Why Am I Not Losing Weight?
I get this question all the time. "I'm doing everything right," they say. "How come I'm not losing more weight?" Whether it's somebody who has been pounding away at Insanity for a couple of weeks, or who's about to finish their first round of P90X, people will often climb onto that dreaded scale and get disheartened. Expectations run high when people start, and yearning for a total body transformation, they pour their heart and soul into their workouts, only to find themselves betrayed when they haven't dropped the 50lbs they hoped to lose. What's happening here? What went wrong, and why?
Is it too late for you to start exercising? Is there a certain point beyond which extreme workouts are no longer possible? How do things change when you leave your 20's for your 30's? What should you know about your body so that you can best train it to maximize gains and performance? These are the kinds of questions people who treat health and fitness as a life long goal have to ask, and that people who are only in it to lose 10lbs never consider. Health and fitness is a life long passion, and today we know that exercise can not only make you feel better, but even reverse aging's effects. As such, we have to ask: how does your age affect your workout routines?
It's a simple fact that the Insanity Workout involves an intense regimen of plyometrics and cardio, and that following such a schedule six days/week for two months can result in an inordinate amount of stressing on your joints. This is one of the main reasons why the Insanity Workout is considered an elite workout, due to the fact that in order to complete it successfully you need to have joints that are conditioned for high impact exercise. Many people don't, however, and still wish to attempt the Insanity Workout: what can they do in order to minimize the stress they will subject their joints to, and minimize any potential joint pain?
The time has finally arrived. 
I get asked this all the time. Will I lose muscle if I do the Insanity Workout? As with most questions, there's an annoying answer: it depends. What are the variables? They're your current body composition, your goals, and how you approach nutrition. Let's take a quick look at what the Insanity Workout is designed to do, and then see how you can tweak that to best suit your needs.
People start new programs all the time, and people quit them just as fast. For every ten bright eyed, enthusiastic newbies ready to start their latest fitness endeavour, there are nine burnt out, hollow eyed folks who failed to go the distance. What's that one person doing right, that those nine people are failing to do? How do you line up your factors so that you're most likely to stick with your workout, and less likely to quit? If you've glanced at the banner above, you're likely to have an idea as to where I'm going, but listen up folks. Sometimes its the basics that people forget first.
Have you ever noticed that naturally skinny people tend to pack on muscle when they overfeed, while naturally curvy people tend to pack on fat? And those naturally skinny people tend to lose fat quickly when they diet, while naturally curvy people tend to struggle to not lose as much muscle as fat? What's going on here? Why are some people naturally better at staying lean and getting ripped, while others have to fight their love handles their whole lives? It's simple really, and quite unfair: the culprit is something called your 'P-Ratio', and it's what determines what kind of body you're going to tend toward naturally. Love it or hate it, your P-Ratio determines nearly everything.
Father's Day is right around the corner, looming on Sunday, June 21. If you're planning to celebrate it, if you plan on telling your Dad how much you love him, how much he's done for you, how proud you are of him and how much you want to enjoy the future with him, then think of entering our P90X Giveaway for the chance of winning a P90X Workout to give him as a gift.
Every once in awhile you come across a tale of such inspiring magnitude that you can't help but be touched by it. Most success stories are but eye-candy, affording you glimpses of what others have accomplished, giving you fun 'Before' and 'After' shots that affirm that great change is possible. But some stories go beyond simply changing your body, or having a strong will to take control of your lives. Some stories are truly beautiful and inspiring, and such is that of Cammie Lusk. Winner of the Beachbody Million Dollar Body competition, she proved with her success that love and will power can overcome even the greatest of foes, which in this case was Multiple Sclerosis.
People, let me tell you about the rotator cuff. These little muscles are what anchor your humerus to your scapula, your arm to your shoulder, in what we folks like to call the glenohumeral joint. These little fellows are delicate, essential, and easily damaged. When you see people wincing and pressing their fingers into their shoulder joints, that's what they've hurt. Mess up badly enough, and you can tear your rotator cuff, and then you're out of the game. That's bad news, people, and yet people still insist on messing their shoulders up, right and left, with these awful exercises. Why oh why? Here are the worst shoulder exercises I've seen during all my years walking this green Earth. Don't do them people, stay away.