Bikini season, getting ready for the gun show and wearing little to no clothes is the time of the year some people dream about and some people hate. I’m bringing this up because over 90% of my clients all have one thing in common right now. Looking better. In this case, the “better” means getting lean. If your looking for a simple, smart, and strategic training program to do so, you have landed in the right place.
I am hoping by now most people understand high reps, can NOT “cut up”, “sculpt”, “tone”, “shred”, or “define” a muscle. For those of you that don’t look at this article post here where I simply explain why that’s not possible, and what muscle tone actually is.
What you will get:
In this post I am going to introduce a training structure and approach for looking ripped and losing fat. With this you will receive a sample 4-6 week workout that can be tailored to your needs whether you are a beginner, intermediate, or advanced. I define everything below.
Things to be aware of:
The major thing to consider is that NO TRAINING PLAN FITS EVERYONE. By now if you have been following my blog you understand this, and that it also goes for nutrition as well. I have put this fat loss training template up just as ONE example structure to follow. The reality is that all exercises, reps and steps have to be greatly personalized and progressed accordingly to the person.
- Nutrition is #1 when it comes to fat loss. There is no fat loss training program that will work without it.
- If you think you can out train a bad diet and still believe in calories in calories out, you are behind time which is why I am here for you. People often forget about the enzymes, micro and macronutrients, fiber, and glycemic index of food. If you eat 100 calories of Gatorade and 100 calories of broccoli trust me, the hormones, metabolic response, and fat gain will be different.
- If you decide to go on caloric deficit nutrition plan to lose fat, you will not be able to add a lot of muscle. Therefore your main goal for your training should be to maintain as much muscle and strength as you can while keeping energy levels up to lose fat at an optimal rate. Nobody wants to be skinny fat I hope.
On a fat loss nutrition plan you won’t have the greatest strength gains in the world either as you don’t have the extra calories to support energy levels in the gym for new muscle growth. Only if you’re a true beginner or haven’t ever properly trained you can disregard that statement.
I repeat, if your goal is fat loss you shouldn’t be trying to pack on the muscle in your “needed” areas or try to balance out or add to your physique cosmetically. This is far from saying heavier resistance training shouldn’t be included though, especially seeing your number one goal should be to hold on to as much muscle and strength as possible to ensure you are lowering your body fat % more consistently. Find out why and a lot more about this reasoning below.
IMPORTANT!
- If you do not have full range of motion, function or adequate mobility to complete any exercises in this program correctly this plan either isn’t for you, you may need to modify the exercises, and or you probably need and individualized plan to correct these limitations.
- If you decide to start this program and train at partial range of motion this plan isn’t for you.
- If you do not perform any warm ups, mobility work, corrective exercises, or make an effort to maintain or increase your ability to perform basic human movements properly this plan isn’t for you.
- I usually include conditioning, a technical or reactive component and or energy systems training in a fat loss structure. Since I am not there with you this can be done on your own. More on this below.
- If you neglect any of my points above you’re only increasing your chances of poor movement patters, mobility, tissue quality and fitness etc. for the future.
- Follow the workout up with recovery and regeneration strategies like self myofascial release or stretching.
Welcome to the Ultimate Fat Loss Training Series #1
To get you familiar with the set up of this program beforehand, the guidelines are listed below. I try to break it down and make it quite simple. Here it is.
- Its a 4-6 week training program
- It can be modified to 2,3 or 4 days a week as you will see I did for you below.
1st Part of the Program: Strength Training
Every persons fat loss program should include strength training if you want to drop your body fat% at an optimal rate. For all of you new to the fitness game, strength training will increase your strength of bones, muscles and connective tissues including your tendons and ligaments. This in turn will prevent injury during your training and activities of daily living etc.
Keeping in some heavy lifting will keep you from looking either like a weak man, and like a skinny fat female.
Of course there are exceptions when this isn’t true, for example when your injured, but what isn’t an exception is thinking you will bulk up. You don’t need to be a bodybuilder, powerlifter, or an elite athlete to lift explosively and heavy. My older clients perform, feel, and look better than most because I have properly structured strength and explosive training in their programs. This is another subject that I will hit on in the future.
When you strength train, your goal is to increase, maintain, or retain as much muscle as possible. Muscle tissue is partly responsible for the number of calories burned while we are resting. As muscle mass increases, our basal metabolic rate increases, making it easier to increase fat burning while at rest or training.
WARNING: The average adult loses about 1/2 pound of muscle per year after the age of 25. Do your strength training and you will notice huge physique and performance changes for the better. Ladies or anyone, you will also decrease your risk of being diagnosed with osteoporosis/penia and many other diseases.
2nd Part of the Program: Metabolic training:
Metabolic training can be described as performing multiple exercises in a row with minimal to no rest. Hopefully these exercises will consist mostly of mulit-joint compound exercises (push ups, squats, lunges, presses) and not too many isolation exercises. (biceps curls, leg extensions etc.) Saying this, a combination of both CAN be used. The main goal here is to stimulate a metabolic response that will increase your caloric expenditure for a greater amount of time following your workout, and will also increase your work capacity.
Even though metabolic training does not maintain or increase strength and definition as much as pure strength training does, it does have a place in this particular program structure. The only thing is if you are constantly training and ONLY performing exercises as a circuit day in and day out, month after month, year after year you are taking away from your true potential of becoming as lean and as strong as you can. Out of all the mistakes I see I had to touch on this point really quick.
People who fall into this category are bootcamper’s, commercial gym trainers and trainees, and people who take your average exercise classes all the time. I am not saying these classes don’t have their time and place, but that plain and simply this one style of training alone is not your best choice. These are usually the people who see no fat loss results, or some at first, but then they plateau very quickly.
Quick note: Like mentioned above. If any of your movements or exercises are dysfunctional you need to fix that before starting this portion. You do not want to build strength and work capacity on top of dysfunction you may not even know you are experiencing. It will only make it worse.
No Traditional Cardio?
You’re probably thinking, how can a program without traditional cardio help me lose weight? Believe it or not, for this program I want to leave it out. If you read all the information above, I hope you can understand cardio is not your best source of fat loss by now anyways and that proper resistance training and nutrition beat it out any day of the week. In sum its pretty overrated. Check out this post here for my take on cardio when first starting a fat loss program.
Besides have you ever seen those people running on the side of the road that just look in pain or like there running weird? How about the ones that run while holding onto the treadmill? I understand to clear the mind cardio is great, but for optimal benefit there are other options that give you the same or an even better caloric deficit effect.
I have noticed that the people who are avid runners have more mobility and stability problems than people who don’t. I have also noticed that they have more aches in pains throughout the body. Both of these problems most likely due to muscle imbalances and or poor running mechanics. My point here is, your desire will to run may soon die if you start to learn the right way to correctly lift weights. I see it happen too much not to say this.
I’m sad to say this but those people you see that do cardio all the time that neglect resistance training are also usually the people who’s bodies never change.You need to work hard and give your body a reason to do so, otherwise it wont. I am one who wants to better to anyone and everyone, its just that America is so uniformed and told false information all the time they are afraid when they hear the truth. Its my job to put out the VALID information, and most of the time people have there doubts at first.
End Quote (I wish I remember who coined this!): “Don’ run to get fit, get fit to run.”
More Cardio Ranting
Look at it this way. I can take ANYONE that will not exercise and have them lose fat consistently through nutrition only. On the other hand if someone were to do the treadmill, bike, or elliptical etc. every day I could NOT. If you’re using cardio to burn fat you’re behind time, the food pyramid is backwards, and if you did the opposite of what Planet Fitness recommends you are in a good starting point to better health and wellness.
