will up the intensity. Briggs had been training with Tony’s One on One Plyocide workout, which is a decent practice session for the moves, but the final version is a whole other ball game when it comes to intensity. There is simply no way this workout isn’t going to hurt out of the gate but if you start adding a day of ever-increasing plyometric workouts to your training now and you’ll be ready to stave off utter annihilation.
Here are some choices along with comments. Of course you need to work with what you’ve got, so don’t feel the need to get all of these. Just keep increasing the intensity of your weekly plyo session right up until you shut down for the last couple of weeks before X2 arrives.
One on One: Plyocide – this workout is a bit of a practice session. Good training but slow cadence.
P90X Plyo - If it’s all you’ve got it ain’t bad. If you can waltz through this your body is ready for the next X.
One on One: Plyo Legs – The very first One on One workout is a good next step from P90X Plyo
Insanity Max Interval Plyo – It was surprising Mark got so slammed after doing this regularly because it’s still very hard.
Turbo Fire HIIT 30 – Will have you well used to any jumping that life throws your way. Any of the HIITs will prep you, so work your way up to 30 if you're just starting out.
Asylum: Overtime – adding this short workout to the end other workout will destroy you in just the right kind of way.
I can’t believe that it’s only four weeks until I leave for Europe. The final phase of my training program has snuck up on me like a ninja in what’s been a chaotically busy summer. But that’s life as a recreational athlete. Every day doesn’t revolve around training. Training comes down to what I can fit in around everyday life. And this is the case for, like, 99% of the people I work with. And one of the major keys to success is getting them to adjust to the fact that their training schedule is a proposal, not game where one wrong turn means that you lose.
Last night I drew up my template for my final prep for Worlds. It’s a guideline for the volume, intensity, and amount of recovery I think I need to be ready for the race. But it’s only a logical proposal based on science. It’s not a daily schedule, even though it looks exactly like one. My realistic goal is to tick off what’s on the plan, and follow its structure, within the constraints of life. This means that my training log will probably look a lot different than what’s written here, but should yield the same results as long as I stick with the principles reflected in the schedule.
I’m writing this because rarely does a day go by when we don’t hear questions from customers who think that if they deviate from their workout schedule all of their hard effort will instantly disappear. We even stopped using suggested days on our schedules because we got so many “if I do Chest & Back on Tuesday instead of Monday will P90X still work?” type of questions.
Training is not magic. It’s not a game or a trick and there is no on and off switch. Our training schedules follow logic and are very important—as is the template I made last night—but only as a guideline. You need not follow the schedules to the letter to get results. You need to adhere to the principles to keep training hard enough, give yourself enough rest between similar workouts, and not over train and hit a plateau. Doing a Turbo Kick class at the gym instead of HIIT 20, a company softball game instead of Kenpo X, or going a little overboard at your friend’s wedding… it’s all just nitpicking. Success comes from training hard, seeing your program though to its end, then finding a new challenge to keep you moving.
The schedule here is my race-prep training only. Not listed is my mobility work (yoga, stretching—at least a short session daily), weight training (one PAP session per week for the next three weeks), prehab/rehab/core (2x/week), and climbing (Worlds are in Spain so climbing is definitely on the agenda—2-3 short sessions per week).
It’s not just a cliché to say that in order to get better you must be willing to get worse when it comes to training. And though it’s easy to rationalize on paper it’s often hard to buy into a periodizationl strategy when you’re suffering and not seeing tangible improvement. This has been my July.
A month of PAP workouts, running drills, and short hard efforts on the bike are hopefully improving my power and top end speed but I’m is such a state of breakdown it’s impossible to gauge how it’s working. Re-tooling neuromuscular patterns wreaks havoc on the system and keeps me on edge. I don’t feel comfortable and find myself wondering if I’d have been better off overall to keep training my strengths in a way where I know I’d peak for my race in Sept. As I said at the start of the month it’s a gamble to try this on such short notice and I won’t know how it went until I begin integrating my training in August. At least this hay is in the barn and now I’m looking forward to unwinding with a recovery trip to France with some of Beachbody’s top coaches.
