The P90X Challenge: Week 1 Recap

By Kelly Turner on October 28th, 2009

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Editor’s Note: Each week, our resident fitness blogger, Kelly Turner, will be going through the rigorous P90X Challenge, and we are excited to see her weekly progress during this fitness challenge. Please check back each week as Kelly fills us in on her progress.

I’ve got one week of my P90X challenge under my belt (only 11 more to go) and I am loving it so far. P90X is intense, that’s for sure. This week, I am going to talk about the specifics of the workouts and the DVDs.

Day 1
Chest, Back, Abs
Duration: Approx. 1 hour 16 minutes
Heart Rate: 117 average, 152 peak

I have never done so many push ups and pull ups in my life. The sets alternate one push up variation, one pull up variation, about 8 different times using different hand positions and angles. The routine then repeats. I could barely lift my arms afterward, got a little bit of rug burn on my chin from the Dive Bombers (but that means I got low, right?), but still had a blast. The routines changed so much, the hour flew right by.

Ab Ripper X is the ab workout, and it’s exactly the same through out the entire 12-week program–done basically every other day. It’s about 16-minutes long, and ridiculously hard–I couldn’t even do some of the exercises to begin with, and my abs are probably my strongest suit. Every ab and core exercise is done for 25-reps, unless otherwise noted, for a total of 339 exercises. Yeah, it hurts, but it works.

Day 2
Plyometrics
Duration: about 1 hour
Heart Rate: 140 average, 171 peak

This is totally my favorite workout. It’s all explosive jumping moves, which not only jacks up your heart rate to burn serious calories, it strengthens your muscles for better performance too–particularly in sports. The exercises themselves aren’t too difficult–it was usually a heart rate issue that slowed me down (that’s a cop out way of saying I could barely breathe) as opposed to not being able to perform the moves. It’s high impact, and if you are de-conditioned, it is recommended that you skip this one for a while and do the Cardio X DVD until you feel ready.

Day 3
Shoulders, Arms, Abs
Duration: about an hour and 16 minutes
Heart Rate: 104 average, 144 peak

This was by far the easiest workout. The set up is a shoulder exercise, then biceps, then triceps, then repeat. From there you move onto different exercises with the same muscle focus. Since it’s all isolated exercises, the heart rate stays low, but the muscle burn is big.

Day 4
Yoga X
Duration: about an hour and a half
Heart Rate: 95 average, 139 peak

Oh, yoga. I’m not a big fan–and this DVD is an hour and a half long. Yes, yoga is fantastic for flexibility and muscle strength, but I don’t have the attention span for it. Truth be told, I’m no yoga guru. That said, I was surprised that I could keep up with all the moves, so I’m thinking it’s probably fairly easy for the average person to do.

Cardio X–this is the DVD you are supposed to supplement in, and since I wasn’t quite feeling the yoga, I decided to do it on day 4 (I am going to do it once a week.) It’s a combo of kenpo karate and a little bit of plyo and regular cardio moves. Definitely easier that plyometrics, but still a calorie scorcher. Heart Rate: 133 average, 14 peak.

Day 5
Legs, back, abs
Duration: about an hour and 16 minutes
Heart Rate: 133 average, 172 peak

The pull ups are back in this DVD, along with more lunges than you ever thought possible–plus squats and calves. It may seem weird to only do legs one day a week, but the plyo kills the legs, along with the yoga, so they definitely get toasted all the same.

Day 6
Kenpo Karate
Duration: about 1 hour
Heart Rate: 129 average, 169 peak

This DVD is straight up fun. It’s actual karate moves–kicking, punching, the whole deal–but it really gets the heart rate up, and changes so quickly you never get bored. The calorie burn is intense, but you barely notice as you’re having too much fun, kicking ass.

Day 7
REST! Thank god.
You can do the stretching DVD on this day, but I opted out the first week. I will complete it next week, however, and review it then.

Since the workouts repeat for the next two-weeks, next week, I’ll tell you guys how I did with the workouts from week one to week two, and then week three I’ll review the programming itself, along with the actual setup of the DVDs, the level of instruction, and how they are programmed (they aren’t the typical “follow the leader” type workout DVDs–in a good way.)

You guys had a few questions last post which I will now, but feel free to ask more! I’ll answer them in next week’s post.

How tall are you? -Melly

I’m 5′6″

Question about the pull-up bars: Are you saying that a resistance band can be used in lieu of the bars? I’m worried about damaging the door frames in the new place (there’s complex finished wood molding around all of the door frames) with a pull up bar, even one of those “no-drill” ones. -Camevil

Yeah, you can use the band instead of the pull up bar, or instead of dumbbells. I have dumbbells so I use those, but I can’t screw holes in my door frame either, and the molding on my door frame goes the whole up to the ceiling so I can’t use the non screw ones, either. So instead of pull ups I do pull downs with the resistance band hooked over the top of my door. It works just as well, and one of the people on the DVDs only uses bands so you know how to do it exactly right.

Missed anything? Check out:
P90X Challenge: Product Overview