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Health and Fitness

Rushfit Workout Review

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I recently completed the GSP Rushfit workout and thought I would share my thoughts. I did finish late because I injured some cartilage near my ribs and needed to rest it up for a few weeks before I could continue. With that said, GSP Rushfit was a hell of a program and a lot of fun.

What is it?
GSP Rushfit is a home workout starring the one and only Georges St. Pierre and designed and guided by his trainer Eric Owings. GSP goes through the workouts with you and adds some hilarious colour commentary every once in a while, but most of the narration and coaching is done by Eric. I found the Eric/GSP combo to be quite refreshing as they complemented each other well. Each week consists of 6 days on, and 1 day off (rest day).

GSP Rushfit is an 8 week program with calendars for beginners, intermediate, and advanced. They do have a fit test assessment that you should do prior to choosing which calendar to go with but I wasn’t able to find it in the guides what numbers you should be shooting for to determine what program you should choose. I ended up going with the advanced program because when I did the fit test I was toe to toe with the champ with my numbers. Yeah!

As far as I can tell, the only difference between the beginner and advanced program is that in advanced you just do more workouts in the 8 week period. In the last half of the advanced calendar there are doubles (two workouts a day) almost everyday. On the calendar they have “Cardio” which is something you are supposed to do on your own. I thought this was a tad lame and lazy on the part of the designers but most of my days I was going to jiu jitsu training so figured that would do. There are 7 workouts to do over the 8 weeks:

Stretch for Flexibility, Balance and Agility (these were on the “Bonus” DVD), Abdominal Strength and Core Conditioning, Explosive Power Training, Full Body Strength and Conditioning, Strength and Endurance, and The Fight Conditioning Workout. The workouts all start with the same warmup and end with the same cool down. The warmup did an average job at warming up the appropriate joints. It should have focused more on the ankles and shoulders because those are used a lot in the programs. I did feel on a number of days that my shoulders and ankles weren’t sufficiently warm and felt some discomfort. The cool down is also way too long. It is only 7 minutes, but when you are doing doubles you really just want to get the heck out of there because you are so pooped. The workouts themselves are all 5 rounds to simulate a championship UFC fight except for the Flexibility and Balance and Agility workouts.

All of the workouts were great and varied to keep things interesting. What was really cool for me to see was watching GSP do his thing. You could tell he was really great at explosive stuff but really sucked at isometrics and flexibility movements. He cheated like most people do and Eric would call him out on it. It was rather entertaining. I found Full Body Strength and Conditioning to be the most challenging and by round 4 was pretty tired. Strength and Endurance was also pretty tough and had me gasping for air by the end of it. The Abdominal Strength and Core Conditioning workout was ok until round 5 when they had you doing bridges, which I couldn’t hold for the entire time until I was near week 7. My favourite workout was The Fight Conditioning Workout because it involved a lot of coordination involving striking, grappling, wrestling and judo components.

Pros of GSP Rushfit

  • Eric Owings is an excellent instructor. Very detail oriented, clear and concise
  • GSP cracks me up with his French Canadian accent and quirky sense of humour
  • Very good workouts that will leave you pooped but feeling alive
  • Good variety of movements and different body parts being worked that aren’t seen in other home workouts
  • Minimum equipment required. You only really need dumbbells.

Cons of GSP Rushfit

  • Complex movements such as the Turkish get up should not be in a home study course, in my opinion, because if done improperly could result in injury
  • Workouts are too long and there is too much chit chat between the warmup and the workout and the workout and cool down. Again, 6 days a week for 8 weeks is a big commitment for most people, at least make that time working out as efficient as possible.
Final Thoughts
GSP Rushfit is an excellent program that will whip you into shape. Like most of these home workouts, it does require a time commitment. It comes down to your priorities and what you value in life. If you are a fan of GSP and love mma and are looking to get a little more physically fit and lose weight, this is the product for you. I did feel some carry over strength that translated in my jiu jitsu training with GSP Rushfit. Maybe you will too!

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If you liked this review, you may also like my P90X2, Rip:60, P90X+, Insanity, RevAbs, or RMAX BER reviews

Health and Fitness

Rip 60 Review

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What is Rip:60?
Rip:60 is a 60 day program that utilizes suspension training. That’s just a fancy way of saying ropes and pulleys. Suspension training is a useful type of training because it helps with balance, agility, coordination, and works muscles that you didn’t know you had. Doing a pushup on a stable floor is relatively easy. Put your feet in some unstable straps and the game changes slightly. Lots of MMA fighters use suspension training in their regimen, the most popular being the TRX system (which I also have). Georges St. Pierre and Jillian Michaels endorse Rip:60 and have included bonus DVDs.

