First of all, I should have started writing about our P90X experience last week, for my life has already changed drastically, and I still haven’t done a damn workout.
It all started when my wife and I were in a hotel room and saw the infomercial.
The New P90X Infomercial – Part #1
Now, there are only two infomercials that have ever almost swayed me into a hasty, regrettable purchase, and those are the ones for Slap Chop and Sham Wow. I know, I know, nothing to be ashamed of as those are brilliant works of a visionary madman, but still. Transforming one’s body in 90 days is a dime-a-dozen sort of claim you hear about all the time. Unless you’re adopting an eating disorder, you can debate proper nutrition and workout regimens forever.
However.
This program piqued my interest because it incorporates weights, jumping, yoga, stretching, cardio, and kicking and punching. It also introduced the concept of “Muscle Confusion”, which suggests that consistent progress in strengthening and conditioning one’s body is possible by constantly changing up routines and “confusing” the body; keeping it guessing as it were. In general my workout routines consist of going to the gym a couple of times a week, lifting weights and jumping on an exercise bike, rinse and repeat, etc. P90X resembled training for the UFC by comparison.
So my wife and I discussed it and when I got home from vacation I immediately went to Beachbody’s site and ordered the program.
For what it’s worth, I read tons of reviews of P90X before opting for the purchase, and most people had good things to say about the program and the company. Ordering from Beachbody was easy enough, but they sport what is quite possibly the most obnoxious marketing “Upsell” flow with their checkout I’ve ever seen. After you try to finalize your purchase, you are repeatedly taken to one screen after another asking you if you’d like to purchase protein bars, recovery drinks, pull-up bars, stretch bands, so on and so forth. It’s incredible — like buying something at a store and having the cashier try to get you to set up a credit card account, and buy some tube socks, or maybe some chapstick on the way out, or how about premium shampoo!
Beachbody also gave me a “Free” upgrade to some sort of expedited shipping. Yet shipping and handling still added about 30 bucks to the price, so instead of $120 the total price was $150. Thanks for that free service!
Nevertheless, the package arrived within a few days, and I could then progress to the next part of the program — figuring out what the hell to eat.
More on that later.
I still haven’t watched at P90X but in any case I think that for all the products you get it’s very good value, there are plenty of e-books around which cost like 1/4 of the price and those are virtual items holding generic concentrated knowledge and often just covering one area.
Afaik P90X covers both weightlifting, cardio and things like yoga and you mentioned nutrition in your blog to. Not to mention some written documentation and DVDs and producing it all cost some money to.
Johan, the value of P90X is really high. However, this is another area where I think Beachbody over-markets. On the infomercials they claim more supplemental materials (nutrition guide, fitness guide, etc) are worth hundreds of dollars and this is obviously not the case. The supplemental material is pretty nice to have around, but the real value is the DVDs and the overall design of the entire program. I think the nutrition guide is a tad dated, but as I tell people who think the program is too expensive — 1) You’re investing in your health and 2) You’ll end up voluntarily spending a lot more on food, supplements and equipment tweaking long after you’ve forgotten how much you paid for the program.