The P90X Newsletter Archive

The P90X specific newsletter began in 2009 and we've got an indexed archive up on my site:

P90X Newsletter Archive

It's not too differenent from the normal Beachbody Newsletter except the content is often geared more towards graduate-level workout programs instead of any workout program. Topics may include anything about nutrition or fitness but you'll also find targets subjects customizing P90X, how to create hydrid programs with Insanity, Turbo Fire, 90X and any of our graduate programs, a how to use our workouts for sports specific training. If you don't find a subject you're looking for don't forget to look on our standard archive, which goes all the way back to 2000.

Beachbody Newsletter Archive

Shhh, I Have A Fat Burning Secret

There’s always stuff that works that no one wants to talk about condoning, like steroids and ephedra. I won’t say “won’t condone” because, often times, it remains as insider secret and kept for the greater public, often in fear of them abusing it. But not all of it is dangerous, especially if you know why it works and how to do it properly. Take what I did this morning for example: the Workout From Hell Back & Chest workout on an empty stomach.

No trainer would advise doing a WFH (or any kick-ass workout) without an ample storage of blood sugar (which converts to glycogen in your muscles and liver and fuel anaerobic performance). Hard training, sans glycogen, sends your body into a deep stage of the bonk. You have to push harder than you should and, in turn, do more muscular damage than normal (and brain damage, which runs on glycogen). While this sounds bad there’s a flip side—as there inevitably is—in that your body, being forced to the brink of its performance capability, turns to body fat for energy. This is cause for no great shakes as even the most casual athlete has probably heard that your body turns to stored adipose tissue for energy when its preferred fuel, glycogen, is kaput. But what most of us (trainers) don’t discuss is that this fat for fuel equation can be trained to improve. And nothing trains it as well as pushing it to the brink.

More conventional wisdom has us train this process doing low to moderate exercise on an empty stomach. In fact, it’s what you’ll hear from me all the time (in our Beachbody literature and elsewhere). And it works pretty well. But in the sports world we’re always looking for an advantage and it doesn’t work as well as trying to perform anaerobic intervals without any fuel.

If this sounds familiar it’s because there was just an article on the wires about this process and I blogged about it a couple of weeks back. But I didn’t get into specifics, which is why you shouldn’t do it if it works so well, or why I’m doing this right now.

First off, this is not a recommended training modality because, well, people have a hard time with moderating anything they think works “to burn fat”. And it’s definitely not the kind of thing you want to do often. Even then, when you do it the recovery process must be maximized or the damage you cause will outweigh the positive training effects. So let’s go over the rules:

First, you should only do this once in a while; max once per week and in cycles of no more than 4 weeks in a row. Next, you need to eat after your workout. This, more than any time I can imagine, is the slot for Recovery Formula or something similar. Whatever you choose you want 200 or so calories of something that digests rapidly. And then an hour later you should eat a small balanced meal to keep the recovery process going. Even then don’t expect to be at your best. If there aren’t a lot of typos in this post I’ll be surprised. And I certainly wouldn’t want to take a test or try and climb something at my limit this afternoon.



PS - read the comments if you're interested in more on this topic.

pics: more than any other group of athletes, climbers tend to get pushed anaerobically sans fuel and, hence, tend to get lean. in fact, older (and far less science-minded and more food deprived) climbers seemed like the most ripped of all.

WFH: Stabilization

While by far the easiest day in the rotation, day 3 is vital for both performance and non-performance. Stability work keeps injuries at bay but, if done correctly, will also free up your prime mover muscles to function more effectively. I dedicate my knowledge in this area to the late Kevin Brown, who taught me much more about stability training than I learned from books, classes, training rooms and medical offices.

He was an innovator in the field of “prehab”, which is addressing injuries before they happen. Sports programs that worked with him saw their non-contact injury rates mostly disappear. Most of his breakthroughs seem obvious once in practice, yet are overlooked by athletes the majority of the time. Over the years he would continually take something conventional and mildly effective and tinker with it until he found something more effective. Eventually he came up with a system that worked for any group of athletes no matter what their given sport.

While training with Kevin could get complex, the cornerstone of his system is simple. There are a few key movements he used that, when done regularly, keep your musculature balanced and greatly reduce the chances of injuring your knees and shoulders, the two hot spots in the athletic world. My stabilizer days feature these movements with a couple others adding for climbing specificity.

Hip stabilization

Hip Medley
A series of four exercises, done in successive 45 second sets, which target the gluteus medius. The benchmark is 3:00 with 5 pounds. Hard to explain so you’ll have to wait for video.

