Posted on 12/31/2011 7:26:54 PM PST by Altariel
To give you a sense of what you’re up against if you attempt to make it through P90X2, the sequel to the phenomenally popular P90X fitness program, here’s a sample exercise: the four medicine ball push-up. Yes, that means having a ball under each hand and foot. “It’s like doing push-ups during an earthquake,” says Tony Horton, the 53-year-old former stand-up comedian who created the original program eight years ago.
That 90-day, 12-DVD regimen has sold 3.5 million copies, spawned an astounding number of before and after photos, persuaded politicians from both sides of the aisle to sweat it out together at the House gym and become shorthand for “really hard workout.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
People who have been doing crossfit for a while get so much fitter (e.g. 30 continuos pull ups) that the standard crossfit workout needs to be scaled down for newbies. Really, anybody is better off scaling the workload to their current level of fitness - up or down. When I started, I had no idea how to adjust the recommended workout, so that guidance was really helpful. As you search the site, you will find other useful tips for scaling, like the use of assistance bands for getting the pull ups, and alternatives to help you progress to doing handstand pushups (I thought that they were beyond attainable back in July, but I do 5 in a set now). After a while, you know what they are getting at with the workouts and how to scale them yourself.
Like the P90X program, they employ variety to avoid overtraining or plateauing. Also like P90X, they bring intensity, because it is just so much more productive. The Crossfit emphasis is on getting good at a core of a few dozen "World's Best" exercises, endlessly varied in their arrangements, sets and reps. You never know when they will will come up some new unique challenge though. At first it may seem like they are jumping around randomly, but over time I have appreciated that it is really scientifically selected and programmed based on sound principles and precise logical analysis.
You wrote:
” Do not believe anybody who says that you can lose 5 pounds a week.”
I lost 25-30 pounds in six weeks. I did no deliberate exercising. All I did was move to Italy, walk everywhere, and ate plenty (drank wine every day too). I also had to walk up 147 steps to get to my apartment while there.
I just complete my first week of UFC trainer on kinect and it kicked my butt. Ive started both P90 and insanity. They both work but it’s sticking with it which is tough.
To lose 5 lbs of fat, you have to burn approximately 17500 calories above your calorie intake.
When I go for my 1 hour brisk walk every day, I burn about 440 calories in that hour. That would mean, for me, I’d have to walk almost 40 hours to burn that many calories.
Now you said that you lost 25 to 30 lbs in your time in Italy. There’s a good chance that at least some of your weight loss wasn’t fat, but other things like toxins or water. All weight loss really means is that you’ve loss mass, but that mass isn’t necessarily fat. Depending on your diet, like if it was low protein, you could have found that some of that weight loss included muscle.
But you’d really know what it was unless you tested for fat percentage before and after your visit. But congratulations, at any rate.
That’s my understanding, that the main thing to monitor is the number of inches lost, not pounds.
I’ll never try it because people who are “in to it” evangelize about it like TV preachers and never shut up about it.
They remind me of people who have quit smoking within the last 30-60 days.
Thanks for the info. I looked into it more to get a better idea, and I’m liking what I’m seeing. It looks like it’s fairly simple to set up a home gym (minus the rope climbing stuff).
What’s the big difference between Crossfit and P90X?
Similarities include a lot of variety (P90X's muscle confusion), advocating a higher intensity than the 60% of maximum heart rate (suitable mainly for recovering cardiac patients), and an emphasis on functional movement (vs. isolating unnatural movements in a weight machine).
Differences include a wider variety of exercises, inclusion of training max strength (e.g. deadlifts, 1-3 rep max weights), greater emphasis on power (explosive strength), more skilled movements requiring practice or coaching (like jumping rope and Olympic weightlifts), and a more open-ended/life long approach.
If you kept doing the P90X four times a year, you would adapt to it and gains would taper off long before for the seven years until P90X2 comes out. With Crossfit, you tend to rapidly progress toward your genetic potential, and then efficiently main your capabilities at a high level. Some of the workouts are done in five minutes or less by well trained Crossfitters.
For example, yesterday's Workout Of the Day (WOD) was one of the most famous within Crossfit, named Fran. It consists of three sets of two exercises, done for time. The first is a thruster (front squat standing to an overhead press) with a 95 lb barbell. The second is a pull up, On the first set, you do 21 reps of each (broken up however needed), on the second 15 reps, and on the third 9 reps. It is a whole body workout (Push, pull, squat) with a powerful systemic effect. Six months ago, I could not do thrusters because of a bad knee, and could only do four pull ups. Yesterday I completed Fran in twenty minutes. Experienced crossfitters do the 21 thrusters or pullups in a single set, and burn through the whole workout in 2 to 5 minutes.
So once you have rehabbed your injuries (typically 6-12 months) learned the harder skills well and backfilled your weakness (typically 1-2 years), workouts (as prescribed) tend to be in the 5 to 20 minute range, with occaisional 40 to 60 minute WODs. Over the next few years, max strength increases tend to move up the barbell weights into the 300-400-500 lb ranges.
The normal approach is to scale workouts (e.g. reduce the weight, use assistance or substitute an easier equivalent exercise) to generally keep pace with a group and develop metabolic conditioning (cardio).
I workout in my garage with no coaching or spotter, and I am older (50) with multiple old joint injuries, so I took a cautious approach and slowed down my workouts to emphasize maintaining good form and developing strength vs. the more balanced strength and conditioning crossfit approach. Frankly, I was also cautious of a heart attack because of a strong family history, 30% bodyfat and two years of total de-conditioning after ankle surgeries. It has been wonderful for rehabbing my joints, and improving my physique nonetheless. This Summer I intend to push speed more (at this rate I'll be down to 10% bodyfat), and spend more time gasping for air on those days when the WOD is focused on metabloic conditioning (met con in the Crossfit jargon). Anyhow, Crossfit doctrine is: Mechanics, Consistency, Intensity (i.e. have consistently good form first, before you go pushing the envelope), I have just been abundantly cautious with it, due to my situation.
One thing about Crossfit that has me particularly hooked, is the fact that they have selected best practices as their core - those exercises that have been so widely proven to be among the most productive/effective at improving performance that they are the centerpieces and mainstays of training programs for athletes worldwide (e.g. squats, cleans, sprints, plyometrics, box jumps). Over the course of a lifetime, it seems almost grossly negligent not to incorporate those elements into ones fitness training. Crossfit gives you a convenient way to work in the great bulk of these best practices, in a well programmed way, so that you don't overtrain or plateau with them. This exercise selection and programming provides a lot of the value added that athletes get from having strength and conditioning coaches - long a huge gap in the fitness training of individuals.
Essentially, Crossfit brings a professional strength and conditioning coaching capability to the individual's general fitness training. Individual coaching is still pretty important to get the right form, especially for heavy or fast lifts (Deadlift, Squat, Clean & Jerk, Snatch), but you can get the bulk of it free from the website or $25 a year subscription to their Journal. Going to a Crossfit gym (they call it a Crossfit box) brings added comaraderie, motivation and eyes on coaching that I look forward to, when I feel that I can jump in with the young guys, without the dishonor of resorting to the ladies weights. It's coming along nicely, just from following the WODs on the main website.
Cheers,
Paul (Army Vet, but not a Snake Eater)
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