When I first started working out with P90X, I went after it hard thinking I could handle it since I had been an athlete all of my life. One thing that I never really put much work into though was my core. Five weeks in, my lower back was really hurting, so much so that I had to quit for a little over a month. I started over and slowly worked my way back into the program. I haven't experienced any lower back pain since and I attribute a large portion of that to a much stronger core. I definitely feel more durable and I think that is so important as we all get older. I truly believe now that the key to longevity is a strong core coupled with flexibility. So any little thing we can do to strengthen our core is going to be beneficial for a more active life in our later years.
I found this installment on Tony Horton's blog that I was quite interested in because it seems like a very simple thing to do and I thought you might find it helpful as well.
A Simple Tip to Improve Lower Back & Core Strength
If you experience stiffness and tightness in your lower back on a regular basis, for no apparent reason – adopting a simple habit could help ease that by improving your lower back and core strength:
Whenever you walk, focus on your ab and glut muscles and keep them strong. You don’t have to put a lot of energy into this and constantly flex your behind and abdominal areas while you go about your business; the key is to consciously use your glueteal and abdominal muscles whenever you stand, walk, jog, and run.
If you do this correctly, your gait will feel strong and purposeful, and you should be more aware of the muscles that surround your hip and lower back areas.
What makes this habit helpful for people who experience chronic, intermittent lower back pain? It lightens the load on your joints. Your ligaments wrap tightly against the joints in your pelvis and lower back and your muscles are right over them. The main purpose of the ligaments is to keep your joints stable, preventing dislocations and keeping your muscles strong eases the tension on the ligaments.
Over time, the muscles and ligaments that surround your lower back and pelvic regions can become weak. As your muscles become weak, your ligaments have to work even harder to keep your joints stable. Since muscles and ligaments tend to get weak together, your ligaments under extra stress can become injured, typically producing intermittent joint problems. Injury leads to pain and inflammation, which leads to less physical activity, which produces further weakening of the muscles and ligaments. See how that works?
Injured ligaments can heal and strengthen over time, but in some cases, the involved joints may never fully recover. So, if you’ve recently started your program and you’re having a hard time with lower back pain, don’t let it stop you. Training your muscles to be active and strong while you go about your daily activities can be an extremely effective way of strengthening your lower back and core – and help you bring it harder, sooner. Your muscles have much greater capacity to be strengthened and reconditioned than your ligaments do, so by consciously using your abdominal and gluteal muscles every time you stand, walk, jog, or run, you provide significant support to your lower back and pelvic regions and keep your joints happy.
When it comes to bending your trunk forward and backward, your abdominal and lower back muscles perform opposite actions; your abdominal muscles flex (curl forward) your trunk, while your lower back muscles extend (bend back) your trunk. Your nervous system is designed to allow both your abs and lower back muscles to perform with the least amount of opposing strain. This nervous system mechanism is called reciprocal inhibition.
When you keep your abs strong while you walk, your nervous system tells the muscles of your lower back to relax to some degree. And when you keep your gluts strong as you walk, your hip flexors receive a steady signal from your nervous system to relax and lengthen.
Having strong abs, strong gluts, and relaxed and lengthened lower back muscles and hip flexors are the four main requirements for a strong and healthy lower back and core.
So, there you have it. Just be conscious of your ab and glut muscles when you’re moving around, going about your business and you’ll strengthen your lower back and core, which will help you feel better, fight aches and pains, and be able to bring even harder. Simple. Try it.
About Me
- Coach Shloo
- Dallas, Texas
- In and out of gyms for the last 20 years -- I've never been in the shape I am right now and it's only getting better. I can honestly say that Beach Body Products (specifically P90X Extreme Training System) have changed my life and it's a dream come true to be able to share what I have learned with people like you. If you would like to experience diligent training, I would be honored to be your coach. Contact me and I'll tell how to make that happen. I'll do everything I can to make sure you exceed your fitness goals and my coaching won't cost you a dime.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
P90X Better Than Steroids?
This was written by Steve Edwards and I actually got it off Tony Horton's blog. For those of you that don't know, Tony Horton is the trainer that runs the P90X training program. He just recently turned 50 and is in immaculate shape.
