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!

What’s a workout log?

A workout  log is just a daily listing of the important information about your workout. With P90X, we’d recommend that it include the following information:

- Time of day that you worked out

- Which workout you did and the amount of time it took

- Your weight that day

- Your calorie count for the day

- What you ate that day

- Any notes you want to make

Where to Keep your Workout Log

You should keep your workout log wherever it’s most convenient for you. It can be hand-written in a notebook, entered onto a Word document or Excel sheet in your computer, or kept on your phone. Whatever works for you!

What’s the point of a workout log?

The first point is accountability. If you know that you need to enter your workout information onto a log, you’re less likely to skip workouts or break your diet because you know that you’ll have to document it later.

The second point is for when you’re done with P90X or P90X Plus! You’ll have a record of what worked well, what you didn’t do as well as you hoped and what you enjoyed the most so that you can easily repeat those elements and make them part of your daily post-P90X workouts.

Keeping a workout log is simple, but it can have a great impact on your dedication to and follow through with P90X. It’s a quick step that can formalize your workout and help you be more efficient about getting the results that you want!

Don’t Overextend: Whether you’re using weights or the P90X resistance bands, stop yourself before you get to the outer limits of your range of motion. If you overextend your range of motion, you’re putting undue stress on your joints that could lead to injury later.

Don’t Use Too Much Weight: Also know your limits about how much weight you can lift for exercises that require you to do so. It’s important to push yourself to increase the weight that you lift, but not so much that you’re lifting weight that is clearly too heavy for you. That, again, will put stress on your joints that will ultimately weaken them.

Floor Surfaces: To protect your knees, make sure that the surface that you’re working out on isn’t too hard. If your home only has hardwood or tile floors, invest in a P90X yoga mat to put between you and the floor to cushion the effect on your knees and ankles.

Bend Your Knees: Always, always bend your knees when working out, even if you’re doing an exercise that only focuses on the upper body. You don’t want to get your ankle, knee or hip joints locked, again because of the pressure it puts on them.

Even if you’re young and fit, if you don’t take proper care of your joints now, you’ll feel the results when you’re older! Follow these tips and protect your joints not only from injury while working out but also from developing problems as you age.

The Tennis Ball Technique: While we’re suggesting using a tennis ball, any ball that is somewhat firm and squishy at the same time will work for this exercise! Just carry the ball with you, and periodically throughout the day stop to squeeze it a hundred times with each hand. Even if you do this just once a day, you’ll see improved strength in your hands over time. Ideally, however, you’ll do this twice to three times a day.

Hand from Your Chin Up Bar: If you’re doing P90X, somewhere in your home you’ve installed a chin-up bar. Try simply hanging from it rather than doing chin-ups or pull-ups on it. The hanging will help to strengthen your grip, which will have benefits on all of your workout exercises where you need to hold things.

Hand strength may seem like the thing that you’re least concerned with in your quest to get your best body and be in the best shape that you’ve ever been in. However, in order to get the most out of any of your workouts, you’ll need to have strong hands to support holding weights, bands, bars or your own body weight. The two simple tasks above can have an impact on the results of your workout that will make the short amount of time that it takes to complete doing them well worth it!

Use a Mirror: Take a daily ten minute break to stand in a mirror and make sure that you’re aligned. Your ears should be above your shoulders, and your shoulders should be above your hips. Your ears, shoulders and hips should make a straight line, but your back should really have a slight s-curve in it (your spine is naturally curved). Practice holding this posture.

Take Ballet or Yoga: Both of these practices focus heavily on maintaining correct posture. P90X can’t help you with ballet, but Yoga X (particularly when you do it as intended with a P90X yoga mat and P90X yoga blocks) can assist you with perfecting your posture using a proven technique that’s been around for ages.

Stretch Regularly: Often, our lack of flexibility causes us to sit and stand in non-posture perfect ways. Make sure you’re doing a daily or semi-daily stretching routine to maintain flexibility.

Use a Balance Ball Instead of a Chair: Many people find that if they sit on a large balance ball instead of a chair during the day, at least for a portion of the time, the correct posture that the balance ball forces you into stays with them throughout the rest of the day. This is an adjustment that takes some getting used to, but people who have done it report great results.

Consider a Brace: For many people, getting a temporary posture-improving brace until their muscles and spine get used to their correct posture is the best way to go. Consult a doctor about which ones he or she recommends.

Having great posture won’t only improve your P90X results, it will also make you more comfortable in day-to-day life. Posture is as important a part of health is exercise and nutrition are!

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.

Don’t Feel Guilty: Firstly, if you miss a workout, don’t feel too guilty, though a little guilt is a good thing! Everybody misses workouts sometimes. Life happens. Some days commitments come up, or we’re simply too tired, or perhaps we’re even nurturing a small injury. You are not a bad person if you miss a workout or two. Don’t beat yourself up over it!

