Real Challenges: Think level ten of your favorite video game is hard? Try the P90X plyometrics workout! Or the chest and back workout! Trust us, whatever you think the hardest challenge in your favorite video game is, you’ll be more challenged by P90X.

Better Tools: Sure, your video game as a crazy weapon that can’t exist in real life and a special suit that allows you to breath in outer space, but P90X has the P90X Powerstands to help you do absolutely perfect push-ups, chin-up bars and a slew of other P90X accessories that are cooler in real-life than any virtual-world video game accessory.

Better Rewards: At the end of the video game, all you have is a high score. However, at the end of your ninety days of P90X, you’ll have an amazingly fit body, better health and a new self confidence.

We’re not saying that you should give up video games. We think that they’re fun too. But we do think that it’s important that you get up off of the sofa and get some physical activity. If what you love about your video games are the challenges and rewards, you can definitely get that with P90X as well. And, just like a video game, you’ll level up to harder challenges as you go through the ninety-day program. Better than a video game? We think so. Now, go get your P90X game on!

What is P90X?

Just in case you’re just starting your P90X research, P90X is a ninety-day fitness program by celebrity fitness trainer Tony Horton. It combines not only twelve workouts that get done on a six-day-on, one-day-off schedule for all three months but also a complete nutrition program that teaches you three phases of eating so that you’ll not only lose weight but also optimize your workouts. The program has been used and endorsed by celebrities like P!nk and Taylor Lautner as well as professional athletes like Brett Favre, Ray Lewis, Barry Zito and Kelly Slater.

Who is P90X right for?

P90X is right for you if you meet any of the following criteria!

You’re READY to Get Fit: And we mean ready, because P90X will push you to your max. If you’re ready to get fit and ready for the hard work that it requires, P90X is for you.

You’re Dedicated: Three months of workouts six-days-a-week and a strict nutrition plan isn’t easy. You’ll need to be dedicated. If you’re not ready for that, you’ll struggle. Prepare to dedicate yourself to your fitness effort!

You’re Starting from Zero Level Fitness. Or…You’re Already Fit: You’ve seen the before and after pictures! P90X can take you from zero to ten on the fitness scale, but if you’re already fit it can make you even better. From beginners to pro athletes, everybody who finishes P90X benefits from it.

You Play a Sport: P90X has great benefits for just about every type of athlete. We’ve broken them down by sport on the Finish Well Fitness blog, but if you play a sport of any kind, P90X can get you into better shape and help you excel at your sport.

You’re a Man. Or You’re a Woman! P90X is equally good for men or women. Again, just look at the before and after pictures! Both genders can get rocking bodies from P90X.

In short, P90X is good for everybody! It really is! You just need to show up determined and ready to put your game face on. If you do, you’ll not only get the best body you ever had, but also be in the best health that you’ve ever been!

P90X creator Tony Horton is a celebrity fitness trainer, so it makes sense that he’d be able to design an extreme home fitness program that will get you in shape like a super hero or a celebrity. In fact, in addition to your standard action hero, Demi Moore and P!nk both use P90X, as well as any number of professional athletes.

P90X is a ninety-day fitness plan that also combines the P90X Nutrition plan with its intense (and we mean intense) workouts in order to get you into the best shape that you’ve ever been in. You’ll have access to twelve different workouts that alternate among strength training, flexibility training and cardio training, as well as the nutrition plan. There are also P90X accessories that you can use to intensify your workout even more, including a chin-up bar for chin-ups and pull-ups, powerstands to help you do perfectly correct push-ups every time, resistance bands with handles for the best grip and yoga accessories for those hard-core yoga days.

A superhero physique, or just a celebrity physique, isn’t entirely out of the question even for us mere mortals. You’ll need to come ready to play, however. P90X isn’t called “extreme home fitness” for no reason at all. The workouts are hard. The nutrition plan really requires that you change some of your eating habits (for the better), and you’ll need to be prepared to workout six days a week for three months. However, at the end of it, you’ll be leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Ok, that’s not true. But you will have a body that everybody will envy and, more importantly, be in the best shape and health of your life.

