I’m not planning on posting a long blog, since I don’t have much to talk about this topic, more than I’ve already talked, but as I might try do P90X3 because I want to do something short enough due to my work schedule, avoiding having to drive to the gym, and at the same time giving myself a break from the gym environment, I was hoping to see the kind of results people have gotten with one cycle of P90X3, but all I’ve found is coaches selling the program through their incredible reviews… Reviews that claim it is better than the original P90X.

In any case, if I get to do this program, I’ll surely be posting my review and progress throughout the whole 90 days.

It is unfortunate that I cannot give a detailed example of why I am stopping this program by showing you the actual list of the workouts and diet, but I will try to explain the best I can why this program is 100% crap. I’ll try to do this in a short summary below, and then I’ll explain in better detail everything there is wrong about this program.

As I posted yesterday, last week’s training was a very intense, so intense that I honestly said this program wasn’t suited for beginners. From an excessive load of strip-sets to very short breaks between sets, and relatively low caloric days when it came to cardio and days off, plus a ridiculous amount of coffee on a daily basis, made it a tough week even for someone like who spends over an hour a day 6 times a week, lifting heavy all the time and not wasting any time talking or taking extra long breaks. Now, all of the sudden, I start the second week with an increase in macros (or calories if you prefer) in comparison to last week, with a workout that other than the warm up run and push ups, I didn’t get a drop of sweat out of my body. We’re talking about a one set per exercise with very few exercises in general. To explain better how different this workout was compared to last week’s workouts, is like comparing a marathon to a 5k race. So for anyone to tell me, this kind of plan can get someone ripped with a muscular body in 45 days, is the biggest lie anyone could ever say, leading me to the conclusion that MP45 is one of the biggest scams every created.

If after reading this short summary you still feel like reading more of what I have to say, then feel free to continue reading below, otherwise, by now you should already know is not worth it spending a minute of your life reading anything related this program. You’ll do 110% better watching youtube workout videos and getting a gym membership than dedicating any of your time to MP45.

Anyone with a little knowledge about how muscles work is aware that in order to make a muscle grow you need two things, eat and lift, and by lift I mean lifting enough weights to put stress on the muscle fiber which will cause macro-tears on that will lead the muscle to grow in size and strength. Of course, you can do this the right way (minimizing the amount of body fat you gain along the process) or the wrong way (increasing your body far tremendously along the way). Similar concept applies to body fat loss. With proper eating and exercising you will lose body fat, but just like with gaining muscle, you can lose more body fat than muscle or lose a lot of muscle along the way, depending on how you eat and exercise. Anyone that spends lots of hours a week at the gym trying to gain muscle knows how hard that is and how horrible is the experience to lose muscle because of a poor diet and exercise plan. So far MP45 has demonstrated to me that it is a bad plan that will make anyone who has worked hard for their muscles lose their gains and those without much muscle won’t gain any at all.

For a workout plan to put me through a day of exercises that literally didn’t get my muscles exhausted, burning, feeling a “pump” and sweating like I always do, that says a lot about how bad this plan is. And believe me, this wasn’t because of me not giving 100% of me or using enough weight. One exercise of one set only for back, chest and shoulders is not going to make absolutely anyone lose body fat or gain any muscle ever, especially when the total amount of calories today is even higher than during last week’s excessive lifting. And while earlier today after I finished the workout, I refused to even look at what was due for tomorrow, I just did and is exactly the same thing than today. A couple of warm up sets followed by 1 set for the lower body, that includes 4 weights exercises and some body weight squats and lunges. Not to mention Wednesday is rest day. What in the world…..?

