P90X

Some of you may know that I have been doing P90X. I wanted to share some of things I've learned from dedicating almost 6 months of my workout life to it:

1. Be prepared for P90X to rule your agenda. There is some major sacrifices involved. I do my workouts in the evening when the kids are in bed. That means that the glass of wine or four with diner is scratched 6 days a week. Or if you workout at lunch and all of sudden there is a business lunch, you will need to prepare and either do it in the morning or evening. It's a constant battle.

2. Make sure that what you need to workout is portable. That includes ripping all the dvd's to your mobile device like your phone, portable media player, tablet or laptop. It's the only way you can stick to the schedule since no one stays locked at home for 3 months straight. Invariably you will have to workout somewhere that is not your basement or living room and will need that dreaded pull-up bar and your spreadsheets to write down your progress.

3. In the videos, Tony Horton, keeps mentioning to write it down. He is not kidding. I'm a competitive person and the only way I can continue and motivate myself to improve is by knowing if what I'm doing is actually working. The spreadsheet I use even includes weight loss and measurements and keeps me on schedule since it's built in.

4. Try to get a group of people together to do it. It's a lot more motivating to know that you are not alone doing it and "X" it to get better results than your friends. Put bets into the equation if you want to incentivize things up even more. Use the group to share all the body aches, anecdotes and to motivate each other to keep going. I personally created a Facebook group so we could share those stories and keep in touch.

5. P90X is not for everyone. They do try to pitch the program to every age group, fitness level and sex but I think that you need to have been somewhat athletic in your life to be able to go through it. That said, I'm sure some people that have never worked out in their life's and are overweight will find the courage and the dedication to do it but they will be the exception. Think of doing 349 or more abdominal repetition in 16 mins 3 times a week, 6 sets of varied style pull-ups to failure combined with 12 different styles of push-ups and some other back exercises in an hour, it's hard! Of course you can use chairs for pull-ups and go on your knees for push-ups but it's still very very very hard to do all week long.

6. I can vouch for it. After all the scary things I just mentioned you might be thinking why would I do this. If you do stick to it, watch out! It works. I am a huge fan and Carey, my significant other ;), will tell you, she is tired of me talking about it. I'm one of those annoying apostles that keeps talking about it. Maybe it's to make all that pain worthwhile....

Any P90X related opinions, stories or experiences to share?  I've love to hear!