In this day and age of tight budgets, tight deadlines, stiff competition and harder bottom lines, the last year and a half has been a training of survival of the fittest. How can we apply the same principles to our workouts and make all the bottom lines tighter? Being disciplined and exploring new ways of working out to challenge your fitness can relate to some of the ways that 2009-2010 has made everybody “tighten up”. Make the connection and see how it can also help you to close another notch on your belt.

Discipline creates longevity and strength

The type of discipline exercised by business people to stay alive in this shrinking economy has been forcing industries and individuals to evolve in ways that have raised their game beyond their ordinary performance by making them harder, stricter and very careful.

In the same way that business practices have had to transcend “ordinariness”, this attitude can be adopted in the way that one deals with their physical health, as a matter of honing skills. It can be seen as an opportunity to elevate the standards by which we live, and can help us to apply the same discipline in our daily lives outside of the office.

Potent new tools on the market

New technologies, new practices and ideas are being adopted by businesses that allow for greater savings. Businesses are now in hot pursuit of any new tactic, product or strategy that will help them to conserve and increase the company’s bottom line. With time and resources being as limited as they are, a more conservative approach to conducting business has taken some creativity, trial and error, risk and constant management for many business owners. It’s no longer a matter of just “working”… now it’s about “working smart”.

As the time constraints plague the workforce, a barrage of new home fitness workout DVDs are taking the fitness industry by storm. Working out on your own time allows for more productivity during the day. Using time and energy wisely can assist people to tighten up, and so along these lines, Crossfit and P-90X fitness programmes are born. They are available right off of your TV or computer screens and use your own body weight primarily as their props.

What is Crossfit?

Crossfit uses compound movements from gymnastics, martial arts, weightlifting and powerlifting as well as sprinting and running to maximise a person’s response to exercise. Workouts are scalable from a rank beginner to a very elite athlete. Exercises are constantly changing, involve big movements that demand focus and constant attention to form. It’s possible to “grow up” with Crossfit, because the mastery of many exercises requires years of practice, though the basics can be learned over a weekend, or picked up along the way. Workouts are posted on the website www.crossfit.com every morning, so you are never prepared for what will come next, providing a constant challenge for your body and your mind. The idea is to push it every time you work out.

What is P90X?

P90X is a series of DVDs which take you through a variety of different workouts, mixing bodybuilding techniques (Day 1: chest and back) with other disciplines, like Yoga and Martial Arts, to maximise muscle confusion and counteract boredom. It should also be noted that P90X is largely geared to improving physique, while Crossfit targets overall fitness improvement. With a choice of 12 sweat-inducing, muscle-pumping workouts, they are designed to transform a regular body into a ripped machine in a 90-day programme. Its mix-and-match style minimises your body’s adaptation to exercises.

Which one is better?

Depending on how you work them, both are good and effective. My opinion is that Crossfit is a lot more fun and its enthusiastic online blogging community makes it more interesting. Also, knowing that tomorrow is ‘Yoga Day’ doesn’t do much to excite an exerciser on the third time through the P90-X DVDs.

However, each is great at moving people toward the stated goals of the programme. Crossfit’s goal is to improve work capacity (fitness) on a broad scale; P90X is built to help people lose body fat. Where “physique-al” improvement comes as a byproduct of improved fitness with Crossfit, P90X targets that goal singly.

With P90X, trainees watch a video every day that takes them through a workout. It feels a bit like an infomercial: Crossfit offers a daily video or photos of “real” exercisers doing something different, a couple of articles, and interesting links to Crossfit affiliates. Then you have the discussion board, where Crossfitters around the world post their daily results, making it more interactive and real-time.

Price differences

Crossfit, at its core level, is 100 per cent free. Skill acquisition, coaching, and gym access is not. Some may practise Crossfit for 30 years without instruction beyond the expert coaching offered in the Crossfit Journal (USD$20/year) or for free on the main site and affiliate site.

P90X — three payments of US$39.95

Of course, if working out on your own just fundamentally doesn’t work for you, and the probable outcome to going any of these routes is “no exercise”, then you would need to be honest with yourself about that, not entertain any false illusions, and seek a more viable route for yourself from the get-go.

P90-X classes are available in Kingston, so if you are interested in trying out this cutting-edge workout, contact me at bodybyselena@hotmail.com.

Choosing your strategies for business and fitness can determine whether you “curl up and die” or come out fighting like a tiger, never giving up, no matter what each day brings. Every day is a choice, every workout makes a difference, and working smarter is definitely the way to go.