Where I can tell I’m getting stronger is in my PAP workouts. I’m leaping higher and have much better lateral stabilization. Last night I did Asylum Back To Core and Relief as a recovery day and it felt like one—itself an indication that something good is happening. But all this power gain comes with a loss in endurance and, hopefully, there’s time left to bring this back to competition level. Peaking for races is always tricky and it gets even harder when you also attempt to throw in a major body composition alteration.
This is why P3 tries to get as much time with athletes as far away from their season as possible. The longer time period you have to easier it is to make major changes. In these videos are the Utah Jazz’s Derrick Favors and Gordon Hayward. Both showed promise as rookies but need improvement to become household names in the NBA. To get there they’ve been working at P3 on weaknesses since the season ended. In the two examples of PAP complexes you’ll see Hayward jumping off of one leg to try and offset a discrepancy in leg strength, while Favors’ targets lateral explosiveness. Very motivating for those days you aren’t in the mood to bring it--as well as a small preview of P90X2.
Periodizational training can be a hard sell because each time you change training blocks you take a small step backwards. But these steps “back” are there for a reason and, eventually, you lose less strength during each transition leading to larger cumulative gains near the end of your program. If you alter your program so that you never regress you hamper to ability to ultimately improve. This requires trust.
Every 90-day (or longer) Beachbody program comes with a periodizational strategy designed to do this. As you’ll see if you click here, mutiny is a rational consideration when you aren’t moving towards your goals. But you should trust these schedules because they work, which I know because I’ve spent the last 30 or so years of my life trying to perfect them.
And while I know how to set up periodizational schedules for a broad demographic my own personal plans are more of a crap shoot because I’m always tweaking, or experimenting, with something theoretical. Each time I set up a new scenario I’m never 100% certain it’s a good idea.
Yesterday my training took me back into the gym (well, garage) for the first time in six weeks, where I was somewhat surprised, and quite happy, to find I’d lost little, if any, strength doing Asylum Strength. I say surprised because six weeks is about the outside of time you can hang onto strength gains. It’s not like I’ve been doing nothing, far from it, but outdoor sports don’t usually allow you to keep strength gains made in the gym. This is a sign that my training plans are going according to plan.
I began this schedule back in January. Back then transitions weren’t so smooth. In the deep off season you should focus on areas of weakness. This means your strengths will suffer, which is fine, since you know (or should know) that you can get them back. But it’s still hard to wrap you head around the fact that you might be training harder than ever before only to be getting worse at your main objectives then you would be if you didn’t train at all.
Closer to your objectives these peaks and valleys merge. You don’t take big steps back during transitions and each step of your training leads to a little peak. Eventually, if you get it right, it all cumulates with a major peak in fitness.
The lesson of the day is to trust your program and let it work. We get tons of mail (literally if it weren’t electronic) from people wanting to alter their program, or quit, as soon as they get weaker, gain weight, feel tired, or hungry, or anything that’s not what they consider to be the direction they want to be going. But you’ve got to trust us; those steps back are going to lead to improvements that you never would have believed to be possible.
I was just answering a question on the Message Boards about maintaining results that leads right into what I’ve been doing since my last training cycle ended: playing, tactically, which can be just as important as the program itself.
Without breaks any training program will get stale. Your results will plateau, your enthusiasm will wane, and you’ll increase the risk of overuse injuries. For most of us life itself creates plenty of opportunity for breaks, but they should be scheduled regardless. And if you plan these breaks well they can lead to improvement that’s almost as rapid during your program, especially if you’re training for sports.
Here’s a very simple overview of why, without going insanely nerdy on you:
Training almost always targets certain energy systems in your body. Beachbody programs generally target those that will lead to rapid body composition change because that’s what most of us are after. But whenever you actively target one area of fitness others are being left out. If you know what your training program isn’t covering then it can be easily to fill this in later. If you don’t it’s harder, however, it’s not all that tricky to figure out what your training has been lacking because, basically, it’s stuff that’s the opposite of what you’ve been doing.
