This blog is devoted to answering the questions that people have with Beachbody programs, like P90X and Insanity, that go beyond what is in the program guides.
One of the most common questions I see about the P90X Kenpo X workout is, “Do I really need to do the Kenpo workouts?” A similar comment is, “Kenpo X is too easy.” People seem to want to replace the workout with PlyoX or Cardio X, and want to know if there is a problem with that. I am biased, but I do think that Kenpo X is a critical part of the P90X program.
First I should say make the disclaimer that I typically replace the Kenpo X workout with Kenpo Cardio X+ from the P90X+ program. I do think I get a better workout with the +. Frankly, it is also shorter, and easier to fit into my schedule. I also think that Kenpo X is probably the least strenuous of all of the P90X workouts, with the clear exception of Cardio X, but that is a very relative term. It is still harder than most other exercise programs on the market. If you have any questions on P90X+, please ask.
Unique Benefits of Kenpo
First you should consider that Kenpo X offers benefits that the other workouts don’t. Kenpo Cardio X+, for example, is described as providing Endurance, Balance, and Agility. There is no doubt that Plyo X provides endurance and agility. Cardio X seems to help with endurance, but is not as good for agility. Yoga X provides balance. The Kenpo workouts provide another source for all of these benefits in a single workout.
As important though is that the punches, blocks, and kicks require people to rapidly extend their limbs, and cause the fast twitch muscles to fire. You don’t get that type of body movement or muscle use in any of the other workouts, so you actually develop quickness as well.
Also consider the placement of the Kenpo workouts at the end of the week. Kenpo X is frankly a great recovery workout. By frequently extending your limbs, it is essentially a form of ballistic stretching, which is a great feeling after Legs & Back.
More important though, there is a reason that Tony wanted Kenpo X in the P90X program. He could have easily just put Cardio X as Day 6, if he wanted to. I hope I captured the essence of Tony’s logic above, and he knows more about fitness than most of the people doing the program. So, I would tend to trust his judgment here.
Why Mess with Success?
Many people believe that Kenpo X can be replaced with a more strenuous workout to burn more calories. I guess that’s true. But again, you wouldn’t get the unique benefits of Kenpo X. There is more to fitness than burning the most calories, or you might as well rename P90X to Plyo90X.
However, the tremendous success people get with the program as is, more than proves people aren’t being hurt by the calories burned during Kenpo X.
Some people don’t like Kenpo X or Kenpo Cardio X+ and want to replace it with another kickboxing program. If that helps get you through the program, then you can probably do it. However, the Kenpo programs are already available to you, so why spend more money when you don’t have to?
Do What Works For You
While I hope I addressed the common issues, if at the end of the day you really hate the Kenpo workouts, and it affects your ability to stick with the program, do what’s best for you. However, they are a proven component to P90X.
Someone posted to the P90X Discussion Group asking for someone to simplify the P90X Nutrition Plan. I responded and received good comments, so I thought I would post my answer for everyone.
The Response
Here is the essence of the P90X Nutrition Plan. The first thing you have to do is figure out how many calories you need to eat. There is a formula in the book, but there is a Caloric Needs Calculator on teambeachbody.com that is more accurate and doesnt require you to do all the math. It is under Eat Smart > Nutrition Tools. If you need an account there, here is a link for a free one:
Then based upon the calories you are supposed to eat, you look at the Level of the nutrition plan. If you are supposed to eat 2400 calories or less, use Level 1. If you need 2400-3000 calories, use Level II. More than 3000 calories, use Level III.
Then within the Levels are Phases. Generally you do Phase I in Month 1, Phase II in Month 2, Phase III in Month 3. The phases all have you eat the same amount of calories. What they change is the ratio of carbs and proteins.
Fat Shredder is Phase I and has you eating 50% of your calories from protein and 30% calories from carbs. The other 20% of your calories is fat. In Phase II the ratio is 40/40/20 and in Phase III it is 30% protein, 50% carbs, and 20% fat.
Generally the higher protein diets help to burn off fat more effectively. And I recommend that as long as you 1) Have enough energy to make it through your workouts, 2) Have enough energy throughout the day, 3) Like what you eat, and MOST IMPORTANTLY 4) Continue to get results, you can stick with the Phase that you like best.
If You Still Have Problems
Generally I recommend that people follow the sample menus in the plan for the appropriate Level and Phase. That makes it simple for me. However frequently people want a simpler plan. In that case, I recommend that you consider the nutrition plan out of the Body for Life book. The Body for Life Plan is generally similar to Phase II from the P90X Nutrition Plan, and should give you the right amount of calories.
The Beachbody Coach Summit took place from June 17-19, 2011, and as expected there were A Lot of announcements to share with everyone. I normally mail updates to my customers, however a message with all the information would be overwhelming, so I thought I would send everyone a message referring them to this blog post if they want more info on the subjects. So, enjoy!
P90X2
P90X2 is supposed to be available for the 2011 Christmas/Holiday season. Preordering will hopefully become available in August, and you should take advantage of it, as Beachbody is trying to balance out the projected orders, and only does a limited run for new programs until they see the demand, so there is strong potential that it might go out of stock early.
