P90X Chest Shoulders and Triceps – Review

Finally, a hard workout so far everything you may have heard about P90X Chest Shoulders and Triceps DELIVERS. I don’t know if I was just tired or what, but for whatever reason, this workout was the hardest for me by a long shot. This is probably because of my ectomorph upperbody. In earlier article I have mentioned my body is a endomorph / ectomorph split. Ectomorph meaning that I have a small frame and very lean muscle mass, basically a skinny guy in my upperbody.

P90X Chest Shoulders and Triceps

With all the other P90X workouts, they were decent, but I would not call any of them hard, where I actually had to dig down and apply some serious effort to complete the workout. But this one . . . this was THE one. I was already tired by the 4^th exercise. I am going to do this workout again later in the week and confirm if it was just as hard.

For being so hard, I am giving it a preemptive 5 Face Charles Award. This one seriously kicked my ass.

As you will notice, a lot of the exercises are incorporated from some of the other P90X workouts. I will note where.

The Exercises:

Slow-Motion 3-n-1 Push-ups

Here we start out with what I’m weakest at: Push-ups. I’m actually kinda grateful for that because it’s where I need the most help, and I know it.

You start out with a normal wide “grip” push-up, but as the exercise name states, you do it in slow motion. You go 4 seconds down, then 4 seconds back-up. Then you change your grip to a standard push-up when your hands are at shoulder width. Then you change that to military push-ups (your hands are close to your sides). You stop when you can’t do any more. So yeah! we start out with a bang.

In & Out (Not the hamburger) Shoulder Fly

This is just a straight up no-frills shoulder fly. After you come out of that, you do a side lateral raise. Here you pick your number and stick with it. If you want size, pick a heavier weight and do lower reps. If you want tone, pick a lower weight and do higher reps.

Chair Dip

Julie and I outlined this in Bench Tricep Dips here. These are the exact same thing.

Plange Push-up

This was sort of the odd man out push-up. The only difference between this and a normal push-up is you have your hands next to your rib cage, versus higher up. The jury is in recess about this exercise.

Pike Press

I have never done push-ups this way but Julie teaches this in her boot camp classes. You get your body into a pike position, with your legs spread open, your butt high in the air and your hands spread out (mind out the gutter). Then you do a push-up so the crown of your head touches the floor then come back up. It’s a smoking shoulder workout.

Side Tri-Rise

This was also done in the Shoulders and Arms day. “Lose your weights because you don’t need these. Like the name states you are lying on your back. Use your arm that is off the ground to place is on the ground in front of your chest or wherever is comfortable, and then uses your arms that are already on the ground to grab your shoulder. Then using the arm that is in front of your chest push to rise up your body. This is a great bodyweight exercise. I love this!” – Charles Lloyd

Julie also uses this in her boot camp classes!!  It’s VERY effective and one of her favorites as well.

Floor Fly

This was a very cool exercise. I never thought about doing it. Here, you need a piece of cardboard or something that will slide easily on the floor. You start out with a normal push-up but with one hand on the piece of cardboard you slide out with your hand then push yourself up then slide back in. Do 4 of these with each hand then switch arm. It works out some serious pectoral muscles and triceps as auxiliary and practically killed me.

Scarecrow

I think I may have done some of these in the past; I used this as a recovery from the Floor Flys. I am using the Bodylastics resistance bands. This exercise kicks serious ass with resistance bands.

With your weights or resistance bands, bring your arms out so they are parallel to the floor with your elbows in the up position. All you do here is move your forearm between the up and down position while keeping your arms parallel. If you choose the right weight, it will seriously burn after a few seconds. But a great exercise.

Overhead Tricep Extensions

This was also done on the Shoulder and Tricep Days, but were called Lying-down Tricep extensions. The only difference is you are standing up if you have dumbbells. If you have resistance bands they are exactly the same- “These are more commonly called “Skull Crushers.” If you’re using dumbbells while lying down you extend your arms straight up and only using your triceps you bring the weight down to the sides of your face and back up again. With the bands you stand up and do the same thing, except you are bringing the bands behind your head. I have done millions of these and this is one of the staples of my normal workouts.” – Charles  (Julie’s too :))

2-Twitch Speed Push-up

They are called 2-twitch because you use your fast and slow twitch muscles for this exercise. The slow twitch is exactly the same as the slow-motion push-ups you did earlier.

