Healthy eating and fitness for everyday people
In this short video, Tony Horton — the creator of P90X and P90X2 — explains the difference between the two programs.
If you don’t want to watch the video, the upshot is that P90X gets you into shape, and P90X2 focuses on making you more athletic. It’s the same as the difference between Shaun T’s Insanity and Insanity: The Asylum.
You can order the programs through the links above or email me at [mailme] if you have questions. Ain’t nothin’ to it but to do it!
I am in day 20 of my high fat diet, which aims for 70% fat, 20% protein, and 10% carbs.
My body seems to have adapted to the lack of carbs, so I am not feeling as run down, although I’ve been doing only yoga the past 10 days. I switched from Insanity to yoga because I tweaked my back, but I liked the yoga so much, and my back was feeling so good, that I decided to stick with yoga for a few weeks. I haven’t done that before and have been wanting to give it a shot, so now’s a good a time as any, right?
I’ve always liked yoga, and I am really thankful that Tony Horton got me into it during P90X. It seems like a great way to stay in shape, although I do feel the need to add some cardio. I will do that once I feel my back is in really good shape. Honestly, my back hasn’t felt this great in years, so I don’t want to do anything to mess it up.
As for the high fat diet, I am again feeling like it’s a mixed bag of pluses and minuses.
First of all, I continue to struggle to stay under 2000 calories, which was not a problem on my high-protein diet. For some reason, when eating high fat, I end up in the 2200 to 2400 calorie area almost every day.
Not that there’s anything too wrong with that. I burn enough to still be able to see negative net calories on that regimen, but I’d always read that fat is far more filling and satisfying than carbs and protein, and I am just not finding that to be the case.
Also, I am feeling some of those same episodes of “hitting the wall” after a high-fat meal. I had previously attributed that phenomenon to too much carbohydrate, but now I wonder what the real cause is.
For example, as I write this, I feel somewhat sleepy. Well, I had a good 7.5 hours of sleep last night, and it’s still morning. However, about a half-hour ago I had a heavy cream latte that had about 20 grams of fat in it. So, yes, I wonder what is causing the sleepiness.
Honestly, it could be allergies. While my mountain cedar sensitivity is severely diminished during this period of no-grain eating, it’s been raining a lot here, and mold still seems to have a pretty strong negative effect on my body.
Aside from all that, I feel great. My energy level is fine, my strength is great, and I haven’t had any problem sticking to the diet. When I go out to eat, I usually have a salad with some protein in it, which is usually what I had to eat when I dined out before anyway.
Today’s Super Bowl party at a friend’s house may prove challenging — not sure what to expect for food there — but I can always eat nothing, and maybe that will keep me under 2000 calories for at least one day.
Sure, sure, Tony Horton and his P90X program have made “muscle confusion” a buzzphrase, but the fact is, as Tony readily acknowledges, that the idea of muscle confusion has been around for years.
For example, in P90X we do 3 weeks of varied workouts, a week of recovery, 3 more weeks of different workouts — same muscles, different moves –, a week of recovery, and 3 weeks of workouts that mix the 2 sets of moves.
Why is it so important? I mean, I’m not a bodybuilder, so why do I need to worry about muscle confusion?
Well, I figure it this way: If I am going to put the time into being fit, why not go ahead and get fit the best, most efficient way I can? And, let’s face it, running every day is not my style. Too boring.
Plus, I want to be generally fit. If my goal were to run fast 10k races, I would run. But I don’t need to be able to fun faster than the rest of the world, I just want to lower my fat level and have an overall stronger body.
So I’ll cross-train and keep my muscles confused.
I have told the story before of the distance runner who used to fail the fitness test when I was in the Air Force, because the fitness test was done on a stationary bike. Once he added bicycling to his distance running, he was able to pass the test.
Beyond just engaging in different cross-training activities, though, the principle of muscle confusion also tells us to switch it up by working our muscles differently.
I use muscle soreness as a test. If I get to the point where I notice I am not sore (or not as sore) as I should be, that’s a reminder to switch it up. I tend to do the same routines for 3 or 4 weeks, then take a week of recovery, then change things up for another 3 or 4 weeks.
Switching up a routine to create muscle confusion can be as simple as reversing the order of the moves.
For example, try doing Steve’s Chest and Back for 3 or 4 weeks as part of your workout plan, then, after your recovery week, keep it in your plan, but reverse the order of the moves. You’ll feel it!
Muscle confusion is the basis for cross-training, and it’s the reason I engage in resistance training, do aerobics, and practice yoga. It takes a lot of different kinds of activity to build a body, and, for me, anyway, doing the same thing all the time is too tedious.
So, relieve the tedium and reach your general fitness goals by varying your workouts on your way to a better body!
I love Insanity. It’s my favorite of the 3 programs I’ve done. (The other 2 are Tony Horton’s P90XÂ and The Asylum. I’ve also worked out a lot with the One on One DVDs, but that’s not a program, per se.)
I wanted to start 2012 with a round of Insanity, but I wanted the weekends off, so this post is about what I’ve come up with.
The original Insanity is a 9-week program. This is 10 weeks.
My Insanity-with-weekends-off program includes all the high-work days that are part of Insanity, but, to compress the schedule while taking weekends off, I leave out all but the first and last fit tests, as well as some of the low-work days.
Trust me, though, I’ll get plenty of work during this program, and so will you, if you choose to follow it.
Here you do, day by day, with weekends off, if you start on a Monday.
WEEK 1
I am just starting Week 3. I see myself substituting some Ultimate Power Yoga routines during Week 5, the Recovery Week, but we’ll see how it goes. I love me some yoga and doing Core Cardio & Balance over and over (which is what the original Insanity calls for) is pretty boring.
You may notice that the first month I put Cardio Recovery on Day 4 each week, instead of splitting the workouts in half by putting it at Day 3. That’s a personal preference, because I like to work hard, have a milder day (not that Cardio Recovery is that easy a workout, but it does take a day off from cardio), then another tough day, then 2 days off. If you want to put Cardio Recovery on Day 3, go for it.
During the later weeks, I do go 2 cardio days, recovery day, 2 cardio days, because those later cardio days are tougher than the ones during the first months.
Two weeks in, this seems pretty great. I am looking forward to finishing it up, because I am using this as a lead-in to my first time through Tony Horton’s P90X2.
I’ve been on my fitness quest for about four years now. I went in with with an open mind, wanting to find out as much as I could, experiment on myself, see what works and what doesn’t.
Here are a few of the things I think I know, subject to change as I learn more:
I’m sure I’ve learned more than that, but those are a few good lessons that came to mind pretty quickly.