P90x: Life Saver or Latest Fad

Each year, a handful of fitness fads explode onto the American scene. And, each year, an equal number fizzle out in far less spectacular fashion. But every so often, one sticks around, and for the last several years running it has been P90X—a wildly popular home-based fitness routine with a growing (and near fanatical) following among weekend warriors and A-list celebs alike (Ewan McGregor, Ashton Kutcher, and Donavan McNabb are among its devotees). It’s also one of the most popular search terms on MensHealth.com. But if you’re reading these words, you’ve found the only ones we’ve ever written about it. Why? Because while P90X might be able to accomplish what it claims for $120 (i.e., “transform you from regular to ripped in 90 days”), it’s likely not the total-body fitness solution that most people are looking for.

If you watch late night television, you’ve seen the infomercials: Fitness trainer Tony Horton and a handful of attractive models explain that by constantly introducing new exercises and workouts—which run the gambit from traditional strength sessions to Kenpo karate classes—you’ll achieve a constant state of “muscular confusion.” The less your muscles adapt, Horton explains, the faster they’ll grow.

The idea of “muscular confusion” isn’t new. And unfortunately for Horton and the folks at Beachbody—who also introduced the world to Hip Hop Abs and the Turbo Jam workout—it’s not based on science. “It’s a marketing term invented by Joe Weider [the creater of the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding contest] back in the 1980s,” says Bill Hartman, C.S.C.S, a strength coach in Indianapolis. “And it’s kind of counterproductive.”

Here’s why: If muscles don’t adapt, they don’t grow. “The whole goal of weightlifting to is to get an adaptation to occur,” says Hartman, “and that requires multiple exposures to the same stimulus.”

Unless you’re a beginner, doing something different every workout can actually halt your progress if you’re trying to add lean mass. (If you’ve never worked out before, just about any novel exercise stimulus will trigger muscle growth.) “But if you’re already carrying a bit of muscle, you probably won’t see the same sort of effect,” says Hartman. “What you might see, however, is fat loss.”

By constantly changing your workouts, you’re body will never become efficient in the motor pattern of any one exercise, and the less efficient you are, the greater the metabolic (fat burning) stimulus will be. “So if you’re primary concern is weight loss, then there’s nothing wrong with P90X,” says Hartman. “In fact, it might be a very good program, because the Hollywood-style presentation will keep you engaged.”

Does all of this mean that you should never vary your workouts? Certainly not. Variation is key to any good training program—as long as it’s not too frequent. Neither do your workouts need to vary radically from one to the next to achieve radical results. Indeed, the best way to achieve big gains is to make small changes to your fitness plan when you begin to notice diminishing returns—you’ve been curling the same amount for a couple of weeks, for example, or your progress on the bench has come to a screeching halt. Even then, the best solution isn’t necessarily to switch up the exercises that you’re doing.

“Instead, follow the same strategy used by many elite athletes,” says Hartman. “Rather than change the exercise, change how you do it.” Slight alterations in tempo, load, sets, reps, or rest periods are often all it takes to stimulate new muscle growth. Here are three rut-busting strategies to get you started. You can apply them all to your existing program without changing a single exercise—or spending a single dime.

1) Alternate the Order Sometimes breaking through a fitness plateau is as simple as changing the sequence of your exercises. Most guys run through their workouts doing one exercise at a time, which is fine if you have time to kill and enjoy the slow-and-steady approach to muscle-building. If you want to maximize your gains, however, do supersets—two exercises performed back to back without rest. Pair noncompeting muscle groups, such as your deltoids and glutes, so that one muscle group can recover while the other works. Combining a chest press with a row, or a shoulder press with a deadlift, for example, would work perfectly. Such multitasking will not only save you time, but also help you build more muscle and burn more fat by increasing the intensity of your workout.

2) Change the Tempo Instead of raising and lowering the weight in one continuous motion, try pausing for a second about halfway up, and then again about halfway down. Another strategy: Use a tempo of 4 seconds up, and 4 down for eight weight-lifting sessions, and then adopt a 2-seconds-up, 2-seconds-down tempo for your next eight. Studies show that tweaking the parameters of an exercise is more important than varying the exercises themselves.

3) Vary the Volume Instead of always doing 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps, try reducing the weight and shoot for 4 sets of 15 reps. Alternatively, you might skip rep counts entirely, and simply focus on doing as many as you can in 60 seconds. A recent study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that men who regularly varied their rep counts and trained different muscle groups increased their bench strength by 28 percent and their leg press strength by 43 percent.