I have tried many programs since I got into fitness, some made by companies like BeachBody, other programs made my trainers, and even some by online fitness celebrities, and in all the years I have been trying programs, I’ve never come across with such a horrible workout program. This is literally the first time I have stopped using a fitness program ever, and on top of that only after a week of doing it. When I started this program I was already convinced it was a scam based on the claims of getting results that usually take months, and sometimes over a year to achieve. In fact, the reason that got me into trying the program was because of this false claims. The one thing I didn’t know was how bad this program really is, starting with the absolutely horrible grammar and layout. It feels like the person putting it together at times was thinking of one exercise when he was supposed to write another exercise, making it very hard to understand the exercise flow. And last but not least, the PDF files have a LOT of pages, which means you’ll spend a lot of time reading explanations about so many things that in my opinion are trying to create this image on the reader’s mind that this program is the best in the world by following all this scientific explanations when the reality they’re just justifying the $97 dollars the reader just paid.

Conclusion: Do NOT spend a dime or waste your time in this program even if you get it for free from a friend. It won’t provide you with any benefit whatsoever. Any of those muscular people posting pictures of them wearing MP45 gear and claiming their looks are thanks to that program are lying and getting paid to attract people to buy the program through the affiliate program MP45 offers.

Is this how I look after completing one week of MP45? By the end of this post you’ll know whether or not that’s the case.

This is my first official review of the MP45 fitness program after one week of following both the exercises routines and meal plan. The workout plan doesn’t get any easy, although I’m disappointed at the description of phase 1 of getting acclimated by the creator of this plan when stating “focusing on full body workouts 3 times during the week plus 2 cardio workouts on different days”. My main issue with this, being someone who has been working out for a while, is the lack of focus on muscle groups. I’m a huge fan of giving each muscle group plenty of attention, especially working my shoulders a lot since they are muscles I’m trying to develop more, but for now I’ve been limited to what the program suggests. As part of my review I have to stick to the plan, even if I would prefer to be doing a wider variety of exercises and targeting muscle groups directly. But in order to be accurate and prove this plan can’t give the results they claim, I have to just go with he flow.

So, what other issues I have encountered with the program? When it comes to the PDF, it is very poorly written. There are instructions that make no sense at all. For instance, one of the instructions seems to ask to increase weight on each set after already fatiguing your muscle on the previous set, making it absolutely impossible to increase the weight. Now, this is an assumption because the note is absolutely confusing. I even asked a friend to help me decipher the instructions and she agreed with me it is far from being clear and possible indicated what I assumed. Also, in various occasions the plan indicates to do warm up sets for an exercise (legs exercise), but right after tells you to do a different exercise (arms exercise). Or to warm up for a muscle group and then describe the exercises you already did for another muscle group. Kind of insane if you ask me. 

When it comes to meals, sometimes the plan asks you to eat 8 times a day, while others you have 6 meals… if you can describe a small amount of protein with water as a meal. The amount of coffee suggested to drink is ridiculous, especially for someone who doesn’t drink coffee like myself (Wait, what? You don’t drink coffee? What a weirdo).

In general, and as I mentioned on my previous post, this isn’t a program for beginners. I guarantee you if you do this program without previous muscle conditioning, you will either be sore for weeks, or you won’t be able to finish a full workout if you really push yourself to meet the reps and sets goals.

So, what’s the MY plan then? The plan is to weight and measure myself by the end of each week plus take daily pictures (which by the end of the week I realized this is tiring and totally a waste of time, not only because those daily transformation people are showing are not real, but also because once a week is more than enough to show results if they happen), to track the progress. Things I will be looking for are body composition changes, including increase or decrease of muscle mass, body fat, and weight (this one is kind of irrelevant). Muscle and body fat are the two main factors I’ll be paying attention to very closely, mainly because I will hate if I lose muscle volume because of a program with a poor meal plan (not saying that’s the case YET) that doesn’t go hand to hand with the amount of exercises that need to be done. And of course, body fat because as expected, it needs to decrease (supposedly in 45 days you’ll go from being a Sumo Wrestler to a Lazar Angelov physique).

In any case, here are small reviews of how each day went for me during this past week.

Day 1- As mentioned before, while I’ve been working out for a while (even if my current pictures makes you think I haven’t), I don’t consider this program to be beginner friendly. The level of intensity, if each set is done properly, looking for failure, is very intense. Also, even when timing the breaks betweens sets and exercises, it was literally impossible to finish the workout in one hour.

