I am finishing up our Asylum Challenge, and looking forward to another hybrid with my ever-growing assortment of workout programs! I now have, for the purposes of creating my round 5 hybrid, P90X, P90X Plus, Insanity, Asylum, and many of the 1-on-1’s. I also have my homemade TRX workout that I want to work into the routine some.
So what have I come up with for Round 5? It’s a traditional training block routine like P90X Classic, but since I have so many great lift days that I want to use, this bad boy will be 4 months long (4 training blocks instead of 3). And since I prefer to not have a set “rest day”, I am setting this up in 30 day blocks, with 28 workout days and 2 “rest days” that I can use and check off at anytime during the block whenever I feel like my body needs a rest day. You’ll also notice I still have 2 Ab-only days per week (I really prefer that to doing abs after a lift workout).
Another thing you’ll notice is that I don’t have a 7 day schedule. This is because I want only 1 day of rest between lift days, and on a 7 day schedule there is an odd number of days, so I have altered it a bit to be able to include 3 big lift days per week, every week, in addition to 2 TRX (or PAP) workouts (for variety). It’s a more complicated layout, but as you look at it, I think it will make sense.
And finally, in my biggest change, I’m using Asylum as my “recovery week” (in the ultimate irony!) No, it’s not because it’s easy. In fact, it’s a total crusher! But the idea of the recovery week is to take a break from the block of heavy lifting, so I’ll do 1 week spurts of Asylum in order to give me a big change of pace before starting the next block of big lifts. And I won’t be overdoing the cardio since during my training blocks I have only 2 cardio days per week.
Oh, and I should definitely point out that I don’t expect to many of you to follow this exact Hybrid. I’m doing this for me, because it’s the workouts I have and the workouts I want to do. I already know you may not have (or want to have) all the workouts that I’m using in this hybrid. That’s fine! You can make your own. But maybe this will give you some good ideas!
And for each workout, I’ve listed the program it’s from (for instance, “PAP” is the workout from the most recent Tony Horton 1-on-1 series). And since the “Rest” days are off to the side, that’s because I can use those 2 rest days at any point during that block that I choose to. Thus, this 4-block hybrid will take exactly 4 months.
Let me know if you have any questions! And if you want a more simple version of a hybrid (maybe you are in your first round and you want something that doesn’t involve tons of programs you may not have), check out my straight P90X/Insanity Hybrid or my article on how to create a hybrid in the “Workout Zone” (which is under the Coach W’s Tips tab).
Here’s the downloadable spreadsheet (*EXCEL VERSION) of what I’ll be doing for the next 4 months :-)
Here’s the PDF VERSION for those of you without Excel:
