The thyroid is a seriously misunderstood gland. 

It has a major role in regulating metabolism, so it becomes the scapegoat many times when someone has a hard time losing weight.   

But your thyroid is much more than just a thing that sits in your body and is either working or not / on or off.  It's integrated into your body in a major way. In fact, we have thyroid receptor sites in every cell in our bodies.  

As you've probably guessed, thyroid can be a complicated topic. So today’s blog is here to simplify thyroid function, what you need to know, and how you can support the health of your thyroid.

The thyroid gland is a butterfly-shaped gland that sits in the front of your neck, and it regulates metabolism in response to inputs like stress, activity, and energy availability (food intake and body fat).

Because the thyroid is the main metabolism regulator, if it isn’t healthy you're more likely to struggle with weight gain or loss that is difficult to control.

Your thyroid is always releasing a steady amount of thyroid hormone into the bloodstream. At times it senses it may need to increase output, like when you’re cold, growing, or pregnant. 

When the thyroid is healthy it regulates processes in our body like hormone balance, metabolism, and protein synthesis by producing triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4).  

A region of your brain called the hypothalamus releases thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH), which tells the pituitary gland to release thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), which tells your thyroid how much T4 to produce.    

When T3 and T4 increase, BMR (basal metabolic rate) goes up.  When this happens the heart rate increases, liver and muscle glycogen is used quicker, heart rate is faster, and in children the organs and bones grow. 

Thyroid also indirectly controls testosterone production and ovarian function because the ovarian cells in women and the leydig cells in men also have thyroid receptor cells on them.   

T4 must be converted to T3 (our active thyroid hormone) by enzymatic action.  This happens in the liver and gut and can be influenced by cumulative stress.  Stress can come from any number of sources including lack of sleep, poor nutrition, overtraining, and more.  

Image: Precision Nutrition

If the allostatic load (total of all stressors) is too high, or you are taking certain medications, or have excessive inflammation, this can disrupt the conversion of T4 to T3, which can disrupt the production of testosterone or ovulation.   

Thyroid hormone production controls the amount of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) that is used as fuel. Thyroid hormone can increase or decrease the amount of fuel used based on the amount of output.  

Let’s take a look at two of the most common issues with thyroid health associated with the output of thyroid hormone... 

hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism.

Hypothyroidism means you have an under-active thyroid. 

This condition affects about 5% of Americans (about 10 million people), and is more common in women.  About 1 in 8 women are affected by hypothyroidism. 

Some side effects of hypothyroidism include: 

↦ Weight gain 

↦ Feeling cold

↦ Slow digestion (constipation, bloating)

↦ Dry hair and skin 

↦ Slowed heart rate 

↦ Infertility

And a few of the most common causes of hypothyroidism:

↦ Hashimoto’s thyroiditis - This is an autoimmune condition where your immune system is overactive and attacks your thyroid, which causes it to lower it’s output. 

↦ Hyperthyroid treatment - Treating an overactive thyroid can permanently lower thyroid output, causing hypothyroidism. 

↦ Thyroid removal - If you have to have your entire thyroid gland removed, it will cause hypothyroidism. 

↦ Radiation

↦ Medication

Hyperthyroidism means you have an overactive thyroid. 

With hyperthyroidism you produce too much T4, T3, or both. 

Hyperthyroidism is much less common than hypothyroidism. 

Symptoms of hyperthyroidism include: 

↦ Swollen or enlarged thyroid 

↦ High heart rate 

↦ Unexplained weight loss 

↦ Muscle wasting and weakness 

↦ Anxiety 

↦ Hair loss 

↦ Restlessness 

↦ Difficulty sleeping 

Causes of hypothyroidism include:

↦ Thyroiditis (inflammation of the thyroid) 

↦ Grave’s disease 

↦ Too much iodine

Keeping your thyroid happy and healthy will in turn keep your metabolic rate at a good level, help your organs function properly, keep skin and tissues healthy and put you in an ideal hormonal environment to lose fat and build muscle.

HEALTHY THYROID KEY #1: Manage Stress

As mentioned above, allostatic load can affect conversion of T4 to T3, so keeping stress under control can optimize thyroid output. You can think of stress as draining or charging your battery.  