Day 2- A cardio based workout with lots and lots of running. This could be a major issue for those who either have bad knees or don’t run at all. I got to the point my left knee was bothering me a little. I was able to finish the workout, but I see myself looking for an alternative. Either running for warm up and then replace the actual running workout with elliptical or other form of cardio, or I’ll have to see what can I do to get to run without having my knees get affected.

Day 3- This workout was a little harder than Day 1 considering the fact the break time between sets was 45 seconds. The amount of exercises is just ridiculous. More exercises have been added to the routine which extended the total length of the workout to over 2:30 hours.

Day 4- Rest day. Very much appreciated and nothing to talk about here. I’m not sore because prior to beginning this program I was already lifting a lot. BUT since I’m not a runner, my tibialis anterior and probably the fibularis brevis are kind of sore.

Day 5- Today’s workout proved to me that whoever put together this workout is out of his f*cking mind and those who have posted reviews praising this program as the best world are 110% full of S…. Now, why do I say that? Because who in their right mind would think it is healthy or productive at all a workout that asks you to do a full body workout where all sets are strip-sets (more than 3 times dropping weights), looking for failure reps each time and only getting 30 seconds break in between sets, and I’m not talking about 30 seconds break between dropping weight, that only takes a couple of seconds when changing weight using the machines, I’m talking in between each full strip-set. Not only this is definitely NOT beginner friendly, but also, even for those who lift weight regularly like myself (6 times a week), it is absolutely insane. I can’t talk for professional athletes, but if I had to guess, this kind of workout would be more like what they would do. Therefore, today’s workout has been crowned the King of the ________ (choose any of the following: impossible, puking, passing out, stupid, crazy ass, idiotic, wtf) workout. Thank you very much.

Day 6- Today was pretty much a mess if you ask me. Low calories was already giving me a slight headache, add to that a cardio session, of course it would be kind of hellish. I was hungry the whole day and in my own personal opinion, calories were too low for my body weight/composition.

Day 7- Rest day. Once again, very appreciated but looking forward to the new phase tomorrow to see what’s next with this program.

PROGRESS

Below you can see my pictures, taken everyday in the morning before drinking any water or eating any food. Underneath you can see the pictures of one of the people who claim drastic changes in just one week. Which changes do you think are more realistic?

And last but not least, at the end of this post you can find the measurements taken before and after this week doing MP45. So, go ahead and be the judge and leave any comments if you’d like.

MP45 Week 1 Progress Pictures

NOTE: The following pictures are what this guy claims to be his progress in one week. Obviously, there are more than a few things wrong about the pictures, besides the fact this is definitely not a one week progress. Posture is a big issue in these pictures. He seems to be pushing his stomach out on the first and second picture. shoulders forward and kind of curved back, as he takes the other pictures he contracts the abdomen giving the impression of losing the belly, pulls the shoulders back and gets a more straight posture, all giving the impression of a transformation that anyone would love to have if this was possible to achieve in one week.

MY STATS

Note: My initial weight of 196.6 lbs might have been affected by the fact the two previous days my diet was kind of high in carbs, which of course causes water retention, so the whole 6.2 lbs drop in one week has to be wrong considering it surely has to do with water.

In conclusion, the only thing that me and the picture at the beginning of this blog have in common is how I feel on this low caloric days and how ridiculous is the working out with 30 seconds break between strip down sets.

Update: See my final review for this program >>HERE<< and why I truly believe this program is a scam.

#MP45 #MP45review #MP45reviews #MP45workout #MP45workoutreview #MP45workoutpdf #MP45pdf

MP45? What is that thing? Well, in case you haven’t been paying attention to the internet ads, Facebook fitness groups, and Google results for best fitness programs, MP45 seems to be the newest and “hottest” workout system where some people are claiming these amazing results in just 45 days. Yes, you read that right, only 45 days. Of course, me being me, I already have an opinion about this program based on the pictures I have seen and the blogs I’ve kind of over read when looking for reviews. Personally I believe this whole 45 days transformation claims are total BULLSHIT with capital letters. Yes, I don’t care what anyone says, 45 days to go from obese to rip with ridiculous abs and a decent amount of muscle mass? Seriously, GTFO!

