P90X (Part 1): The Absolute Intensity Argument

One of my readers, a young man who goes by Mr. Huntington, sent me a question about P90X a little while ago. He wondered if I would recommend P90X as a fat loss program because he personally felt that it was useless. He said that he knows a bunch of people who have tried it and quit because it was "too hard" or they got injured or that they just flat out didn't like it. I responded to him with a lengthy email. He subsequently mirrored some of my thoughts on an Internet forum and the response was enormous. Why was that?

You see, I am not a fan of P90X at all. However, I know that thousands upon thousands of people attempt the program. I also know that many of these same people are missionaries for the cause. You see, the marketing for P90X is amazing. What they have essentially done is created a tribe of people who will defend it to the death for no other reason than that they are convinced that "everybody is doing it."  Why do they think everybody is doing it? The advertising tells them it is so. The advertising also tells them that everybody gets ridiculously amazing results and that it is by far the best and most comprehensive fat loss program on the market. Let me tell you something. The marketing team for P90X did a FANTASTIC job. You can't avoid the commercials. You can't avoid the thousands of people that sell the product as part of Beach Body's multi-level marketing scheme. You can't type P90X into Google and find a bad review because they have flooded the Internet with hundreds and hundreds of pages telling everybody about how awesome it is.

So anyway, before I make a bunch of people mad at me, I want to say that this 3 part series will not mindlessly rant about how much I dislike P90X or anything like that. What I am going to do here is raise an intelligent argument based on sound training principles to hopefully open up a discussion about P90X as a fat loss program. Ready?

In Unit 1 of The Theory of Fat Loss, I spend a great deal of time discussing the theory of absolute intensity. The theory of absolute intensity states that "the greater the absolute intensity achieved with training, the greater the fat loss result will be." Absolute intensity is an objective measure of how difficult a workout is. It is not a subjective measure like relative intensity.

You see, relative intensity tells you nothing about how difficult a workout actually is. It only tells you how difficult a workout is for you. You can only give your 100% effort on any given training day. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean much for fat loss. You simply cannot train very hard even if you give your best effort if you are weak or out of shape.

So, how hard your heart is beating and how heavy you are breathing really don't mean much unless you are a superb athlete who would only get tired under extreme conditions. Where am I going with this exactly? Well, people tend to only think about how good a workout is based on how it makes them feel... which is not a very good approach. So when people tell me how much a P90X workout kicked their butts or how hard it was... it doesn't mean anything to me. Anybody can make a workout relatively difficult... it is called progression. In a nutshell, do more than you did before and you will get tired... P90X is nothing special in that regard since most people are completely untrained when they jump into P90X.

Okay... so far I have only made the point that P90X relatively intense. All good fat loss programs are relatively intense... in fact, the very last absolute intensity factor I describe in the book is relative intensity... so I haven't really established a good case against P90X yet. It actually fits one of my criteria! To make my case... I need to argue that it isn't absolutely intense.

How in the world am I going to do that? Well, luckily I have all that covered in the book. We can objectively measure absolute intensity with the intensity factors. They are:

1) Strength
2) Range of Motion
3) Power
4) Workout Duration (or Volume)
5) Time Under Tension
6) Rest Time
7) Exercise Selection
8) Cardiovascular Load
9) Relative Intensity

Now, before I go re-write my entire book, I think you can figure out that lifting heavier weights, lifting with more power, lifting through a greater range of motion, increasing the volume, increasing the time under tension, decreasing the rest time, and picking exercises that utilize a great amount of muscle mass are all ways to increase the absolute intensity of a workout.

The only thing that P90X really does is make you a little better conditioned. What I mean by that is that you get a pretty good cardiovascular workout by doing 90 days of this. Why? The rest times are low and there are a lot of reps. So... in at least one regard... P90X isn't the worst thing to ever be created.

But here is where it goes south pretty fast. Strength and power are not improved very much over the course of the program, and the full body range of motion is limited because of the use of bodybuilder splits (in other words, exercise selection is pretty poor for a fat loss program). As we know from before, bodybuilder splits are not conducive to fat loss. Muscular endurance is a big factor in maintaining intensity because constantly working the same muscles for an entire hour greatly reduces strength and power output and encourages sloppy form done through a cheated range of motion.

One argument that you might bring up is that the purpose of P90X isn't to increase strength and power. You are absolutely right. It is marketed as a fat loss program for beginners... and it isn't an ideal one because all it does is try to maximize relative intensity for 90 straight days without ever improving one's capacity for absolute intensity all that much (outside of the cardiovascular gains that you could get by doing anything). Beginners simply cannot jump into a program like this without first spending time getting stronger. When you focus on short term instant results, you usually end up spinning your wheels and failing miserably. Long term improvements in training habit and consistent progression are two seemingly forgotten aspects of fitness that will never stop working but that will continue to go ignored because of our quick fix culture. Quick fixes rarely work.

Okay, well now the argument becomes... "What about strong, experience lifters? Shouldn't P90X be great for them since they can already train at a high absolute intensity?" P90X, if completed by a great athlete, can get a fantastic fat loss result based on the theory of absolute intensity alone (although I will make another point about that shortly). However, one key word there is "completed." In P90X (Part 2): The Limiting Factor Argument, I will go into great detail about how P90X is not a worthwhile program because of several limits a person will likely reach when attempting the program. So, stay tuned for that.

Now, back to the point I began to make earlier. A great athlete can probably get great fat loss results with P90X simply because he or she is already in great shape. The great athlete already has a tremendous intensity capacity. Almost any program completed by a great athlete will get that person results! To truly judge a program, we need to compare it to other programs, and here is where P90X truly fails the absolute intensity test. When compared to workouts written by some of the best coaches in the industry such as Coach Dos and Alwyn Cosgrove, P90X is just plain average when it comes to absolute intensity. Mainly this is due to the exercise selection (far too much isolation work) and the programming of each individual workout. In my book, I spend an entire chapter covering what makes any individual exercise intense, and I spend another chapter describing in detail how to determine what makes an ideal fat loss workout, training phase, and long term program. It just doesn't fit the criteria. It even fails to maximize relative intensity because the whole body never seems to be involved.

Take away point if you got lost in the details: Just because P90X makes you tired doesn't mean that it is optimal. Relative intensity is not a good measure of ABSOLUTE intensity, the true measure of how effective a workout is for fat loss.

Agree? Disagree? Want to learn more about what THE Theory of Fat Loss is all about? Leave a comment below. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Read Part 2
Read Part 3