You can focus on decreasing the drain on your battery (decreasing stress inputs), or charging your battery (stress-relieving activity), or a combination of both. (To our knowledge, Sam Miller deserves credit for the concept of "drains & charges".)

Some examples of ways to charge your battery:

 ↦ Spend time in nature, it has been shown to lower cortisol (stress hormone) levels and can be very relaxing 

↦ Walk; make it a slow relaxed walk, not a power walk.  You can combine this with being in nature and go on a hike.  

↦ Speaking of going on a hike, if you can look at the horizon, that big panoramic view has also been shown to decrease cortisol (whereas looking at a screen seems to have the opposite effect) 

↦ Get a massage 

↦ Deep breathing (i.e. ujjayi breaths/belly breaths) 

↦ Reading or journaling

↦ Having sex 

Some examples of drains to try to decrease: 

↦ Financial worries 

↦ Poor relationship management (fighting with loved ones) 

↦ Divorce 

↦ Stimulant overuse 

↦ Overdoing intense exercise (“HIIT classes”, endurance exercise, excessive cardio) 

↦ A world-wide pandemic

Maybe you can’t do much about some of these, but you can increase your “battery charges” to help even things out, and you can add some things to reduce the load of the stressors.  

Some examples from Precision Nutrition we love from to share with online clients include: 

↦ Talk to a therapist

↦ Limit exposure to news 

↦ Timebox worrying 

↦ Work from home 1x a week 

↦ Ask for help 

↦ Outsource chores 

↦ Timebox social media 

↦ Set boundaries 

↦ Automate less important decisions 

↦ Consider breaking up with toxic chronic stressors 

(Check out PN's "Effects of Stress on the Body" here.)

Using some of these tactics can reduce your allostatic load, and decrease the risk of stress affecting the health of your thyroid.

HEALTHY THYROID KEY #2: Maintain A Healthy Diet

You can eat in a way that supports your thyroid health. 

Like any other gland, organ, or process in your body, it needs the right macro and micronutrients to thrive.  In some cases it can be hard to get enough of these in your diet, and you may consider supplementing.

Some nutrients that are especially important for thyroid health:

↦ Iodine - Iodine is a major building block of both T3 and T4. It isn’t produced by our bodies so it needs to be found in the diet. Many people who switch to a healthy whole-foods diet will also cut out regular salt in favor of sea-salt. This is a fine switch, but it also cuts out iodine. 

You may consider using regular iodized salt on occasion, or use an iodized sea salt or iodized himilayan salt, that way you’re not missing out on iodine.  Another good source of iodine is kelp and seaweed.  Most grocery stores have seaweed snacks that can supply a good amount of iodine. 

↦ Vitamin D - It’s hard to get enough sunshine if you live in a warm climate, let alone if you’re in a northern state or have to work inside.  If getting in the sun for a long stretch of time daily (and in a tank top and shorts or shirtless) isn’t realistic, you may need to supplement with vitamin D.  

Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin, meaning it can accumulate, so it’s a good idea to get a blood test to see where you’re at before you supplement.  

Your daily supplement needs can vary widely from 1000 up to 10000 IUs to get your levels up to where they need to be.

↦ Magnesium - Most people are deficient in magnesium, so a daily magnesium supplement may be helpful. There are many forms of magnesium with varying levels of absorbability, so I recommend magnesium glycinate, or a combination of different forms of magnesium.  

In most instances if you go find magnesium in the grocery store it will be magnesium oxide, which doesn’t have very good absorbability so be aware of the type you’re picking up. 

↦ Zinc - Zinc can be found in meat, shellfish, nuts, seeds, and grains.  This one may be a little easier to get through food. Having enough zinc will not only keep your thyroid healthy but it’s very important for your immune system as well so make sure you’re getting enough. 

↦ Selenium - You can get enough selenium for the day from one brazil nut. It’s also found in fish and meat.

↦ Iron - You can find heme iron in red meat and liver, and non-heme iron in nuts, beans, spinach, and soy. Heme iron is more easily absorbed, so vegans may need to supplement.  

