You won't be cracking jokes when you contract a case of ringworm from somewhere and it won't go away for FOUR FREAKIN' MONTHS because it keeps moving around your body despite daily doses of the top-end medication your doctor recommended.

The cartilage in your feet will love you if you actually do it. The skin probably not so much, but all that connective tissue will have a nice time of it.

Dancers also work out on floors designed for that type of activity (at least they should).

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I go Wednesday through Monday (XStretch on Tuesday). This allows me to do YogaX on Saturday when I don't need to worry about time. Most of the other workouts allow you to speed things up quite a bit if you need to.

I'm really tempted to re-edit the XStetch video to cut out all the bullshit. Tony spends too much time talking about the next move sometimes. I understand that each video needs to be set up so that it is simple for someone doing it for the first time but damn. It is a pain in the ass to fast forward 20 seconds but simple things like that can add up to a lot of time.

They should, and when they don't, they end up with bum knees. I danced on a few sub-par floors as a youth, and it wasn't until later that it really became a problem. I wouldn't recommend it.

Just started Week 3 here...did Chest & Back last night and Plyo tonight.

I'm definitely keeping up with Tony and the gang a lot better now than I was before. I think the upcoming week of "rest" (you still do Yoga twice, so it isn't all rest!) will help out greatly.

I'm loving P90X, so far. I need to get my diet going a lot better than I am right now, but the workouts are great and I already feel like I am in much better shape than I was 3 weeks ago.

Just finished the first week yesterday. Maybe someday I won't be sore. Incidentally, upper body: weak, legs: strong.

Felicitations, filtherton. You'll be a bit less sore next week, and less again the next. Do increase the weights if they start to become too easy, though.

Thanks, Will. I'm used to the ins and outs of training. I was in good shape 10 years ago. The nice thing is that I definitely have room for improvement before I have to spring for new weights.

Speaking of springing for new heights, isn't Plyometrics fricking awesome? Sometimes I just do it for fun.

Ugh, we couldn't complete the whole Plyometrics video. My legs were killing me for the next couple of days, though they did loosen up after the yoga workout.

I think next week we will push ourselves to do the whole Plyometrics video. I am just proud that im2smrt4u has stuck it out for the first week.

Indeed. I experienced the same thing. I studied dance up to Russian teacher academy training levels, but had to give it up due to injuries. My knees are really messed up now. For example, I can be walking down the stairs, and my knees will give out, just randomly. Fun stuff. My dance instructors knew we weren't dancing on proper floors either. They were concrete with ceramic tile on top, and one studio had laminate on top of the tile. It was all slippery, and very hard. Ouch.

But speaking of P90x, I do have the program, I got it from my cousin, but I haven't tried it out yet. Mainly because I don't have a consistent schedule for that kind of thing. I'll have to see if I can change that this fall, give it a try, get my dancer muscles warmed up. :P

I've only done it once, but I was able to keep up with the video. I suspect it will be more fun next time through.

You sir are a masochist. Truly though, if you like plyo you'll love the insanity videos, it's like plyo almost every day.

I've been following this thread, as I'm rather intrigued with the theory/method behind the P90X program. However, this is not something I think I would purchase, as I already have a gym membership at corporate discount rates.

I'm happy to say, however, that I have recently been checking out a book that uses similar principles of "muscular confusion," or periodization. It specifically differentiates from "linear" periodization and focuses on what it calls "undulating" periodization. The difference being that linear models are designed to move toward a peak performance. Think Olympic athletes training for one big day. The latter instead "mixes" the training in such a way that it conditions your body to a different peak level that's more sustainable over the long term: think pro basketball players who need a strong season and playoff performance.

Anyway, the book is called The New Rules of Lifting by Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove, who also wrote The New Rules of Lifting for Women. I thought I'd post about it here for anyone who either wants to try something similar (in principle) to the P90X training, or wanted to be able to move their training to the gym after completing their P90X at home. (And, for anyone who's interested, there's no focus on cardio or stretching, as the program uses resistance training to cover these areas without separate cardio-only training and stretching routines.)

There are four programs depending on your fitness level and they run for a year, moving between four or five phases (or types of training). There are phases for basic training, fat loss, hypertrophy, and strength, and they're all mixed in by various means and in various order based on your program.

What I like about it is that it cuts out a lot of the crap you see happening at the gym: no machines except occasional cable exercises and very few supplemental exercises, as it focuses on the "big six" movements, which give you real results more efficiently.

I highly recommend checking it out. I just started the basic training, and my legs are quite mad at me.

Day 77. I haven't missed a day yet, though I'll occasionally swap out plyo for cardio and yoga for core. So far I've lost 15 lbs and am down to ~9% body fat (though I have no way to quantify the accuracy of my bf% measurements, I'd say I'm under 12% judging by pictures of other folk I've seen). These are the hard pounds to lose, too- I had already lost ~20lbs from ellipticalling for an hour five days a week for a couple months before I started p90x.

I haven't stuck specifically to the p90x diet, though I have been avoiding eating processed foods when possible and sticking to ~1900-2100 calorie diet (with the exception of this week, where I've made and eaten the better part of two pies because I had a hankerin' for some pecan pie).

I just got my hands on Insanity and I hope to start that after I finish p90x and take a week or two off.