Don’t Use It as a Reason to Quit: Don’t use a few days of missed workouts as a reason to quit your P90X journey. This is an easy thing to do, especially if you’re struggling with the workouts (and many people do at first). Once you’ve missed a few workouts, it’s very easy to say, “Well, now I’ve missed workouts. Now I’ve blown the whole thing, and I’ve proven that I can’t get through this.” That’s not true! But you do need to get back on the horse and start working out again as soon as possible!

Adjust Your Workout Schedule: You’ll need, obviously, to adjust your workout schedule, but how you do it is dependent on how many workouts you skipped and your reason for skipping them. It might be best for you to sneak in a few workouts and then restart the normal schedule the following week. It may be best to backtrack and do the workouts from the week before again before moving on. Only you know how much time you missed and how the best way to compensate for it is.

Show us somebody who works out in any way, and we’ll show you somebody who’s missed workouts and then had to mentally and physically adjust for them. You are not alone. Missing workouts doesn’t mean that you’ll fail with your P90X workout products. All it means is that you’re human!

Your Fitness Level: The first thing you’ll want to look at is your current fitness level and whether the workout you’re doing is appropriate for that. If you’re already in great shape, a lighter home workout with more fluff may not be right for you. If you’re severely out-of-shape, you may want to try a “softer” workout before jumping into any of the P90X workout products.

Your Goals: Are you trying to lose weight? Build muscle? Add flexibility? Just get some moderate physical activity into your life so that you’ll be overall healthier and at lower risk for heart disease and other preventable conditions? Do the research about the workouts you’re considering and watch the preview videos available on most of them. Not every workout is designed to do the same thing. Find a workout that aligns with precisely what your goals are.

Your Real Motivation: Be honest with yourself about the level of motivation that you have. Will you really stick out a ninety-day workout, or do you realistically need something that’s a lower time commitment, either in hours required per workout or overall time commitment? Don’t set yourself up to fail at a workout because you’re not honest with yourself about how much commitment you’re willing to put into your program!

The Instructor: Finally, learn something about the instructors in each of the workouts that you’re considering. Everybody has different qualifications and instruction styles. Do some research about the workout philosophies, accomplishments and reviews of the instructors in the videos and workouts that you’re considering, and also try to find preview videos so that you can become familiar with their instruction style.

Home workouts are no different than any other kind of purchase! A little research before you make your selection can ultimately save you from wasting money on a product that’s not right for you. But we promise you, there is a home workout that’s right for what you’re looking for!

How can bad posture hurt my workout?

There are three primary ways that bad posture can hurt your workout results. The first is that you won’t properly workout the muscles that you were hoping to workout because the bad posture has impacted your form negatively. When that happens, you won’t see the toning or muscle mass results that you were hoping for in the time frame that you were hoping to see them in. The second way bad posture can hurt your workout is that it can reinforce your bad posture habits, but now they’re being reinforced with extra weight or exhaustion so that they’ll be even harder to break. Finally, using poor posture when you workout can increase your risk of injury, both to bones and muscles.

What is correct workout posture?

The posture that you’ll want to maintain will vary by workout type and goal, but the general rule of thumb is that you’ll want straight lines and a balanced stance. This holds true even if an exercise calls for you to bend over or lunge. You still want to create straight lines and aligned positions within those movements, not curves or crookedness.

How can I get great workout posture?

With P90X, we recommend that you get out your P90X yoga mat and do the Yoga X workout repeatedly (especially the exercises that use the P90X yoga blocks). However, the key to good posture not only when you’re working out but in life in general is to go slow and always be aware and concentrate on your posture. It will be very hard at first because your body has gotten into the habit of using lazy, bad posture. However, in the end, good posture not only makes us healthier and improves circulation, it’s also a lot more attractive to look at!

How NOT to Breathe

There are two big no-no’s in breathing and exercising. The first seems so obvious, yet so many of us do it. It’s to hold your breath while working out. It seems logical that you would want to breathe and suck in as much needed oxygen as possible, but if you look around a gym, you’ll see plenty of people working out and forgetting to breathe. It’s just a natural reaction to exertion for many. The second “no-no” is to breathe out of rhythm with your exercise. It sounds trivial, but the more that every part of your body is in sync with the rest of your body, the more that you’ll see improved results (and be less fatigued).

How TO Breathe

When doing strength exercises, you want to breathe out (exhale) when you are exerting force. So, for example, if you’re doing a push-up, you exhale as you push yourself up. If you’ve got out your P90X Chin Up Bar and are doing chin-ups, you exhale as you pull yourself up. Wherever you feel the “burn” or the pain, that’s where you exhale. Then, when your body is in the rest phase between movements or doing the recovery motion, you inhale. For cardio exercises, you simply want to keep your breathing even and as steady with your target heart rate as possible.

Surprisingly, given that we all breathe all of the time, you’ll need to concentrate at first in order to get used to this. Letting out a small (We said small, not Serena Williams style!) grunt when you exhale can help you find a rhythm and get used to the correct breathing pattern. Breathing correctly is as important as any other workout factor: hydration, rest, stretching and nutrition!