Research Topic

Ok, so for this research paper the question I ask is "does P90X work better than traditional workouts and why?" I'm curious as to how this question's answered and how much actual evidence there will be to sway my opinion of the P90X program. I've never tried it before but I did do a little bit of the Spartacus workout while I was deployed to Afghanistan and the two are similar in energy output. I feel like this is a fairly important topic as more and more people are giving this workout a go. If I was going to pay over $120 for a workout program I would definitely want to know more about it. Specifically who is saying what about it and why they're saying it. I know a few people that have used the program and from what I've seen they're all in great shape so that proves that it does work in getting people in shape. When P90X first came out I looked into it a little and found that the diet that one should use while on the program was not so good for them. It seemed much like the Atkins diet which is horrible for your body in the long run. Recently I've come across a few articles and reviews that have opinions that are for the product as well as against it. Some of them are basing their opinions on the looks of the individuals using the program and others are basing their opinions on the nutritional aspect of it. There are a lot of mixed feelings about it. The P90X program is based on muscle confusion which prevents your muscles from reaching a plateau (they stop growing once they've plateaued) and helps to alleviate over working your muscles among other things. The idea is that you vary your workouts in a way that your body has to continuously adjust to the different amounts and types of workouts you're doing which forces your muscles to keep growing stronger. It's a great idea and is proven to be effective which is one of the things that makes me believe that it's a great program. Now, the nutritional side of it I'm not so fond of. When I first looked at it, as I said before, it's almost like the Atkins diet. Atkins is a program that eliminates carbs from a persons diet and forces their body to burn through sugar faster causing them to lose weight faster. The problem is when you do that you force your body to change where it gets its energy from. Usually carbs are what fuel your body but while on the Atkins diet it starts to use sugar as energy and then once the sugar is gone your body has to turn to protein for fuel. Yes, you'll lose the weight but eventually you'll start to lose muscle making your body weaker. I'm not sure if it's changed since I last looked at it but if it hasn't then that's one thing that I don't like about P90X. All in all, should be an interesting topic to research.