For example let’s use P90X because it’s the most inclusive program we offer (meaning that it concurrently targets the broadest range of energy systems). Because every workout has you training at your maximum for about an hour, simple math lets us guess, correctly in this case, that we probably aren’t targeting things that are much shorter or much longer; which are the energy systems concerning muscle cell motor unit recruitment (or power) and aerobic efficiency (aerobic endurance). While these areas aren’t too important for body composition change they can be extremely important for athletes. If you’re an athlete who values one or both of these areas they are best trained during your breaks from the program.
Furthermore, specific sports always require some amount of more simple body adaptations, such as getting used to the elements your sport is played in. These play periods should focus on lots of time doing your activity. For example, in almost any sport skin is vital and can only be prepared specifically by doing the said sport.
Finally, sports all require specific neuro-muscular patterns (often called engrams) that, while somewhat retained, need to be refined if you plan on continual improvement. Again, these are gained by doing the actual sport. Also, if you’re training is sound you’ve gained fitness (strength, endurance, mobility) which must be taught how to perform. Play time, through specific adaptations of your training gains, will help you get stronger while you aren’t doing any actual training.
If you look at the calendar of my month “off” (top), you’ll see that I’m spending as much time, or even more, doing exercise as I was when I was training (below). The only difference is that there are no real workouts. But there’s a plan, which is, well, no real plan because taking a mental break is vital to build-up enthusiasm for structured training. But within my “no plan” I’m still playing in areas that weren’t targeted during my last round of training, while also building up skin, making environmental adaptions, and refining my engrams. The goal of which is to have me mentally and physically ready to progress further during my next round of training.
key: boulder, climb, coop = some form of climbing; 4 x 10 means 4 5.10 routes, etc; mtb = mountain bike; RUKE = run/hike, which is an aeorbic-level hike (ultra pace); FWU = a variation of the X2 functional warm-up, which i don't usually record; NIS = neuro-integrated stretching; brick = run and bike workout; trainer = rode my bike on a trainer indoors; RACE = duathlon nationals
Your training program should have a definitive target you want to achieve with it. Prior to working for Beachbody my world was mainly filled with people who wanted to be better at sports. Then it transitioned to overweight folks who wanted to drop weight for a myriad of class-reunion-type motivators. Since 90X hit a few years back it’s been coming full circle, but not totally. The Beachbody community is filled with athletes but most, it seems, are still more motivated by aesthetics than performance. The most obvious anecdote I have to cite is a college baseball player I was working with. As I tweaked his training towards pure performance he finally came clean and said, “I do P90X because I just want to look good on the beach. I only want to make sure it doesn’t hurt my sport so that I don’t lose my scholarship.” Target defined.
As a lead in to seeing how I create my programs you should know that I don’t care how I look on the beach. My personal programs are created for performance. I often experiment with other styles of training, for work mainly, but I’m always looking at everything in relation to how it will improve biomechanics. Aesthetics is simply a by-product of performance.
On that note here’s another anecdote. I write up scientific evaluations on all of our workout programs. We need these in foreign television markets who aren’t as liberal as the United States when it comes to what you can advertise on TV. Marketing slogans, such as muscle confusion, won’t fly unless they can be scientifically defined and, of course, all of our programs are based on training principles so this is easy—they just don’t always make sexy copy. So, anyway, the scientific advisor board (or whatever it’s called) in the UK, upon reading my definition of how P90X was a targeted performance and that body composition changes came as a natural extension, came back and asked us why we didn’t advertise it that way because they thought it sounded impressive. Apparently, looking good on the beach doesn’t have the same clout on the sceptered isle as it does here. Luckily (by design) P90X can be used for both.
The point of today’s post is a warning that the training program you’re going to read about over the next few months is leaving the beach aspect out. It’s how to use Beachbody’s program for increased performance for my sports (cycling, running, climbing). Only.
the tour is no gun show and these guys will drop you.
