5 Things to Consider When Choosing a Workout Program
Many people choose to start a fitness program for a variety of reasons—to lose weight, improve cardiovascular performance, improve athletic/sport performance, increase flexibility, etc. Make sure you have a clear goal in mind before starting a program so you can be sure the program is geared towards helping you achieve that specific goal.
As a quick overview, P90X is know for it’s strength training, Insanity and TurboFire are both known for their amazing cardio workouts, and Insanity: The Asylum is known for increasing your skills in the areas of Sports Performance. And of course, there are the area specific workouts such as Rev Abs and Brazil Butt Lift.
Determine How Long of a Commitment You Want to Make
The next thing to consider is how long do you want to commit yourself to the program and how much time each day can you devote to your physical fitness?
If you are really focused on your career, have a full family life, travel frequently, and you can’t see yourself making your fitness a top priority at this point in your life, P90X probably isn’t for you. The workouts can take anywhere from 55 to 90 minutes per day, six days per week.
Decide what kind of time you can commit yourself to working out each day and base your program on that and stick to it. What really helps is sticking to the same time each day for your workout so after a few weeks it becomes routine. When my clients try to vary their workout times from day-to-day they end up making their fitness less of a priority, they put it off for one day, that day turns into two, and then they find themselves so far behind they just quit the whole program.
Set yourself up for success from the beginning—pick a time everyday to workout and commit to it.
What Kind of Nutrition Program Can You Commit Yourself to Following?
Perhaps the key ingredient in any success story that you see on TV is the person’s ability to follow a nutrition plan (if you look at the tiny print on any of the infomercials, they always mention how the testimonial followed a nutrition plan).
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Now, if you have a tendency to want to get in the kitchen and really prepare some great tasting food, the P90X Nutrition Guide may be just your thing. There are some really in-depth recipes that do require a lot of ingredients, but they taste amazing (especially for how healthy they are).
Another option with P90X is using the Portion Approach where you have a list of how many carbs, proteins, dairy, etc. and how many you have to fit in each day and just cross them off as you eat them. There are many different combinations you can do with this approach and basically gear this to work with almost any budget. For more information on using this approach, please visit the Resources section of http://AkersFitness.com.
If you are on a restricted budget and don’t like preparing fancy meals, the Insanity Nutrition plan may be more of a fit for you. The meals in the Insanity Elite Nutrition Guide are more user-friendly but just as delicious. They are very user friendly and you don’t have to track down a health food store to find rare ingredients.
There are a lot of worksheets and videos out there to use as resources for helping you cater each program’s particular nutrition program towards individual dietary needs so if necessary, do a Google Search and find a nutrition plan you can commit yourself to.
And the last option I want to give you is the Team Beachbody Club Membership. This is a membership option where you can get individualized meal plans catered to what you have in your kitchen cabinet right now. They can basically build you a meal plan for whatever workout program you are using that will fit your budget and the foods you like. They give you a full weeks worth of meals so there’s absolutely no guesswork as well as a shopping list for when you go to the store at the beginning of the week.
How Much Variety Do You Want?
This is something you want to consider along with first thing I mentioned at the beginning of the article. If you like having a lot of variety in your workouts, a program like P90X is definitely the way to go—you are doing a different workout each day of the week.
The benefits to this approach is that you don’t get bored anywhere as near as fast with this type of program because you don’t repeat workouts until the following week. However, the drawback is that a big part of fitness and working out is developing your skills and coordination to a point where you can focus on putting more physical effort into what you are doing to get stronger, where it’s cardiovascular strength or physical strength. Doing the workout only once per week makes this difficult to really learn the routines until perhaps the third or fourth week.
Contrast this to a program like Insanity where you run through only basically three workouts each week so you get a chance to really learn the routines and can put more effort into each workout versus trying to figure out what you are supposed to be doing and thinking about your coordination.
The thing you need to consider is whether or not you are going to get bored with repeating workouts each week or if you’d rather have the physical benefits of putting more efforts into your workout because you are familiar with it.
Which Trainer Personality Do You Like Best?
The last thing you need to consider is what kind of personality you like to work with—do you enjoy a more laid-back, comedic approach where you are going to have a good time and enjoy a few laughs or do you want a more fast-paced workout with little down-time between sets?
Do a little research on each trainer (or if you are using this outline to pick a personal trainer, ask for personal references) and find out more about their training style. There is enough information on the internet to where you can find out what type of personality you want pushing you to achieve your goals each day before you make a significant investment.
For even more in-depth information on each workout program and to receive one-on-one personal coaching, visit http://AkersFitness.com. The first seven people to respond will receive a FREE sample of our cutting edge nutritional product delivered to your door on our dime!
