Fitness Destinations

Every year around New Year’s Eve, people start thinking about what weight loss program they are going to use to get into shape in the New Year. Although there is absolutely no logic whatsoever in waiting until some random date on a calendar to start taking care of your body and losing weight, it happens every year just the same.

Photo Courtesy of Stefan Krilla
So, for those of you who want to make some positive changes in your life in the coming year, here is a list of the Top 5 Best New Year’s Weight Loss Programs. Choose a program that is realistic for YOU based on your interests, your goals, your present abilities, or where you will be working out, and then take action to make your weight loss happen this year!

1. Indoor/Outdoor Running

So many people say “I can’t run” or “I don’t like to run” but here’s a newsflash: Running is one of the most effective ways to lose body fat!

Even if all you do is a steady jog, you can’t deny the raw calorie burning effect of continually putting one foot in front of the other and keeping your heart rate up into the moderate to high-intensity range. You run, you lose weight. It’s just that simple.

Running Workout Program Resource:

My Treadmill Trainer – Interval training iPod workouts to help you run faster, farther, and longer. Includes iPod/iPhone running workouts; 5k, 10k, and marathon running programs; stretching, nutrition, strength, and conditioning for runners.

2. iPhone Applications

Apple’s iPhone has successfully become not just a telephone, but an all-in-one tool that has applications for pretty much any lifestyle need that you have, including health, fitness, and weight loss.

There are many, many iPhone applications that can help you to attain your weight loss goals by giving you specific instructions, motivation, information, and tracking ability, and many of the applications even let you program your own workout and then take it with you.

iPhone Application Workout Programs:

Fitness Builder – Contains a large database of workouts and exercise images & videos, as well as an entire suite of fitness tools built from a personal trainer’s one-on-one guidance.

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Gym Buddy – Simple and effective way to record and track your workouts so that you get the maximum benefit out of each and every workout.

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Absolute Fitness – Log and manage food intake, exercise, and weight, and also have access to the nutritional content of over 10,000 foods, and the calorie expenditure of almost 200 exercises. Can also set and track customized diet goals.

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Workout of the Day – 365 separate workouts, each needing absolutely no gym membership or weight training equipment of any kind.

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iStayFit – An easy to use interface with a well designed workflow so that your focus is on your workout. Fully customizable software that can be geared towards YOUR needs and specific exercise requirements.

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iPump Total Body – Includes over 400 ready made workouts, as well as the ability to drag and drop to create your own custom workouts. Includes add-on modules for many different specific fitness or weight loss goals.

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Yoga Instructor – Gone are the days of needing to go to a gym or yoga studio and listen to the same boring yoga instructor over and over again. Just turn on this app, program in the type of yoga workout you want to do, and the application does the rest.

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3. In-Home Workout Videos

You can’t beat the convenience of working out at home, and with companies like Beachbody on the scene these days, you could just give up your gym membership completely.

Beachbody has dozens of incredibly effective exercise programs, and you can check them all out at the Beachbody Store. Some of their most popular in-home workout titles are below.

Beachbody In-Home Workout Videos:

P90X- Extreme Home Fitness Program – Probably the most well-known and effective fitness program ever created, there is a reason why P90X has an almost cult-like following – because it works! Click on through to see my personal P90X results.

Insanity 60-Day Total Body Conditioning Program – This program lives up to its name, and if you like cardiovascular training (or even if you don’t!) Insanity will push you to limits that you’ve never even dreamed of, and you’ll have the results to show for it after only 60 days.

RevABS 90-Day Ab Solution – A program that is based solely on abdominal work doesn’t seem like it would be very effective, and it probably wouldn’t. RevABS, however, is not just based on ab work, but rather it is an intense, overall fitness and weight loss program that makes sure that you can SEE the abs that you work so hard for.

Brazil Butt Lift – This is probably the first fitness program that targets – and successfully builds – one specific area of the body; the butt! However, just like RevABS, Brazil Butt Lift incorporates total fitness and weight loss, not just creating a nice backside.

4. Effective Gym Workouts

If you have worked out a gym before, but didn’t get results, what makes you think that this time is going to be any different? If you are going to the gym now, or have in the past, nothing is going to “magically” change just because you have a New Year in front of you.

If you want results at the gym, you need to make sure that you are doing what you’re supposed to be doing while you are there, rather than just wasting your time.