“Twelve inch arms don’t drop nobody,” is something that my bodybuilder friends used to like to say. The fact is, however, that in strength to weight ration sports small arms are exactly how you drop people. With the plan I’m laying out I’ll get fitter, and look ok to some, but I won’t be targeting my six pack or the gun show. So if you’ve got a reunion coming up and were planning on wearing a tank top you’ll probably want to amend this program, which can be as simple as my final anecdote of the day.
We’re shooting an X2 vid and, in this program, we do most movements out of unstable or athletic position to induce more muscles to fire. During one set of a biceps movement Tony drops into a stable platform and picks up more weight. “Sometimes,” he says. “Maybe all you care about are your guns.”
Given it’s the first warm sunny day of the year here in Utah it seemed like a good time to record how my winter training program went. Maybe then winter here in the Wasatch will finally end. We kind of skipped spring but what are you going to do? At least our house isn’t about to get flooded so I’ll count myself lucky.
Back in December I wrote down some goals and carved out three large blocks of training leading to a race at the end of April. May was a month “off”, and now it’s time to add to the base I spent the winter building. I don’t often record the end result of my programs. The goal of this blog is to educate; hopefully in an entertaining manner, and planning a program aids with this. Results are a nice perk, especially when you hit a goal, but the important elements of training programs happen en route. End results are personal and I only report on them if there’s a good story involved or something to learn.
This time, however, I’m rolling my winter training into another program that should be some help to all of you Beachbody-ers that use our programs to train for sports. The next phase of my Year of Fitness will be putting my knowledge to the test, big time. But that quest begins later. Today we’re recappin’.
From December: Goal: since all training plans must have one, is to build a huge fitness base that will see me through an epic year of adventures.
I think this goal went well. While a lot of my sports specific fitness is nowhere near its peak my general conditioning is as good as it’s been in my life. I’ve got no acute injuries (other than some scrapes from falling off my mountain bike), my chronic pains are all at bay, and my strength base is very well rounded.
training with finnegan: meaning most of it was on trails. not ideal for speed but big plusses for fun, especially when you consider how crazy an un-exercised rescued cattle dog can be.
My primary fitness test, Duathlon Nationals, went well. With very little sports-specific training I easily qualified for the World Championships in a fun, very spirited, and ultra-competitive race for a multi-sport event (which can be very boring). Later I learned that a few of us had been penalized for some weird infractions and then had to sweat out the selection process as our penalties (6 minutes in a race where I was 4 behind the winner) knocked us into the alternate category for the US team. My official notification of selection came just as I was ready to target some new goals for the next round of training, but now I’m all in for the World’s in September, in Gijon, Spain.
probably losing time for sporting un-triathlon-specific ritte clothing
Climbing-wise I’m way behind schedule, mainly because the weather has been dreadful. Last week we humped some gear up to a local crag (with a one-hour uphill approach so we stash gear so that we can “run” up and down after work) and it was still completely soaked. Most of our local cliffs won’t be ready until midsummer so there just hasn’t been any urgency to get serious.
And while I’ve had very little time for long endurance days the few I’ve put in went surprisingly well. This is a testament to how solid a fitness base our programs build as my training centered, as you may know, on Asylum, an as-of-yet unannounced Beachbody program, and the PAP phase of X Two.
likely i was the only one racing in tucson who did this sort of thing for training.
There were no injuries during this phase. I only missed training during 90X filming, where I’d scheduled a break anyway, and the week following it when I got sick—about as good as I can expect in a five-month program.
what's next, buddy?
My break officially ends on June 1. The summer training schedule will be announced soon. If you plan to use Beachbody programs to prepare for any outdoor sports pursuit, particularly multi-sports, I’d recommend following along.
One of my favorite activities is something my friends and I call sports days, where we try and fit as many activities as possible into a given day. They are a bit like being a kid, at least if you were a kid like me, when you’d spend your summer days moving from one activity to the next and wouldn’t stop until you were summoned for dinner. Most of my birthday challenges are glorified sports days (or sports weeks/months...).
