Doing Doubles. I get a lot of questions about doing doubles. “Doubles” are when you do two workouts a day. You may do cardio in the morning and then a lifting routine in the evening. Whatever you are doing, you are doing double… hence the name, Doubles. Sounds like a great way to burn some extra calories and goo, right? Be careful though, I don’t think that doubles are all they are cracked up to be.
My recommendation for P90X is = ALWAYS DO CLASSIC!
A Case Against Doubles
1.) Time – Pretty obvious here. If you are going to do two workouts a day, you need double the time set aside for workouts. I don’t think this is realistic for most people. From work, school, church, hobbies, and the other random demands of life I know I am strapped for time many days. If you are a parent or married, that is taking more time away from your family. Family members (spouses especially) will be far less sympathetic if you are going down to the basement or out to the garage to workout for 2+ hours a day. You want as little stress in your life as possible, don’t make exercise the cause of stress.
2.) Sustainability – It’s great when people are all sold out and ready to change their life and see doubles as a way to do it faster, but doubles burn people out. If you have set up a deficit and are running Fat Shredder, doing double can make some less than favorable caloric environments. Typically cardio is choice for a double (more on why later). You will be burning through even more glycogen with an extra cardio workout each day. If you are not fueling properly, that extra cardio will shortchange your strength and muscle gains. 30% carbs is really quite low to recover from two workouts. Also, if 1 workout tires you out just think of two.
3.) Recovery – Your body needs time to recover. Depending on how you have structured your doubles this could be really bad. All of Beachbody’s programs do a great job of giving each muscle group adequate rest before working it out again. You want to give each muscle group a full day off before even thinking of working it out again (so 48 hours between actual workouts). Chances are when you are doing doubles, you are going to hit muscle groups within that rest period. That is a great way to overtrain and really set yourself up for failure. The worst case scenario is you get injured. That is much easier to do when you are doing doubles.
4.) Nutrition – Hit on a little in #2, but nutrition is really important to consider with doubles. You are increasing your effective deficit (more exercise) and if you don’t take that into account in your nutrition planning it could be really bad. If you are already at a big 1000 calorie deficit an extra 400-600 calorie workout on top of that is just driving you lower and lower. That may seem great (and the point to some people) but I can’t stress this enough, YOU NEED FOOD TO RECOVER AND PERFORM PROPERLY! If you have dialed in your nutrition, the fat loss will come. Slower, more controlled fat loss is more lasting. That becomes a lifestyle and really gets back to the sustainability piece. You want your workouts and nutrition to be something you can sustain and live with.
On a side note, I fear that often times people do Doubles as a way to “make up” for poor eating. They think that since they aren’t sticking to their nutrition 100%, that doing some extra cardio will cancel it out. WRONG!! It will tire you out and make you less effective on your main workout, and it won’t make up for poor eating. The old saying “You can’t out-train a poor diet” is 100% true.
Still thinking of doing Doubles?
If you still think you want to do doubles, heed the cautions I mentioned above. And then, take a look at the P90X Doubles schedule. It has some wisdom.
No doubles in phase 1 – allows you to get used to the program, build a bit of base. Obvious HINT – if you are just starting out on your fitness journey… DON’T DO DOUBLES!
Doubles are only 3 days a week (an added 4th in phase 3) – Doubles are done Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the AM with the lifting workout in the afternoon. 3 extra days a week is more sustainable than 6 extra days.
CardioX as the only double workout – CardioX gets overlooked a lot. It’s not in the normal Classic schedule, but it’s a good little workout (45 minutes or so) and does a good job working against #3 – Recovery. CardioX has a little bit of everything: yoga, kenpo, and plyo. No muscle group will really get overtrained here. The yoga will stretch you out and the kenpo/plyo will move some extra blood around. No push ups, pull ups, etc to worry about hitting a muscle group before it’s recovered. The shorter time helps too, only 45 minutes and you won’t burn an EXORBITANT amount of extra calories.
NEW Programs and Doubles
With all the new, shorter programs from Beachbody, doing doubles has become popular again. So let me say this, if you are doing a program for the first time… just do that program. No doubles or hybrids. You can get great results with just Hammer and Chisel for example.
One program I might add to would be 22MHC. I would not recommend a full double schedule, but as I have talked about before, 22MHC leaves some time to add in some extra weight training. Not a full round of Beast, but a few sets of chest once a week, and back on another day would really round that program out for those that are experienced.
Still doing doubles?
If you are still going to give doing doubles with P90X a go, give CardioX a look. If you are doing more, be careful. Really consider what muscle groups you are doing and think about adding some extra calories to account for your added workload. Be sure to listen to your body and get it the rest you need. I don’t want to hear any complaining when you are burned out or injured, I warned you.
Need a coach?
My email: coachwayne@teamripped.com
IG: @wayne_wyatt