Effective Gym Workout Resources:

Fitter U – A series of weight loss workouts that can be loaded onto your iPod or mp3 player to motivate and guide you through time-efficient and results-producing circuit training workouts.

Custom Fitness Programming – If you want results at the gym, why not have a program created JUST FOR YOU that is custom-built for whatever your personal fitness and weight loss goals are?

FitterUFitness – An exclusive monthly source of time-efficient portable athletic workouts to help you burn fat and get into the best shape of your life.

5. Clean Slate Nutrition

Nutrition and exercise go hand in hand if you want to lose weight, and if anyone ever tells you otherwise, they are straight up lying to you. You cannot lose weight and keep it off by dieting alone, just as you can’t lose weight and keep it off by exercising intensely yet not cleaning up your nutrition.

For many people, their nutrition is way out of whack from years of eating junk food, processed sugars, and chemicals in manufactured foods. Starting with “a clean slate” is a great way to kick-start a rapid weight loss program. Get all of the sludge out of your intestines, clean up the toxins that are clogging up your body’s ability to function properly, and then start eating cleaner, more natural foods in addition to an effective exercise program.

Nutritional Cleanse Resources:

Total Wellness Cleanse – A holistic cleansing plan which gives you day-by-day support, as well as a detailed dietary, exercise, and lifestyle action plan.

Beachbody 2-Day Fast Chocolate or Vanilla Shake – Lose up to 7 lbs. in 2 days with chocolate or vanilla shakes that reduce cravings and start burning off hard to lose body fat.

Click here to see my personal P90X 90 Day After Pictures!

If you’ve seen the P90X^® infomercial, gotten excited, and then asked yourself How does P90X work?, then this 12-part series is for you. Part 4 covers the P90X Yoga X workout.

P90X – Yoga XThe P90X Yoga X workout will make a believer out of anyone as far as the power and the difficulty of yoga. Many people (myself included) have thought that yoga may be an effective exercise modality, but that it was – at best – something to do once in awhile just for a change of pace. The P90X Yoga X workout will show you conclusively that not only is yoga a great use of your exercise time, but it is an exercise modality that should be a part of your weekly exercise regimen as well.

There are countless benefits to doing yoga, and each person will enjoy different aspects of it. However, regardless of your personal enjoyment level, there are 6 primary benefits to doing the Yoga X workout, and each of those benefits also enhance the effectiveness of the P90X program overall. For a full review of each of the moves that are performed during Yoga X, be sure to check out P90X Review Day 4 – Yoga X.

Muscular Endurance

Although yoga does not use the same set/rep type of training that traditional strength training utilizes, that does not mean that your muscles aren’t being put through their paces. There are several moves in the Yoga X routine that you repeat many times, giving rise to an ever-increasing level of muscular endurance.

Also, yoga is an overall body workout that does not target any particular body part for maximum stimulation, instead focusing on the use of many different muscles over and over again. This allows for a high level of muscular stimulation without “wiping out” any particular muscle so much that it cannot be used in subsequent workouts later that same week.

Mind-muscle Connection

The ability to control your muscles is actually a function not just of a muscle’s size, but of how well your brain can control any given muscle or muscle group. Since the yoga poses cause you to use many different muscles all at the same time, your level of neuro-muscular coordination is radically enhanced.

An enhanced level of muscular coordination not only assists you in future yoga workouts, but it also allows you to create more muscle-building and fat-burning intensity when you perform more traditional types of exercises.

Active Recovery

The term “active recovery” basically means to work a fatigued muscle in such a way that warms it up, opens up the blood vessels, and washes away soreness-causing lactic acid from previous workouts. This is great not just from a comfort level, but it also allows you to work a muscle or muscle group before it is completely recovered from a previous workout that was very intense.

The Yoga X routine is normally done on Day 4 of the workout week, and the previous 3 P90X workout days were all filled with very intense exercises. Since yoga is difficult but does not wipe out any given muscle group completely, there is great value in the yoga workout from an active recovery standpoint.

Flexibility

The importance of flexibility in both injury prevention as well as real-world and athletic ability cannot be overstated. If you have flexibility issues, it is very often not a matter of IF you will get injured, but rather just a matter of when.

The P90X Yoga X routine has many moves that would be considered “classic” flexibility exercises, but the real benefit comes from the constant need to stretch various parts of your body while in unusual and/or difficult to hold poses. Even people who consider themselves to be very strong and flexible will nonetheless be challenged repeatedly during Yoga X, and they will improve their level of overall fitness drastically as a result.

