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Trying to decide between Max Workouts and P90X?

I’ve used both products – P90X for 6 months, and Max Workouts for 2 ½ years. I know from experience that they both work well, but they’re very different products that make very different demands on your time, and produce very different results. In my opinion, Max Workouts is generally the better option, although in some cases you may want to choose P90X instead.

Both products are affordable, and look pretty good in the advertising, where they’re accompanied by believable visuals of men and women in great shape. Of the two products, P90X is much better known. It’s heavily advertised on TV and web, has a lot of customers. Odds are you already know somebody who’s tried it. Max Workouts, on the other hand, is only advertised on the web, and to a much smaller extent than P90X. It has a smaller, but dedicated set of customers. See this Max Workouts Review for more information.

The bottom line is if you want big muscles, with decent overall strength and fitness, and you’re happy to spend a lot of time working out, choose P90X. If on the other hand you want to maximize fitness and fat burning, while getting good overall muscle development, or you just want shorter workouts, choose Max Workouts.

Do you want to save time working out?

Max Workouts requires ½ an hour a day, for six days a week. Five of these days are very intense, while the sixth day is a light “active recovery” day. Later in the program, when your fitness has increased, the sixth day also becomes another intense workout.

P90X requires between 1 hour 15 minutes, and 1 hour 45 minutes, each day, for six days a week. You need to have a lot of free time if you want to do this program. The main workouts are quite long, and they’re followed by a 15 minute optional abdominal workout. You also need to be flexible with your time, because the workouts vary considerably in length from one day to the next.

Note that the times quoted for each workout include warm-ups and optional abdominal work.

Do you want big muscles?

All of the exercises in Max Workouts build overall strength. Your arms, legs, abs, and back will all develop stronger, well defined muscles. And the fat burning will make them stand out. You’ll definitely look good. But you won’t look big.

In contrast, P90X exercises focus on individual groups of muscles. You’ll find yourself doing lots and lots of different kinds of bicep curls, crunches, triceps extensions, etc. This is a much more traditional body building approach, and will result in larger muscles. I certainly got bigger upper arms from doing P90X than I did from Max Workouts.

Do you want to burn fat?

Max Workouts is excellent for this. The full body moves engage most of the muscles in your body, getting them all to burn energy and raise your metabolism. The cardio work is super intense and also seems to have a big effect on the waistline. Personally, I burned away 11kg (about 24 lb) of fat doing Max Workouts. Of all the health and appearance benefits of working out, this is what made me by far the happiest.

P90X is okay for burning fat, but I didn’t experience anything like the same kind of result as with Max Workouts. True, bigger muscles require more energy, but there’s a limit to what you can expect. And yes, P90X does have fun and challenging cardio routines. But these aren’t as challenging or rewarding as those in Max Workouts.

Do you want endurance, power and agility?

Again, Max Workouts is the better choice here. All of its workouts are oriented around achieving this outcome.

P90X isn’t bad in this regard. It’s just not as good. There’s a plyometric routine that has a lot of different kinds of jumping, and is a great workout. There’s also a karate-style workout (Kenpo-X) that’s really fun – it’s my favorite of all the P90X workouts. But I found that my overall power and functional strength decreased when I did P90X, compared to what it was when I did Max Workouts. Definitely a case of use it or lose it.

Do you want to combine both programs?

This is certainly an option, if you have the time. I’ve tried doing one program for a few months, then switching to the other for a few months, and back again. But it doesn’t work very well because gains made in one that weren’t supported as effectively by the other would just atrophy. Here’s a better plan:

1. Follow the Max Workouts program. Don’t leave anything out or skip any days. This is your main, long-term program.
2. Once a week, on a Max Workout cardio day, add a P90X upper-body workout. I suggest the shoulder/biceps/triceps one. Pick a day when you have a lot of time to spare, such as a weekend, where you can do one workout in the morning and the other in the evening. If you have enough time, you could actually do this twice a week, with different P90X workouts on different days.
3. On your Max Workouts active recovery day, do either the P90X Kenpo-X routine or Plyometric routine . These are certainly more than “active recovery”, but they’re not as tough as a Max Workouts routine, and they’re fun. When you reach the stage in Max Workouts where “active recovery” is replaced with a full workout, do the full workout.

Do you want to avoid taking supplements?

The diet program that comes with Max Workouts is all real food. No pills or powders.

P90X, on the other hand, emphasizes its own brand of supplements, and sells them pretty heavily throughout the materials. I’m rather skeptical of this, especially for the average person just trying to get into shape. If you’re already in awesome shape, and want to use supplements to help you achieve your next goal, I’m not going to argue with you. But if you’re just trying to lose fat and build strength and fitness, your body already knows how to do that with regular healthy food, and in my opinion there’s no point adding extra calories and chemicals.

In summary…

I think Max Workouts is the stronger program. It’s better for burning fat, takes a lot less time, and will give you better overall strength, energy and fitness. On the other hand, P90X is a better choice if your primary goal is larger muscles, and you have plenty of time to dedicate to it – it’ll still get you fairly fit, and you’ll still lose some fat, but in my experience not as much as Max Workouts.