P90X - Press "Pause" or Let It Play?
P90X - Press "Pause" or Let It Play?
P90X - Press "Pause" or Let It Play?
So, you're new to the P90X - maybe you're in your first week. Or, perhaps you'll be starting soon and are just researching and doing your "homework." Either way, unless you're already in terrific shape, those early weeks are going to beat you down.
I guarantee your first Plyometrics session will leave a puddle of sweat on the floor and perhaps even a little vomit in the sink (not intending to gross you out, just keeping it real!). And, I'm just picking on Plyo because, in my opinion, it's the most difficult of the P90X workouts. In reality, all of them have the potential to leave you feeling a little light-headed and/or nauseous.
So, this leads to a question of sorts: when you feel like you're on "death's doorstep" and need to take a break, what do you do, press "Pause" and gather yourself or just do so while the video continues to play?
I've always subscribed to pressing "Pause" and taking those thirty seconds (up to a minute) to catch my breath and regain control of my heart rate. Here's why:
For me, in the beginning, I was woefully out-of-shape. I found during those first couple weeks I had to press "Pause" in between nearly every exercise. My heart rate was soaring and I was breathing so hard my heart sometimes felt like it was beating out of my chest.
By pressing "Pause" when I needed to, I was essentially turning a 56-minute exercise video into a 65-minute exercise video. Sure, I wasn't actually "exercising" during those cumulative 8,9 or 10 minutes of "break time," but, because my heart rate was still highly elevated, I was essentially burning a much higher rate of calories than normal, even during the "Pause" time.
Those who let the video play while they catch their breath aren't necessarily doing anything wrong - not at all. But, they are cheating themselves out of two things:
1) portions of the exercises that they might be missing while taking that break, and
2) extra calories that are burned during that cumulative "break time"
Here's what I mean: say during a 56-minute video you take eight, 60-second "breathers" while letting the video play. So, by the end, you still did a 56-minute video but only participated in 48 minutes of it.
Now, say during that same 56-minute video you take eight, 60 second "breathers," but press "Pause" for each one. By the end, you did all 56-minutes of the video, not missing any time because you pressed "Pause." But, you also added eight minutes to the time of the video from the time you pressed "Play" to the time you pressed "Stop," essentially turning a 56-minute video into a 64-minute video. Because during the "Pause" time your heart rate remained elevated above it's normal rate, you added an extra eight minutes of calorie "burn time."
For me, during Plyo, my heart rate typically hits 165-175 beats per minute (bpm). My normal resting heart rate is about 60 bpm. During those eight, 60-second "breathers" I could drop my heart rate down to about 120 bpm or so.
So, for eight minutes of "break time," with my heart beating 120 bpm, I was adding approximately 40 - 50 expended calories to my workout just by pressing "Pause" when I needed to. Over the course of six or seven workouts during the week, that meant an extra 240 - 350 calories burned!
Read more about P90X, including a P90X Review.
See Joel's amazing P90X Transformation!
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