>I agree about the push-ups pull-ups and ab work as I said in
>a previous post but the leg work and rest of the upper body
>work is seriously lacking in P90x and if you want to develop
>and train these areas sufficiently you need to supplement with
>other workouts and Tony advises against this with his program
>and if you follow his program, you will have difficulty
>finding the time to add workouts to this workout program
>anyway. I also feel that too much emphasis is placed on
>push-ups for chest work.
>As far as cardio, as other posters including myself have
>noted, the cardio is not very intense, in fact I thought with
>the exception of plyo, they were easy. Also,there are only a
>couple cardios to choose from. If you are not a cardio
>enthusiast this won't be a problem and as far as weight loss
>this won't be a problem IF you follow the prescribed diet plan
>with the program. As far as cardiovascular fitness gains and
>cross-training gains this is a disadvantage. I do like the
>plyo segment and will rotate this into my workouts
>occasionally.
>I want my legs and arms, not just chest,abs and back developed
>and I also like to be aerobically challenged. I am also
>self-motivated enough to put my weekly rotations together to
>train all body parts and to cross-train and so I prefer Cathe
>to P90x. I also prefer to have alot of variety in my workouts
>not only from a cross-training perspective but from a mental
>perspective. Your preference will be based on what you are
>looking for in terms of fitness goals and if you prefer highly
>structured programs or like to design your own rotations.
>Different strokes for different folks.
The thing with the upper body work for shoulders, biceps and triceps in P90X is that you get out of it what you put into. The key is to choose the right weights. You really have to max out on the last rep in order to see gains. Tony does work the muscles with different moves and from different angles, but the basic movement and pace remains the same. You've got to lift heavy in order to make those reps quality. Also, the pullups and pushups engaged the muscles in the arms as well so you get a secondary arm workout from those moves as well.
The great thing about Cathe's shoulders and arms routines is that she forces you to get stronger by varying the weights and speeds of the moves. Even if I go a bit light for shoulder presses, I'll still feel the burn with Cathe because not only does she make you do 12 reps, she'll then have you do another 8 with a slow 4 count, and then have you follow it up with singles. Heck, I could choose no weight and my delts would be on fire with her sequencing.
And you are right, from a cardio cross-training perspective, Cathe has P90X beat by a mile. There's just a larger variety of workouts to choose from. When I was following the P90X schedule I simply subbed a long run for the Kenpo X workout.