A trainer's review of P90X

P90X, if you haven't heard the hype, is a heavily marketed hardcore fitness program in the form of a big set of DVDs. It is supposed to be a 90 day total body transformation program, complete with nutrition program.

A lot of people ask me what I think of this program, so here is a rundown of the positives and negatives.

Positives:

-The workouts are actually really good with a lot of original exercises that really do the job. I particularly like the "Ab Ripper," a 15 minute ab segment that works every part of your abdominal muscles. The concept of "muscle confusion" - working the muscles in different ways each workout so as not to hit a plateau - is a good one and will get results.

-The plyometrics, cardio and strength training really will jumpstart your metabolism. This is a very complete program, with heart-pumping cardio, strength training and flexibility work.

-There is very little equipment necessary. You will want a pullup bar and some resistance tubes. You can get everything you need besides the DVDs for around $50.

Negatives:

-This program is being marketed to the average out of shape Joe and Jane, which can be dangerous. You should NOT try to do this program right off the bat if you've never exercised or are restarting after a period of being sedentary. That's a good way to get injured. Even if you don't, it's likely you will give up after not too long because of the difficulty of the workouts.

-This takes a lot of time. I like the program a lot but would like it even better if the workouts were not mostly hour-long ones. That said, the intensity it would take to get similar results in shorter workouts would be even higher.

Is the program worth the $100+ you'll spend on it? Yes, but only if you're already in decent shape and 100% dedicated. Otherwise you'll do a few workouts and put it on the shelf like so much other unused exercise equipment.

This is a great program, but certainly not for everyone.

Could personal training benefit you?

Most people are looking to improve their health and fitness at any given time and are peripherally aware that personal trainers exist, but don't really contemplate hiring one. Recently, I did a drawing for 3 free personal training sessions and when I notified the winner, she asked me exactly what a personal trainer does. I realized that lots of people probably have no idea what a personal trainer actually does; in fact before I started doing research into the health and fitness industry I really didn't know myself. So, here is a rundown of what trainers do and some of the benefits you might get from working with one.

1) Personal trainers educate people about exercise appropriate for their goals, strengths and limitations. If you're just not sure what to do to get where you want to be, a trainer can help you figure out a plan.

2) Personal trainers design exercise plans based on individual needs. A trainer can teach you specific exercises designed to get specific results and tell you how many, how often and how hard or heavy to do them.

3) Personal trainers help people create appropriate goals. "I want to lose weight" is a vague goal that is hard to quantify and is usually never achived. A trainer can help you figure out how much weight is appropriate for you to lose if that's what you're looking for, or how long it will take you to get ready for your marathon, or how many times you need to work out in a week to improve your health.

4) Personal trainers help motivate people. We can remind you of why you want to achieve your goals and of the steps you have already taken and need to take to get there. We can give you kicks in the butt when you need them. We can't make the decision for you to give it your all, though, and if you're at a place where you haven't yet decided to do what it takes to get results, a personal trainer can't make you follow through.

5) Personal trainers help you show up. If you have an appointment, you're less likely to miss your workout than if you were exercising on your own.

6) Personal trainers help you track your progress. Through fitness tests, body measurements, weight and body fat testing, we can help you figure out if what you're doing is getting the results you want, and if not, waht to do about it.

7) If you're in a rut, have hit a plateau or are just bored with your workouts, a trainer can help you blast out of it with new exercises, modifications or entirely new programs. It's important to be constantly changing your workouts, because when your body adapts to any given thing, you stop getting good results.

There also seems to be a lot of confusion about how often or how long one should meet with a personal trainer. That all depends on you, your goals, your needs, your schedule and to a certain extent, your budget.

If you're quite self-directed and just need to know what to do, a few sessions with a trainer might be all you need, with an occasional meeting to tune up your workouts or change the exercises so you don't get bored or stop getting results.

