So, my ninety days are over. I’m officially what Beachbody
calls “a P90X grad.”
How did it treat me? It re-shaped my body. By way of
example, I’ll tell you a story. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a
stereotypically skinny distance runner. When I’d run shirtless in the summer,
people would yell, “EWW!” at me as I passed by. Many people have taken potshot
jibes at my “chicken legs.” While I’ve always been healthy and fit, that
fitness has always come in the form of a distance-runner’s build because, after
all, I am a distance runner. The other day, though, I was running through the
park – not shirtless, although it was a hot day. As I neared some tennis courts,
I saw some school children filing off the bus and standing in line. So, these
are kids who don’t know me and who have no exposure to my history of being a
scrawny guy. As I ran past them, they yelled, “Look at those muscles!”
So, they noticed.
They’re not the only ones. While talking with a coworker
over lunch, he told me that I seem to have gotten even more fit than I was before,
and remarked that I’ve put on quite a bit of muscle mass. He’s right. My wife,
too, has been enjoying the change in my body, and the other day she cooed that my
body has become “hard.” That’s a good thing. And the before-and-after photos,
which I don’t think I’ll share, don’t lie. My body is simply better now.
The long and the short of it is simply this: P90X works. It
works because it’s the real thing, a home fitness program that emphasizes the
right moves at the right times for the right duration. The core-emphasizing
workouts build not only muscle tone across your trunk, but also improve
flexibility and balance, so that you can do more of whatever you do all day
without risking injury from simple things like bending over or standing up all
day. The weekly plyometrics workout puts a spring in your step that, if you’ve
never done plyometrics, will frankly surprise you. Weekly yoga workouts offer
you a combination of core strength and flexibility exercises that facilitate
recovery from the weight lifting sessions; even a yoga skeptic like me had to admit
that the yoga days helped me recover faster.
I’m also pleased to report that I didn’t have to or want to
stop running while I was working through the P90X program. I did my P90X
workouts in the morning, and then continued to run during my lunch hour on most
days as usual. In fact, I ran 160 miles last month, tying my highest-ever monthly
miles since I started using GPS watches, and just last Saturday completed an
eleven-mile run with a 1-mile tempo run at mile #7, which I completed in 5:37,
my fastest mile in a year. This is a pretty significant thing here. Recall that
last year I was attempting to run a 100-day streak on top of P90X. At my most
consistent, I wasn’t putting in the same number of miles that I’ve been putting
in this year, I wasn’t running as fast, and crucially, I wasn’t able to
complete my streak or P90X. I knocked
it all out of the park this year.
What’s next?
From what I can tell, most P90X grads either do a second
round of P90X or go into some sort of maintenance pattern. A few of them try a
new Beachbody program, and a fair number of people go back to piecing together
their workout schedule on an ad hoc basis. In general, it seems that once people
complete P90X, they’re essentially “done.”
Me, though: I’ve learned a lot from doing P90X. More than
just familiarizing myself with the workout program, I’ve gotten a good idea
about Tony Horton’s general exercise and training “philosophy,” and I like very
much what I see. Consequently, I’ve decided to see how much more I can absorb.
To wit, I started P90X2 this morning, which is a very different program, but
which still follows Tony Horton’s over-arching training ideas. I plan on doing
a round of this, and then moving on to perhaps P90X Plus, or another round of
P90X. Thereafter, I’ll be cycling among the three for a while. I want to see
what happens when I make P90X a regular part of my life. I’m encouraged by my
results, and I want to go further.
Of course, I’ll keep you updated as I go.
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