P90X Search Engine Queries – Part 2

I’m going to do this every few weeks just to see if I can help people out, as I have had many questions while doing P90X and I hope that my experience can help.

I wrote this post a few weeks back, and it’s garnered some traffic.  I’m hoping to have a veritable P90X Q&A by the time my girlfriend and I are done with P90X in 90 days ( we start tomorrow morning, this will be her first time doing P90X, we’re going to do the lean routine ).

Recently I’ve had the following P90X search engine results:

p90x stiff

This one I answered in my first post, so I don’t really need to go into it again, just scroll down to the end, you can’t miss it.

p90x week 3 is hard

p90x tired

These two questions kind of go hand in hand.  Week 3, if you’ve been following the nutrition plan, more or less, you’ve been depriving your body of carbs to get your body to burn the fat you’ve stored. Your body is not used to this, it’s used to the high carbs you’ve likely been downing and this can be reason for your lower energy.  Don’t worry, if this is the reason, it will all be taken care of once you hit week 5, as you start Phase 2 and you get to increase the amount of carbs you’re eating.

If lack of carbs isn’t the reason, you need to examine your calorie intake more closely.  Are you taking in the right number of calories to leave your body burning just enough to lose fat, but still be able to repair and grow the muscles you’re using?  To properly calculate your calorie intake you need to follow the nutrition guide, but here’s the short version:

• Body weight * 10 = Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR)
• RMR * 20% = Daily Activity Burn ( DAB )
• RMR + DAB + 600 = Energy Amount ( Calories )  – This number will dictate what “Level” of nutrition to be at

Lets take an individual that weighs 195 lbs:

• 195 x 10 = 1950
• 1950 x 20% = 390
• 1950 + 390 + 600 = 2940 calories / day.

If you’re not getting the proper nutrition, you will find yourself tired, weak, unmotivated and struggling with results.

p90x recovery week 1

recovery week p90x

p90x recovery week

Oh, recovery week.  Recovery week is nothing but a break from resistance lifting.  Your body gets a break from pullups, chinups, curls and squats, and instead focuses on exercises that focus on your core ( think more like Yoga ) than anything else.  It’s far from an easy week, in fact my first recovery week I found to be JUST as hard as my first week of P90X.

P90X Progress Chart

I don’t know of any charts around to help you chart your progress, you can always just jot down your measurements and weight on day 1 and then again on the recovery weeks to see how things are going.  Nathaniel Arms has put together some amazing spreadsheets for helping you track your progress and track what you eat throughout the day. You can contact him here and make sure you request the “p90x Nutritional Spreadsheets”

Tags: p90x, Recovery Week, stiff, tired, week 3