Asylum’s Game Day workout is a condensed sports day. You pretty much take the hard bits out of many different sports and combine them into a ridiculously active one hour period. If you’re into sweating and grunting you could probably say that it’s nothing but fun.
To conclude my review of Game Day here’s an excerpt from an article I wrote for our newsletter that I hope captures the spirit of both Game Day and the entire Asylum program.
Child's Play
Hell Week was accepted, and perhaps even enjoyed, because it was preparing you to get better at a game. And Asylum is all about the game, the game of life. And the only thing that might make anyone think I need to be locked up is that it’s given me a glimpse back at my youth. In closing, I’ll leave you with an anecdote about youthening, as they say in Camelot. You can tell me if I’m insane.
My summers as a kid were spent outside. My parents, and pretty much the entire neighborhood, would throw their kids out of the house with instructions not to come back in until dark. Without video games or money we were pretty much left to make up stuff to do with what was in our garages. A day might consist of a football game, maybe some tennis, some pick-up basketball. We may head down the street to the school and jump over the hurdles or kick field goals, or head to the park for a swim. Afternoons would often feature a Little League baseball game, after which I’d often stay late to work on my hitting or pitching. Summer days would end, after dinner, feeling blissfully tired while doing my best to stay awake through The Brady Bunch.
My favorite moment doing Asylum, so far, was late in the Game Day workout while we were “playing” baseball. Baseball players have not always been a paragon of athleticism but, especially during those sports days, it felt plenty active. Asylum’s baseball movements are decidedly tiring and as I was delivering one of my many “pitches”, in my garage in a snow storm, I had an acute sensory overload of a summer’s evening. I felt the same warm fatigue those long days would provide. I could actually smell the grass, feel the setting sun on my shoulder, and hear my dad telling me to arch my back or keep my elbow up. And so, okay, maybe that is a little insane. But that’s an Asylum that I won’t mind visiting every so often.
I was saving my review of Speed & Agility until late because I had something funny to write but, alas, we’ve editing a very entertaining sandbag out of the final program notes. I was probably the one who changed this but, after running through the workouts a bunch, I kind of wish I hadn’t. You may not, but I digress.
You see, Shaun used to refer to Speed & Agility as an active recovery workout. You do it on day one and, in many ways, it’s just as hard as anything in the program. As I’ve already pointed out, Shaun’s definition of active recovery can be liberal. Anyone finishing Speed & Agility and thinking that they just did the recovery workout for the program was probably going to feel as though this Hell Month thing was going to be literal. But this tactic can have a flip side in that if you respond to it positively your head will get more in the game, you’ll focus more in subsequent workouts, and get better results. But, as with all coaching philosophies, what works for one person doesn’t always work for another and this “scare tactic” may have been too much for some.
It should be pointed out that Shaun is technically right. Speed & Agility targets proprioceptive awareness and speed instead of explosive strength. For any of you whom actually have been through a football Hell Week will remember, there were parts of practice that were obviously for strength improvements, like where you hit each other, or sleds, or dummies, with a lot of force. Then there were parts, usually during “breaks”, when you did speed and agility drills that were often more painful than hitting because you had to move very quickly. This workout is about those “breaks.” And because its target is speed as well as accuracy you’ll most likely feel, like me, that there is no end to how much you can improve.
"you shoot a mean game of pool, fat man."
Sandbagging has a long and glorious history in sports. From the more overt examples, like pool hustlers, to nefarious, like the Black Sox scandal, to downright clever like last year’s Boston Celtics, hiding your clear agenda in order to facilitate an outcome is a tried and true component in sports. We don’t do much of it around here because, well, we offer training programs, not sports psychology. Both Insanity and Asylum, however, have a little bit of a get-into-your-head component. But next time you think the challenge is mean, or over-the-top, just remember that it might have been worse.
