July 10, 2010
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The Hardest Part About P90x
A few posts back, I mentioned that I had done P90x. I’ve gotten a number of questions about it over time. Yes, it’s a good program. No, there is no gimmick to it other than that the workouts are hard. No, I did not follow the nutritional plan. No, you don’t really need to buy any of the other stuff they sell (more on that later). Personally, I remember on one of their commercials where someone said that when they looked at it, they saw it as something they wouldn’t be embarrassed about if one of their friends walked in on them doing it. This is an excellent point. If anyone were to see me doing something like Hip-Hop Abs, or Samba Slim, or Brazil Butt Lift, or whatever else is out there, I would have to leave the country.
Now, you may wonder what day was the hardest day of the P90x program? Chest and back? Arms? Ab Ripper X? No, those were all reasonable. Hard, but reasonable. The hardest day, in my opinion (as well as the opinions of people that I have talked to about it) is Yoga.
Fucking Yoga.
I expected the yoga disk to be something calming, maybe some inner peace stuff, and some flexibility work. “Yoga. How hard can that be?” 15 minutes into pretzel-ville and I’m dripping sweat from God knows how many Sun salutations to chaturanga to downward-dog combinations. By that time, I thought I was AT LEAST 30 minutes in, so I was in for a big surprise when I looked at the timer on the screen. Most P90x workouts are about an hour, so guess how surprised I was to also see that yoga was a 90 minute workout. An hour and a half minutes of “hold this,” “grab those,” “lift that,” and “balance.”
Yoga was the one thing I actually purchased any additional stuff for, because I needed a yoga block. Using a dumbbell as a substitute wasn’t cutting it.
What’s worse is that during the “recovery” week, you do yoga TWICE. How does that count as recovering.
Eventually, it was manageable. Especially after the first two or three times, when I knew was was coming.
I’m thinking about doing Insanity. Hopefully, it’s not insane enough to have yoga. (Just looked at the website. No Yoga)
