Is Mixing P90X With the Insanity Workout a Good Idea?

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If you’ve tried either P90X or Insanity, you know how hard those programs can be. P90X was built mainly around strength training and/or muscle building and Insanity is a strict cardio training program. It seems like they would fit well together, right?

Wrong, and let me tell you why from my own personal experience of trying it.

I’ve completed P90X twice now and have seen some great results. I’m much stronger now and P90X is nowhere near as hard as it once was. I’ve also completed the first six weeks of Insanity, but I haven’t finished the program all the way through yet.

After three weeks of Insanity, I decided I wanted to include P90X into the workout, because I wanted to continue building muscle while burning fat. My plan was to do Insanity in the morning before work and then on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I would do a strength training video from P90X after work.

I was fine for the first week. I did Insanity in the morning as usual and then on Monday I did a Chest & Back video, Wednesday was Shoulders & Arms and Friday I did Legs & Back. I was completely worn out over the weekend. On Monday I started the routine over again, and by Tuesday I could barely function anymore.

I had put too much stress on my body.

I couldn’t even force myself to wake up in the morning to do my regular workout so I decided to stop doing P90X. I took a whole week off from working out at all and I finally started to feel normal again the following week.

In my opinion, doing both programs at once is just too hard on the body. I do believe that a diet change would have helped me sustain energy and recovery. I also think that I should have completed Insanity at least once before modifying my routine so drastically, especially since I’ve never really done much cardio in the past.

I hope to try including both programs into my routine again at some point in the future, but for now I’m going to stick with only one at a time.

3 Replies to “Is Mixing P90X With the Insanity Workout a Good Idea?”

  1. I wouldn’t do more than one of these workouts per day. How about do p90x strength workouts+ insanity cardio workouts one week (alternating days), then next week do insanity strength workouts + p90x cardio workouts. then switch every week. if will take much longer to complete the program, but some serious mix up on the workouts!

    1. Agreed. I think your suggestion makes much more sense. There’s really no reason to do both in one day. In fact, I think doing them both in a day will probably result in over-training.

      Thanks for stopping by Mark!

  2. Ive tried this lately..just a thought. P90 chets routine(any) on Mon, p90 cardio or kenpo tues., abs wednesday, p90 arm n back thrs, pure cardio insanity on fri or sat…..works well, and u can mix the strength routines every week rotating every two or three

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