Windshield Wipers
The “my guys would rather get shot” exercise, again targeting the gluteus medius. Do 3 sets of 25 reps with a 10 second hold at the end. Again, you’re going to need video.

Shoulder stabilization
I do three sets of one exercise that targets the muscles of the rotator cuff region. It’s a standard move, sometimes called scarecrow, though I do it one arm at a time. I use both a theraband and a weight to keep the resistance constant throughout (the benchmark goal is 50 reps with 15lbs). The trick is that I push down on a stability ball with my elbow. This deactivates the deltoid muscles that tend to take over the movement, focusing the exercise onto the correct muscle group. Again, vids coming.

Wrist
I do reverse write curls to work the extensor muscles in the forearm. 3 sets of 30.

Core
The same bridge and plank series from the day before, but I’ll do three sets. The benchmarks are a 3 minute plank and 10 sets of one-legged bridge held for 20 seconds rotated back and forth.

TA muscle
Normally I add the exercise from the preceding day on stabilizer days as well.

I can mainly hit my benchmarks so I don’t always do these exercises. During this program, however, I will do them religiously and try and exceed all benchmarks. The stronger these muscles are the better and when you’re spending a lot of time doing other stuff it’s hard to focus on them. I find a few intense periods will give you some margin for error so you can safely slack off at other times.

pic: in the 80s we had lycra, which instantly increased both your range of motion and stabilization strength. it was subsequently banned from competition.

WFH: Back & Chest (and even some legs)

Lactic Acid Bath is the name of a New River Gorge sport route that was famous in the early 90s. But you don’t have to travel for such an experience. Just train your chest and back, in a volume workout, on the same day. Toss in a few sets for your other big muscle group and you’ve got a veritable pukefest in waiting.

Day 2: A step down in focus from day one but every bit as painful. Working two large muscle groups together is brutal, and today we throw in a third.

The Warm-Up

Because such light weight is being used I do not warm-up thoroughly. I generally do a bit of easy movement, some ballistic stretches, and then practice each movement to determine the weight I’m going to use, doing about 10 reps.

Back
3 sets of 30 reps for 4 different exercises. 1 minute rest between sets.
Wide late pull-downs
Seated rows
Pronation pull-ups – done on rings
One arm rows

2 minute break

Chest
3 sets of 30 reps for 4 different exercises. 1 minute rest between sets.

Dips – I can’t do 30 dips so I’ve rigged a way to do dips from my knees.
Cable Flys – I use a band
Wide fingertip push-ups – These are fairly climbing specific. I’m on my knees and they still hurt at this point.
Diamond push-ups – I do these from Tony Horton power stands, on my knees, and at this point in the workout I’m dying from about rep 10 on.

Note: I try and hold a long stretch between each set. Bodybuilders claim this stretches out the fascia and will lead to more hypertrophy. At a minimum it counteracts all the muscle contraction by forcing the actin and myosin strands of your muscle cells apart.

Legs
I can’t do much for my legs right now because I can’t bend at the waist under duress. If I could I may change the schedule because I’m dying on the little that I’m doing.

Wall Squat – One set to shakiness with my low back flat on the wall. I will probably increase this to two and then three sets but it’s vital at this point not to put too much strain in the low back area.
One leg calf raises – 3 sets, each from a different angle: toe in, toe out, and neutral. This is somewhat climbing specific.
Tibialis Anterior exercise – I set to failure of form. I consider this a stabilizer exercise but do it here because it feels right. Back flat against a wall, feet about a foot’s length in front, raise the toes. Should be able to do 40-50 easily.

Core
Again, I’m limited what I can do so I train core two days in a row. Today is easier.

Bridge – one set until form start to go- at least 2 minutes today, which doubles when you haven't done the above workout.
Plank – on elbows, back flat, to failure of form. 2 minutes or so at this point in the workout.This is a far cry from what I do when healthy but the point is back rehab right now.

pic: from the back in the day files, me climbing in mexico, sometime during the 90s.

WFH: Shoulders & Arms

Hell hath no fury like a climber who can’t go outside on the longest day of the year. So instead of climbing the largest limestone wall in North America I’ve been hitting the WFH like a man possessed. I’ll go through each workout I do day by day. The first workout in the series is for shoulders and arms.

Training Overview

Each training block consists of a three day rotation, done twice per week with a day off after the second round, done for three weeks. The goal is to improve significantly each week. There is no recovery or transition week between each block because they are each so different it’s not necessary. Other than the workouts listed I hike daily and am doing a little (careful) climbing.