If you're able to stick to a plan pretty well but need support on the way, longer-term weekly trainer sessions might be the way to go. You can get a good workout in with the trainer and get a plan for the rest of the week, with the trainer checking in with you to help hold you accountable.

If you're having trouble sticking to a plan, or just don't feel you can push yourself as hard as a trainer will, you may want to meet with your trainer several times per week. If this is difficult for you to afford, think about group personal training. This way, you still get good personal attention and a hard trainer-led workout, but you'll be sharing the cost with others.

As to how long you meet with your trainer, some people meet for a few weeks or months to get in the habit of exercising and learn what they need to know. Others stay for years because they continue to find value in training. It's a way to stay on track and constantly update your workouts as your goals and body evolve.

Whatever your fitness goals, an experienced and certified trainer can probably add value to your journey. How you utilize that relationship to your benefit is mainly up to you.

Equipment-free exercise

There are a million fitness gadgets, machines and pieces of equipment out there. Some are in gyms and fitness centers. Some in the sports equipment store for home use. Some are on late-night tv, enticing us with fitness models and logical-sounding claims.

Sometimes, you need to just step back and return to the basics. Machines, dumbbells, kettlebells, stability balls, BOSU trainers, treadmills, rowing machines, etc. are great tools for helping us forge the fit, toned bodies we want. But they are tools. We don't NEED any of them.

Equipment free exercises are great for traveling, but they're also a good staple for our regular workout routines. If you start your day with a few equipment free strength training exercises, you're ahead of the game, and if you're worried about not having time to get to the gym, you can certainly do without! I prefer some body weight exercises over their machine counterparts because they work more muscles at once and provide a greater challenge!

Here are some excellent exercises you can do with nothing but your own body.

Cardio:

Walk
Run
March in place (bring your knees up high and swing your arms)
Jump: straight up, or side to side, or any variation you like

Leg strength:

Squats
Lunges (stay tuned for posts on how to do these spot-on)
Calf raises
Standing leg extensions
Duck walks & bear walks

Upper body strength:

Pushups (see previous post for tips)
Dips (for the triceps - use a chair or the floor and push yourself up with your elbows behind you)
Crab walks

Core strength:

Crunches
Planks & side planks
Bicycle crunches
and a million variations....

There is a nearly endless variety of things you can do without equipment - the above are just a few of my favorites. Enjoy!

Pushups: an awesome exercise most people get wrong

Pushups are some of the best exercises there are. They require no equipment and work multiple muscles and joints. Depending on your strength, you can do them standing and pushing against a wall (easiest), from the knees (medium) or from the feet on the floor (hardest). There are many variations that add challenge and emphasize different muscles. Unfortunately, most people don't know how to do them correctly and either get a lousy workout or worse, hurt themselves. Here is what you need to know.

Pushups work your arms, chest and core, with a supporting role from almost everything else in your body. To do a correct pushup:

-Keep your body in a straight line. This applies whether you're working from your knees, from your feet, or standing up and pushing off a wall or counter. The hips should be in line with the knees and the head / neck. Don't let the positions of either change as you move up and down. Keeping your stomach muscles tight throughout the exercise will help you hold the position. Using a mirror is very helpful.

-Keep your hands under your shoulders and slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. If they are out under your head or even further, this exercise will be much harder and will probably hurt your shoulders.

-When you bend the elbows to come down, don't keep them out paralell to your shoulders. Bring them back at about a 45 degree angle from your body to avoid rotator cuff problems.

-Come down as low to the floor as you can while still supporting your own weight. Technically, a "proper" pushup means coming down close enough to the floor with your chest (not with you head - that should be higher than your chest, in line with the rest of your spine) to touch a fist placed below your chest's center. If you can't get down that far yet, just get as close as you can.

-If you are too tired to hold the correct position, stop and rest instead of trying to continue with bad form. This goes for pretty much any strength training exercise out there. It is better to do 10 pushups with perfect form that 20 that are out of alignment and sloppy.

