When To Start?

Hey all,

I discovered the site a couple days ago and have been reading up on it like crazy. I've decided to get the starter pack and begin my journey with F1 and H1.

I got into working out years ago with P90X and have been doing crossfit for quite some time. Anyway I just discovered they made a P90X3 and started that few weeks ago. I am currently on the second of three phases with that....

I would like to finish it, so my question is would you recommend waiting to start F1 and H1 until I have completed P90X3 or could I perhaps juggle both maybe slowly start implementing F1/H1 and then ramp it up and make it my primary focus once P90X3 is done?

The P90 series are a "feel good program", meaning one of those programs designed to make you feel tired so you think you have trained, while not bringing any significant long term benefit apart from being able to tell people "hey look at me how cool I am I workout at home!". The high amount of training volume and the nutritional guides will indeed make you lose a lot of bodyweight fast, while also making you weak.

If you are after athletic abilities, and if you are here I assume you are, just let P90X be a shadow in your past, and begin your new journey with a clean and open mind. You'll notice there's a substantial difference in how things work, and how often progress is achieved.

Sorry if this doesn't exactly answer your question, but to me what you ask is similar to "hey I have a spoon and a blender, should I cut this banana with the spoon before putting it in the blender?". Weird metaphor but hopefully you can see my point of view. Wish you fun with gst, whatever you end up deciding.

F

4 hours ago, Blake Harris said:

would you recommend waiting to start F1 and H1 until I have completed P90X3 or could I perhaps juggle both maybe slowly start implementing F1/H1 and then ramp it up and make it my primary focus once P90X3 is done?

 

Definitely your second option there, if you are set on P90X3. A lot of people, including myself, have found a big benefit by initially including mobility and prehab work in a couple of sessions / week into their other training, in my case at the time full time martial arts that also involved a fair bit of conditioning. Once the results started coming in, it was natural to move into making a the primary focus.

That said, the sooner you can start dosing yourself with restorative mobility the better

I don't really know anything about P90X3 other than hearsay, so I can't comment on it unfortunately.  Trying to juggle two programs is not going to give you the full benefit of both; the mobility goes a long way, so if you are in reasonable shape and you are not destroying yourself with volume you should be able to progress nevertheless, although you will need to be super cautious with it.

Thanks for the replies! 

Yeah I'm really only doing P90X3 for nostalgic reasons. I found out there is a newer instalment of what got me into the fitness lifestyle years ago. That said I'm stubborn and don't like not finishing something once I've started it. I haven't even looked at their nutrition outline, I follow the paleo diet and that works well for me.

Jon I appreciate you sharing your experience. I think that's the way I'm going to go. I actually expect the mobility elements to hold me back more than the strength elements at the beginning anyway so it might be a good idea to get a head start with them.

Blake, good call.

As Jon suggested, finish the last phase, if you must, while beginning to explore F1, H1.

I do know something about PX90 and the gazillions of "fitness" claims out there. What they all have in common I describe as "the appearance of fitness." Like in a spinning bike, you may be sweating and working hard... but not smart. In reality, you're literally going no where (skill wise). Continuing the bike analogy, when you ride a real bike, you may discover you are not well prepared and you may fall because now you're in the real world with many more subtleties (terrain, wind, gravity, GRF, etc).

May I suggest a third choice: quit PX90 and dive into F1, H1. That would be my first choice. Cheers.

6 hours ago, Blake Harris said:

I actually expect the mobility elements to hold me back more than the strength elements at the beginning anyway so it might be a good idea to get a head start with them.

This is certainly the case for most adults work capacity however is certainly challenged in most people in the early work. 

Before coming to GB I made a few cycles of Insanity and T25. While I see now how unbalanced these programs where, I still think I got a lot out of it and definitely I don't feel like I wasted time on these programs (on the other end believing the TRX claims that it would strengthen my core was indeed a waste of time).

In the end I decided to stop T25 in the middle of the cycle (I finished beta but I didn't do gamma, for people familiar with that structure), because I couldn't wait to start GB, after I discovered it.

1 hour ago, Giovanni Garcea said:

Before coming to GB I made a few cycles of Insanity and T25. While I see now how unbalanced these programs where, I still think I got a lot out of it and definitely I don't feel like I wasted time on these programs (on the other end believing the TRX claims that it would strengthen my core was indeed a waste of time).

In the end I decided to stop T25 in the middle of the cycle (I finished beta but I didn't do gamma, for people familiar with that structure), because I couldn't wait to start GB, after I discovered it.

And I take it you are happy you made the choice to get started right away? 

Thank you for your input!

Very happy!

So I purchased the starter pack. I'm probably going to take the advice and make the switch to focus on GST before P90X3 is done but for this week at least I'm sticking to P90X3 and adding in one of the seven elements from foundation per day just to get a feel for it and see where I'm at.

Yesterday I achieved mastery on FL PE1 and PE1>iM but it wasn't easy. During sets four and five I was telling myself "you know it's the first time you don't have to reach maters today, just let go" but I was able to ignore that and make it through. I'm going to do it again before moving on to PE2 just to be sure.

Tonight I'll be giving SPL PE1 and PE1>iM a try. I have no idea what to expect from PE1 tbh but I know for sure the mobility aspect will be a problem for me. I'm definitely going to have to take my time on that one and work my way through it.

Hi Blake, as a former Beachbody customer myself this might interest you. Over the weekend I decided to pull the trigger on GBpro+ and I also decided that I wanted to try and switch to the F7 scheduling (all elements in one workout). Also, GBpro+ gives you access to all the online classes.

So yesterday was my first workout since jumping on GBpro+. I first warmed up with a 15 minutes online class, then I did the Foundation specific warmup (a couple of sets of the previously mastered PEs) and finally the F7 workout using the fast paced follow along videos. By the end I was spent and I had to lie down for 10 minutes in my garage before going back in the house. GBpro+ definitely pushes the metabolic side of training more than when I worked out without follow along videos and this reminded a little bit of how I felt when doing workout videos before discovering GB.

Best of both worlds, potentially...