What is P90X?

There are two answers to that question. The strictly-accurate answer is that P90X is a 90-day home fitness program emphasizing muscle confusion that helps people burn fat, build muscle, and increase all-around endurance in the comfort of their own homes without having to spend money on gym memberships or wasting time driving there and back.

The real answer? P90X is a life-changer.

P90X was created by elite fitness trainer Tony Horton, the good-looking young guy pictured over there to the left.

That young guy is 53 years old, and he’s living, breathing proof that there are no limits when it comes to getting in the best shape of your life.

P90X is his masterpiece, and I’m proud to have become one of the first 50 P90X Certified Professionals in the program and a NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine) Certified Personal Trainer. When you order P90X, you can have me as your own personal coach helping and guiding you through the program.

My P90X review and results.

My story might be familiar to you. After I graduated college, I gained a lot of weight, about 45 pounds.

I got almost no exercise and ate plenty of junk food. I think we all know what happens when we let that go on for too long… We get way bigger than we want to be, we feel tired all the time, and we don’t have the energy for the things that are important like our favorite hobbies or playing with our kids.

Everywhere I looked, people were talking about P90X. I felt that if there are so many people that swear by it, if the thousands upon thousands of people showing off their results on Youtube mean anything, then there’s gotta be something about this program that people love so much.

I looked for a long time for negative feedback, but I just couldn’t find it. Here’s what I looked like before I started. I’m the guy on the right and I weighed 210 pounds.

It was time for less of what we usually don’t want…

I didn’t start doing it because it looked like the best program around. I started doing it because I could see that real people used it and loved it. Instead of celebrities endorsing the program, I saw tons of regular people like me showing off their before and after pictures.

I saw guys who looked more or less like me – not morbidly obese, but carrying too much weight for their health. I saw the photos they’d taken at the 30-day mark. The 60-day mark. The 90-day mark and beyond.

I realized that this wasn’t an instant fix. This wasn’t some magical weight-loss pill. This was a program that took the thinking out of the process, that didn’t ask me to make room in my schedule to get to the gym, just that I keep showing up and do my best.

It was simple: pop in a DVD, follow along, work hard, and change will happen. It wasn’t going to be easy – change wouldn’t happen without effort on my part – but all I was being asked to do was show up every day.

And more of what we do want!

I’m currently in my second round of P90X. I’ve dropped 40 pounds – I’m down to 170 – and gained an unbelievable amount of strength. When I started this program, I couldn’t do a single pull-up. Now I can do 10 – and I’m going to keep going until I can do 30.

It’s hard to describe the feeling of being fit when you’ve been overweight for so long like I was. I have a spring in my step, a constant smile of my face, and more energy and strength than I ever thought I’d have. Not to mention the huge boost in self confidence because of how I feel about myself now.

Working out 5-6 days a week can be tough, but the benefits can only be described by one word. Awesome. The rewards for being healthy and fit are almost infinite, so why not toss the excuses, kick some bad habits, make some new better ones and join me in a healthy lifestyle?

More P90X Results

If you’ve ever seen the infomercials for P90X, you’ll see a lot of success stories from people who have achieved their ultimate goals. For those who started out with a decent level of fitness, they can achieve their goals within one round of P90 days and look phenomenal. Others went through several rounds of P90X, getting stronger and leaner and more ripped every time. Just have a look at Jeremy’s results to see what happens when you stay committed.

Jeremy is a huge inspiration for me and I’ve met him personally several times. Whenever I think I can’t do something, I just remember what people like him have already achieved.

That’s what this program is really about. It’s not an instant fix. It’s not an overnight solution. It’s about showing you that you can achieve something you never thought you could. It’s about understanding how much better you feel when you’re stronger, fitter, and healthier than you’ve ever been.

P90X is about spending the rest of your life in spectacular shape. And I’m here to tell you that once you start, you’ll feel way too good to stop.

How P90X Works

First and foremost is the focus on periodization training.

Yeah, I didn’t know what that meant either. Stay with me.

Most fitness programs have you do the same exercises day after day. You might have an upper-body and a lower-body workout and rotate the two, but every time you do either workout, you’re doing the same thing. Same reps, same weight, same pattern.

It’s boring as hell – and it’s not just boring to your brain. It’s boring to your body. Your muscles simply adapt to the specific exercises you’re putting them through, and since your body still thinks it’s in the caveman era, it tries to minimize the amount of energy you put out to do those exercises.

The more familiar your body is with your workout, the better your body can conserve energy. As far as your body’s concerned, socking away calories for future use is a great idea. It still thinks you need those fat stores to survive the lean times ahead – even though we’re not exactly living in lean times.

P90X’s muscle confusion eliminates your body’s ability to predict what you’re about to do, which means it can’t just give you the minimum energy you need to get through it. Your body has to give you everything it’s got – because it has no idea what’s coming next.

You’ll get a different routine every day, and cycle through that set of routines for a few weeks. And just as your body’s starting to get the hang of it – P90X throws it a curveball and changes up the workouts completely.

Oh, and when your body starts to get used to that cycle, guess what?

Time to change it up again.

That’s periodization, and it would work even if you did it at the gym by yourself, changing your workouts constantly to force your body to keep guessing. There’s are a couple of reasons you should work with the P90X workouts instead of trying to go solo, though:

• P90X is designed to encourage you to work harder. When you first start P90X, you’ll be doing a lot of what Tony calls “modified moves.” You’ll do push-ups on your knees, or use a chair to do pull-ups, or do about half the jump squats before you cry mercy.