I follow online many professional athletes, people who compete in fitness contests, people who are professionals, people who are knowledgeable, people who either have years of experience or have spent months and years (not a weekend taking a seminar to get a certification that allows you to become a leader of a cult… oops), and absolutely no one will come up with such a ridiculous claim that they can turn anyone into a fitness looking freak in just 45 days. I’ve done P90X in the past, a super intense fitness program and while I have achieved amazing results in just 90 days, not even those who do P90X (except for a few bullshitters who want to fool people into joining their coaching teams) will claim such a drastic transformation unless they have done the program more than once.

SO…. what am I going to do about it besides calling it bullshit. Well, considering that not only I truly believe those people who show the 45 transformation didn’t get such results in just 45 days, but also are probably paid by the owner of the program, since they offer people to become affiliates, I decided I will do this program, committing myself 100% to the nutrition plan and workout split (like I have before with other programs), and give a complete accurate and honest review of the program.

Because I’m currently 3 weeks away of finishing the current program I’m doing (my diet has been crap, which in a way is great so I don’t have the best body/muscle definition by when I’m done with the program), on March 7 I will officially start MP45 and take a picture on a daily basis for my weekly review of the program, which will take about 6 weeks to finish? Somewhere around that. So I’m really hoping the creator of this program somehow discovered the magical workout plan that belonged to Merlin, and makes me eat my own words.

Keep tune for more on March 7

While the answer could be narrowed to two very simple facts, I would dare to say it goes beyond those two reasons, but for the purpose of this blog and to avoid getting into a ridiculously long post, I’ll stick with those two, which are diet and health.

I’ve been following Josef Rakich on Instagram which got me into trying his program. I mean, considering the price and pictures of those who have tried his program, I dare to say there really wasn’t much to lose.

So, is it really worth it? That’s the question that brought you here, and here’s my answer.

IF you are one of the many people out there overwhelmed with the amount of information online where every “expert” says a different thing and you feel like you’re walking around in circles without getting any solid information or getting any results, the answer is yes. Just like I’d say yes to P90X, Insanity, the Jillian Michaels DVDs you can by at your local Walmart, etc.

IF you are looking to get your fitness to a new level, and maybe achieve the looks of those people who apparently have tried his program and look amazing? I would say you should probably look somewhere else for a different plan. And here’s why. While you will get results, there’s no question about it, based on my experience with other plans I’ve done, there are two major factors in this equation that I don’t like.

1- The workout plans are exactly the same for the most part during the 3 months of training. The one thing that changes is the amount of reps/sets. I even went from the lean option to the bulk option and the workout plan was exactly the same. Now, I personally get bored easily of the same routines after a few weeks of doing them. I usually change them between 4 and 6 weeks. With this plan, you will stick to the same plan with no changes. Is this a bad thing? I’d say YES. Forgetting about boredom or hitting a plateau, there’s never a personalized assessment where Josef or anyone working for him looks at your pics and says, hey, you seem to be lacking of shoulder mass, or chest, so we’ll make the program for you to develop those muscles you’re lacking a little more to get you to a proportionate look. That right there is not a good thing.

2- The diet plan gives you the option to select which kind of foods you don’t like to eat. That is a good thing, the same way they provide you with how much of each food to eat per meal and the total amount of macros per meal. So far so good, BUT, anyone who knows how fitness works knows, food is the most important part of how your body composition will be affected with the exercises you do. So what I found with the meal plan is, as closed as I followed the meal plan, my body didn’t change as expected. Now, I’m not saying the meal plan is badly designed, I just believe it is a little generic base on previous experiences, and on my fitness goals, there were modifications and certain adjustments made to the plan in order to achieve the desired goals.

So in conclusion, when doing both the lean and bulk plan, I felt there was something missing with the meals, something to get better results, and the workouts got me bored even if with some exercises I got strong and with others I got better. It was the lack of variety and change that got me bored of this plan.