P90X Better Than Steroids?
by Steve Edwards
The X is gettin' some serious love lately. My dad calls the other night and says he watching a show in the Giants and two pitchers, Zito and Wilson, are doing 90X. Tony calls me the other day to get my opinion on something because NBC is coming over to film a segment on Wii and wants the X perspective. He calls me again, a couple of days later from a plane on his way to do more X interviews and says, "Dude, you see the Grammys last night?" I hadn't but Cheryl Crow gave us a huge shout out from the red carpet.Then, yesterday, I get this from Tony:On WFAN, (biggest sports radio station in NYC) the host was talking this morning about A-Rod and said something to the effect of "his body was never that chiseled, not like he had a P90X body or anything".
This, for those of you not privy to the national news, is a reaction to Alex Rodriguez admitting that he'd been doing steroids. In reality, steroids don't make muscle, they just increase your body's ability to build muscle. But in a world where we see advertisements to "build muscle without steroids" as if the public thinks it's impossible, it's nice to get a little validity for our system. Anyone can have an X body. All it takes is a little structure and a lot of hard work.
Note: Jon Congdon (our President) sent this and I think it's a nice addition:
Everything you see about P90X that might appear to be PR is "organic" -- meaning that we don't pay for PR, and don't hire celebrities or athletes to do it, or talk about it. It's advertised on TV, in magazines sometimes, and more and more on the Internet, but we don't do PR. If Cheryl Crow, or Usher, or an MLB, NHL or NFL athlete buy it, they buy it just like everyone else and either because they saw the infomercial or a friend told them. That's what's so amazing about the P90X phenomenon of late.
Everything you see about P90X that might appear to be PR is "organic" -- meaning that we don't pay for PR, and don't hire celebrities or athletes to do it, or talk about it. It's advertised on TV, in magazines sometimes, and more and more on the Internet, but we don't do PR. If Cheryl Crow, or Usher, or an MLB, NHL or NFL athlete buy it, they buy it just like everyone else and either because they saw the infomercial or a friend told them. That's what's so amazing about the P90X phenomenon of late.
What's the Deal with P90X?
More and more, people are starting to notice that I'm doing something because of the results I'm getting. And more and more, I'm hearing the question, "What's the deal with this P90X thing you're doing?" I explain to them that it's an extreme and diligent workout regimine that uses "Muscle Confusion" so that you don't plateau. I want to thank DarkSiren for posting this on her blog because this is a great look at how P90X and P90X+ came about.
Xamining the X
By Steve Edwards
With the arrival of P90X®+, many of you might be wondering how we could
improve upon the "most extreme home fitness system ever." The simple answer is, there's always new training, new techniques, and a new way to look at things to take them (and you) to the next level. P90X is the step from fitness to extreme fitness. The Plus takes it to yet another level. Our focus was to give you more options to maximize your fitness experience. P90X+ is not trying to top the X but to enhance its efficiency for those who have reached the peak. Let's take a brief look at the science behind P90X and why you'll want to add X+ to your home fitness arsenal.
The History: What's Next?
P90X wouldn't have come about if not for the success of Power 90® and Slim in 6®. Designed around our principles of Slim Training® and Sectional Progression™, we marketed these to combat the rising obesity epidemic at the entry level. Both of these programs could be done by just about anyone, whether an ex-college athlete or a couch potato who'd never exercised a day in their life. As our database grew and the number of Success Stories mounted, we were besieged with the obvious question, "What's next?"
But P90X didn't come about overnight. We knew we were creating a market for a highly advanced home fitness program, but we wanted to make sure that it would be perfect, or at least darn close to it. As we kicked around concepts and ideas, we developed a few simpler graduate programs, such as Power Half Hour® and Slim Series®, as well as broadened our appeal to the entry-level client with the addition of Yoga Booty Ballet®, Kathy Smith's Project: YOU™, Turbo Jam®, and Hip Hop Abs®. Our long-term vision was to bring in clientele from all walks of life. Then, once committed to our healthy lifestyle, we would provide the means to take them to the ultimate level.
The Periodizational Approach
Periodizational training is training in specific blocks in order to achieve a goal. While the standard in athletic training for decades, it hadn't been applied to home fitness except at its most basic level. In our initial meetings on how to construct P90X, a periodizational approach was the first concept that we all easily agreed upon.
Our challenge was then how to come up with a program targeting overall fitness for every individual. When you train for a sport, your goals are pretty clear. With general fitness, targets can be across the board. Instead of focusing on body sculpting, the X approach would be overall body fitness and performance. We wanted to achieve increases in strength, speed, power, flexibility, aerobic efficiency, and mind and body awareness—a tall order for a 12-week program. But we knew that if we could pull if off, body sculpting would naturally follow.