Women who menstruate may also need to supplement since they are bleeding monthly. Iron can be overdosed so be sure to have your blood levels checked to make sure you’re supplementing appropriately. (Also, calcium and tannins can inhibit iron absorption, so having dairy or tea can keep you from absorbing your iron. Vitamin C can enhance absorption so taking them together can help.) 

↦ Vitamin A - Sources of vitamin A include eggs, cod liver oil, orange and yellow produce, and green leafy vegetables. 

↦ Essential Fatty Acids - Unless you’re eating fatty fish a couple times per week you probably need to supplement. Look for a fish oil or cod liver oil (or algae oil for vegans) with >70% of total omega 3s as EPA and DHA.

HEALTHY THYROID KEY #3: Gut, Liver, and Kidney Health

Aside from maintaining an overall healthy diet, you need to make sure you have good gut health and good liver and kidney health.   

The liver and kidneys are sites for T4 to T3 conversion, and T3 sulfate and T3 acetic acid are converted to active T3 by gut bacteria. The good news is, maintaining good gut, liver, and kidney health requires the same principles as a  typical “healthy diet” recommendation.

[*Bonus:  eating this way and supporting your gut health will also benefit your immune system and help prevent the autoimmune condition Hashimoto’s that is the most common cause of hypothyroidism.]

A few ways to support your gut, liver, and kidney health:

↦ Drink plenty of water

↦ Don’t eat anything you have an immune response to 

↦ Eat plenty of whole foods and vegetables  

↦ Eat plenty of fiber; about 10-15g per 1000 calories in your diet 

↦ Avoid eating things that cause excessive bloating 

↦ Don’t eat past fullness 

↦ Avoid alcohol 

↦ Manage stress 

↦ Consider adding bone broth, L-glutamine, ginger, curcumin, and/or fermented foods  

↦ Exercise 3-6x/week

If you have been having issues that cause concern about your thyroid function, you can go to your doctor and request a thyroid panel.   

Sometimes your doctor will be resistant to testing more than TSH because a lot of them like to look at just TSH and deduce any issues from just that value.  

The problem with that is you may have a healthy TSH level, but have a problem converting from T4 to T3, or are converting to reverse T3* (T3 not bound to a protein). You may also have normal TSH but have high thyroid antibodies which indicates Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. If you want a more in depth look you may have to specifically request more labs. 

[*Side Note: rT3 doesn’t carry out the metabolic processes T3 does.  When T4 converts to rT3 instead of T3, it’s usually because of starvation or illness, but some experts have suggested that chronic dieting may cause an increased conversion to rT3 in an effort to conserve energy, making subsequent diets harder.]

Common labs taken to assess thyroid health, along with their abbreviations and normal value ranges are:

While the thyroid is an important regulator of your metabolism, some portion of its health is within your control.  

There are ways to support your thyroid, lessen the likelihood of issues, and optimize your health.  And although some things that aren’t within your control can happen, there are medications to bring your thyroid into healthy function.

Improving your health with lifestyle, training, and good nutrition will help regardless of if you ultimately need medication or not. 

The same things that improve your body composition, gut health, organ function, digestion, and performance will support the health of your thyroid:  whole, unprocessed, nutrient-dense foods in the right proportions. 

If you need guidance getting your diet and training dialed in to optimize your health and body composition, click here now to chat with us about online coaching.

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Odds are, your approach to nutrition is what’s holding you back from building the physique you’ve always wanted… the version of you that both looks aesthetic and can outperform everyone in the gym.

You’re already pushing yourself in the gym, “eating clean”, and maybe even tracking your macros. 

But you still don’t feel any closer to the body you want than you did two years ago.

So what gives?

Truth is, the basics of nutrition are important to master. But they’re far from the only things that you should be focused on to achieve the well-above average results you desire.

So if you’re sick of feeling like you’re guessing with your nutrition… just hoping it’ll yield the specific result you want… it’s time to change.

Today’s blog has the answers you need to finally level up your physique.

Periodization basically means… 

“Planning your training & nutrition to work in a synergistic fashion, with achieving your best possible results in the LONG-TERM in mind.” 