I cringe every time I see, hear, or know of how much of this people are doing (Especially women!) to lose fat. The misconception, myths, and fallacies they have built up in their mind is beyond control of fixing through one post which is probably why I reinforce it so much. Cardio is done way too much, and for the wrong reasons.
Also with you women you are prone to losing muscle and it is ridiculously hard for you to gain it yet you are still afraid of putting it on. This makes no sense to someone like me who coaches and uses strength training for clients young to old, beginner to advanced (male or female) to help maintain or INCREASE muscle so MORE body fat can be dropped for longer, more consistently, and quicker.
My point here is women lose muscle very quickly and it is often a struggle to keep it on. The more muscle you LOSE the LESS fat you can drop. Not a good combination. For you guys or gals out there who go to the gym and hop on the treadmill most of the time, especially over strength training, you are halting fat loss and most likely adding to dysfunction.
For fat loss, cardio is not all bad especially when you reach the true point where you may need some of it temporarily. But for beginners or intermediate folks you should not be adding this in, ESPECIALLY if the basis of your program isn’t proper resistance training.
Isolation exercises
I understand a TON of people love isolation exercises (biceps curls and triceps press-downs with the elbows fixed, chest fly’s) where a TON of people are against them. I actually do like them, think they deserve a spot in a training program, and also think they are functional. For example, a biceps curl could be transferred over when using elbow flexion to pick up a bag of groceries or move a TV.
The only thing is, compound multi-joint exercises deserve your attention first the majority of the time. They involve more muscle groups, help you gain more strength, balance, coordination etc., and allow you to burn a lot more calories than things sit ups etc. Saying this, for this program they are either out or added in after you finish the other exercises in the structure listed. Even then I still recommend you use that extra time in the gym working on imbalances.
Below lists the exercise structure, reps, sets, etc. I broke it down into sections so you can see how it is easy to fit into your schedule. I also included sample exercises of each “category” (these are in bold) so you can pick, choose, and modify exercises according to you.
Strength Portion 1
A1) Quad Dominant: (Front Loaded Reverse Lunges) In this particular video I make the exercise more hip/glute dominant as I using a longer step lunge. A shorter step would be more knee dominant.
Reps: 3-5
Work sets: 5
A2) Active recovery: Shoulder Press Push Ups (30 seconds)
With these exercises, perform A1) rest 30 seconds then perform A2) rest 60 seconds then repeat for 5 working sets.
B1) Vertical Push: Standing Overhead Press
Reps: 5-7
Work sets: 5
B2) Active recovery: Stability Ball Leg Curls (30 seconds)
With these exercises, perform B1) rest 30 seconds then perform B2) rest 60 seconds then repeat the B exercises for 5 working sets.
C1) Vertical Pull: Pull up, Assisted Pull up, or Lat Pull-down
Reps: 8-10
Work sets: 5
C1) Active recovery: Single Leg Lowering (12 each side)
With these exercises, perform C1) rest 30 seconds then perform C2) rest 60 seconds then repeat the C exercises for 5 working sets.
That’s it for Strength Day 1. Remember how to structure these into a daily routine is listed below.
Metabolic Training 1
A1) Quad Dominant: Barbell Rear Leg Elevated Split Squats
A2) Horizontal Push: Neutral Grip Alternating Dumbbell Press
A3) Core, carry, or corrective exercise: Zercher Carries (30 seconds)
Perform 12-15 reps of each exercise without rest. Obviously rest as needed but no rest is optimal. Rest 1 minute after all 5 exercises are completed. Repeat for a total of 3-5 rounds.
B1) Hip Dominant: Cable Pull-Through
B2) Horizontal Pull: Inverted Rows w/ pad
B3) Core, carry, or corrective exercise: Barbell Rollouts
Perform 12-15 reps of each exercise without rest. Obviously rest as needed but no rest is optimal. Rest 1 minute after all 5 exercises are completed. Repeat for a total of 3-5 rounds.
