Generally speaking, when I meet someone new who wants to ask me about fat loss, I always get asked about P90x, and whether or not its an effective weight loss program. As you might imagine, I like to refrain from slander in any form, on any program, but I also feel it’s my obligation to help you assess the best and worst of the industry.

As such, here is my formal review of P90x. You should know that I’d prefer you do my programs, not only because they are mine, but because I review every program on the market before I come out with one. If I don’t feel that my program is truly better than every other program on the market, I simply don’t release it.

I mean this with complete humility, as I’d only be contributing to the amount of fitness confusion in the marketplace if I didn’t absolutely 100% know that I was offering you something better, or more effective. There’s enough confusion out there – if you’re getting results, and you’re staying safe, stick with your program.

That said, I do believe P90x to be one of the better programs on the market. Before I get into the benefits of P90x, let me discuss the biggest objection I have to this program, in my experience training clients who ask me about it:

People get hurt, a lot. The intensity is super high, and many of the exercises are simply unrealistic unless you are an experienced athlete or have a lot of history in the gym.

With that said, I personally find the P90x workouts to be fun and effective. Please keep in mind that I’m able to spot my own form, monitor my own fatigue points, and realize which exercises wind my joints into unsafe positions. I also have a spotter around, at all times, if I need one, and I’m as close to 100% neurologically efficient as anyone I’ve ever met.

Again, said with humility, but properly qualified, this program can be extremely effective and fun to do. P90x works off of a philosophy of ‘muscle confusion,’ which helps your body keep guessing throughout your workout program. The concept is, if your body doesn’t know what’s coming next, it won’t become efficient, which means you’ll keep getting results.

By alternating phases of your workout program, from yoga to bodybuilding to high-intensity based training, you are working all three energy systems and attempting to balance out your muscles. While I do not see the specific exercises that yield the largest muscle balancing effect in P90x, I do respect Tony Horton and this organization for improving the quality of fitness workouts in mass-driven workout-at-home DVDs.

P90x will produce results, if you stay safe and you don’t get hurt.

The three main reasons that I decided to create the Double Edged Fat Loss DVDs, although P90x is available, are:

1. Unstable surfaces aren’t utilized fully, and they systematically increase your neurological efficiency over time, while increasing core recruitment, and decreasing your chance of injury.
2. I found the workouts to be too long for most people who want to burn fat. Likewise, considering the workout length, they were missing aspects like 3 energy system training in every workout, muscle balancing in every workout, and the 5 basic fat loss movements building upon themselves as time went on.
3. I never saw a proper demonstration of intensity during workouts, as this was made to ‘look good.’ I understand the dilemma here, but I’m more concerned with you having the right example in a weight loss program.

This might be a strange email to read, as you’ve probably heard everyone else who sells a fitness program rant about how P90x isn’t as good. I’d rather be honest. It’s a great program, and it produces results for a lot of people… but, does it produce the results that you want?

That’s the only important question to me, and the feedback I’ve gotten with over 110,000 subscribers to date is that you want a program that answers the three objections above. If this is true, it’s time to sign up to Double Edged Fat Loss.

1. Grab a set of the DEFL DVDs and work out with me. I’ll hold your hand and walk you through every exercise, at full intensity, as you watch me train 2 clients at a time, correct form, and work around injuries.

Good luck, and please keep me posted!

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About Author

Dr. Kareem Samhouri

Dr. Kareem Samhour is known as (perhaps) the best Doctor of Physical Therapy & Kinesiologist on the internet. People come to him for results when other methods fail, injury gets in the way, or health situation is more complicated. Dr. Kareem Samhouri exercising In fact, he and his companies reach a combined total of 1.5 MILLION people on a daily basis to help them with their health. If you ever saw Dr. Kareem on the street and mentioned something was going on with your health, however, he would volunteer and offer to help you for free... that's the Dr. Kareem way.