Part II: How to 'X' the INSANITY Workout

In Part One, we talked about the INSANITY diet and how anyone who has already completed P90X should amend it. This time, we'll talk about the exercise component - specifically, how to alter INSANITY if you've just finished a round of P90X. The most common question we get is how INSANITY will affect the muscle mass gained during X. The answer is that if done right, it can improve it. This is based on understanding some basic physiology, primarily the periodization principle.

Let's begin with recovery. The time between actually doing a workout program becomes very important as your fitness improves. We always recommend a break after our workout programs, but P90X, and especially Insanity, require more calculation. These programs are designed to break you down, let you recover, then increase the breakdown and finish with a bang. The goal is to put your body into a growth (sometimes referred to as mastery) phase over the final few weeks of the program. During this phase, results come rapidly, but stay on it too long and you over train - forcing your body into a plateau, or worse, a decline. This is why we recommend that your final P90X fit test be done after a week of recovery.

When transitioning from P90X to INSANITY, it's important to consider that you're moving from a mastery phase of one program into an entry phase of another. Sure, INSANITY's entry phase is very hard, but over the course of P90X, your workload capacity improves. Because INSANITY doesn't have a true resistance component, its first week can function similar to the transition/recovery weeks of P90X. Post-X, your body's ability to adapt to hard exercise is greatly increased. This means that you can start INSANITY on the heels of P90X, and its first week will function as your recovery week. Even though it will also break you down in some new areas, your fitter body will adapt quickly to the change.

Conversely, post-INSANITY you'll want a longer recovery period. This is because you've essentially extended the adaptive and growth phases of P90X for an extra six to eight weeks. No matter how fit you are, your body will always need a break after such a pounding. One-to-three weeks of easy-to-moderate exercise should have you recovered and ready to move into your next round of training.

Speaking of adaptive and growth phases, we should also address how you might want to shorten the first block (or month) of INSANITY. Similar to the diet phases of P90X, you'll only want to continue in the first block of INSANITY as long as your body is adapting to it. Once it feels "easy," it's time to move into the second block. You'll still want to take the designed INSANITY recovery week, because you want to be rested for your next block of training. This will accelerate your time in the adaptive phase of the training block and help you maximize the growth phase.

Finally, we need to discuss how this can improve your muscle mass. The six-to-eight weeks of INSANITY will have improved various energy systems of the body, increasing its potential for hard training. INSANITY will improve you aerobic and anaerobic capacity. Your VO2 max and anaerobic threshold will both improve. As will your body's glycolytic efficiency, which is your ability to recharge your anaerobic system during intense bouts of exercise. The result is that in your next round of P90X (or any muscle-building program) you'll have more energy to burn at the end of each set. This will result in increased reps per set, or more weight per set, both of which lead to increased hypertrophy (muscle growth), if that is your target.