Every time you pop in that DVD, though, you’ll start to hear something different. Instead of hearing the modified moves, you’ll start hearing Tony say “but if you want to push it a little harder . . .” Instead of “It’s okay to take a break if you need to,” you’ll start listening when he tells you “I want you to fight, my friend.” You’ll start keeping up with Tony. You’ll start wanting more. And you can’t get that kind of motivation by yourself at the gym.

• P90X doesn’t let you slack off. At the gym, it’s easy to get there, mess around a little bit, visit the water fountain every two minutes, and generally give yourself the easiest “workout” imaginable.

With P90X, that’s just not on the table. You’re keeping up with the master, which means you move from exercise to exercise quickly, without time to think or hesitate or decide to maybe just go sit in the sauna instead. You’ll get your breaks, but they’re just that – breaks. You’re not giving up and walking away, you’re taking a moment to breathe, get a sip of water, and keep on working out as hard as you can. Slacking off isn’t an option.

• P90X makes the most of your time. You’ll be working out for an hour to an hour and a half every day, and you’re not messing around. You’ll burn more calories in that hour than you’ve been used to burning in a week, and your metabolism is going to get a kick that keeps burning extra calories for the rest of the day.

If you have an hour a day to catch up on your favorite TV show, then you have an hour a day to get in the best shape of your life – especially since you’re not wasting time or gas or stress driving to the gym. I work 12-hour days regularly, and P90X is absolutely worth the time to start off that long day with an endorphin buzz and the certainty I can tackle the toughest challenges.

• P90X is cheap. Only about 5% of people with gym memberships actually go regularly, and only about 3% achieve their goals doing so. It’s estimated that 90% of gym members only go once or twice before never going again – but they keep paying fees because they mean to go. That’s a lot of money spent on good intentions and no results.

With P90X, you pop it in the TV at home, so there’s no reason not to do it every day, and you’ve got a huge support network to keep you going. At the end of your 90 days, you’ll have spent about $1 a workout to get in the best shape of your life – and you can do it as many times as you like after that for free, getting better results every time. Try getting that deal at your gym.

• P90X lets you get through the hard part in private. If you’re like me when I started, you may not want to go the gym because it’s embarrassing working out alongside super-fit people who work their butts off and clearly have no problem knocking out a 10-mile run or 25 pull-ups. It’s not fun to feel like you’re the odd one out, so you don’t go.

With P90X, you can struggle and strain without anyone watching or judging you. Wear what you want, get sweaty and red-faced, yell and scream and talk to yourself if that’s what gets you through. You’re competing against yourself, not the strongest guy in the gym – and that gives you the freedom to push yourself harder than you ever have before.

You Can Do This

There’s a reason why P90X doesn’t use celebrities to endorse the program. They don’t have to pay them millions to talk about their products because there are thousands to millions of regular people like you and I willing to talk about it and show off our results for free.

P90X wasn’t designed for people with all the time in the world. It was designed for you and me – people who could find a spare hour in their day to devote to their overall health.

It’s not like P90X lacks for potential celebrity endorsers. There’s a long list of athletes (Emmet Smith, Brett Favre), entertainers (Usher, Pink, Bruno Mars) and actors (Taylor Lautner, Ashton Kutcher) who have publically said that they use and love P90X. Media outlets everywhere, from Men’s Health to The Today Show to the Wall Street Journal, have written fantastic articles on the program.

But P90X continues to grab new people the same way it grabbed me – with real stories from real people who have regular 9-to-5 jobs and not a lot of time.

People who discovered that even though they couldn’t motivate themselves to drive to the gym every day, they could wake up every morning, pop in a DVD, and take on whatever Tony threw at them.

People who found out what they were capable of. People who discovered they had honest-to-goodness abs under that belly. People who had always said they could never do a pull-up – and who were now cranking out 10 in a set.

People who discovered they were their own definition of excellence.

I did it. They did it. And I promise you, you can do it too. Don’t wait to get started. I can’t even describe how much better life is when you are confident, proud, and happy with your body.

What You Get When You Start P90X

• P90X 3-Phase Nutrition Plan designed to help you lose fat while maintaining high energy levels

• P90X Fitness Guide packed with valuable fitness information to help you get the most out of your program

• “How to Bring It” videos for a quick overview of the complete P90X Extreme Home Fitness training program

• 12 Highly Diverse and Intense P90X Workouts

P90X is designed to be done at home, and you can do it with some very basic equipment that you may already own: a pull-up bar, resistance bands or free weights, and a yoga mat. If you’ve got those things already, then you have everything you need to get in the best shape of your life.

If you don’t, then I’m going to recommend you upgrade to the P90X Deluxe package, which includes an easy-install pull up bar that fits into any standard-size doorway, your choice of medium or heavy resistance bands, and a high-quality jump mat that doubles as a yoga mat.

You’ll also get a month’s worth of P90X Results and Recovery Formula, which helps immensely with getting energy back into your muscles after a strenuous workout. Sure, you can go without it but you won’t be getting as much out of the workout as you could have. It contains a 4:1 carbohydrate to protein ratio which studies have been saying for years is the optimal nutrient ratio to re-energize your muscles so that they start recovering immediately so that you aren’t as sore the next day, prevent muscle catabolism, and reduce your risk of injury from overtraining. It also has vitamins and minerals plus a little bit of creatine, arginine, and glutamine.

Have questions about the program that you’d like answered before you buy? No problem. Contact me anytime by using the “Questions” button on the right side of your browser window or leave a comment below. I’m here to help.

P.S. Still feeling hesitant? P90X comes with a 90-day money-back guarantee. Which is to say, if you try out P90X for a month, or even two months, and you’re not happy with the results, you can send it back. No hassle, no arguments. That’s how certain I am that you’ll be seeing results way before that 90 days is up. You’ve got nothing to lose – and an incredible new life to gain. Get started today.