P90X^® AB RIPPER X Review: 16 Minute, 6 Pack Abdominal Workout

So, you survived P90X Chest & Back, did you? Well, good job, that’s a hard one for sure. Now I bet you feel like you’ve earned a nice relaxing evening. Hold on there buddy! You’re not done yet. That’s right, you just did a resistance day, and what does that mean? Well if you’re following the P90X Classic schedule, it means you’ve got to pop in another DVD. Not just any DVD either, we’re talking about Ab Ripper X, the most hated AND beloved workout in the program.

That’s right, as if an hour of lifting weights wasn’t enough, you have to do about 16 minutes more of abdominal exercises. 16 minutes doesn’t initially sound like a lot, especially for a P90X workout. But believe you me, it’s just as intense.

The Breakdown

Ab Ripper X is broken down as such:

• 11 moves
• 25 reps per move (with some exceptions)
• 0 breaks

Initially, this doesn’t sound so bad. I can assure you, however, that 16 minutes straight of these exercises without rest is no joke. Your abdominals are done by the end. Of course, this is always a sign of a good workout.

The Exercises

No you don’t do any “crunches” per se, at least not in the familiar sense. There are some sit-up type moves, that I’ll get to later, but for the most part it’s a pretty fresh and unconventional set of exercises. That being said, you do this workout 3 times a week (with the exception of the recovery weeks) for 3 months. You will be watching this DVD more than any other, so while it may seem refreshing to not do crunches at first, by week 5 or so, you’ll be begging for a change. So what are the moves then? Glad you asked…

Legs and Chest… Up!

For the most part, all of the moves in Ab Ripper X are leg based. I don’t mean that they work your legs in the squatting and kicking sense, but rather that you use your legs (and the weight/resistance provided by them) to work your abs. This means a lot of lifting your legs while contracting your core and keeping your upper body tight and stiff. These moves vary from fast(er) paced to more of a slow and controlled movement. The fast ones include exercises like:

• In & Outs — Sit on your butt, legs up, hands down pull your knees to your chest, extend straight, repeat.
• Bicycles — Sit on your butt, legs up, pedal your legs like riding a bike forward for 25, then backward for 25.
• Crunchy Frog — Same as In & Outs except your spread your arms wide like a “T” when your legs are out, and wrap your knees when they’re in.

The slower and more control-based moves have you doing things like “Fifer Scissors”, my most hated of all the moves. For this you lie on your back with your hands down at your sides. With your legs fully extended and your feet flexed, you lift one leg straight up (as close to a 90º angle as possible) and one leg hovering an inch or so above the floor. You hold this until Tony tells you to switch, which NEVER comes soon enough. Personally, I have never been able to make it through the full 25 of these without taking at least one break for 3–5 reps. I’m usually good for the first 15 without stopping though. (I blame the fact that by the time you get to this one, your abs have already been rocked through 4 other moves.) Becca, on the other hand, was able to dominate this after like week 2.

This leads me nicely me to my biggest problem with Ab Ripper X…

Discrimination and a lesson in physics

Let me preface this by saying that this isn’t a fault or even a negative aspect of the workout. I have very few criticisms of it. This is more me complaining and justifying why I suck at it so much. I only mention it because I’m a whiner…

What do I mean by “discrimination” exactly? I mean this workout is—what I can only assume—infinitely more difficult for taller folk like myself. Why? Well, for the reasons I listed above mostly. Everything is leg based, which means people with longer legs have to work much harder than short people (i.e. Becca). The reason for this is simple physics. To fully understand I will compare our bodies to a lever. Here’s a quick definition from wikipedia:

In physics, a lever (from French lever, “to raise”, c.f. a levant) is a rigid object that is used with an appropriate fulcrum or pivot point to either multiply the mechanical force (effort) that can be applied to another object or resistance force (load), or multiply the distance and speed at which the opposite end of the rigid object travels.

If you think about your abs as the fulcrum, the longer your legs are, means not only do your legs travel a greater distance, but also more force is needed to move them that “greater distance.” I’m no mathematician, but crunching (see what I did there?) some quick numbers yields that taller people have to work a million zillion times harder than short people at leg lifting exercises. So, there you go, the reason why Becca dominates me in any and every ab workout, especially Ab Ripper X.

Of course, the benefit from the exercise being “harder” for me, is that I technically get a better workout from it. But it’s still frustrating not to be able to keep up with Tony. Adam, (one of Tony’s workout buddies in the DVD) looks quite tall to me, yet still does everything with perfect form and max intensity/reps. I consider him an exception, and also because he has like a 12–14 pack.

Conclusion

All in all, this is one heck of a workout. It will give you great results, and as always, some days will go better than others. Its only real downfalls are that it gets to be quite a chore since you do it so much, and that it’s not generally the funnest way to finish out a long workout. I’ve heard lots of people do it first, and I could see that being a very sensible way to increase performance (it’s quite hard to lift your legs up after that Legs & Back day).