When you are striving to make great changes to your body we know it can be confusing because you are being bombarded with conflicting health & fitness information at every turn you look. From fad diets to the latest and greatest workout gizmos, celebrity magazines claiming to drop 3 dress sizes in 2 weeks. What should you do at this point and who should you believe and trust?
We never claimed the system that we prescribe is the only way to get results. In fact we use many approaches when working with our clients.
Here are a few tips from our proven SYSTEM that will help you maximize your body transformation potential.
1. Make sure you have a strong weight training component to your plan.. Implement it for 4 weeks and assess your progress. Your training should always goal oriented and pushing you to progress.
2. Always execute with proper form, use tempo training principles and train whole body over seven days. This will depend on the split you use (3, 4, or 5 day split, or more.)
3. Add a combination of short intense cardio and longer duration cardio which we refer to as steady state cardio . For short intense cardio keep to 16-20 minutes. For longer steady state cardio, 30 minutes is perfect. Adding both types of cardio will effectively hit two different energy systems in the body. But remember, more is NOT better. You don't want to be burning the candle from both ends and have nowhere to go when you hit a plateau. Be smart and add a little at a time. Asses your progress every 2-4 weeks and adjust accordingly.
4. Consume quality protein at every meal.
5. Eat small frequent meals to keep your energy levels up throughout the day, blood sugars stable and avoid over eating. This also helps to establish routines and habits that allow you to successful
7. Add 1-2 handfuls of fibrous veggies to each meal. Listen to your mom! Eat your vegetables.
8. DON'T avoid carbohydrates. Make smart about your carbohydrate choices and timing. Focus on consuming the majority of your carbohydrates around your pre and post workout time or when you are going to be the most busy throughout your day.
9. Get adequate and quality sleep to aid in recovery and growth. If you aren't sleep well or getting enough of it, your results will be effected. During sleep is when our body grows and repairs itself so that the next day you can hit the ground running. If your sleep is suffering, look at getting into a bedtime routine. Seriously, just like when you were a child. Try contrast showers , remove stimulants past 3-4pm. Melatonin is also often used to aid in sleep but please speak to your doctor first before taking it.
9. Please be consistent and be patient! You have to give the plan time to work. Commit to executing the plan for a solid 6-8 weeks minimum and 12 weeks is probably even a better time period to complete before you evaluate. Expect a solid 6 months of great execution for dramatic improvements.
10. Remember that programs are not a one size fits all approach. If you apply something, whether it's increase training, adding in different cardio, changing your nutrition, etc., remember to track the change, give it time, and assess the effects of it. When you changes something in your strategy, try to change one thing at at time, that way you know what change the effect had on your progress. Plus, it also requires less energy than trying to do everything at once.
We wanted to add that in our collective years in the fitness industry (35 years combined to be exact) we see consistently one common thread when it comes to physique transformation. There is a select few people that ever get life long transformation. In others words permanent results. We like to call this the 3% Club. The other 97% quit and give up. Sometimes the 97% achieve results and hit their goal but then their old habits seem to come back and they quickly bounce back to were they began. We wanted to ask you.....which club do you want to be apart of? Now that is worth thinking about.