Migraines

If your post-workout headache is a migraine, you should absolutely consult a doctor about not only your headaches after a workout, but also about your migraine problem in general. There are many medications and treatments that can help you! It’s been shown, however, that a regular fitness program such as anything involving the P90X workout products can improve your overall migraine health and reduce your instances of headaches.

Injury and Altitude

Other primary causes of post-workout headaches include injuries to your spine or head during a workout or working out at high altitudes (which impacts your circulation). These factors aren’t particularly controllable, but if you experience regular post-workout headaches, you’ll want to evaluate the role of either of those potential reasons for your headache.

Preventing Regular Workout Headaches

Science still hasn’t figured out why many people experience regular post-workout headaches, but “smart sweating” techniques are suggested for reducing the frequency of headaches after your workout. These techniques include:

Stay Hydrated: Dehydration can cause headaches!

Warm-up and cool-down in both a standing position and on the ground (for comfort use a P90X yoga mat) before and after your workouts.

Don’t overheat! This is true for avoiding headaches even if you’re not about to workout.

Get enough sleep each night! If you’re not rested, your headache is more likely to not only happen but also feel more intense.

Learn to breathe properly during your workout to avoid extra stress on your circulatory or pulmonary systems.

Avoid alcohol and caffeine too near to your workout!

Exercise makes us overall more healthy, so battling through your post-workout headaches until you’ve reached a point of being healthy enough for them to reduce in frequency is definitely to your benefit!

Loving the hard, painful feeling that you get after you’ve done twenty pull-ups on your P90X Chin Up Bar isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. The pain that you feel after a workout is (mostly) good pain. It’s the pain that comes from doing something healthy that will make you a better person. Plus, the pain reminds you that you pushed yourself to the max during your workout. You didn’t leave anything on the table.

Of course, like anything, it’s possible to take your love of workout pain to an extreme that’s not healthy. We certainly don’t support that! But looking forward to the sore muscles and overall fatigue after a workout means that you’re working out as hard as you can and you’re enjoying the physical feeling of proof that you’re working out as hard as you can. That’s something that should be celebrated. And it’s okay to miss that feeling on days when you don’t have your workout. Sure, part of that feeling is endorphin-high, but part of it is also the pain being proof that you, my friend, are awesome.

If you’re regularly feeling total fatigue and pain after a workout, however, you may not be giving yourself enough in terms of recovery between workouts. Make sure you’re getting enough rest and replenishing with P90X Results and Recovery Formula. The truth is that if the pain or fatigue is in any way overwhelming, you may be putting yourself at risk for injury.

It’s okay to love your workout pain! That’s a sign of being successful at your workout! Just don’t take it over the edge!

Of course, this is a trend, not a set-in-stone truth. We all have the ability to maintain a lean, muscular and fit body well into middle and even older age. All we need to do is to be responsible about three things:

Have a Workout Plan: Having a regular workout program such as P90X obviously helps keep you muscular and fit, as well as encourage the release of endorphins which will ultimately send messages similar to the hormones of your youth. P90X is a ninety-day extreme home fitness plan that will get you into lean shape no matter what your age and current fitness level!

Responsible Dieting: Similarly, as we get older, we need to increase our responsibility about diet and eating. We can’t afford to go to either extreme, either through crash dieting or through eating unhealthy foods. One of the benefits of P90X is that is comes with the P90X nutrition plan, which will not only teach you how to eat in order to lose weight but also how to eat in order to get healthy and optimize your workouts. You’ll also learn how to supplement with proper vitamins such as those in P90X Peak Health Formula.

Reduce Stress: The hormones that help to lead you to a “fattier you” are often triggered by stress. Reducing the amount of stress in our lives can have the effect of reducing the release of those hormones and their negative impact. Fortunately, it’s been proven that a regular exercise routine and a healthier diet will help reduce stress!

We can’t eliminate aging, but we can fight it and its impact on our bodies! Look at Demi Moore or many older professional athletes and you’ll see! You can accomplish staying lean long into life with P90X.

Ask How the Program is Going: One of the hardest parts about a home workout program is not having anybody to answer to for your results and having to motivate yourself. You can help your friend or family member succeed at P90X by remembering to frequently ask them how their workouts are going. Be encouraging when they’re doing well, but give them a bit of a push if they tell you that they’ve slacked off or are considering giving up.