By far the hardest block is the first. It’s difficult for most people used to traditional weight training that generally consists of doing 15 repetitions or less. 30 reps shifts the energy systems stressed from phosphate to gycolytic. This transition is difficult and painful, like the difference between running the 100 and the 400. Doing 30 reps forces you to breathe in order to recharge your Kreb’s Cycle using oxygen. Theoretically you could do less than 15 reps holding your breath (though you would not want to). This is why Largo says “the difference between 20 and 30 reps is the difference between 5.8 and 5.12.”

Day 1: This is my hardest day. It's very climbing specific and takes a lot of focus, which is why it has top billing on the schedule.

The Warm-Up

You can get away with a lesser warm-up during this block than the others because the top end stresses are very low. However, I begin each arm day with a fingerboard workout that is climbing specific, so I warm-up thoroughly.

Hangboard (fingerboard)

The workout I’m doing for the first three weeks is described in detail here. It will transition during each block.

I take a short break after this part of the workout, maybe 5 minutes.

Shoulders
3 sets of 30 reps for 4 different exercises. Whereas Largo’s version of the WFH stresses doing simple isolation movements I’m doing more climbing specific movements when applicable.

I rest of approximately one minute between each set.

Front delt pull-downs – This is very climbing specific. I use an exercise band and do a front straight armed pull-down from full extension up all the way down to my waist. Feel this in your front deltoid area. Keep your core very rigid.
Lateral raise
Standing rows
Standing dumbbell military press, elbows in

I won’t describe traditional exercises. Look them up if you don’t know what they are.

Triceps
3 sets of 30 reps of 3 exercises. I do tris before bis because I think the exercises are harder.

Overhead tri extension w/ band (cable) – forward
Switch-grip kickbacks – rotate hand position every other rep
Overhead tri extension with weight – straight up

Biceps

Dumbell curls
Hammer curls
Reverse grip curls – works forearm extensors

Forearms

I do this workout.

pic: more back in the day: wolfie, the late german powerhouse, training his famous shoulders and arms in the valley

The Workout From Hell For Climbing

After nearly a week I’m finding more merit in the WFH than I was expecting. Maybe it’s just because it’s so damned hard, but I’m enjoying my pumped up trip down memory lane. I also may be on to some type of breakthrough so this is going to be an ongoing series about doing a climbing specific WFH. For those of you not into climbing (most of you) there will be other things to learn in this experiment. In fact, it’s possible that the rep scheme for WFH might be appropriate for those of your trying to do X and get leaner. I’ve written an article on this here but my new training program could be the next evolution.

Essentially the WFH is three, 3-week blocks of training that target muscular endurance, followed by hypertrophy, followed by power.

The first block targets muscular endurance by having your work til failure doing 30 reps—yep, you read that right! If you do these reps til failure (or close—if you never fail on a set you’re not using enough weight). This is the “hell’ part of the program. These workouts are ridiculously long and hard. The plus is that it’s almost impossible to not have some sort of physical or mental transformations occur from the process.

The 2nd block targets hypertrophy, though the reps stay at the high end, 15, in order to limit muscle growth (since the whole concept promises that you won’t gain weight).

The final strength or power phase targets only 5 reps. Again, we’re looking to strengthen the muscles yet limit growth.

Due to the excessive nature of the program, especially the first training block, sports specific training must be minimized. But during my round I’ve altered Long’s version by adding more sports specific movements to target some of my weaknesses.

Essentially, my endurance-driven decade has caused me to regress in certain aspects of strength, especially when it comes to big muscle power. My ability to lock-off, do one-armed pull-ups, etc, has all gone way down. If I can improve this during the program, when my endurance comes back later my overall climbing ability should go way up-- theoretically higher than its ever been (of course age will come into play but still, we’ll see). Also, I was in my early 30s during my last round of the WFH, so that’s another aspect to observe.

Because of my injury I can’t do any strength tests at the moment so I’ll start just looking for improvements in body fat percentage (when I can do one-arm pull-ups and muscle-ups I’ll know my strength has improved). Currently, my body fat % is somewhere between 6% and 15% (using two different devices, which are always wrong). I’d say in reality its in between. The goal is 5% at 50. My weight is 173.

Tomorrow I’ll start describing the actual workouts.

pic: i know, the WFH isn't supposed to make you big, but you do plenty of screaming so i couldn't resist using a pic of one of the masters of the iron days, tom platz (who also taught my first fitness seminar)

Beachbody Article Archive

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The Beachbody Newsletter Archive

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