I will start by saying I love Tony Horton. I bash on him about the P90X series, but they have truly helped me find workouts that don't suck. P90X helped me lose inches in weeks and over two months or so improve strength. P90X2 did the same, but felt a bit more rough than P90X. Insanity nearly killed me everytime, but it was awesome (thanks Shaun-T). And P90X3 has some great workouts. I feel the deadliness after the workout and I always feel great. The workouts are superb (for me) and at a slow enough pace that I never feel like I'm working out but I also don't feel like I'm sprinting. I dread starting the workouts, but by the time they're over I always think how fast they went by.
This isn't a review of the Tony Horton P90X* series.
This is about my first TRX workout. The first workout took 45 minutes. Most of that was b/c I watched the videos on how to do the movements as I went along - and I had to get setup for each movement. In total - each move took about 2 minutes to setup and do. I also moved locations because I needed more than the narrow hallway to work in so that took about 5 minutes or less to do.
The guidebook is spectacular. It's spiral bound and made of waterproof and nearly tearproof pages (like the 68W handbook) - very nice. I have pictures in my previous blog.
The workouts are very nice and the level of difficulty is based on your angle, which is what I love about calisthenics and why I started doing the cali-move type workouts. I've always wanted to be able to do a lot of the moves they do (the stuff Stephen Amell does in Arrow). You can say I may never be able to do any of that stuff; I will, however, still work towards that goal - why not? Back to the review.
The app is very nice. It contains a lot of information that helps you breeze through the workout even if you don't know what you're doing. Between exercises you adjust the straps as needed - most of the time "like" exercises are placed together so I didn't have to jump up adjust the straps then do the next exercise.
The videos in the app are superb often giving you more than one way to do the exercise based on your level of fitness. I often felt like it took longer to watch the video than it did to do the exercise.
Almost every exercise in the app has a timer next to it - so you can hit the timer and it gives you a 5 second countdown then starts your exercise timer. Very handy.
Each exercise was approximately 45 seconds - I went slow and was able to do about 10 sets in that time frame. I never felt like I was going to "die" or that I was going to run out of energy. Each exercise seemed to be the perfect amount of time for me.
The feet suspended activities were awkward for me; I was able to do all but one foot-suspended activity.
There were only three exercises I could not do correctly; one I could not do at all. The first was the side plank. For my belly size it's incredibly difficult to get my feet into the foot straps - so I did side planks level one off the floor (as the app showed). The second exercise I couldn't do correctly was the Spider-Man pushup. I had to do these on the ground - and again with my belly at it's size it was hard to maneuver myself correctly. I was able to do all 16 (8 each side), but on the floor and not suspended. The only exercise I did not do was the shuttle sprints. It was raining and I don't have a 50 yd running distance inside my house. I'll have to do those later tonight if it clears up.
Overall:
This isn't a review of the Tony Horton P90X* series.
This is about my first TRX workout. The first workout took 45 minutes. Most of that was b/c I watched the videos on how to do the movements as I went along - and I had to get setup for each movement. In total - each move took about 2 minutes to setup and do. I also moved locations because I needed more than the narrow hallway to work in so that took about 5 minutes or less to do.
The guidebook is spectacular. It's spiral bound and made of waterproof and nearly tearproof pages (like the 68W handbook) - very nice. I have pictures in my previous blog.
The workouts are very nice and the level of difficulty is based on your angle, which is what I love about calisthenics and why I started doing the cali-move type workouts. I've always wanted to be able to do a lot of the moves they do (the stuff Stephen Amell does in Arrow). You can say I may never be able to do any of that stuff; I will, however, still work towards that goal - why not? Back to the review.
The app is very nice. It contains a lot of information that helps you breeze through the workout even if you don't know what you're doing. Between exercises you adjust the straps as needed - most of the time "like" exercises are placed together so I didn't have to jump up adjust the straps then do the next exercise.
The videos in the app are superb often giving you more than one way to do the exercise based on your level of fitness. I often felt like it took longer to watch the video than it did to do the exercise.
Almost every exercise in the app has a timer next to it - so you can hit the timer and it gives you a 5 second countdown then starts your exercise timer. Very handy.
Each exercise was approximately 45 seconds - I went slow and was able to do about 10 sets in that time frame. I never felt like I was going to "die" or that I was going to run out of energy. Each exercise seemed to be the perfect amount of time for me.
The feet suspended activities were awkward for me; I was able to do all but one foot-suspended activity.
There were only three exercises I could not do correctly; one I could not do at all. The first was the side plank. For my belly size it's incredibly difficult to get my feet into the foot straps - so I did side planks level one off the floor (as the app showed). The second exercise I couldn't do correctly was the Spider-Man pushup. I had to do these on the ground - and again with my belly at it's size it was hard to maneuver myself correctly. I was able to do all 16 (8 each side), but on the floor and not suspended. The only exercise I did not do was the shuttle sprints. It was raining and I don't have a 50 yd running distance inside my house. I'll have to do those later tonight if it clears up.
Overall:
- I like the structure of the workouts.
- I like the speed of the workouts - they'll get faster as I'm more accustomed to the exercises and adjustments
- I like the fact that I have muscles worked out that I didn't even know existed
- I like the stretches I can do with it
- I like that I use my own body weight
- The cost is quite high and there are others out there that have their own version - I would've paid 150 for this including shipping (the gifter paid a lot more - retail on TRXtraining is 300 plus shipping) - for this version the app is well worth the extra cost (developers gotta eat)
I'm curious to see how I progress over the next 12 weeks.
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