Don’t Eat Too Close to Your Workout! You should wait an hour to an hour and a half after you eat to workout. This gives you a chance to digest as well as to make sure that your body is at its optimal level of energy.

Increase the Duration and Intensity of Your Cardio as You Go Along: Fortunately for you, with P90X this factor is taken care of as Tony Horton has developed the cardio workouts to push you harder (and longer) as you get deeper into the P90X program itself. However, once you’re done with P90X and potentially with P90X Plus as well, you’ll need to make sure that you continue to challenge yourself.

Vary the Type of Cardio that You Do: Again, with the P90X workout products, you have an advantage because Tony Horton focuses on muscle confusion and makes sure that your cardio routines never get mundane or boring or repetitive. On your own, however, you’ll want to be extra conscious about mixing up your cardio workouts. Once your body gets too used to one type of cardio workout, it becomes too easy and the results will begin to plateau.

Monitor Your Heart Rate: We’ve written previously about the proper target heart rate zone. Monitor your heart rate and make sure that it’s neither too low (where you’re not getting an effective workout) or too high (where you’re at risk of injury).

Cardio is an essential part of any workout program, but to get the most out of it you’ll need to push yourself every time! It’s very easy fall into the habit of having the cardio workouts be “less intense” than many of the strength workouts. Don’t let that become your bad habit!

Why You Need Muscle

If you want to burn fat and get healthy for the long term, you need to build muscle as well. Why? Because muscle raises your body’s resting metabolic rate, which is the rate at which your body burns fat when you’re not actively working out.  This means two things: Firstly, it means that you’ll burn fat more consistently throughout the day and keep weight off. Secondly, it means that you won’t need five hours a day on the treadmill because your metabolism will be higher when you’re not working out for a more consistent fat burn.

Why You Need Variety

Repetitive cardio routines also work against you because your body, mind and muscles need confusion in order to not plateau and decrease your results. It sounds simple, but it’s true. If you’re just running or just doing the same aerobics routine daily, then you’ll eventually start to see decreased results as your body gets used to it.

A Solution with P90X

P90X offers a great solution to breaking out of the cardio rut, however. P90X is ninety days of a combination of stretching, strength and cardio all done at various intensities. You’ll also get to ease into strength training with some safe and effective equipment like the P90X Resistance Bands (and we’d recommend the P90X Resistance Band Handles if you’re new to strength training). You’ll only need an hour a day, but it will be an intense hour! However, if you’ve been coasting on your cardio program for a long time, or if you’re just starting to get fit and want to get in shape the right way the first time, the balanced approach of P90X is what you’re looking for.

Cardio X is actually considered an optional workout in the P90X series. You can add it to the mix once, twice or three times a week. However, some people find that adding Cardio X to the mix is just too much for them. We recommend that you include some type of cardio program with your P90X workouts, whether it’s Cardio X or not. The reasons that you’ll want to include a cardio element are:

Calorie Burning: A cardio element means that you will, ultimately, burn more calories. Burning more calories means that you’ll lose weight faster. Losing weight faster means that you’ll start getting ripped faster. These are all things that you want, so a cardio element is an important element for you to add.

Improved Workouts: Adding a cardio element means that you’ll improve your overall cardiovascular fitness, and that means that you’ll be able to workout even harder during the P90X workouts.

Whether you use the Cardio X workout or another way to get your cardio is up to you, but there are benefits to using the Cardio X workout. Firstly, it’s designed to enhance the program. Many of the moves that you’ll do during Cardio X are moves that you’ve been exposed to in the other P90X workouts (particularly the Kenpo X and Yoga X workouts). They’re set to a faster pace in order to get a cardio burn, but you get the benefit of getting extra practice at some of the moves. Secondly, with Cardio X, you know you’ll be getting the motivational leadership of Tony Horton. Just going off and doing cardio on your own may not pump you up mentally in the same way!

If you’re looking for a different cardio workout to do, you may want to consider Turbo Jam Live or Rockin Body instead. Both of those workouts combine cardio and muscle toning to high energy, upbeat music with a dance emphasis. If you think you need a break from Tony Horton, or you just want to mix up your cardio elements, consider those or other workouts that feature dance music.

Get out, get running, do some Cardio X and improve your cardiovascular fitness today. If you do, it will improve your fitness overall.