For those of us who haven’t exercised much - or at all - in a long time, Beachbody’s Power 90 workout program is an ideal way to get back on the fitness horse, or to climb on for the first time. It’s challenging enough to bring major changes to your body, without being so overwhelming that you’ll be tempted to give up out of frustration.

Power 90 - or P90 as it’s often called - is a ninety day program that focuses on resistance training, cardio, and abdominal work, and is led by Beachbody’s premier trainer, Tony Horton. It’s split into two basic phases: 1-2 and 3-4. And like all Beachbody fitness programs, it comes with a nutrition guide. You don’t need any equipment other than dumbbells or resistance bands (and the kit comes with one of those to get you started).

Phase 1-2

Phase 1-2, as you would guess, is the intro part, and has three workouts: Sculpt (resistance), Sweat (cardio), and Ab Ripper 100. While the Ab Ripper 100 exercise is listed separately, it’s normally done at the end of the Sculpt workout. Normally you’ll do each exercise three times per week on alternating days, and take a day off to rest and let your body recuperate.

The Sweat 1-2 aerobics workout (about 35 minutes) starts out with stretching and a bit of Yoga. This is really vital for flexibility, so take these exercises seriously (and some of them are pretty challenging if you’re a couch potato!). Then it’s warmup time, followed by some low impact aerobics that range from jogging in place to basic karate-style kicks and boxing moves. But don’t worry: this isn’t an “extreme” workout, and a person of even limited flexibility shouldn’t have much difficulty doing the exercises, but you’ll still work up a good sweat! And if you need to take a break, do so - when you really have to. Just keep moving, even if it’s walking around the room until you catch your breath and can rejoin Tony and friends.

Then Tony takes you through a brief cool down, and then into the Ab Ripper 100 routine. The exercises Tony uses are, again, fairly conventional, and not over the top. He leads off with crunches, but that is only one of ten exercises of ten reps each that make up the workout. Again, if you haven’t exercised much - or at all! - this workout will definitely challenge you! But if you work hard at it you’ll be amazed at how quickly you adapt. To give you an example, when we first started Power 90, I could only make it through about half of the workout (I totally sucked at abs). But in about a month I could do almost all of them and was ready to move on to Ab Ripper 200 and the next phase.

Moving on to Sculpt 1-2, you alternate days between Sweat and Sculpt, normally doing three days of each workout.

The Sculpt workout is just shy of 30 minutes long. Just as with the Sweat workout, you start with stretching and some warmups before moving into the resistance exercises.

Tony leads you through three exercise circuits, with a variety of conventional dumbbell (or resistance band) routines that hit all the major muscle groups, plus some body weight exercises like pushups. Each circuit concludes with a brief stretch before starting the next one.

He mixes in some different exercises in the circuits to hit the main muscle groups (chest, shoulders, arms, back, and legs) different ways, with about 8 to 15 reps for each exercise. I think he gives you a wide latitude like that (as opposed to specifying 8 or 12 reps, for example) so you can concentrate on form and not so much on the weight. The Sculpt 1-2 workout is partly a learning exercise for those who haven’t been gym rats before, and Tony wants you to learn to do the exercises right. Once you’re comfortable with how to do them, you can increase the weight until you feel like you’re getting a good pump!

All the exercises are done at a moderate pace that seems deceptively easy until you add those weights!

Phase 3-4

One interesting thing in this program that is different from the more advanced programs like ChaLEAN Extreme and P90X is that there’s not a clear-cut transition between Phase 1-2 and 3-4. In other words, there’s no “X” on the day planner that comes with Power 90 to say “on this day you go to Phase 3-4.” It’s basically when you feel you’ve mastered Phase 1-2 and it’s no longer really challenging you. I think Jan and I were somewhere around day 35 or so when we shifted up.

In Sweat 3-4, Tony again leads you through some stretching and yoga before getting to the cardio routines. This workout is a bit over 41 minutes long. The moves are pretty much the same that you learned in 1-2, but Tony moves you along a fair bit faster: you will definitely work up a sweat!

