Insanity Verses P90X – Plyometric Workouts

plyometrics The word makes people who know shudder. It also forms the basis of many different workouts, including most Insanity workouts and “the mother of all P90X workouts,” as its creator claims. Which of these two has the harder plyometric training? Are they both effective? What are the differences? Read on to learn about plyometrics in both P90X and Insanity Workout!

First of all, what exactly is plyometrics? Most people just say they’re ‘jumping exercises’, but that’s not all bro. Plyometrics can be any form of exercise that aims to produce fast, powerful movements by improving the functions of the nervous system. This can be anything from explosive jump power to running faster, throwing farther, or hitting harder. It’s basically a means of improving how fast and how hard you can move. So jumping, yes. But much more.

So let’s look at the P90X plyometric workout first. Tony Horton claims that this is the workout that puts the ‘X’ in P90X, and coming in at 60 minutes, there is a lot of truth to this statement. It consists of four or five main series that are repeated twice, each series consisting of about four exercises. They range from variations on the horizontal jump, variations on squat jumps, jumps on one foot to sports exercises such as shooting hoops. The great thing about them is that they last an hour, but they never bring you down (except for a couple of particularly difficult exercises in the middle). You can maintain a consistent level of intensity throughout, so while you’re absolutely dead by the time you hit the 60-minute mark, you can definitely hang in there at all times.

The Insanity Workout plyometric cardio circuit is another story. Coming in at just 45 minutes, and with the main Plyo workout only around 20 of those, you’d think it would be easier. You would be wrong. The workout starts with a brutal 10-minute warm-up (I regularly advise people to warm up before the ‘warm-up’), goes through a long stretch, and then starts with the main workout, which is broken up into four sets, repeat range 3 times without interruption. It starts with Suicide Drills, gets harder with Football Drills, and then explodes into a world of pain with Basketball Drills (the words ‘In! Out!’ will haunt your darkest nightmares forever). The last set, Attacks, is just a series of punches and crosses, but the previous 17 minutes will have destroyed you and made them incredibly difficult.

So which is the tougher of the two? The award goes to the Insanity plyometric cardio circuit. Shorter in duration, it almost qualifies as a High Intensity Interval Training program, falling just short of that killer intensity so you can keep going for the full 20 minutes. As such, it qualifies as Threshold training, and trust me, that’s punishment enough. The P90X is done at a lower intensity, but for much longer, so those 60 minutes end up eating you up even while you’re working on them. I’d say the P90X is more beginner-friendly as a result, but it’s still an incredibly tough workout. What about the Insanity plyometric cardio circuit? It’s absolutely crazy training.