-If you are having problems with your wrist hurting during pushups, try standard pushup handles or the "perfect pushup" rotating handles. With either, hold your wrist straight instead of letting them bend at the same angle they would if your hand were flat on the ground. Keeping the wrists straight and "neutral" will take the extreme stretching off the muscles and tendons in this small and vulnerable area of the body.

Good luck!

How to snap out of a "I don't wanna" mood

You're drained after a long day, or not ready to get out of bed. You're just not feeling it. At. All.

How do you get your butt off the couch or out of bed and working out like you planned? Moreover, how do you get yourself to look forward to it instead of dreading it?

One key is consistency. The more you exercise, the better it feels. For the first couple of weeks you're doing it, if you've been inactive, it's probably going to feel uncomfortable and you're probably going to feel worn out afterward. What's all this about exercise increasing energy? Depending on how deconditioned you are before you start, at first it might just make you feel pooped. Don't let that stop you. If you're consistent and start doing a little something preferably every day without overdoing it, you'll start feeling the benefits of increased vitality and energy with little bursts of exercise induced endorphins ("happy hormones"). Once you start feeling better, it's easier to keep at it.

Sometimes that's not enough. We get into these arguments with ourselves. "I'm tired, I deserve a break, I don't feel like it today, I'm too busy..." etc. etc. etc. We view exercise as a chore, and so we do mental backflips to avoid it. We need to start viewing exercise as something fun and valuable. Lots of people who enjoy exercise view it as "me time", to focus on and care for themselves. Taking the time to care for yourself means you're better able to care for others and fulfill your responsibilities. Plus it makes for happier people. Still dubious? Try something new you haven't tried before. Zumba is cardio dance and seems more like a dance party than exercise. There are lots of team sports you can try - check programs in your area. Martial arts are fun and active and can really help if you're feeling frustrated. After all, you get to go beat on punching bags for awhile. Find something you like, and try different things until you figure out what that is. Make exercise social if that works for you - work out with friends or groups of people. Get outside if you like being there. Get in the water if you like to swim. Find some aspect you like and start thinking of exercise as something you're lucky to be able to do.

Okay, so those are long-term attitude adjustments to work on. How do you get out of a short term slump and get your workout in right now?

1) Imagine how you will feel afterward. Accomplished. Alive and awake. Energized. Relaxed after a great stretch. I love the feeling of getting into the shower after a good sweat. Whatever makes you feel great after you've just gotten done with exercise, visualize that with every detail you can, and crave it like you would a piece of chocolate.

2) Bargain with yourself, but don't make your reward food. Maybe if you get your workout in, you can then take the rest of the evening off and watch a favorite tv show. Or go window shopping at your favorite store. Or whatever slight indulgence you want to look forward to but that won't sabotage your efforts.

3) Decide. With a capital D. Remember that you are in control of your life and your outcomes, and that success is the sum of the decisions you make for many days in a row. Make the conscious choice to succeed today.

4) Switch things up. If you'd planned on going on the treadmill and can't stand the thought, try playing basketball with a friend or trying that new kickboxing class or whatever. Do something different, equally beneficial, that you can stand the thought of a little better.

5) Call up your acountability partner. You have to plan ahead for this one and ask someone to help you keep yourself on track. Then when you're wavering, you call them and they talk you into it. If you don't have a formal partnership set up, call your most encouraging friend and tell them you need some firing up. Then listen to them.

I hope these help. Enjoy!

"Secrets"

I get so sick of hearing and seeing variations on the phrase "weight loss secrets."

Secrets? Really? Is there some super weight-loss cult out there plotting and hiding this information from the rest of us? And Glamour Magazine, or whatever product is boasting the "Secrets" headline is our only hope of getting this amazing, magic information that will make us instantly slim and perky?

