Wednesday, December 8, 2010

P90X (Part 2): The Limiting Factor Argument

Update 12/13/2010: In response to the comments by two of my readers, apparently I was wrong in my assessment of P90X in regard to time. Both of them said that I was too nice, as the workouts are actually longer than I thought they were. So, my updated grade of P90X in lieu of this new information is C-.


This is the second of 3 installments discussing the efficacy (or lack thereof) of the P90X program. To read Part 1, The Absolute Intensity Argument, click HERE. This purpose of this post will be to evaluate P90X in terms of the construct discussed in Unit 2 of The Theory of Fat Loss, the limiting factor theory.

Note: One of the comments on my previous post suggested that it is impossible to evaluate P90X without reviewing the nutrition system with it as well. While I completely agree that you can never out train a poor diet, the purpose of these posts is not to discuss nutrition. Even the poorest exercise programs out there can look fantastic if a good diet is followed. I am simply critiquing an exercise program as it stands by itself. The Theory equips people with an evaluation system to objectively look at any training regimen, so I am merely providing you with an example of how it can be done.

Note 2: Let's not get accusatory in my comments section! It takes a lot of courage to post things non-anonymously, especially training results. I just recently posted a guest entry on this... the "your a skinny b*****" post. What matters is that people continue to make progress and that we help and support them, not tell them they are too thin or whatever. Even if somebody is technically "underweight," I don't see a problem with it if they are still improving their numbers in the gym. Now, if a person starts regressing or getting physically ill, then there is a problem, but being light doesn't mean unhealthy. I must say though that it does support my point about P90X not being a hypertrophy program.

Okay, without further ado...

Unit 2 of The Theory of Fat Loss, I discuss several limits that hinder a person from reaching a fat loss goal (as they limit the absolute intensity you can achieve). In summary, the limits are:

1. Capacity Limits (such as strength, muscular endurance, cardiorespiratory endurance, and muscle mass)
2. Functional Limits (knowledge, coordination, posture, and injury)
3. Time Limits (daily and global time limits)
4. Programming Limits (exercises, workouts, short term programs, long term programs)

In order to truly maximize what you can get out of a workout,  capacity and functional limits need to be broken through, and beyond that, no new limits should be introduced throughout a training program. How does P90X match up to limits?

Capacity Limits
The good: I have never doubted that P90X raises people's heart rates and keeps them up. It's not a bad cardio stimulus in any way. I also have never doubted that people improve their muscular endurance due to the high number of repetitions of the 100 variations of the same exercise per workout.

The bad: Muscle mass is not improved very much when following P90X. Many people that complete P90X actually end up with less lean mass than they did when they started. To some extent, that is to be expected if there is a lot of fat loss, but a better program would not have such drastic loss of muscle. (Extreme muscle fatigue and high volume training is not the way to stimulate muscle growth, by the way. If you want a different opinion than mine, coach Jason Ferrugia just wrote a 4 part series on training to failure.) Of course, in the short term, muscle mass isn't necessary to be strong or to complete a lot of reps, so it might not being a problem when completing P90X. However, when you look into long term efficacy, muscle mass is very important to keeping resting metabolism high (and looking really good). Am I saying that P90X might actually hurt you in the long run? Not necessarily, but I'm still tossing that idea around in my head. I can expand upon this point some more, but I'll move on. If anybody has any comments or questions about it, leave a comment.

The ugly: Strength is one of the most important factors when it comes to burning fat effectively. Also, muscular endurance is largely determined by strength. If you aren't strong enough to do 1 pullup, you surely aren't strong enough to do 10. People simply do not get that much stronger following P90X because it wasn't designed to get people stronger. Strength limits are simply not broken through.

Grade: C-
I cut it a little slack because it is designed as a done-for-you home workout program. You aren't supposed to need heavy weights to do the program. That's fine. The real problem I have is the way it's marketed as a program that will solve every single one of your problems, when really, it is just an overpriced conditioning program for people who don't know how to train on their own or think that they don't have time to go to a gym. I also give it low marks simply because it is 90 days long. It is ridiculous to condition for 90 days and not work on any other aspect of training. Another issue is that the program preys on people's misguided ideas about how training is supposed to feel. It goes for the burn, the pump, and the shortness of breath... all subjective and largely meaningless measures of difficulty.