Muscle Confusion
Athletes train in blocks. These are phases of increased intensity with a recovery period between each block. As you move through the phases of each block, you alter what you do in order to keep the stimulus to the stressed energy system high. The more fit you are, the quicker the body adapts and the more often you need to move into the next phase or block. We call this process of altering your exercises Muscle Confusion. In reality, it's total-body energy system confusion because you're doing the same thing to your aerobic system, your anaerobic system, your lung capacity, and so on. But that was too long an explanation, so we settled on Muscle Confusion.
The reason athletes train this way is that when you begin an exercise, your body goes through a period of time when it adapts to the new movements. Once it's adapted (learned how to do the movements efficiently), you get to a mastery phase where your muscles (and all stressed systems) respond to training and make enormous fitness gains. This period is short because your body is always trying to become more efficient. The more efficient, or better, you become at something, the less it affects you, so naturally, your results will then level off. This is called a plateau.
Once you hit a plateau it's time to reshuffle the deck and begin another block. A targeted recovery phase enables your body to heal its microtrauma and grow stronger for the upcoming block. This way, each subsequent block can be slightly more intense than the one previously completed. Using calculated training blocks, your results curve will continually point skyward.
Periodizational Dieting
Luckily, we'd had a lot of experience with our members and Success Stories that gave us a solid idea on how to craft that ultimate training diet. Similar to that way your body adapts to exercise, it also changes and adapts to different nutritional strategies. The P90X diet is based around how we've gotten the most overall success with all of our members.
Essentially, this is done in three phases. First, we limit carbohydrate consumption. Among other things, this teaches the individual the role the carbs play in their diet. When reduced, the body is forced to look for energy from sources other than blood sugar. Since stored fat (and some muscle) doesn't fuel the body as efficiently as glycogen (or blood sugar), this phase not only teaches the body to use its fat more efficiently for energy but teaches the individual how to feel the way carbohydrates fuel their body. Subsequent phases add more carbs to facilitate harder training until, ultimately, the relationship of food as fuel is well understood.
The Ultimate 12-Week Transformation
With this combination of diet and exercise, we were able to achieve incredible results in human performance over a 12-week program. And because of the variety of workouts we created, P90X could be retooled to target various goals and could be used over and over again.
So Why the Plus?
No matter how good a program is, you don't want to do the same routines forever. You can, and it would work, but it's more efficient using the modalities described above if you continually find ways to force new adaptations on both your mind and body. When we then analyzed the fitness gains achieved during a cycle of P90X, we knew that we could actually increase the intensity per minute and continue to provide fitness gains to X graduates, in even less time!
There's a rule in both diet and fitness (that seems particularly unfair to de-conditioned folks) that allows you to do less to maintain—or even improve—your fitness than what it took to get in shape in the first place. It's why a piece of cake does little to an athlete, whose raging metabolism can put the empty calories to work, but will go right to a sedentary person's thighs. A well-trained person can also push their body harder and tax their energy systems quicker than their less-fit brethren. When sprinter Michael Johnson was training for his Olympic double (he won both the 200 and 400 meters and set world records), the public was surprised to hear that he finished the bulk of his training in less than an hour. But for ultimate performance, efficiency is far more important than time. The Plus follows this model—combining difficult moves in a symbiotic fashion in order to maximize your workout time for ultimate results. The new question begs, are you ready for the Plus?
Xamining the X
By Steve Edwards
With the arrival of P90X®+, many of you might be wondering how we could
improve upon the "most extreme home fitness system ever." The simple answer is, there's always new training, new techniques, and a new way to look at things to take them (and you) to the next level. P90X is the step from fitness to extreme fitness. The Plus takes it to yet another level. Our focus was to give you more options to maximize your fitness experience. P90X+ is not trying to top the X but to enhance its efficiency for those who have reached the peak. Let's take a brief look at the science behind P90X and why you'll want to add X+ to your home fitness arsenal.
The History: What's Next?
P90X wouldn't have come about if not for the success of Power 90® and Slim in 6®. Designed around our principles of Slim Training® and Sectional Progression™, we marketed these to combat the rising obesity epidemic at the entry level. Both of these programs could be done by just about anyone, whether an ex-college athlete or a couch potato who'd never exercised a day in their life. As our database grew and the number of Success Stories mounted, we were besieged with the obvious question, "What's next?"
