Does P90X Help You Put On Muscle?
Somebody reached the site yesterday with that exact question, "does P90X help you put on muscle?" The answer is yes. The interesting thing about P90X is that it builds muscles in places that you have probably never tried working out before. Most people don't have a clue when they are working out. They get into this routine that they started doing back in high school and stick with it. Its what they learned and they feel like they are still getting results and keeping themselves in shape. For the most part they are but your never going to be able to build other muscles and your long term fitness will not change much. All of those muscles that you continually workout are still going to be there. As soon as you peak with a certain amount of weight you can lift or an amount of reps its time to change. A lot of people will stick with the same routine and never change it up. This causes the plateau effect. If anything the strength that you are building goes down.
This is kind of off topic but a good example would be your golf swing. I was watching the golf channel and they were interviewing some pros caddie and he asked the pro golfer if he worked out at all over the winter. The pro replied with no. He then asked the pro that he must at least take his clubs out to fine tune the swing. He replied with no again. The caddie said there is no way that this guy can go 3 months without swinging a club, he must be crazy. So what the caddie did was put a banana in his golf bag and personally put his pros clubs away for him. Three months later he went over to the pros house for their first tournament and went to the closet to get the clubs. When he opened it up he said it was the worst smell he had ever came across. Turns out that the pro did not take his clubs out of the bag at all and didn't even workout once. They grabbed the clubs, ditched the banana and he went on to shoot 3 under par that day. The reason is that he has made so many swings over the years that his muscles remember that motion and they will just wake up when asked to do something. This happens with all of us. When you peak out with a weight or rep its time to switch it up.
What P90X does is it teaches you what Tony Horton likes to call "muscle confusion." When you get all 12 of the P90X dvds each one of them is a different workout that is going to challenge you. Your muscles are always guessing because the way P90X works is that you do 5 different workouts a week and after 3 weeks you enter in 3 new workout DVDs. You just continue doing this process. This will let you build some serious muscle because it never gives your muscles a time to plateau. The strength is going to be there even if it feels like you are getting weaker.
I have been doing P90X for about 6 months now and during the first 4 months I stuck to the workout plan to a T. After that I still did the workouts but in a new way. Its kind of cool now that I can take 3 weeks off from doing any pull ups and still be able to do the same or more (depending on how I feel that day) pull ups next time I do it. The reason is because i worked so hard to get to that point and when I started peaking at the end of 90 days I switched it up and started doing different non P90X workouts like swimming. I was still pushing myself and building muscle. All I have to do now is one of those P90X workouts every other week or so to maintain the muscle I had worked so hard to get while in the mean time I work on new fitness goals.
The kind of muscle you are going to put on with P90X is the kind you want. Even if you are trying to get bulky, P90X is not going to let you disregard other major workouts. Your not going to be doing bench presses 3 days a week so you look like one of those guys at the gym with a huge chest and chicken legs. Instead you will be doing working chest once a week with shoulders and back. Once you understand the reasoning behind this you will get it that you are trying to work on all of your muscles not just one in particular. You will get outstanding P90X results and you will not believe what kind of body you had stashed away under that skin for all of those years. Go check out the P90X workout at the Beachbody Store.
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April 6, 2010 9:48 AM











My name is Brad Gibala. In 2007 I was introduced to P90X by a friend training for the Marines. I didn't know it at the time but that moment changed my life. Since then I've become a full time
June 4, 2010
11:18 pm
Hey can I work out one hand at a time? Cause I use the other weights from the other dumbbell
June 6, 2010
10:48 am
@ Michael
If you want to. That’s kind of extreme.
June 6, 2010
6:12 pm
What do you guys mean by modifying p90x to gain mass? Like how modify
June 6, 2010
9:38 pm
@ Michael
Tony Horton shows how to modify the move in each P90X workout. Do you own the P90X DVDs?
June 7, 2010
9:58 am
Can I used P90x in addition to my normal workout routine?
June 7, 2010
12:03 pm
@ Cbaptiste
Yes. However, I suggest doing P90X by itself for 90 days and then go back to your normal workout routine…if you can. Many people who do P90X find it hard to go back to their old routine because their results with P90X are too good to go unnoticed and stick with it.