Hope ya’ll had a wonderful 4th of July and made time to spend with your family and friends. Hopefully you stayed safe and stuck with your plan, with your ultimate goals in mind. If you deviated or had a little slip-up, just get right back to it. Don’t beat yourself up. But use this as a learning experience to be better prepared in the future. Just like one day of perfect eating won’t make you ripped, one day of bad eating won’t cause you to lose all your progress. It can be a slippery slope though, so that’s why we take it seriously and we commit to our ultimate goals.
T25 General Review
T25 has already been quite the standout program. It’s offering people a legit, intense, and excuse busting workout in only 25 minutes a day. Up to this point, I have sampled and reviewed the Alpha and Beta Phases. These workouts are no joke! From the very first workout, if you’re going all out, you’ll be sweating up a storm. This in no way should be looked at as a beginners program, but it is a great place for beginners to start because of all of the modifications that are used to accommodate the beginner.
T25 Strengths and Areas to Consider
Some of T25’s greatest strengths are:
- The workouts are only 25 minutes!
- Shaun T’s cues and directions are superb.
- Tania (from Insanity) shows modifications for every move, in every workout.
- Easy, fast, limited ingredient recipes in the nutrition plan (more on that later).
- Very limited gear (you could really do the Alpha and Beta Phases well with only a resistance band).
- Expansion Gamma Phase with even more lifting (I will be reviewing this soon – had to get back to BEASTing up for a while. You understand!).
T25 Considerations (Not really a weakness, you may just wish these areas were different)
- Only 25 minute workouts, a double edged sword.
- You can get a huge burn in 25 minutes (we have guys on teamRIPPED burning 400+ calories in a single workout), but it is still just a 25 minute workout. It won’t produce the same super high calorie burns as a full P90X or Insanity workout. But remember the purpose of T25 isn’t to be another Insanity. It’s a focused 25 minutes designed to get real results in a shorter time frame.
- Low calorie and limited level meal plan (again, more on this in a bit).
- High rep, lower weight lifts. Just not optimal for muscle growth. The lift days are not “bad” and won’t hurt you, but it’s not lifting for size (hypertrophy) or optimal muscle gains.
T25 Nutrition
The T25 Get It Done Nutrition Guide is a lot like the Asylum nutrition guides. There is an initial 4-Step Calorie Quiz that puts you either on a 1200 or 1600 calorie level. Maybe you can already see where this might be an issue. A man that is 160 lbs is put on the same level as a man that’s 220 lbs. You should know that their caloric needs are and should be very different. DUH! The big deficit helps people get great results quickly, but we also need to be sure that were not hurting ourselves in the process. Extreme deficits for a prolonged period can slow your metabolic rate. That in turn causes it to be difficult to add calories back when you want to move to maintenance.
I’m sure some of the rationale for this plan factors in that your daily workout burns will be less than the burns you’d see if you were doing hour-long workouts. But as I mentioned before, there are experienced teamRIPPED members that are easily burning over 400 calories a workout. My suggestion, as always, is to pick a calorie target and run it for a few weeks to see how you are doing.
The meal plan has some really great recipes. Most are limited to 4 to 6 ingredients (all under 5 if you don’t count seasoning and cooking spray). There are also recommendations for “flavor booster condiments” that won’t put a dent in your diet. All of the prep times are right around five minutes as well (cooking times maybe longer).
Overall Experience and Opinion
I really can’t say enough good things about T25. It’s a legitimate workout that will produce results when you put in the work. It’s going to challenge you no matter what your fitness level, and it will offer you a place to perform at YOUR best.
Use the meals from the nutrition plan but track everything you eat. If you’re a 250 lb guy, please don’t go to 1600 calories LOL! Send me an email and we can work on setting up a goal that will still give you great results but will be safe and results producing! Or go to the teamRIPPED Calorie Calculator and find a goal using the P90X Formula.
My review of the Gamma phase will be coming soon. So stay put and keep a watch out for it. Just a reminder, for the month of July the T25 Challenge Pack is on sale for $180! If you are thinking of getting T25 that would be a great deal to take advantage of. Keeping digging deep and BRINGING IT teamRIPPED!
Need a coach?
My email: coachwayne@teamripped.com
IG: @wayne_wyatt