Be Aware of Food: Whomever you know who’s doing P90X is also following the P90X nutrition plan, and so they’re having to be very aware not only of how many calories they eat but also of the actual food content that they eat. You can help them succeed by being aware of what you eat when you’re around them. Don’t tempt them with unhealthy food or beverages! And don’t be shy about asking them what they’re eating and how it fits into their fitness goals if you catch them cheating on their diets!

Be a Cheerleader: Most importantly, be a cheerleader! We don’t mean that you have to show up in one of your P90X shirts every time your friend or family member is doing their daily workout and do an actual cheer (though that certainly wouldn’t hurt!), but we do mean that you should take every opportunity to applaud their effort and their successes. P90X is the hardest home workout to ever hit the market. The results are amazing, but you have to put in the hard work to get there. Help your friend or family member make it to the end!

Having a strong support system is one of the keys to success with P90X, so if you know somebody who’s doing the program, help them by being their support system. You also never know. While you’re doing that, you may discover that you, too, are ready for the P90X challenge.

Why Barefoot Workouts?

Barefoot workouts actually started with a movement to encourage barefoot running, inspired by a number of marathon champions, including two-time Olympic champion Abebe Bikila, who run barefoot. The logic behind the movement is that contemporary “supportive” shoes actually aren’t designed with the shape of the human foot in mind, and that when removed from a confining shoe, the foot itself actually adjusts to support the body in the most balanced and healthy way. There are even “shoe” brands currently developed that emulate the real shape of a foot (toes and all) to help accomplish this while also giving protection from surfaces. The same premise as with running then extended to strength training, that without confining shoes, our feet would adjust to better balance and support our bodies.

How Does Barefoot Training Translate to P90X?

It’s possible that for you, with P90X, less in the shoe department may be more! You’ll have to try and see for yourself. However, with workouts such as Cardio X and Kenpo X, you’ll certainly have better balance barefoot. With the strength training exercises, the theory is that you will experience better balance and body support and therefore be smoother and more efficient in your workouts if you’re working out without shoes. However, again, every body is different and you should experiment for yourself. You’ll certainly want a P90X yoga mat if you transition to barefoot working out to provide a comfort level between yourself and the floor.

Barefoot training makes a great deal of logical sense, but it’s a new movement and the benefits and drawbacks haven’t been entirely studied yet. Fortunately, if you find that barefoot training works well for you, P90X can be done in the privacy of your own home so that you won’t need to worry about the rules about shoes at your gym or fitness club!

Economics: The first, and largest, advantage is simply economics. Personal trainers can charge hourly rates that range anywhere from twenty-five dollars an hour to literally hundreds of dollars an hour, and to get the most out of them you’ll need to see your trainer at least once a week, though you should see them more. P90X will cost you $120 for the workout series, and then you can pick and choose which P90X accessories you feel you need. Plus, P90X lasts you for three months, not three hours.

Nutrition: Your personal trainer will give you nutrition advice. However, P90X comes with the P90X nutrition plan, which will easily walk you through three phases of nutrition and teach you how to eat both now and in the future in order to lose or maintain weight as well as optimize your workout.

Privacy and Convenience: It’s possible that you’re willing to pay top dollar to have a personal trainer come to your home. However, chances are that that may just be a bit too rich for your budget. If you’re not using an in-home personal trainer, than that means going to the gym. Going to the gym means not only commuting time and having to schedule your workouts around your trainer’s schedule, but also having to workout in front of a lot of intimidating people who are already in shape. With P90X, you workout in the privacy of your own home and when the time is best for you.

You Do Get a Personal Trainer: You get Tony Horton, and he’s not only trained professional athletes and celebrities alike, he’s also designed the most successful home workouts of all time. He’ll not only clearly instruct you, he’ll also motivate you. So, really, you are getting a personal trainer. You’re just getting a more reasonably priced one, a more convenient one, and one that comes recommended by hundreds of thousands of fit people!

A personal trainer may truly be the better choice for you. Only you know that for sure. However, P90X has a number of advantages over personal trainers that you should consider before making that decision.