At the end, my results didn’t match any of those who claim they got amazing results in the 90 days. Was it my fault? I’m not sure. I dare to say it wasn’t, but who really knows.

Left home at 4am to drive up to Tampa, with enough time to get ready for the race, including setting up my GoPro camera. Temperature was around 42º by the time my race was about to start, which is not a big deal, but when you’re about to run and most probably jump in cold water, it becomes one of those “oh crap, this is going to be fun…. not” moments.

Overall, I thought the race was tougher than my Super race from last year, but I think two main factors that got me to this realization has to do with to very specific issues. The first one, right at the beginning of the race, during the second obstacle, while helping a lady jump over the wooden obstacle, the force she applied in order to reach the top wasn’t downwards but find of forward, literally throwing me to the floor and hitting my knee and wrist against the concrete floor. Although my knee hurt just at that moment, my wrist was the one with more damage, which became worse as I had to keep using my hand throughout the race. The pain became excruciating and there was nothing I could do about it… because I wasn’t going to quit and I wasn’t going to do 30 burpees just to skip each obstacle. The second issue was the amount of stairs we had to climb during 75 to 80 percent of the race. I’ve never in my life climbed so many stairs before in a single day.

I’ll be honest, while I enjoy helping others to overcome obstacles, that initial injury that cost me having to deal with so much pain and ending up not being able to use my hand for a week after the race, taught me that not always I can sacrifice myself for those around me, especially during a race. The worse that can happen during a Spartan race is, that if you can’t complete an obstacle, you’ll have to do 30 burpees, and even then you’re getting something physically positive out of it.

My goal now is to prepare and focus for next year’s Beast race, which most probably will be in Atlanta, and for once I will try to focus on timing other than recording videos with my GoPro. This along with a Tough Mudder race and smaller obstacle races will keep me busy for a while when it comes about outdoors physical activities.

As mentioned before, Shortcut to Shred seemed to be a promising solution to cut down or shred body fat. The concept, which is mainly based on reducing carbohydrates during a 3 phase setting, puts you on a caloric deficit, which one way or another would make anyone lose weight. Of course, the main goal is to lose body fat and little to no muscle mass, but this is where it gets tricky.

My Experience
I have to admit that, as much as I tried to stick as close as possible to the macros, I found it pretty hard to reach the amount of fats I needed to eat without affecting the protein and carbs quantities. It could have been easy to just add a spoon or two of olive or coconut oil to my meals, but I wasn’t a big fan of that idea. So other than the fats (which make for a lot of calories) I was pretty accurate with the rest of my macros.

During phase one, the amount of carbs gave me plenty of energy, not only to do the exercises in between each set, but also to lift very heavy. During phase one and two I was able to achieve new personal goals, lifting up to 315 lbs on my deadlifts, and over 800 lbs on legs press, but the motivation and happiness didn’t last long. Phase three requires to eat one third of the initial amount of carbs eaten during phase one. This, for anyone familiar of how important carbs are for energy purposes, was a major hit on my performance. My energy levels dropped dramatically affecting my workouts from the amount of weight lifted to the amount of reps, and in some cases sets. Forcing myself to reach the amount of weights I was used to lift during phase one and two became a painful experience realizing my body wasn’t capable of performing the same way without enough carbs.

One major problem with this program, and personally my biggest concern is, that while my body fat percentage dropped, I lost muscle mass during the time I did this program. This, is the one thing those of us who worked really hard for will want to avoid at all cost. I personally blame it on the constant low carbs during the third phase of the program. I think if at least there would have been some kind of cycling, it would have been the best option, not only to keep the energy and strength, but also to retain muscle mass.

Conclusion
If you are looking to drop weight, mainly from fat, but also sacrifice some muscle along the process, this program will probably be a great option. You’ll have to be mentally strong to fight the lack of desire to do cardio in between sets, especially during phase three. One thing is for sure, I wouldn’t try to do this program again, even if I was in a hurry to lose body fat in a short period of time, not unless phase three had me eating more carbohydrates.