Strength Portion 2
A1) Hip Dominant: Conventional Deadlift
Reps: 3-5
Work sets: 5
Rest between sets: 90-180 seconds
Once you finish 5 working sets of exercise A, then move onto B.
B1) Horizontal Push: Flat Bench Press
Reps: 5-7
Work sets: 5
B2) Recoil Medicine Ball Slams (3 reps each side)
With these exercises, perform B1) rest 30 seconds then perform B2) rest 60 seconds then repeat for 5 working sets.
C1) Horizontal Pull: Bent Over Barbell Row
Reps: 8-10
Work sets: 5
C2) Active recovery: Standing Medicine Ball Chest Pass (8 reps)
With these exercises, perform C1) rest 30 seconds then perform C2) rest 60 seconds then repeat for 5 working sets.
Metabolic Training 2
A1) Quad Dominant: Front Loaded Barbell Step Ups
A2) Vertical Pull: X Lat Pull Downs
A3) Core, carry, or corrective exercise: Tall Kneeling Cable Lift
Perform 12-15 reps of each exercise without rest. Obviously rest as needed but no rest is optimal. Rest 1 minute after all 5 exercises are completed. Repeat for a total of 3-5 rounds.
B1) Vertical Push: Seated Unsupported Overhead Barbell Press
B2) Hip Dominant: Hip Bridge Variation
B3) Core, carry, or corrective exercise: Bear Crawls
Perform 12-15 reps of each exercise without rest. Obviously rest as needed but no rest is optimal. Rest 1 minute after all 5 exercises are completed. Repeat for a total of 3-5 rounds.
The Weekly Structure
What I have done below is structured the exercise plan to make it valuable for either a 2, 3, or 4 days a week routine on a 7 day a week schedule. Beginner, intermediate, and advanced are included. These are optimal set ups. But very quickly before you take a look lets classify what stage you are currently at.
IN SHORT…
How to classify yourself is an extremely broad and relative term. For example, I don’t care if you have been lifting for 10 years. If you still lift with poor form and need to learn the lift over you are a beginner. If you can front squat 300lbs but have never performed an Olympic lift, you are a beginner to Oylmpic lifting etc.
Being very general, I’ll define stages according to what I see in the “average population”…
- Beginner: This could be anywhere from less than 3 months to 1 year of consistent proper strength training. You need to worry less about exercises, sets, and reps and need to focus on the execution of good form.You have less experience and body awareness and need to focus on form and the major the compound lifts first before you start metabolic training. Otherwise poor technique will arise, you wont reap the benefits, and you will be building on dysfunction. You will see huge gains very rapidly until you move up a stage or two.
- Intermediate: 1-3 or 4 years of consistent proper strength training. You need to focus on form, and the major the compound lifts before you start metabolic training as well. If your technique is great, you can add in some metabolic training. Whether you are an early, middle, or later intermediate it takes a little more time to see progress than a beginner.
- Advanced: 4 or more years of of consistent proper strength training. Your form is fantastic, you don’t cheat on exercises, and you are very comfortable and well versed in the gym. Strength and metabolic training combined may be one change you need to improve yourself further or break some plateaus.A much harder stage to notice any type of progress at.
- Elite:I am leaving this category out. It is very rare to come across this type of person.
For a 4 days a week routine do this
For this routine, just make sure you take a day off after two consecutive days of workouts if possible. If you cannot do these EXACT days just be sure to complete all 4 days during the week and weekend if needed. This is the optimal set up.