As far as the program itself goes, P90X2 will be a 90 day program that you do 5 days a week. Yes I wrote 5 days a week. There will be 14 workouts that are part of the program, which will have 3 distinct phases; Learning, Strength and Performance, and it appears that you will do different workouts in the different phases.
Tony Horton and his advisors describe P90X2 as the most advanced program ever put on DVD. Note that they did not say the most intense. While it will not be as theoretically extreme or intense as Insanity or Asylum, the entire P90X2 program was scientifically designed to provide maximum gains in all areas of fitness.
P90X2 is not however a program for beginners. Doing pushups while your hands and feet are on balls requires very significant core strength for example. It is designed to improve all areas of athleticism, but needs a good base to build on.
The above also touched upon the need for some extra equipment. While there will be alternatives for people who don’t have the equipment, P90X2 will use medicine balls, stability balls, a weighted bar, and a foam roller.
One major change that you might or might not notice is that there will be no traditional cardio in P90X2. As all the work is essentially intervals, you are improving your cardio vascular fitness enough for functional health as Tony stresses. Tony and the people he works with believe that intervals provide more effective improvements, and you also don’t see a functional reason for the normal person to just keep their heart rate in an aerobic range for extended periods of time.
Just to answer another question you might have, yes there will still be yoga, but it will only be about 65 minutes long.
For those of you that care, it might be available in Blue Ray format.
There will be multiple nutrition plans available to accommodate the most common dietary styles, including vegetarians and vegans. Shakeology will also be integrated into the plans.
I will provide more info and videos later, but please let me know if you have specific questions on this.
P90X iPhone App
The long awaited P90X iPhone app should be available in August. This was the most secretive part of the whole summit, where they wanted all recording stopped. While it is still unclear as to what can tell you now, I will say that it has the workout tracking that you all wanted, and so much more. You will definitely be able to take P90X to the gym. From the little bit that we saw, I can tell you that the P90X app is AWESOME!
To answer other questions, you should be able to run the app on iPads, as well. There was however no information about Droid or other pending smart phone versions.
Active Duty Military Coach Fees Waived
As many of you know Beachbody actively supports the military and their families. To further that support, people who have an active duty military person in their family will be able to sign up to be a Beachbody Coach for free, which saves $39, and the later monthly fees ($15) will also be waived. This means it is essentially free for you to be a coach.
While this is clearly an outstanding opportunity for military families to create a second income with no money out of pocket, it is also a great way to get all Beachbody products at a wholesale cost. For example, Shakeology will be $90 per order for military families. You get all programs, including Insanity and TurboFire for the coach prices of $90, and it costs you nothing.
The new Shakeology flavor was formally debuted at the summit, and is named, Tropical. They describe it as based primarily on Banana, Pineapple, and Papaya, and was designed to be a light flavor that is there to enhance the flavors of what you add to it. It was designed to be versatile. For the summit, they were blending it with pineapple, strawberries, yogurt, and milk, and the closest thing I could describe it as was somewhat of a bubblegum flavor. I don’t however believe that that description does it justice.
Many coaches were mixing the Tropical with Chocolate flavors and loved the combination. Personally, I love chocolate, and prefer the chocolate, but I definitely liked Tropical more than Greenberry.
While it is pretty much ready to go, Beachbody is a major stickler for all around quality, especially with regard to Shakeology, and they are still making sure that the formula will have significant shelf life and will not be impacted by adverse shipping conditions. They intend for the flavor to be ready to ship by the end of the year.
Vegan Shakeology and Other Flavors
Very ironically, all of the people who designed Shakeology are vegans, and given that Shakeology uses whey protein, it is not technically a vegan product. They all drink it though. Given the market, they are continuing to work on Vegan Shakeology, and have the product ready during the first quarter of 2012. While I realize this is not the news you want to hear, I get enough questions about this, so I wanted to give you a status that Beachbody knows of your concerns, and is actively addressing them. Apparently the holdup is that they have had difficulties finding a formula that has a flavor and consistency that will meet all standards of quality, which includes taste and consistency.
While there was no detail about this subject, there is also at least one additional flavor in the works that they hope to also have ready in the first quarter of 2012. It will not however be Vanilla, as many people hope, as that flavor was nixed last year as it was being ready to be shipped. Again, they could not get enough quality vanilla that was not chemically treated to have a good flavor as a lead flavor. They will not compromise their core beliefs even when the demand for the product is huge.
New Tai Chi Program
The only new program announced, besides P90X2, is a Tai Chi based program. I will have more information on that later in the year. For those of you not familiar with Tai Chi, it is a martial art that is essentially a slow movement of Kung Fu sequences. The program is designed for people of all ages, but is probably going to be more popular with people who have flexibility issues, difficulty with the harder programs, or just want an easier program for a change that strives for mental clarity.