Functional Limits:
The good: I've got very little to say here. Some people that try P90X are so sedentary and uncoordinated that simply doing anything will improve their knowledge and coordination. That doesn't mean P90X is good about doing so. Also, very highly trained people might get a good stimulus due to a variety of challenging moves, but that is a tiny subset of the population.

The bad: P90X throws in way too much variety and never allows people to master basic movements or execute proper technique. It seems like keeping up is more important than learning how to move. Sloppy form should never be allowed. P90X also teaches people very little, although it does consistently and subtly try to sell you other products in the middle of workouts. A good program should not only give you a good training stimulus, but it should teach you something. Exercises, loading, sets, reps, and rest times should be recorded in a log. That way, you can look back and see exactly what worked, what didn't work, and what to tweak.

*If you buy my book by the way, you will have instant access to training templates and guides that will teach you exactly how to do that. Just click on the Buyer's Bonuses tab after your purchase.

The ugly: My main concern is that the injury rate of P90X is so high that it just shouldn't be followed by anybody. I'm not talking about major traumatic injuries that are going to result in lawsuits or anything, but I mean aches and pains that prevent people from training. Any done-for-you program is going to be awful at fixing posture just because there is no individual assessment, so I don't necessarily fault it there. What I really don't like are the warm-ups. The approach to warming up in P90X is so 80s. Where is the soft-tissue work? Where are the intelligent and workout specific dynamic mobility drills? Injury prevention should be practiced every workout, not just in a stretching and a yoga DVD. Finally, P90X abuses the law of repetitive motion. It is an example of too much too soon, high repetitions with poor form, overuse of body parts due to the training splits, etc.

Grade: F-
Too little cognitive and motor learning. Poor excuses for warm-ups. High injury rate. Useless yoga and stretching DVDs.

Time Limits:
The good: You get to work out in your home. Convenient.
The bad: 90 days is too long to be stuck doing only conditioning workouts
The ugly: Long term, this program will do you a disservice. Where is the periodization? When does the training stimulus change? Conditioning is the easiest thing to improve, but unfortunately, it is also the fastest thing to disappear with detraining. Strength and mass and coordination tend to stick around for a while. I wouldn't want to waste 90 days only working on one thing only to have it disappear shortly after. I'd like long term progress that could get me results faster next time.

Grade: B-
As far as daily time limits go, P90X is pretty good because it won't take more than an hour. (If you have less than an hour, it isn't very good though.) Most of the time (and there are exceptions, of course), it is a waste of time to condition for 90 days. Time would be better spent improving other intensity factors first and getting to the conditioning last.

Programming Limits
These have basically been covered already in this post and in the previous post. I want to say that short-term, the program is too long for what it is meant to do. Long-term, the program has a focus that is too short-term and narrow. You might not get that... oh well.

Grade: C-
Makes people very tired and has a high relative intensity. Due to the bodybuilder split though, relative intensity is never actually maximized either. Does very little to improve intensity capacity, so the absolute intensity achievable remains almost equal the entire length of the program.

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Overall, I hope that gives you a glimpse into why I do not think P90X is worth doing. It is too limited. Stay tuned for Part 3, where P90X is analyzed using The Theory of Fat Loss, and not just one of the constructs.

What do you think? Leave a comment. Start a discussion!

Read Part 1
Read Part 3

15 comments:

  1. Feel free to check out Part 1 of the series and all the comments from there if you wish to use it to jump start this discussion.

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  2. Overall I can agree with most of what you wrote, just a couple of things. First as for time, it usually took me an 1 hr 15 min to 1 hr 30 min with various preparations and cooldowns. If I rushed the workouts I could do it in an hr but that was skipping rest breaks and moving to the next workout when i hit my max reps on the previous one. Since you aren't doing the program but probably watching the videos I figured you should know that.

