Hello! I've been lurking around here for about a month and finally decided to register and start posting. I just started week 3 of P90X (doing the lean version), but instead of making progress, I've been regressing from the start.

I'm in decent shape (just looking to lose the last bit of fat after a plateau in my routine, and p90x looked great for that) and for the first week of workouts I could keep up fine and was feeling great. I was feeling sore as heck, though, so when the second week rolled around, I wasn't doing better like they wanted me to. In fact, I was so sore from the previous workouts that I had to lighten my weights on everything, and I couldn't keep up at all on a lot of exercises.

Starting week three... same problem. Too sore to keep up. How am I supposed to be getting better when I started off blazing along with them and I'm just doing worse as time goes by? If things keep up like this, heck, I'm not even going to be able to do the exercises with weights (I've had to lighten the load every week).

Since I'm sore I know I'm getting a good workout, but is it not worth it if I just have to keep "bringing it" less and less? Am I doing something wrong?

Hmmm, trouble shooting mode activated!

Couple of questions for you:

1) How are you doing diet wise? Are you following the meal plan? And if so, what level and phase are you using?

2) How is your water intake and sleep?

3) Do you use a recovery drink of any type after workouts, whether it's a store-bought formula or a home-made one?

Dude...sounds like you started off too heavy the first week...now fpr ,e, to this day, doing legs and back on Friday, my quads and glutes are sore to the following Wed...but...your chest and back should NOT still be sore 7 days later...if I were you, would punt...take a week off...start over..find reasonable poundages to use..make sure you stretch out good, make sure you are doing all of the warmup stuff on the dvd's...there will be some soreness to work though, to be sure...the hardest thing for me is doing plyometrics with sore pecs from the chest and back workout the day before..don't worry about the amount of weight you are using, just pic something where you get to near failure on 12 reps ( or 10, or 15, whatever suits you).

- Drink enough water
- Get enough sleep
- Eat right, get enough food in for energy
- Make sure you're intaking enough protein per day for your muscles to rebuild and repair

Thanks for the responses, guys!

Dietwise: I thoroughly looked over the nutrition guide, and while I'm aiming for the calories that they want me to (1800/"level 1" ) , rather than try to use their portion system I've been breaking it down into macronutrients, which works much better for my lifestyle.

Water/sleep: I probably don't drink as much water as I should, admittedly, but I'm never thirsty or anything. I get plenty of sleep.

Recovery drinks: I have a whey protein shake soon after every workout.


Also, I wasn't saying that I'm sore from the same thing 7 days later. I'm just sore for 1-2 days, but that's enough to throw me back badly. For example, core synergistics totally kills my arms from doing all those pushups, but 2 days later it's arms and shoulders, when my arms are still really sore. So it's not an issue of soreness lasting for a week or whatever--just that even a couple days of being sore is a couple days too much for me to keep up!

Hi Amarok,

Don't stress to much about impprovement these first few weeks. I personally have had a number of exercises that actually went backwards that first month. The important thing is to understand that these frustration often lead people to quit working out. And all I can say to that is to not ever let that happen. the bottom line is regardless of how much weight you use, how many reps you do - if you give it 100 percent then you are burning calories, you are working your heart, you are burning fat, and as such you are losing weight.

So please be patient and by the time you get to the third month you will have improved, and if you don't think so you will for sure be looking better cuz you burned so much fat!! first few week are tough to the newbie so just keep doing it and never give up on it. you only have 90 days so just stick with it and see what happens!