Ask HN: Has anyone tried the p90x exercise program? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Has anyone tried the p90x exercise program?

6 pointspuredemo17 comments

The youtube makeovers look great but I'm not sure how many of those were staged by the company or how difficult or time consuming the program actually is.

View on HN

The P90X program is amazing if you stick to the six-a-week workouts and are really strict about your diet. It will kick your ass in the beginning, so be ready for that. By the end, you will be enjoying the workouts that you dreaded when you started.

There is no gimmick here: you have to work hard and diet hard (although "diet" just means eat smart and healthy, not follow some bullshit fad). The main benefit of the program for me was that it provided variety, structure, and intensity levels that I didn't have to think about.

I would HIGHLY recommend it.

One note: if you are WAY out of shape, start with a more basic program to get you up to speed. This isn't a program for people who are way overweight or haven't worked out in years. It is not for beginners.

I want to add an additional comment about the diet for you. The diet is BY FAR the most important part of this. Finding an hour in your day is not that hard. People who say otherwise are full of shit and just making excuses -- I work 60-70 hours a week, easily. If you have small children, that's a different story ;-) I don't, but I can see that their schedules and responsibilities are far more demanding than mine.

If your diet is not already clean, and you're not used to eating five or six smaller meals spread out over the day, it will be a lot to get used to. You can easily burn 6-700 calories in a workout. But you'll want to cut your calories and eat very smart and healthy. If you consider that you need to have a calorie deficit of about 3,500 compared to what your body needs in order to lose a pound, you can burn 500 calories and cut 500 calories in a day, and that will give you about a two pound loss for the week, which is a good goal. But you only have to worry about the workout for an hour a day. You have to worry about your diet ALL DAY.

The good part, as I mentioned above, is that there is no fad here. You have a tonne of flexibility as far as what you can eat, and as long as you cut out junk like soda, junk snacks, burgers, pizza, etc. you should the pounds drop off very quickly. I didn't even think I had 20 pounds to lose, yet I had lost 20 pounds in 60 days.

But the workouts make you want to eat better, the healthy diet makes you want to workout more, and when you start seeing real results (which you will very quickly if you follow the system religiously), that will motivate you even more.

Really, I cannot speak highly enough about this program if you're willing to commit to it.

This might get answered once the DVDs arrive, but in your opinion can I pretty much just do the program in the morning before work and then drink a protein smoothie afterwards for breakfast?

For sure. I can't workout first thing because I'm too hungry, but if you can, then a lot of people do it. Since your post-workout meal is also your first meal of the day, you'll want to male it more than a smoothie. There is a lot of info that comes with the program, so you can read that.

Yep, I've gone through a couple cycles of it -- it's pretty solid. It's going to take ~1hr of your day for those 90 days, but it's well worth the effort.

You don't need any fancy equipment. A few dumbbells and the corner of a room will do just fine.

Does anyone know of an open-source alternative? I don't mean "lift up heavy shit until you get tired, don't eat bad food" either, I mean a tested, regimented, and focused system?

I participated in the 911 Fitness Challenge http://www.911fitness.com/ a few years ago and it was particularly helpful to have everything spelled out for you, but it was expensive to implement, given the gym membership and dietary requirements.

I have a number of friends who have tried the program and rave about it. One of them lost around 15 lbs over the summer.

Thanks, that helps. Do you know if they spent a lot of time on it each day?

About an hour a day, six days a week is what you'll need.

Haven't tried it, but I have a NIB Bowflex if you want to get in shape ;)

The Bowflex scares me. I think I'll pull one of those levers the wrong way somehow, let go and it'll smack me in the face.

I've never understood the fascination with all the high tech machines. They're more expensive and more complicated than something everyone already knows works the best: picking heavy things up and putting them down again.

Difficult to pick up heavy things with certain muscles, like the triceps, without a pulley system.

Anyway, I do think p90x basically consists of listing heavy things.

Sorry, in re-reading my comment I kind of sounded like a jerk - I promise, it was unintentional.

I guess my point was that you can do a heck of a lot for yourself with basic situps / pushups / floor squats with a bag full of books or sand and it doesn't take anything that requires payments to do so.

A machine does two things.

(1) It sits there and says "you spent $500 - are you going to use it?"

(2) It sits there and gives you another place to hang junk.

If (1) works for you, great.

BTW - These are two reasons why the "put under your bed" machines are a bad idea. Out of sight, out of mind.

a. Machines are easier.

b. Machines develop muscles to show at the expense of muscles for function.

Human nature.

I suspect the largest portion of the truth derives from point B.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com