    Second- I found they did a fairly good job of injury prevention with how they explained the moves and if your form gets sloppy, (which for the record, there are about 6 moves they are horrible at explaining) they say to stop or if you start to feel pain, to stop. Mind you i'm a young lad so it may just be I was more resilient.

    overall I agree though good read again.

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  3. Thinking about the time limits again, I think I should have graded P90X less favorably. One, Keith said they took longer than I thought they did. Two, some extremely good metabolism boosting programs can be completed in 30 minutes, and, I'm a little biased here, a lot of the programs I write are completed in 45 minutes, and that includes a 15 minute warmup.

    @Keith, I still have to completely disagree about injury prevention. They aren't very biomechanically aware... I don't want to go into all the technical details because I've already written tons on that... but if you go back and read my anterior pelvic tilt posts and my low back pain posts, or if you wait a little while for my shoulder post, I think you'll see very quickly what I mean.

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  4. Oh, and the 6 days a week thing. That's a lot. The author the foreword of my book got his bf% to under 10% and his deadlift to over 400 pounds training 3 days a week.

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  5. @ Theory: That's not true! That's....IMPOSSIBLE!

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  6. @ Sausage: Hahahah. Alright, Luke Skywalker.

    Moving on... I just thought of something new in response to what Keith said about the "injury prevention" aspects of P90X.

    He said, "I found they did a fairly good job of injury prevention with how they explained the moves and if your form gets sloppy, (which for the record, there are about 6 moves they are horrible at explaining) they say to stop or if you start to feel pain, to stop."

    Injury prevention is not simply properly performing exercises or stopping if there is pain or discomfort. That is crisis avoidance. Stopping when there is pain is a reactive approach to injury, not a proactive one. A proactive approach involves working on muscle tissue quality, correcting muscle imbalances and posture, etc.

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  7. Agreed, I can retract the prevention that I'd give them in light of you may not feel it but you might be injured anyway and chalk my personal survival to what I call "youngin' resilience"

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  8. @Theory: But what did he do for cardio?

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  9. Sausage, please stop confusing everyone by quoting your part of the book.

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  10. "an overpriced conditioning program for people who don't know how to train on their own or think that they don't have time to go to a gym."

    As keith and you have already discussed your time estimates were wrong. I have been guided through p90x so i cant say that this is exactly how they want it, but in addition to the workouts, abs, warm up and cool down it takes me almost 2hrs to do a p90x workout with a partner. Just goes to show that timing was your best grade and it can be justifiably lower. As a user of p90x (5 weeks in) i'm not noticing substantial gains, even for endurance. waiting for part 3.

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  11. Thanks for the comment Eric. I'll have to revise my grade to a C- for time.

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  12. I just wanted to make one comment about 1 paragraph in this page.

    "The bad: P90X throws in way too much variety and never allows people to master basic movements or execute proper technique. It seems like keeping up is more important than learning how to move. Sloppy form should never be allowed."

    This statement is quite incorrect. In every video tony says probably a dozen times to hit the pause button if you need it, practice good form and do it right. In no way are you required to simply keep up with the video for the sake of keeping up. Also, in several of the videos he makes specific mention of quality of the movement over reps.

    "P90X also teaches people very little, although it does consistently and subtly try to sell you other products in the middle of workouts. A good program should not only give you a good training stimulus, but it should teach you something. Exercises, loading, sets, reps, and rest times should be recorded in a log. That way, you can look back and see exactly what worked, what didn't work, and what to tweak."

    This statement as well as the previous part of this paragraph simply sound like you don't know what your talking about. In the videos that have muscle building foci, such as chest and back, Tony very specifically tells you, often after every set, to write down your numbers and to view your numbers from the previous week. He even goes further to actually say that this is a requirement to make sure you are making real progress.

    I honestly was reading your 3 part series here, and thought you had a hand full of decent points, but then I got to the mentioned paragraph. It simply seems now like you have not even really looked at any of these videos in any serious way or you would have seen how absolutely incorrect you are on some of these issues.