How long is Rip:60?
8 weeks. 6 days on, 1 day off.

What equipment do I need for Rip60?
The suspension trainer, which comes with the purchased product, and some weights. In the videos, they use an adjustable kettlebell you can buy on their website. I used adjustable dumbbells which I already had. To work my forearms and grip strength more, I also used a pair of Fat Gripz (highly recommended for added difficulty and training of the forearms).

Description
Rip:60 is 1 DVD per week, 6 days a week with 1 rest day. That means you do the same workout for 6 days straight, which could get a little boring for you depending on how patient you are. Once the week is over you progress to the next DVD and repeat until all 8 DVDs are done. The weeks get progressively harder, but I found week 6 to be the hardest, not week 7 or 8. There is also a recovery week which is just a bunch of stretching with the help of the suspension trainer. Every workout includes a warm up and cool down. The workouts are run by a guy named Jeremy Strom whom I didn’t find very good.

There are 4 bonus DVDs. Rip:60 for runners, power yoga, one from Jillian Michaels and one from Georges St. Pierre. The power yoga is useless and I wouldn’t recommend it as the straps just get in the way. Stick with traditional yoga. The runners one is only slightly better. In the GSP DVD, GSP goes through a workout and it is narrated by Jeremy Strom. This one is decent except you pretty much get no time in between exercises and don’t really know what’s next. This is bad because the exercise has already started while you are still trying to adjust your straps, get into position, and figure out what to do next. The best of these bonus DVDs is Jillian Michaels, she rips it (pun intended), although the workout isn’t as intense as I would have liked. She should have been the one to run through the workouts in the 8 weeks.

The Good
Rotation in the straps, which TRX doesn’t have, makes the exercises more challenging. There are some seriously killer bodyweight exercises you can do with rotational suspension training that you wouldn’t be able to do in TRX. The straps themselves are also quite sturdy. I think TRX is a little better built, but Rip:60 won’t fall apart on you anytime soon and definitely a good piece of equipment to have in your home gym. The DVDs themselves are fairly good workouts using suspension training, although I believe they could have been so much better. I would have loved to see more uses with the trainer and less burpees and strictly bodyweight exercises, but nonetheless you can get a pretty good burn and sweat using Rip:60.

The Bad
Since Rip:60 hangs from door if you don’t have something to attach it to overhead, sometimes the exercises are hard to do because of the proximity to the door. And you should be aware that the metal components may scuff up the door, so if that is a concern you’ll need to tape something soft like a towel to the door. Also, Jeremy Strom is annoying as hell and sucks as a coach. If I was paying him as a personal trainer I’d fire him. His timing is off almost more times than not. He isn’t very motivating or funny and sometimes he’ll say 2, 1, go, sometimes he’ll say 3,2,1 and you are supposed to go, sometimes he’ll say 1,2,3, and so on. It gets unbelievably annoying when you are ready to hit it and aren’t sure when you are supposed to begin. You might think I am nitpicking but just wait until you are exhausted and he says there’s 5 seconds left and you start giving it everything you got only to find out there’s actually 15 seconds left. You’ll want to kill him, too. He also takes jabs at other home workout programs, most notably P90X, which isn’t really necessary. The strength and quality of the program should be enough to stand on its own merits, there is no need to take jabs at a different program (minor complaint, as this one isn’t the only program that does this). See Jillian Michaels’ DVD to see how its supposed to be done. Her DVD is near flawless and gives you an idea how home instruction is supposed to look like.

Final Thoughts
I had to take a week and a half off because I jammed up my foot real good. To finish on time, I had to do doubles and triples. I definitely wouldn’t recommend that, but having a few off days on a 60 day program doesn’t give you a lot of flexibility to catch up. Follow the program schedule as best you can. I didn’t follow the nutritional guide but ate pretty clean throughout and followed an 8 hour eating window and a weekly cheat day. In the end, I am as light as I have ever been in my adulthood and about as lean. So yes, I am very happy with Rip60 and would definitely recommend giving it a whirl.  You can get it here..

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If you liked this review, you may also like my P90X2, GSP rushfit, P90X+, Insanity, RevAbs, or RMAX BER reviews

Health and Fitness

P90X Plus Workout Review

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I recently completed another excellent Beachbody program called P90X Plus. Its an extension of the extremely popular P90X series that you see on all of the infomercials. I’ll probably get around to writing a review of that program as well sometime in the future. P90X Plus, or sometimes referred to as P90X+, consists of a mix of the original P90X workouts in addition to five new workouts. These new workouts are Upper Body Plus, Abs Core Plus, Kenpo Cardio Plus, Total Body Plus and Interval X Plus, which are about 40-45 minutes in length except for Abs Core Plus. Like P90X, this program is a 90 day program (actually, a 12 week program) consisting of 3 phases, phase 1, 2, and 3 duh! There are 3 different calendars you can do, Classic +, Lean +, and X + Doubles. I did the Classic +, and I have to say, it is one hell of a program.  I can tell you that it is tougher than P90X but also that the results for myself have been amazing.  You should do this workout if you have already done P90X.  You should not do this workout if you have not done P90X or if you do not have the original P90X workouts, as those are required on some days.  The most used workout from P90X is the Yoga X workout, which is required quite a bit.

