Product Review: P90X Program

I know this review is going to be a work in progress, and there’ll be a lot to talk about by the time I make it thru the entire thing, so for now I’m just going to keep a running tab of the things I notice along the way.  Much of this will probably be pasted from my posts.

Things ILike

1. I love that the people in the video are working their butts off just as much as I am.  I mean they are really sweating and panting and working hard right along with me.  I can’t stand other video programs (I won’t name names, but there’s a few, usually involving very scantily clad and bustatious women) where the lead person hasn’t even broken a sweat, can talk in a nice even tone, and everyone in the background has superglued smiles on their faces.  If they can do that it’s not hard enough either for them or for me.
2. I just noticed today that on the DVDs you have the option of not only doing the workouts without the music, but also without any of the instructor’s banter either.  You have the option of having the entire thing run silent except for when the instructor tells you to change your exercise and how to go about doing it.  That alone is worth the price of admission for me and this is why:  the shelf life of any other workout DVD (my wife has more than a few) is about 6 or 7 MAX for me, the main reason being that I usually cannot STAND the crappy pseudo-techno music they play.  With P90X you can eliminate that altogether and play your own music, and this is because most of P90X isn’t straight-up aerobic based and therefore they don’t need a dumb generic song playing to keep the beat (the people in the background work at all sorts of different speeds).  Another problem I have with workout videos is the banter of the lead instructor; after a while you know exactly what they’re gonna say down to the exact “almost there!  last time, here we go.”  It just gets on my nerves, and while P90X’s lead instructor is very personable and encouraging, even as a beginner I can tell I’ll get burned out on hearing the exact same words on the 4th or 5th or 8th time.  Luckily, it would seem Beach Body (the creators of P90X) thought of everything by allowing you an unprecedented degree of control over the soundtrack, so that you can have as much or as little as you require while allowing you to play your own music.  This alone might just be the thing that brings me thru to the 90th day of the program.
3. As I continue to go thru the program, I’ve noticed that the music is actually very inoffensive.  Unlike with other workout video programs, I never go thru my day with really cheesy workout music stuck in my head.  With p90x their music is more of a background tempo keeper but what you’re really listening to is Tony give encouragement and tips on how to maintain proper form.
4. With the P90X program they make no bones about the fact that the best way to a ripped back is the pull-up, plain and simple.  They do a variety of different pull-up and chin-up exercises that work different angles of your back, and they give a few tricks for those (myself included) who aren’t quite up to doing full-blown pull-ups yet.  But they do make it clear that the ultimate goal should be pull-ups, and lots of ‘em, by the end of the program.
5. This program will protect you.  Ever since I started lifting I’ve had consistent problems with my right shoulder, so much so I was concerned that as I move on in life it would just become a permanent problem.  But with P90X I just realized that pain has COMPLETELY dissipated.  My shoulders are as developed as they’ve ever been, but that pain is gone.   And for that matter I haven’t really been injured anywhere since I’ve begun this program.  The combination of moves that they have you go thru, combined with the stretch and yoga routines all work together to make sure that you develop yourself in ways that are more clever and less brutal on your body.  To someone like me who wants to hopefully exercise for a long time that’s an awesome thing.