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  13. Hey "Tim",

    Thanks for the comment. I haven't had the desire to watch all the DVDs in full by myself because I have higher ROI activities to do, because frankly, they are terrible compared to what I'm used to, but I have seen people completing all of the full workouts in their entirety following along with the DVDs, although that was some time ago now. I tend not to listen to what he says because it's just noise to me. I'm more interested in what people ACTUALLY do, because that shows what message is actually being communicated to the audience. Regardless of what Mr. Horton says (ya know, with words), the true message can only be deciphered by what people actually "hear."

    It's like when there is a disclaimer at the beginning of anything. "Consult with your doctor before starting an exercise program." Nobody does that (and of course the more ridiculous thing is that we expect doctors know anything about exercise).

    Here's why his "words" don't matter to me. EVERYONE who makes an exercise DVD is going to say things like that because if he didn't, there'd be huge potential legal ramifications if somebody got hurt.

    I have seen, and I'm being serious, about one hundred people do P90X both in private settings and in groups (it is integrated in "group classes" quite frequently), and I have never once seen someone pause a DVD. I admit that one hundred isn't a large sample size, but its large enough where you can reach several conclusions. The reason for this, and this is a bit of a conjecture, is that the idea of pausing the DVD goes against the theme of P90X and the whole "bring it" culture. Pausing and "bringing it" aren't compatible in most people's minds. Also, mentioning "quality" is not the same as teaching it. Of course, this is the limit of a DVD product.

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  14. If they truly wanted to produce a product that taught anything, they would simply have coaching DVDs in addition to what they did put together. They would teach you the coaching cues, the exercises, break down what to look for, show you multiple angles, show common mistakes, give REAL guidelines for progression and regression, etc. I'm looking forward to the day they produce something like that because, well, people deserve something like that.

    On your other point, I'll give you a little more credit, but not much more. Despite the fact that none of his "muscle building" workouts are even remotely hypertrophic in context of the entire program (lean mass, based on numerical evidence I have analyzed, including Keith Courville's comments on one of my posts, actually routinely decreases in men from beginning of the program to the end of it), I'm glad he says to record your numbers.

    Now, props for the suggestion, but no props for getting people to actually do it or for people actually progressing in load. When you do 4,762,132 reps per exercise and 471 different variations while sending mixed messages telling people to stop the DVD and "bring it" simultaneously, most people aren't going to have time (or desire) to record their numbers while keeping up with the exercise. And, its pretty hard to measure progress when your reps are inconsistent from week to week AND you do a ton of reps where a 5 pound jump would be extremely difficult to make (yes, I'm completely ready for any countercomments on this subject).

    "I honestly was reading your 3 part series here, and thought you had a hand full of decent points, but then I got to the mentioned paragraph. It simply seems now like you have not even really looked at any of these videos in any serious way or you would have seen how absolutely incorrect you are on some of these issues."

    Finally, if you let a few paragraphs ruin the entirety of an argument, I'm sorry. If I made good points, great. I hope you learned from them. If you didn't like some points, also great. Thanks for starting a discussion. Absorb what is useful. Reject everything else. (Don't reject what is useful because you don't agree with one or two things.)

    Nothing you read is 100% correct. I've heard a wise man once say, "80% of what you are taught is true, the other 20% you have to figure out for yourself." I'm neither special nor always right. There is much I have to learn. Please don't accuse me of not knowing what I'm talking about.

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  15. As a kinesiologist with a background in some exercise science, I wanted to point out some obvious issues with the program (my brother has completed it)

    1) Training 6-7 days a week, especially from the outset will result in an increase in overtraining injuries, fatigue and limit results

    2) Programs like Ab Ripper X, force you do do moves which are known to be bad for your back and intervetebral discs hundreds of times (spinal rotation, compression)

    3) It is mostly just glorified circuit training

    4) The results I've seen in a lot of people are actually fairly poor given a 3 month timeframe (too much training, not enough rest, not enough variety in weight, rep speed, rest length, lack of periodization). My brother (similar genetics) has completed the program several times and I can get faster and better results in less time and with a less painful diet by doing a well structured gym program.

    I could probably tear the program up more, but I don't want to waste my time analyzing it since I don't work as a personal trainer.

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