YOU wanna be the one to tell him he's been working out all wrong?
Acknowledging that the P90X workout system is one of their top search terms, Men’s Health finally decided to grab some Google juice from it, using a blog post titled “The Truth About P90x.” (Note: As of July 7, the original Men’s Health blog post has been deleted. Interesting.)
The P90X workout system is a combination of weight training (using light dumbbells or resistance bands and a pull-up bar) and aerobics that claims to get its users “ripped” in 90 days. From the web site:
These workouts are not for beginners. …P90X challenges participants by tapping into weight training, synergistic and core training, yoga, plyometrics, Pilates, Kenpo karate, stretching, and abdominal work. The 90-day program turns the challenge up a notch for those already in good shape, allowing them to further define muscles they’ve already started to develop while helping them discover muscles they didn’t know they had; it also includes one of the most comprehensive diet guidelines ever offered for individuals in training.
It sounds like a rounded, advanced fitness routine, and although I haven’t tried P90X itself, it has a number of the same components present in Crossfit, although it’s missing some particular elements I’ll get to in a minute. I would expect that if you adhered to the P90X plan as prescribed, including the nutrition plan, you’d look and feel much more fit after 90 days than you are today.
Confused About Muscle
Now back to the Men’s Health post. The element of P90X they’ve chosen to focus on is the term “muscle confusion”: it means that by switching up the exercises once every 30 days, your body doesn’t have a chance to “plateau.” This is actually an old principle that I’ve seen just about everywhere, including Men’s Health. They don’t call it “muscle confusion,” though—they call it “switching up your exercises to break through a plateau.” An example from one of my past posts, Break Through a Weight Training Plateau, is changing the angle of an exercise.
But now MF has brought out an expert (they’re everywhere) to suggest that you should never vary your exercises or your muscles will refuse to grow:
“Instead, follow the same strategy used by many elite athletes,” says [Bill] Hartman. “Rather than change the exercise, change how you do it.” Slight alterations in tempo, load, sets, reps, or rest periods are often all it takes to stimulate new muscle growth.
Who are these “elite athletes?” We know from the MH article itself that Donovan McNabb does P90X, but they couldn’t give us one example who consistently does the same exercises one day to the next? Crossfit, another program with varied movements (possibly even more varied than P90X) is the workout of choice for many mixed martial arts athletes. But wait, I’ve forgotten that even the MH post contradicts itself (italics mine):
Does all of this mean that you should never vary your workouts? Certainly not. Variation is key to any good training program—as long as it’s not too frequent.
No mention of what “too frequent” is (although I do know that Men’s Health offers an entire battery of new “killer moves” to try each and every month). Really, there are holes throughout the post, which remind me of why I became disillusioned with magazines like this one and Men’s Fitness: while criticizing P90X for not being “the total-body fitness solution that most people are looking for,” the post doesn’t suggest any alternatives, other than a standard bodybuilder’s weight training program. And that’s neither a “total body fitness solution” nor what most people are looking for.
Most people want to look good and feel healthy. They want to be able to occasionally run for the bus without gasping for air, to not have back pain, and to look decent in swimwear. Most guys don’t want to look like they stepped off the stage at Mr. Universe, most of us just want to have defined pecs and shoulders and abs.
What to Do
The real truth is about five football fields away from all of this: if you’re doing an exercise program you like and really get into, and you eat properly, you have miles of advantage over someone who takes an “expert’s” advice but then sits at the bench for five minutes between sets and is bored out of his skull by the third week.
You can vary your exercise from day to day and week to week and build muscle; the thousands of people performing Crossfit demonstrate that. But—and this is my one nit I’ll pick with P90X—to do so efficiently requires rotating in heavy loads. So if you want to build bulk, do as the Men’s Health post says and push heavy weights each day. To build while getting the other advantages of flexibility, endurance and coordination, find a rounded and varied program.
Whatever you do, you should be motivated to do it. If your commitment wavers or you lose intensity, change programs. Feel good about your workouts and don’t let the nitpickers screw it up for you.
The Truth about P90X [Men's Health]
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