Disclaimer

Since I live in the land of the free, greedy, and thus scared (thanks to all the litigious people and lawyers), any and all disclaimers that limit/remove my liability apply. Read the instructions, consult a physician, use common sense. Run out of that? Travel and interact with different people and cultures to see how they do things and be willing to learn. Enough ranting, let’s get on with it.

What Is It?

P90X is an "extreme" fitness program you can do at home. It's also one of the most (if not the most) successful informercials on TV. It has a lot of pull-ups, push-ups, has a lot of variety and zero gimmicks.

Does It Work?

Yes.

Does It Work As Advertised?

Maybe. That part will be up to you. If you are willing to work, are in reasonable to decent shape, and/or have a history of exercise, you’ll likely get the awesome results they advertise. Others might need more than one round, but you’ll get there. There are plenty of success stories from real people in the forums. Check them out.

Is P90X for me?

• Do the fitness test (link):  
  • If you don’t quite meet the recommendation, it’s time to use your common sense (or consult your physician). If you can’t do the pull-ups and ace everything else, you’re probably good to go, though you might not get to “awesome” in the first round.
• Dedication
  • Are you willing to eat right and be uncomfortable? The only way to get fit is to work hard, sorry.
• Diet
  • P90X comes with a good nutrition plan and book with plenty of variety and flexibility for you to succeed. But you’ll need to drop the 200 calorie morning coffee and switch to whole wheat.
• 2 hours per day
  • Yes, the ad states “about an hour a day”. Well, technically that’s correct. The workouts are normally just under an hour (Yoga is 1.5h), but that doesn’t include Ab Ripper X which is another 15 minutes three times a week. You’ll also want to reserve 5-10 minutes for setting up, 10-15 minutes for showering (trust me, you’ll need it), and whatever time it takes you to pause during the workouts.

Getting started

What you’ll need

Here’s the list of things that you’ll need.

• P90X: ~$120
• Yoga/Exercise Mat: $15 - $90
• Pull-up bar: $45 - $60
• Weights: ~$300
• Enough room near a TV with a suitable door nearby for the pull-up bar.
• Chair

Total: Approximately $480 - $570.

You can replace the pull-up bar and weights with bands (and they’ll do the job), but I recommend getting the real things. If you travel a lot, the bands are obviously a better choice as they’re easier to take along.

Our local Target had a Reebok exercise mat which is nice and spongy/sticky for only about $15. I ended up paying over $80 for an extra long 85” Manduka Yoga mat, which was pretty steep.

Don’t get smoked on the shipping for P90X. You should be able to get free shipping, or upgraded to (if not free) expedited shipping on part or all of your order. Just search for coupon codes online (or check your local TV listings for their ad, “if you order within the next 30 mins, you’ll get blah blah blah for free”. Never tried ordering by phone).

You should also be able to get some discounts by ordering the DVDs and chin-up bar (and any supplements) at the same time. I think I had five coupons codes stacked on my original order. While the product is great, don’t forget they sell this stuff on TV. They’ll try their best to sell you other stuff at the same time and confuse you with the pricing (“Just X easy payments of $Y. Order now and get a Free Gift!”). It’s not the worst possible place to shop, but it can feel pushy (Did I mentioned “Free gift!”?). They’ve fulfilled my orders timely, and the product is the important thing after all.

One more note on the “free gifts”. Most of them come with P90X by default (Ab Ripper X comes to mind), are promo DVDs for other BeachBody programs, or even worse you’ll get a free band, but no handles.

Expensive? Not really if you consider that you probably won’t be able to get a gym membership for less than $30/month in the U.S. And with P90X you’ll save the time it takes you to get to the gym and back. Since the economy is in the crapper, you can probably pick up a decent set of dumbbells on Craigslist or similar. All of this is, of course, assuming you stick with it. Anything bought and underused is expensive.

One last thing. I checked around for P90X on Amazon and E-Bay, but it turned out that the BeachBody website was the cheapest for me, since a lot of the cheaper ones only had the DVDs and not the books. Your mileage may vary.

What you’ll want

Here’s the list of things I recommend in addition to the items above.

• Yoga blocks: ~$10
• Water bottle: ~$10
• Push-up bars: ~$10
• Heart rate monitor: Depends how fancy you want to get
• Stool

I got a fancy Garmin Forerunner 50 (which I think is about be replaced by a newer model with WLAN). It uses a chest band and transfers everything to my PC after the workout for tracking. It can even upload the data to Garmin’s website. To save money, I’d try your local Target again. They usually have reasonably priced heart rate monitors, but you’ll need to press a finger to the watch to get a reading since they don’t come with the chest band.

Next time I’ll post about some food/diet and other miscellaneous tips.