While there are a few moves that are moderate impact, Tony demonstrates variations for when you have trouble keeping up. The important thing is to keep moving, or - if you really have to - hit the pause button until you catch your breath, then join back in!

At the end, he goes through a nice cool down routine before you get to Ab Ripper 200. This workout is exactly the same as the Ab Ripper 100, except that he doubles the number of reps for each exercise from 10 to twenty. Ouch! When I started this routine, I tried to do 11 reps for each exercise, then 13 the next workout, and so on until I could do all 20 reps for all 10 exercises. So don’t feel overwhelmed when you first get into this: just build on the progress you made in Ab Ripper 100.

Sculpt 3-4 is 38 minutes long. Tony starts with stretches, and then takes you through four circuits of exercises, starting with pushups with your feet propped on a chair. Yes, you’re increasing intensity!

Most of the other exercises are ones you learned in Sculpt 1-2, but you’ll be doing more sets. There’s also not much transition time between exercises, so you’ll also be getting a cardio effect on top of building muscle.

The last of the four circuits is the “sectional progression round,” where Tony hits you with some exercises you didn’t have before, such as upright rows and wrist curls.

And finally, he takes you through a cool down phase.

Bonus Disc: Fat Burning Express

Power 90 also comes with a bonus workout called Fat Burning Express, which is a tad over 30 minutes long. This is an extra cardio workout to help you spice things up. However, I would recommend that you not even try this until you’ve at least finished Phase 1-2: compared to the Sweat workouts, this routine is pretty challenging!

Be aware that this workout has some higher impact exercises - including some plyometrics (jumping) - although, of course, you can use low impact variations. Just keep moving!

Additional Notes

Power 90 is an awesome building block to help you get fit. One of the things I like best about it is that it has both resistance training and cardio (and abs, of course). I love resistance training, but never focused much on cardio; unfortunately, if your cardiovascular system isn’t in good shape, it can’t support challenging resistance training - you’ll find that your muscles are still able to lift, but you just can’t get enough oxygen in to keep going! So this program works on improving both, and does an excellent job for beginners, couch potatoes, or anyone who wants a well-rounded workout that doesn’t involve Herculean exercises or lots of “extreme” leaping around.

For women, please don’t give in to the bunk about lifting weights bulking you up! That’s poppycock: men gain muscle bulk because they have a lot of testosterone. Women get lean and tight. If you doubt it, just look at Jan’s before and after pics!

Speaking of weights, the goal is not necessarily to do a certain number of reps, but to force your body to adapt and grow stronger. So if Tony calls for you to do, say, 10 reps for an exercise with perfect form, and you can do that without really working hard, you’re not using enough weight. Don’t be afraid to go heavier: as long as you’re using perfect form (which is the most critical thing!), the worst that can happen is that you might not make all your reps. Now, don’t try and be The Terminator and swing those weights around: your goal is to use perfect form. Remember that!

Another thing I’d like to emphasize is the importance of following the nutrition guide that comes with the program. Jan and I have hit on this in a number of posts, but it’s worth saying again: getting rid of the junk in your kitchen and pantry and eating lean and clean is critical to maximizing your success. If you just put your effort into the exercises but keep gorging yourself on triple-decker fast food burgers, fries, and milk shakes, don’t whine that Power 90 didn’t work for you. If you’re going to commit to this, do it all the way - it’ll be worth the effort!

The one major downside to the program is that the routines don’t have a lot of variety over the course of three months, and you may notice that you start to get bored with it about halfway through. We found two ways to spice things up and keep us going the full duration: we turned off the music track and cranked up your own motivational tunes, and we found some alternates for the cardio workouts. In our case, we got Shaun T’s Rockin’ Body program, which I highly recommend and will review later, and substituted those routines for some of the Phase 3-4 cardio workouts.

We chose to focus our variations on the cardio days, because you can do any number of things to get your heart rate up and burn calories for thirty to forty-five minutes. But we stuck with the resistance exercises, because there’s no substitute for those.

So, that’s my take on Power 90! And remember: if you haven’t already, please consider coming to join us in Team Beachbody’s WOWY on-line gym. That’s also a key ingredient for success, as other folks can help keep you motivated. For the free signup page, click here - see you there!

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