Progress

During week three my body embraced the strength phase incredibly. During the first three days of the week, the reps goal was to stay between 2 and 5 reps per set, which allowed me to Military Shoulder Press 170 lbs, Squat 270 lbs and Deadlift 315 lbs. All of these I did without feeling out of energy after each set, but on the contrary, I was feeling super pumped to continue to the following set. My Cardio Acceleration sets didn’t affect my performance at all. In my opinion Week 3 was a major success.

Week 4, on the other hand, was kind of a disaster. The reason why is because of the drop on carbohydrates. Going from 1 gram of carbs per body weight pound to 0.5 gram makes a huge difference. The first two days were literally horrible. Deadlifting 275 lb and squatting 180 lbs felt almost impossible to do. My energy levels were super low during the whole day and my workouts weren’t as good as I wish they had been. In many occasions I had to skip the Cardio Acceleration sets because I just didn’t have the energy. By the end of the week my body was already adapting to this lack of carbs, and while I still don’t feel I have the energy I had during Week 3, at least I was able to do better than at the beginning of the week.

I’m positive I have lost certain amount of muscle mass, but for sure I have lost a lot of body fat, as you will see on the pictures below. Tomorrow, is the first day of Week 5, and the macronutrients adjustment wasn’t too big.

This is how my macros look, including how they were during Week 3

These are my current results

The following is a video of me deadlifting the 315 lbs and at the end of this post you can see my progress pictures, showing much better abdominal definition by the end of Week 4.

This week marked two main personal records which I have been looking forward to for a while already, one more than the other. Although squats have never been my favorite exercise, I had been stuck on 200 lbs for a while, and I finally was able to squat 230 lbs. My goal wasn’t about reaching that weight but at least getting over the 200 lbs. Now, my main goal was in regards to deadlifts. I have been wanting to reach the 300 lbs, not only I was able to deadlift 305 lbs for one set, but I also was able to do a second set with the same weight, not feeling out of breath, lightheaded or exhausted afterwards, as you can see on the video below.

For now, my nutrition plan virtually looks the same way, so I don’t need to make any big changes.

Results
This week the weight difference was not as much, but then again, my goal is not weight loss but fat loss.

Once again, this body fat percentage is very inaccurate, based on the cheap caliper I am using and the fact that I am measuring it myself. This is just for reference purposes.

And here is my photo comparison. Starting next week I will be using only the first set of pictures and the current ones after each week.

Before I continue to compare today’s measurements with last week’s, I will talk a little about my experience during this first week when it.

The Workout
For me it was completely new to include any form of cardiovascular exercise in between sets. Since most complains online were in regards to these cardio exercises affecting weight load and causing trouble keeping up with the same weight during the whole set of the same exercise, I came to the conclusion that either these people suffer of lack of conditioning, or my conditioning is way better than theirs. When using the BodySpace app to track my workouts, you have the option to include or exclude these extra sets of exercise. I personally included them, and at no time my weight load was affected during my lifting. Something I’m aware of is, starting today my weight load is supposed to increase each week, so what effect cardio acceleration will have on my workout is still a mystery. The only down side was that I was sweating way too much, and I wouldn’t even consider that a bad thing.

The Nutrition
As I mentioned before, my caloric intake was raised almost 1000 calories based on the amount of macros I had to eat during this first week. From my previous experience, I distributed my macros during the day as it has worked best for me. That made it easier to schedule my meals and not feel like I was force feeding myself, expect for the first and probably second day. Although I didn’t reach the fats target, I was able to be consistent with my protein and carbohydrates.

Based on my new weight and because I’m starting Phase 2, my macros have been adjusted as shown below.

The Results
As you can see below, I was able to lower my waist measurement and even dropped some weight. My goal at this moment is to lower my body fat, and as much as I would like to stay in the weight range of 182-185 lbs, I’m not really worried about losing some weight for now. Based on the pictures, my posing might have been a little different in some cases, and while my back seems to have lost some definition, my abs look like might have gained definition and probably my thighs did as well. For only one week of training, at least there was some significant change overall.