Agility

Agility is loosely defined as “the ability to be flexible while in motion”. Consider any professional athlete and you will see that just being flexible is not enough, since they have to use that flexibility combined with their strength in order to perform at peak levels during their sport, and also to prevent injury. Although most people are not professional athletes, the benefits of agility in both recreation and injury-prevention apply to all people.

Many of the poses in Yoga X are called “Moving Asanas”. In essence, a moving asana is a pose where you start in one position, and then while holding a certain part of your body perfectly still, you move other parts of your body into very difficult to attain and/or maintain stances. Although the moving asanas are done at a slow speed during the workout, the increased flexibility and agility that they create is easily translated into real-life or athletic movements.

Mental Focus

Although Yoga X is a very challenging workout, it is also a “fluid” workout where you stay in a certain zone and a frame of mind, rather than stopping and starting with different exercises as traditional resistance training calls for. You are encouraged the entire time to focus on the present moment, and to give your attention to your body and to the workout, rather than daydreaming or letting your mind wander to other things.

The Yoga X workout is 90 minutes long, so allowing yourself to “detach” from the outside world for the entire workout gives you a much-needed mental break from the day-to-day grind, and also allows your mind to expand and to become receptive to ideas, thoughts, or emotions that you would probably never experience through your “normal” lifestyle and exercise habits.

Conclusion

For people who don’t understand the value of Yoga X, it may – at first – to look like a waste of time to use one of your workout sessions each week to perform an activity that wouldn’t seem to build the kind of bodies that you see in the P90X infomercials. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The P90X Yoga X workout is not only worth every minute that you spend doing it, but if you skip it and deny yourself the active recovery that was discussed above, not only would you be missing the many benefits of yoga, but you would be setting yourself up for an injury as well.

As with all P90X workouts, always remember that P90X is a program that works because of the overall effect that the program provides, rather than just picking and choosing individual routines that you enjoy doing. P90X has 12 workout routines, and not only should you do them all, but you should do them all in the proper order as well.

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Click here to see my personal P90X 90 Day After Pictures!

OK, for all of you people who think that yoga is for wimps, I challenge you to try the P90X® version – Yoga X! Not only is it incredibly challenging, but rather than just perverting yoga into some mindlessly intense workout, Yoga X actually flows in a manner that is both extremely effective, as well as executed in a manner that is true to the yoga lifestyle and philosophies.

Yoga X is based on Hatha Yoga, and as Tony Horton talks about in the video, the benefits of yoga apply to average people who simply want to be more healthy and more flexible, and they also apply to professional level athletes and sports participants – and, of course, everyone in between.

The level of muscular control, mental focus, and overall body coordination that yoga requires are enough to make even the most in-shape person question their level of overall fitness. Believe me, I have been doing weight training and cardiovascular training for more than 20 years, and there were some yoga poses that pushed my muscles to the extreme, and also produced a massive amount of body-cleansing sweat.

Yoga may look easy, but when done in the Yoga X manner, it is both challenging, and extremely rewarding as well, not to mention the strength, core stabilization, mental focus, and flexibility benefits that come from doing it on a regular basis.

There are far too many individual movements in the Yoga X program to give a review of each pose, so I will instead just touch on the major sections that this workout is divided into: Moving Asanas, Balance Postures, Floor Work, Yoga Belly, More Floor Work/Cool-down.

NOTE: Give yourself plenty of room to do this workout. You’ll need a length on the floor as long as your body is with your arms extended fully overhead and your toes pointed out, and you’ll need that same vertical distance in order to stand up on your toes and reach for the sky. You’ll need the width around you equal to the width of your body with both arms extended out fully to your sides.

Moving Asanas

This is the most physically challenging part of Yoga X from a strength and endurance perspective. Keep a towel close by because after 10 minutes or so (or less!) you will be sweating profusely. Perspiration is great for cleansing toxins out of the body, so don’t combat it by making it cooler in your house. In fact, if you keep it warm, it will increase the physical benefits of sweating, plus the overall feeling of being cleansed by the end of the workout.

The Moving Asanas part of Yoga X includes plenty of repeat movements, which is great because – especially if you’re a beginner – the repetition really helps you to get the hang of the movements, and to increase your ability to do them effectively.