You do 4 fast push-ups followed by 4 slow-motion push-ups. I was pretty much done after this exercise. I could have crawled into the fetal position and started sucking my thumb for comfort. This destroyed me!  (Julie actually did these in her boot camp class last week and had a few people wanting to do the same thing!!)

Y-Press

This is basically the same as a standard military press or shoulder press, but when you press up you come up in a Y-position. I did like this exercise, but would have liked it better if the 2-Twitch Speed Push-up didn’t destroy me.

Lying Tricep Extensions

If you are using resistance bands, you just did these a minute ago. If you are using dumbbells, you’re doing the Skull Crushers I just mentioned.

Side-to-Side Push-ups

Oh boy more Push-ups! Just as the name states, all you do is shuffle side to side on your hands and feet (or you knees, if you suck like me) and do regular push-ups. If I wasn’t done already then I didn’t express my tiredness in the 2-twitch push-up.  (Again, one of Julie’s favorite bootcamp exercises.  These rock!!)

Side-Leaning Tricep Extensions

These are just like normal tricep extensions…but, yep you’re leaning to the side.

One-Arm Push-up

Well um…yeah! One-Arm Push-ups!

Weighted Circles

This exercise really kicks ass with resistance bands. These are just like the scarecrows you did previously but your arms are parallel from shoulder to fingers. All you do here is arm circles with as much weight you can for the time allotted. I loved this exercise.

Throw the Bomb

Imagine you are a quarterback and are throwing a bomb (throwing a football as far as you can). The only difference is you’re not using a football – you are using a weight. This is where the resistance bands really show their superiority, the more you throw out the harder the resistance. Great, Great Exercise.

Clap or Plyo Push-up

I didn’t discuss 1 arm push-ups for a reason. The best part of P90X is this – here is where it just gets out of hand. I love workouts that are just absurd and I have found it. It’s so hard that even the 1 woman and 1 guy were doing push-ups on their knees at this point. Tony actually goes airborne for this exercise; very impressive.

The standard or Clap versions is you do a push-up but throw yourself up in the air and do a clap, come back down and do it again.

The Plyo version is doing a push-up but throwing yourself off the ground so you’re completely airborne. It’s very cool to watch Tony do his thang. I’m on my knees.

Slow-Mo Throw

This is sort of like the Scarecrow and Throw the Bomb put together. When your arms are in front of you, bring your hands back to your ears then go back to the parallel position with your arms in front of you, then bring your arms back down to your sides.

Front to Back Tricep Extensions

These are just like standing tricep extensions but you are adding the Front part to the exercise. Meaning instead of only going back behind your head, you also go in front of your face. After killing myself with all the push-ups, I’m back in familiar territory.

One-Arm Balance Push-ups

These weren’t as hard as I thought they were going to be. All you do here is do a normal push-up. Then come up to a side plank as we see Julie here doing side planks.

Fly-Row Press

This is just a fancy name for doing 4 different exercises and combining them into one. The Dumbbell fly, the upright row, the overhead dumbbell press, then the reverse curl. You have done all these before; you are just combining them.

Dumbbell Cross-Body Blow

It’s finally over! This is the first workout of this program that I’m glad to see it’s over. If you’re using dumbbells, this is just like throwing Cross-Body punches with dumbbells. I believe this works better with resistance bands because the resistance increases as you go up.

P90X Chest Shoulders and Triceps

By far the best workout of the P90X series. I would give it 6 Charles Faces but due to company policy that is not allowed. :p

Interested? Go get it in my Beachbody web store. If you want a 25% discount sign-up as  a “Coach” and spread the word!

This concludes my review on P90X Chest Shoulders and Triceps.