The New $100,000 Beachbody Challenge
Beachbody has completed renovated what was previously known as the Million Dollar Body Challenge, and renamed it simply, The Beachbody Challenge. Now you can win up to $100,000. Everyone who enters gets a T-shirt for just submitting their story. While a huge transformation is outstanding, for just signing up and submitting your Success Story, you will get a T-shirt. The only requirement is that you have an account on teambeachbody.com. If you are my customer, or have a coach, you already have an account. If you dont have an account yet, please click here for a free one. If you want more information, please e-mail me.
If you are interested in this in any way, please contact me so I can help you. My e-mail is ira@xcompanionguide.com. I have helped many people make it through their respective program, and have decades of experience in fitness and nutrition, and I am more than happy to help you find the right program for your needs, and make it through the program with the best possible results.
Beachbody Continues to Grow and Improve
As you can tell, Beachbody continues to grow and expand their product lines to better serve you. They also have a special concern to supporting members of the military and will continue to support them and their families however they can.
I have clearly thrown a lot out here, so please feel free to personally contact me if you want details on anything mentioned here, or anything else related to fitness, nutrition, or Beachbody in general. I can again be reached at ira@xcompanionguide.com.
For good reason, people do think that Shakeology is expensive. The fact is that you have to pay for a 30 day supply at one time, and I get that. However, when you break it down on a per meal basis, it is actually pretty cheap, and there are a variety of ways to get it that make the price as low as $3 per serving.
Why I Think Shakeology is Actually Cheap
When you do buy a one month supply at a time, I do understand that costs $89-$119. That is a given. However if you divide it into 30 separate meals, it works out to $3-$4 per serving. My Egg McMuffin with an iced mocha cost me $5+ the other day. Even making a reasonably healthy meal at home is going to cost more than $3 per serving.
I tend to eat out a lot and using Shakeology, instead of eating out and taking my family with me, has saved me hundreds of dollars a month. So, while I understand that laying out the money all at once seems expensive, to me it saves me a lot of money. Again though, stop and calculate what you personally spend on a healthy meal.
Spending As Little As Possible on Shakeology
Monthly Auto-Ship for Free Shipping
There are a couple of ways to save money with Shakeology. Fundamentally, you can start by ordering Shakeology with the Monthly Auto-Ship option, AKA Home Direct. If you use this option, you save the shipping fee, which is around $10 or more.
While the policy states that if you order with Home Direct, you have to order for at least two months, if you are not happy with the product, Beachbody will cancel your order at any time. You can also put your order on hold indefinitely. The risk most people are afraid of is that they will order with Home Direct and forget to cancel or hold the second order if they are not interested. There is however Beachbody’s 30 day unconditional money back guarantee, so at the worst case you are out the cost to return an empty bag of Shakeology.
The Preferred Customer Option
A Preferred Customer is the term that I use to describe a person who signs up to be a coach specifically for the discounts. Beachbody Coaches get just about everything Beachbody sells at 25% off, which means that you can buy Shakeology for $89. That is a $30 savings per order.
The fee to be a coach is $15 per month, so if you order nothing else, you have a net savings of $15 per month, or about $180 per year. This is in addition to saving $10 per order by ordering Home Direct. It must however be noted that there is an additional $24 fee when you sign up. For this reason, it is only worth becoming a coach if you intend to order Shakeology for more than one month.
Again, you also save 25% on just about all other products, including the upcoming P90X2 and any other product. Additionally, if any of your friends are impressed by your results and want to follow the same programs as you, they can purchase the products through you and you can earn a 25% commission.
Active Duty Military and Spouses Have NO Fees
Beachbody just started a program that waives coach fees for Active-Duty Military or their spouse. This way Shakeology can be a flat $89. Period. The sign up fee and monthly fee will be waived, so if you want just about any Beachbody product at 25% off, it pays to sign up to be a coach if you qualify. You need to fill out the right coach application to qualify for this. Please e-mail me at ira@xcompanionguide.comfor the forms.
No, You Don’t Have To Buy Anything
The one hesitation people have is that they are afraid they will be forced to buy products or make sales. To be very clear, the only requirement is the $14.95 monthly fee. Here is an excerpt from the Beachbody Coach FAQ.
Will I have to purchase products for resale?
Unlike marketing programs that require you to buy a lot of products in order to participate, the Coach Opportunity has no inventory requirements.
Just like all Beachbody products, coaching and Shakeology comes with a money back guarantee. You can cancel Shakeology at any time, and return any for a full refund (minus shipping). You can cancel coaching at any time.
What I Tell My Friends and Family
Even if you only intend to order once, I recommend ordering with Home Direct/Monthly Auto-Ship. Again, you can put future shipments on hold and send it back if you are not interested. If you think Shakeology is something that you want to use on an ongoing basis, in my opinion, it only makes sense to sign up to be a Preferred Customer. You are otherwise throwing away money.
If You Are Interested, Please Talk To Your Coach
If a coach sent you to this page, please go back to them for help in deciding the best way to order. If you don’t have a coach already, or prefer to talk to me, you can email me at ira@xcompanionguide.com. If you just want to order Shakeology via Home Direct, you can just click here.