Some of the movements in this section include the Runner’s Pose, Warrior One, Two, and Three, Reverse Warrior, Twisting Triangle, Prayer Twist, and the Half Moon. As with all yoga movements, concentrate on your breathing, and Tony will remind you of that several times during the DVD.

The Moving Asanas part of this workout lasts for quite awhile, and constitutes a large portion of the “extreme (X)” part of Yoga X. After this part of the workout, several parts of your body will be very fatigued, making the movements for the rest of the workout challenging, even though they are not as physically hard from a muscular strength standpoint as some of the earlier poses.

Balance Postures

This portion of Yoga X is not very long, but it is still challenging, and it makes for a perfect transition from the intensity of the Moving Asanas to the less intense Floor Work that follows.

One of the challenges in this portion of the workout is that you are standing on either one leg or the other during the poses, and your legs are very tired at this point from the earlier movements. One thing to consider when you are standing on one leg is whether or not to lock your knee in place. If you do, then it is harder to balance, but the strain is taken off of the front of your thighs. If you don’t lock your knees, then your quadriceps (front of your thigh) are strained because they are already tired, but it is easier to balance that way.

Movements in this section include Tree, Royal Dancer, and Standing Leg Extension, and they are all challenging in their own right.

Floor Work

The intensity is not nearly as high by this portion of Yoga X, but that is not to say that it isn’t still very challenging. As with most yoga movements, the length of the stretches can be modified in various ways in order to make it more intense or to increase your flexibility as you become more flexible and build up your strength levels.

Movements in this section such as the Cat Stretch and the Frog will be welcome opportunities to really stretch out and be grateful, while movements like the Bridge, the Wheel, and the Table can really challenge muscle groups that have already gotten plenty of work during the session.

Yoga Belly

For anyone in the beginning of their P90X journey, you will at first be appalled by more abdominal exercises after having just done Ab Ripper X on Day 1 and Day 3, but the addition of these yoga ab movements will increase the speed of your progress in the abdominal area, as well as give your body new challenges that are not covered in Ab Ripper X.

Also, unlike other abdominal exercises, the Yoga Belly movements are static movements for the most part. You get into a pose, and then hold it there. This allows you to really make that “mind-muscle” connection (neuromuscular coordination) while at the same time strengthening your front and side abdominal muscles, as well as the muscles in your lower back.

Exercises in this section include Touch The Sky, Boat, Half Boat, Scissor, and Torso Twist & Hold.

More Floor Work/Cool-down

By this point in the workout over an hour has transpired, and you are pretty well spent. Even the people that Tony Horton has in the video with him – all of whom are in incredible condition – have been really challenged by Yoga X. The stretching and cool-down exercises in this portion are a welcome wrap up to a very challenging exercise session.

Movements such as Happy Baby, and Child’s Pose are relaxation and stretching that are more than just welcome at this point, and Corpse Pose and Fetal Pose are aptly named yoga exercises, because that’s about how you feel by the end of Yoga X!

Tony wraps it all up with the Meditation Pose including some surprisingly relaxing heart-felt “ohms” that he encourages you to do as well. Although I’ll admit to not actually vocalizing the ohms myself, I did get a real sense of peace and accomplishment listening to Tony’s all-encompassing audio finale’, and that was a great way to gratefully close out an incredible workout session.

Conclusion

Overall, I have to admit to being impressed with the Yoga X workout. In my years as a personal trainer and just overall exercise enthusiast, I never got around to peeking behind the curtain to see what yoga was all about, and I see now that – done properly – it has a lot to offer.

I would definitely recommend Yoga X for anyone who thinks that yoga is not an intense and effective workout, and I would certainly recommend it to any present yoga enthusiast as a way for them to fine-tune their techniques, and to really take their yoga workouts to the next level.

See other related P90X Review posts:

• P90X Review Day 1 – Chest, Back, and Ab Ripper X
• P90X Review Day 2 – Plyometrics
• P90X Review Day 3 – Shoulders and Arms
• P90X Review Day 5 – Legs and Back
• P90X Review Day 6 – Kenpo X
• P90X Review Day 7 – X Stretch
• P90X Review Day 8 – Core Synergistics
• P90X Review Day 9 – Cardio X
• P90X Review Day 10 – Chest, Shoulders, and Triceps
• P90X Review Day 11 – Back and Biceps