For the past several weeks I’ve officially been over Tony Horton and P90X. I just could not stand to hear him say “Ab … Ripper … X. I hate it, but I love it” one more time, and, if I did, I knew I was going to lose it. Plus, I’d only lost 4 pounds in Phase II of P90X Classic and was getting pretty discouraged. So I decided to take a break from the strict P90X regime and do my own thing. The first few weeks consisted of not one push, pull-up, or PlyoX workout. I pretty much stuck to cardio (spin class, road cycling, elliptical machine, kayaking, tennis, etc.) and enjoyed the freedom of working out in the fresh air and away from my stuffy garage. The additional freedom came from cutting my workouts down from 6 days a week to 3-5.
Now, I know this is totally contrary to what the P90X program is really all about, but I had complete P90X fatigue. I just couldn’t mentally do it any more. Listening to these 4 Hour Body people with their 20 minute workouts a few days a week, made me have workout envy.
One would think that by working out less I wouldn’t lose any weight. Just the opposite has happened though. I’ve been steadily losing weight at a much more rapid pace than I was while doing P90X. I’ve lost 10 pounds in this past month alone! This could be due to a few factors:
1. More cardio = more calories burned.
2. Less weight lifting = less muscle mass.
3. I reduced my caloric intake from between 1800 and 1900 calories/day to between 1700 and 1800 calories/day to account for the reduced workout time.
Although I initially stopped doing P90X altogether, I’ve since incorporated it in to my workouts two days per week for the strength training portion. Here is my current workout regimen:
– 4 hours/week of cardio (spin class, elliptical machine, cycling, or Plyometrics/Taebo/KenpoX) combined with a short core workout of Pilates or Ab Ripper X
– 1 day/week of core strengthening (Pilates/Core Synergistics) for 1 hour
– 1 hour/week of weight lifting. P90X is still the best weight workout I’ve done so I combine the upper body workouts in order to workout the entire upper body in just one session versus the two separate sessions that P90X usually has you do weekly . I’ve stopped doing leg weights because I feel that HIIT training in spin class, while cycling and while on the elliptical machine can get the job done for my lower body without bulking up my thighs.
This new schedule has the added benefit of variety and leaves me the flexibility to work out on the days that I have available and not get bored. I still have to work hard, but I now have the freedom to exercise the way that makes me happy and the way that apparently works.
We’ll see what happens in the weeks and months to come (I still have 52 pounds to lose), but for right now I believe I found my “sweet spot” so to speak.
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