P90X+ Calendar
Each of the phases is basically 6 days a week, with an option for X-Stretch or rest on the 7th day. This is true for all of the calendars. For the most part, I decided to rest instead of doing the X-Stretch. I think I only did the X-Stretch 2 or 3 times during the entire program. Probably due to laziness, but I would say X-Stretch is a really good stretching program so don’t neglect it if you can.

Equipment Needed

The good news is you don’t really need a lot of equipment, much like P90X.  All you really need is a pullup bar, water bottle, mat, pushup stands, and dumbbells.  Heck, you don’t even really need a mat, water bottle, or pushup stands if you are on a budget or something.

Critique of the new workouts:

Total Body Plus

This is a very good total body workout.  Its a lot of fun exercises, 20 in total, that focus on synergistic moves that work multiple body parts at once.  Its a tough but fun workout and one of the better new workouts that come with P90X+.  Its about 45 minutes with a warm up and cool down period, and by the end you’ll feel you had a good workout.   You’ll need a mat, dumbbells, pullup bar, a water bottle and pushup stands.

Abs/Core Plus

This workout isn’t as intense as Ab Ripper X from the P90X series, but it does a decent job of working the abs and the core.  It is a short, 20 minute workout and by the time you are done it you should be feeling your abs a little and worked up a light sweat.  This is also the only workout where Tony Horton assumes you’ve already stretched a little bit and just goes right into the exercises.  It does have a very short cool down period.  Abs Core plus consists of 20 exercises, and the equipment required are a pullup bar, dumbbells, and a mat.

Kenpo Cardio Plus

What a joke, much like the original Kenpo Cardio X.  This program doesn’t belong in the P90X+ series.  I’m serious, I had a really hard time working up a sweat with this one.  I barely even felt my heart rate go up.  Some days where I was supposed to do Kenpo Plus I would replace this workout with an Insanity workout instead, because I know in those ones I have to bring my A game.  Its similar to the original Kenpo Cardio X where you are throwing a lot of kicks and punches, but I would think for anybody already doing P90X+ they are in good enough shape where this program won’t really do much for them.

Upper Body Plus

This is the PLUS, in P90X+.  It is an absolute monster.  And the kicker?  You do this workout twice a week for 10 of the 12 weeks, stacked on top of the Abs/Core Plus.  Talk about a tough day!  Upper body consists of tons of pushups, tons of pullups, lots of dumb bell curling for a grand total of 20 exercises.  oi!  But I can tell you, this is the toughest of all the workouts from this and from P90X.  Near the end of phase 3 I was seriously dreading doing this workout, not only because I had an irritated bicep from a night of drunken debauchery going into phase 3, but also because I’m always trying to up my numbers from previous workouts, and since Upper Body Plus is done no less than 20 times in the calendar, you can imagine how difficult that gets at the end.  There were days doing this workout where I literally could not type on the keyboard, brush my teeth, or put on a shirt, that’s how serious this one is.  You’ll need a pullup bar, dumbbells, pushup stands, and a water bottle for this one.

Interval X Plus

This is a pretty good cardio workout.  I would say its the most fun of all the workouts but isn’t used all that much compared to the other workouts in the Classic + calendar.  It does a decently good job of getting your heart rate up.  It is no comparison to any of the Insanity workouts in that department, but compared to the P90X cardio workouts like Plyo X it holds its own.

In Closing

Motivation was tough near the end.  Mainly because I was dreading that Upper Body Plus workout, but also because I was getting pretty bored at the end with doing the same workouts over and over again.  P90X did a much better job of mixing it up and thus keeping me motivated.  This one, I really had to push through.  I would still recommend this workout to P90X grads, as my results after this program have been excellent.  However, I think after doing the calendar once you can take the workouts and start formulating your own workouts.  I may try some of the other calendars, as they do look pretty interesting, but I don’t know for sure.  Beachbody and Tony Horton have another excellent product in P90X+, I give it a thumbs up. You can get P90X Plus here.

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If you liked this review, you may also like my P90X2, Rip:60, Rev Abs, Insanity, GSP Rushfit, or RMAX BER reviews