But P90X didn't come about overnight. We knew we were creating a market for a highly advanced home fitness program, but we wanted to make sure that it would be perfect, or at least darn close to it. As we kicked around concepts and ideas, we developed a few simpler graduate programs, such as Power Half Hour® and Slim Series®, as well as broadened our appeal to the entry-level client with the addition of Yoga Booty Ballet®, Kathy Smith's Project: YOU™, Turbo Jam®, and Hip Hop Abs®. Our long-term vision was to bring in clientele from all walks of life. Then, once committed to our healthy lifestyle, we would provide the means to take them to the ultimate level.
The Periodizational Approach
Periodizational training is training in specific blocks in order to achieve a goal. While the standard in athletic training for decades, it hadn't been applied to home fitness except at its most basic level. In our initial meetings on how to construct P90X, a periodizational approach was the first concept that we all easily agreed upon.
Our challenge was then how to come up with a program targeting overall fitness for every individual. When you train for a sport, your goals are pretty clear. With general fitness, targets can be across the board. Instead of focusing on body sculpting, the X approach would be overall body fitness and performance. We wanted to achieve increases in strength, speed, power, flexibility, aerobic efficiency, and mind and body awareness—a tall order for a 12-week program. But we knew that if we could pull if off, body sculpting would naturally follow.
Muscle Confusion
Athletes train in blocks. These are phases of increased intensity with a recovery period between each block. As you move through the phases of each block, you alter what you do in order to keep the stimulus to the stressed energy system high. The more fit you are, the quicker the body adapts and the more often you need to move into the next phase or block. We call this process of altering your exercises Muscle Confusion. In reality, it's total-body energy system confusion because you're doing the same thing to your aerobic system, your anaerobic system, your lung capacity, and so on. But that was too long an explanation, so we settled on Muscle Confusion.
The reason athletes train this way is that when you begin an exercise, your body goes through a period of time when it adapts to the new movements. Once it's adapted (learned how to do the movements efficiently), you get to a mastery phase where your muscles (and all stressed systems) respond to training and make enormous fitness gains. This period is short because your body is always trying to become more efficient. The more efficient, or better, you become at something, the less it affects you, so naturally, your results will then level off. This is called a plateau.
Once you hit a plateau it's time to reshuffle the deck and begin another block. A targeted recovery phase enables your body to heal its microtrauma and grow stronger for the upcoming block. This way, each subsequent block can be slightly more intense than the one previously completed. Using calculated training blocks, your results curve will continually point skyward.
Periodizational Dieting
Luckily, we'd had a lot of experience with our members and Success Stories that gave us a solid idea on how to craft that ultimate training diet. Similar to that way your body adapts to exercise, it also changes and adapts to different nutritional strategies. The P90X diet is based around how we've gotten the most overall success with all of our members.
Essentially, this is done in three phases. First, we limit carbohydrate consumption. Among other things, this teaches the individual the role the carbs play in their diet. When reduced, the body is forced to look for energy from sources other than blood sugar. Since stored fat (and some muscle) doesn't fuel the body as efficiently as glycogen (or blood sugar), this phase not only teaches the body to use its fat more efficiently for energy but teaches the individual how to feel the way carbohydrates fuel their body. Subsequent phases add more carbs to facilitate harder training until, ultimately, the relationship of food as fuel is well understood.
The Ultimate 12-Week Transformation
With this combination of diet and exercise, we were able to achieve incredible results in human performance over a 12-week program. And because of the variety of workouts we created, P90X could be retooled to target various goals and could be used over and over again.
So Why the Plus?
No matter how good a program is, you don't want to do the same routines forever. You can, and it would work, but it's more efficient using the modalities described above if you continually find ways to force new adaptations on both your mind and body. When we then analyzed the fitness gains achieved during a cycle of P90X, we knew that we could actually increase the intensity per minute and continue to provide fitness gains to X graduates, in even less time!
There's a rule in both diet and fitness (that seems particularly unfair to de-conditioned folks) that allows you to do less to maintain—or even improve—your fitness than what it took to get in shape in the first place. It's why a piece of cake does little to an athlete, whose raging metabolism can put the empty calories to work, but will go right to a sedentary person's thighs. A well-trained person can also push their body harder and tax their energy systems quicker than their less-fit brethren. When sprinter Michael Johnson was training for his Olympic double (he won both the 200 and 400 meters and set world records), the public was surprised to hear that he finished the bulk of his training in less than an hour. But for ultimate performance, efficiency is far more important than time. The Plus follows this model—combining difficult moves in a symbiotic fashion in order to maximize your workout time for ultimate results. The new question begs, are you ready for the Plus?
