Monday, September 14, 2009

P90X and More

My friend and writer extraordinaire Dena asked a question on my last blog post about the feasibility of doing P90X and still running several times a week. There are two main things that factor into whether or not this would be possible for a person.

The biggest issue is time: Each of the P90X workouts lasts approximately a hour and a half. For me that is about all the time I have for working out during the week. I get up around six in the morning and I don't get home from work until around six at night. At that point I don't really have the time to do more than a hour and a half of exercise, especially if I'm going to cook and/or do any type of cleaning. If I was the type that enjoyed getting up in morning and working out then it would be a lot easier to fit in multiple workouts during the day. Or if I won the lottery and therefore didn't have to work I could workout about three times a day. (A girl can dream....)

The second issue is soreness: Soreness isn't exactly the word I'm looking for but the point is that the workouts are fairly intense and you would need to plan on which days you're going to run so that you aren't in too much pain. The plyometrics and leg/back workouts are brutal on your legs so you probably won't want to run the next day. Now if you did a relatively short run in the morning of those workouts then that would probably be okay.

If you have the time then it should not be a problem to fit in running (or another exercise) in with P90X. If you are already pressed for time and barely fitting in your exercise then you probably won't have the time to do additional workouts with P90X. I really believe that the people that they show on the P90X infomercials are doing additional workouts (or maybe they just aren't eating chili-cheese fries).

In my ideal life I wouldn't be at work for 9-10 hours a day (not including the time it takes to get there) and therefore I would be able to get up in the morning and workout and then workout again in the evening without quickly becoming run down.

If anyone else has any thoughts on this situation then please feel free to comment.

3 comments:

Dena said...

This is helpful, thanks. Now let me ask another question: Do you think there's value in stretching the 90-day program out? So, for example, maybe I'd do P90X workouts 4 days a week and run 3 days a week and just take longer to get through the entire program? I'm really interested in P90X but not willing to give up the running.

Interesting what you say about the people on the infomercial doing extra workouts. 90 days to their physique DOES seem too good to be true. I just assumed they're following the nutrition plan probably much closer than I would...

Tam said...

Dena:

Yes, I do think there is value in stretching out the program. The workouts are very good strength training/full-body workouts. From our conversations I don't get the sense that you are trying to enter into any body building contests. If your main goal is to get stronger then I think that having running days in between the days you workout is a great plan.

I could be underestimating the power of following a fairly strict nutrition plan but the transformations seem to be a bit extreme for JUST doing the workouts.

runrgrl2007 said...

I love chili cheese fries too much for all that! Hope your doing well, we miss you!