BEGINNER:
Day 1.) Monday: Strength Portion 1
Day 2.) Tuesday: Strength Portion 2
Day 3.) Thursday: Strength Portion 1
Day 4.) Saturday: Strength Portion 2
INTERMEDIATE:
Day 1.) Monday: Strength Portion 1
Day 2.) Tuesday: Metabolic Training 1
Day 3.) Thursday: Strength Portion 2
Day 4.) Saturday: Metabolic Training 2
ADVANCED
Day 1.) Monday: Strength Portion 1/Metabolic Portion 1
Day 2.) Tuesday: Strength Portion 2
Day 3.) Thursday: Strength Portion 1
Day 4.) Saturday: Strength Portion 2/Metabolic Training 2
For a 3 days a week routine do this
The typical Monday, Wednesday, Friday lifters will do fine with this. Remember to try and take off a day between workouts. It doesn’t have to be a MWF schedule.
BEGINNER
Week 1, 3, and 5
Day 1.) Monday: Strength Portion 1
Day 2.) Wednesday: Strength Portion 2
Day 3.) Friday: Strength Portion 1
Week 2, 4 and 6
Day 1.) Monday: Strength Portion 2
Day 2.) Wednesday: Strength Portion 1
Day 3.) Friday: Strength Portion 2
INTERMEDIATE:
Week 1, 3, and 5
Day 1.) Monday: Strength Portion 1
Day 2.) Wednesday: Metabolic Training 1
Day 3.) Friday: Strength Portion 2
Week 2, 4 and 6
Day 1.) Monday: Strength Portion 2
Day 2.) Wednesday: Metabolic Training 2
Day 3.) Friday: Strength Portion 1
ADVANCED
Week 1, 3, and 5
Day 1.) Monday: Strength Portion 1/Metabolic Training 1
Day 2.) Wednesday: Strength Portion 2
Day 3.) Friday: Strength Portion 1/Metabolic Training 2
Week 2, 4 and 6
Day 1.) Monday: Strength Portion 2/Metabolic Training 2
Day 2.) Wednesday: Strength Portion 1
Day 3.) Friday: Strength Portion 2/Metabolic Training 1
For a 2 days a week routine do this
For this routine, an optimal set up would be a couple days between each other. If you can’t do so and are on a really tight schedule that is fine, that’s why it’s for 2 days a week.
BEGINNER & INTERMEDIATE
Day 1.) Monday: Strength Portion 1
Day 2.) Thursday: Strength Portion 2
ADVANCED
Day 1.) Monday: Strength Portion 1/Metabolic Training 1
Day 2.) Thursday: Strength Portion 2/Metabolic Training 2
Repeating myself yet another time, with the second option add in metabolic training when wanted. Just remember always pair metabolic training 1 with strength portion 1, and metabolic portion 2 with strength portion 2. The strength portion is the priority in this program so put all your effort into that first.
*BONUS BURNING
I am not leaving you hanging even with all that talk above about traditional cardio! I personally like the aspect of conditioning and energy system training for fat loss . Resistance training builds strength and so much more while depleting glycogen stores, and then doing conditioning or cardio will aid in some fat loss and cardiovascular gains.
Even though I believe traditional cardio is more boring than bad commercials, requires no thinking, and should be left out in most cases, I understand “normal” people’s strategies who do not train under me. I personally think if you can perform high intensity conditioning drills that make you WORK, that is the way to go. This is what will keep you feeling young, athletic, and energized for much longer.
For the most part, unless your competing for a physique competition, or you just plain enjoy the mindless activity for relaxation I don’t think its needed. I do understand it may have its time and place, but for this set up LEAVE IT OUT unless you really want to do it.
If you are going to perform your conditioning, energy systems training, or even your traditional cardio with this program optimal benefit would be to structure it…
- On off days
- Or After a workout if its not on an “off day”
Onto the conclusion.
Follow this plan day by day to make life “easier” on yourself. If you try to take this all in at once you may be left in a mess. Don’t you notice the same thing happens every year? The winter months are over and people are going to either make that one final push for fat loss to look good, or not do a thing. Everyone wants to look better, and with our society today I can guarantee like I said, that “better” means losing fat. The time is now. Give this training regimen a shot and adjust it to your needs. I am open for a Q and A session as always either here or on facebook.