Monday, February 16, 2009
Feeling Stronger
I've only been at the X+ for a week and it's filled with all new moves that I feel completely uncoordinated all over again. But I did notice today with Abs/Core Plus that I am already able to do moves more controlled then I could last week. In addition I purchased some Abs straps which really helped to feel like I was doing the whole workout today. Last week I had to modify due to an elbow thing I've been dealing with. I was really able to focus and get that core burn today which obviously was a great feeling.
Accountability Pic
Abs/Core Plus
Discus Throwers
Accountability Pic
Abs/Core Plus
Discus Throwers
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The P90X+ Journey Begins
The main thing I've learned from training with P90X is that you have to constantly be switching it up if you want to get results. I was the classic gym rat that would be diligent for 3-4 months and then hit a wall. The X has smashed thru all that but anything you do can cause you to plateau if you do it to consistently without variety. So after 2 rounds of P90X, I knew I needed something new to break thru and surpass the results I've achieved so far. I actually purchased P90X+ when I bought P90X back in early part of 2008. But those DVDs have actually not even been touched until now. I wanted at least 2 full rounds of the X before I moved up to X+.
I started on Monday and I love the whole idea of completely switching it up from the original X. I've heard some (guys mostly) say that they don't like the + because it's more cardio based. That's true but it's definitely a very intense system that works at creating true muscle strength, not just mass.
The X is more traditionally based where you pick a weight to do 8-10 reps to build size. But in X+, you pick a weight that you can do a move for 30 seconds, or 60 seconds, maybe even 90 seconds. There are some moves with no weights that you do for 2 minutes. So it's not working to failure with a particular weight, it's working hard for a certain amount of time with the last 15 seconds being tough. If it's too easy you bump it up next time.
Because these are all new moves, the first 3 sessions have been more about getting the moves down. Still, I'm completely drench when I've finished. I totally see this as a fluid way of training, constantly changing and adapting. What's also interesting about X+ is that the classic X resistance training comes in the recovery week, where it was set up the other way around in the X.
If you are doing P90X now, I would highly recommend doing at least 2 rounds of it before attempting P90X+. There are some serious core moves that if you have not adequately strengthened your core, you could really hurt your back. There are some things I've done already that I KNOW there is no way I could have done even after my first round of the X. Some of my favorite moves so far - O Crunch Push-Ups (see acct pic below). Hindu Pike Push-Ups - 1/2 Dervish (got to engage your core!!) - Scorpion Plank - 360 Chataranga Run - Banana Mason. Keep an eye out for Acct pics to come with some of these moves to give you something to look forward to.
I started on Monday and I love the whole idea of completely switching it up from the original X. I've heard some (guys mostly) say that they don't like the + because it's more cardio based. That's true but it's definitely a very intense system that works at creating true muscle strength, not just mass.
The X is more traditionally based where you pick a weight to do 8-10 reps to build size. But in X+, you pick a weight that you can do a move for 30 seconds, or 60 seconds, maybe even 90 seconds. There are some moves with no weights that you do for 2 minutes. So it's not working to failure with a particular weight, it's working hard for a certain amount of time with the last 15 seconds being tough. If it's too easy you bump it up next time.
Because these are all new moves, the first 3 sessions have been more about getting the moves down. Still, I'm completely drench when I've finished. I totally see this as a fluid way of training, constantly changing and adapting. What's also interesting about X+ is that the classic X resistance training comes in the recovery week, where it was set up the other way around in the X.
If you are doing P90X now, I would highly recommend doing at least 2 rounds of it before attempting P90X+. There are some serious core moves that if you have not adequately strengthened your core, you could really hurt your back. There are some things I've done already that I KNOW there is no way I could have done even after my first round of the X. Some of my favorite moves so far - O Crunch Push-Ups (see acct pic below). Hindu Pike Push-Ups - 1/2 Dervish (got to engage your core!!) - Scorpion Plank - 360 Chataranga Run - Banana Mason. Keep an eye out for Acct pics to come with some of these moves to give you something to look forward to.
Monday, February 9, 2009
The Word is Spreading about P90X
So last night I get a call from my sister and she was watching the red carpet show for the Grammy's. She says, "I just saw Sheryl Crow saying she's doing P90X!" Now the X isn't some magic bullet that only the stars can afford. It's just good old fashion hard work and eating clean. I always thought that if I could just afford a personal trainer, I could have a cut movie star body but of course that is incredibly expensive. But P90X can be that personal trainer for you. I can honestly say, it's the best investment I have ever made in myself.
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