Guest Post by Peter Lynch – P90X iPhone App User
The P90X iPhone App has a calendar which shows the scheduled workout for each day of your 90 day program. As of the last update you can also track your P90X2 workouts in this app. You can also add other activities to the calendar which you may do instead of or in addition to the scheduled P90X workouts. I did Turbo Fire hit 25 with my wife in addition to the X-stretch last Sunday. (It doesn’t allow you to track specific exercises in any non P90X workouts but it will show your activities.)
The P90X iPhone App calendar also has a Nutrition tracker which allows you to keep a journal of how many servings of each type of food you eat each day which is especially valuable if you are trying to lose weight. Since I am not looking to lose weight and we already eat a very healthy diet of mostly vegetables and whole grains with some fish and chicken, I have never used this function.
P90X iPhone App Body Measurements and Weight tracker
This feature of the P90X iPhone App allows you to enter your measurements. I wish it would take the measurements too, but maybe that is asking too much. Once you have entered the stats then you can look at how each number changes over time such as your Bicep going from 11 inches to 12 to 13… Weight isn’t the only thing that people are concerned with. Remember, as you do these aggressive workouts you may be building muscle as fast as you are losing fat, so keep an eye on those other measurements, other people will be noticing them!
The P90X iPhone App Keeps Track Of Your Pictures
Always take pictures! The P90X iPhone App allows you to take and store the pictures right in the app. Pictures are scheduled before you start, at 30 days, 60 days and at the end at 90 days. When you take the photo using the app it puts lines on the camera so that you can get the pictures lined up exactly each time you take it so that you don’t zoom in closer one time or take it at the wrong angle. (The lines don’t show up in the picture) Pictures are great to show progress over time.
Don’t aready have P90X? This is a good time to get it!
P90X iPhone App Workout Tracker
The P90X iPhone App is the best way to keep track of your workouts, your reps, and your weights. Tony keeps saying to write it down. How many reps did you do, how much weight, was it too much or do you need more? The P90X iPhone App will allow you to record it all in an easy to use format. While some of the workouts like Plyometrics don’t require any tracking, you either do it or you don’t, workouts like my absolute favorite Back and Biceps are enhanced when you have a powerful tool like the P90X iPhone App to track and guide you.
Now the tracking part of the App is easy to figure out, I did 15 wide front pull-ups so I enter 15 in the box. At this point though you can turn the iPhone sideways and it with show your history of Wide front Pull-ups for this workout. When I started P90X for the first time in July of 2012 I could only do 1 or 2 wide front pull-ups, so to improve faster I used the Pull-Up Assist Bands and could do 10-12 reps. After several weeks of doing assisted pull-ups I started doing them unassisted and was able to do 4. I have now worked that up to 10. The app allows you to check an ‘assisted’ radio button which shows on the chart, so if you look at my Wide front Pull-up Chart it shows that I did 10-12 assisted reps in July and early August, but then unassisted reps that ran from 4 to 10 in the following months. It is so easy to have short term vision when you are working out and forget how much you strained, how few reps, and how little weight you used when you started.
When you are working with weights you get another benefit: The P90X iPhone App will show you how much weight and how many reps you did last time so you know where to go next. There are 17 different weight using exercises in the Back and Biceps workout alone. I can never remember what I did last week on any individual exercise. All I have to do is look at the bottom of the screen and see that last week I did 8 reps of lawnmower with 45 pounds and that’s where I start next. If I had done 12 reps last I might consider ‘heavying up the weight’ this time.
What is the alternative? Paper and pencil? That is so 20th century! Maybe you like having a notebook, or loose sheets of paper lying around, but I would rather use my iPhone for anything I can. I’ve got it with me all the time anyway. If there was a bread toasting app or a sushi rolling app I would get those too. Besides you would need more paper for the calendar to tell you what workout to do each day! Where would you save your before, during, and after pictures and measurements. It all goes in the P90X iPhone App!
Don’t aready have P90X? This is a good time to get it!