First, I object to the wording. There are no weight loss secrets. There is so much information freely available on the topic floating around on the internet among other sources that one could never hope to wade through it all. Some information is more reliable and relevent, but trust me, none of it is kept under wraps, and no magazine or website writer has "inside info" on this stuff. They research the information that's available, maybe talk to an expert or two, and give an opinion on what they think will help the most. Somehow, using the word "secret" seems to sell magazines and DVDs, so it's used as often as humanly possible.

More importantly, I object to the idea. Everyone is aware of the very basic principles of losing weight. Eat in moderation and exercise often. Sure, there are ways to go about this more efficiently and there are things that might affect your outcome such as hormones and there are things that can help to an extent like thermogenic drugs. But without at least one, and preferably both of those two foundations, significant weight loss will not occur. Both concepts represent having to put effort into changing our habits, and we hate that! So, we keep reading up on these so-called "Secrets" and hope that something will eventually tell us we don't have to eat right or exercise and it'll actually work.

In the meantime, we don't take the small steps that, if taken each day, will eventually, slowly and steadily (and we hate that too, in our society of instant gratification) get us to the weight and level of health where we want to be.

My advise as a fitness professional is to stop waiting for some mystical weight loss secret and start doing something small each day to get where you visualize yourself wanting to be. Take a walk. Put half your restaurant meal in a doggie bag for later. Meet a friend for a game of tennis or chat on the elliptical machine for 20 minutes. The more you do them, the more ingrained these habits will become, and you won't have to worry about it all so much, because slowly and steadily, you'll get there!

The Shake Weight: Product Review

Okay. You have to have seen this thing. A woman with gorgeous, toned arms shaking the daylights out of a small, white dumbbell that obligingly moves up and down in her hands. Once you get over the fact that this looks dirty as all get-out, you begin to wonder if the claims that you can get those buff, toned arms in just 6 minutes a day might be true. After all, $19.95 isn't that much....

Well, here's my professional opinion. Save your $20 and buy some real dumbbells!

First off, the thing weighs 2.5 pounds. That is a weight I might use in training a beginner who is frail and elderly, or someone with an injury that prevents them from lifting heavier weights. Most beginners will start with 3 pound weights in both hands, minimum, and will move up from there quickly. So, to get any results, one would have to use it with one hand, not the two often pictured, and even in one hand you would adapt to the exercise very quickly, getting very little in the way of results.

Second: The minimal range of motion necessitated by the shaking motion trains only a very small portion of the muscles used. Do you want a really buff quarter inch of muscle, or a tight, toned, long and lean upper arm? To get the latter, you must train in a larger range of motion, provided by traditional exercises such as bicep curls and tricep kickbacks.

Third: most women looking to use this type of contraption are looking for one thing: to get rid of their "bat wings" (fat deposits above the triceps area that tend to flap when moved). You can tone the triceps, and that will help. But getting rid of this accumulated fat is not going to happen with strength training alone. It is a continued myth that "spot reduction" is possible. Training a muscle will tone the muscle, not get rid of the fat in that specific area. To get rid of fat we must combine full body strength training with regular cardiovascular exercise and proper diet. Additionally, the loose skin that remains over the triceps may only get worse with fat loss - our skin loses elasticity and the ability to "bounce back" as we age. In some cases the only option to lose this floppy skin is surgery. The Shake Weight will provide minimal tricep toning, but will not provide the kind of tightening that women who buy the product are looking for.

Fourth: the 6 minute claim: yes, studies have shown that short boughts of high intensity exercise for as little as 6 minutes, a few times during the day, can net big results. The key here is high intensity
, using more than one muscle group and getting you sweating and exerting effort. The Shake weight does not fit the bill, and even if it did you'd have to do a few 6-minute sessions a day to get results.

If you don't want to take my word for it, here is another opinion by a trainer who actually went out and bought the thing.

Tight, toned arms are a great goal, but there are MUCH better ways to go about it. Pushups, bicep curls, tricep kickbacks and dumbbell rows are just a few of the exercises that will help, and if you have 6 minutes, you'll get much more bang for your buck with these.