For example, when an online client hops onboard with us, we’ll literally plan out their next six months of training and nutrition, and talk them through the strategy week-by-week.

Periodization requires thinking much deeper than “what do I need to do to get the best results in the next months” (which will often actually be counterproductive to your long-term goals), and asking: “What do I need to do to build my best physique LONG-TERM?” 

Needless to say, this involves both more planning and willingness to set aside what’s immediately gratifying for what will get you closer to the ultimate goals you want. 

But with some thought and planning, it’s enlightening when you see the big picture of what you need to do to make massive progress from the macro perspective…

... you’ll often realize that your approach should be different than if you just asked “what do I need to do to get the best progress in a week?”

Now, we have an entire blog on How To Periodize An Entire Year Of Training & Nutrition For Physique Development, so I won’t go too in-depth here.

But a few of the keys you need to understand to successfully periodize your nutrition:

—> Periodization: Splitting a period of time up into blocks. Each block is focused on creating a different adaptation, but all of the blocks synchronize to push you towards one specific goal (e.g. have visible abs by next summer).

In Online Coaching, we implement nutrition periodization to help you as clients achieve better aesthetics, health, hormones, a faster metabolism, & results you can sustain for a lifetime. 

Over the course of months (or as long as you're coaching with us), we'll cycle you in & out of these different “phases” of nutrition periodization:

- Primer Phases

- Fat Loss Phases

- Diet Breaks 

- Maintenance Phases

- Reverse Diets 

- Building Phases 

- Mini-cuts 

A lot different than the ol’ “diet endlessly until I’m lean” approach, right? It’s also much more effective. 

All of the phases support each other, & synergistically push you closer to your goal body composition. That's periodization.

⠀

—> Over the course of a year, spend more time in the Building &/or Maintenance Phases than in Fat Loss Phases.

Fat loss happens quickly, & doesn't require nearly as much time to achieve the results you want relative to a Building Phase.

Fat Loss Phases are by far the most taxing on you physically, hormonally, & mentally. Stay in a fat loss phase for too long, & adherence slips, your body & mindset feel terrible, you'll struggle & you're stuck spinning your wheels… hence the above recommendation.

Now, of course there are exceptions to this (clients that have a large amount of weight to lose, or have time-sensitive goals), but it's still important to implement Diet Breaks + Reverse Dieting + Maintenance Phases after.

—> To create a functionally strong + aesthetic body, spending time in both Fat Loss AND Building Phases is important.

⠀ 

Most people ONLY focus on the Fat Loss Phases, and wonder why they always feel awful + struggle to achieve the body composition they want.

Your body composition improves in the Building Phases. You uncover the changes you've made in the Fat Loss Phases. 

But really, I can’t recommend enough that you read the periodization blog here.

And those are the keys that you need to understand to truly achieve your fullest physical potential. 

If you need expert guidance through the process of applying these principles to build an individualized, science-based nutrition protocol, click here now to apply for online coaching with our team.

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Truly effective training for hypertrophy & aesthetics requires much more than just "going into the gym and working hard". 

This is especially for individuals like us who...

1. Who have already been training hard for multiple years

2. Have mediocre (at best) genetics

You can achieve the well above-average physique results you want.

But it'll require a well-planned, science-based, and systematic approach to progressing your training.

Today's blog helps you resolve that need, by teaching you the science & application behind the three best training program progression models for hypertrophy & aesthetics.

To implement the progressions in this blog properly, it’s essential that you understand a concept called Reps In Reserve (RIR). 

Your reps in reserve gauges how many reps you have in the tank at the end of a set. 

This is the tool our online clients use to make sure they're using the appropriate amount of effort (neither too much or too little) to keep progressing across a training career.

The beauty of using reps in reserve is, it makes your program much more individualized to how you’re feeling on a daily basis.  

If you’re low on sleep, under-recovered, or experiencing significant life-stress, an exercise will feel harder. 

Rather than grind away at (currently) unsafe weights, reps in reserve naturally regresses and progresses intensity, depending on how you’re feeling.  This helps us autoregulate your training and optimize your results. 

To Gauge Reps In Reserve

Ask yourself at the end of a set: 

“How many more reps could I have squeezed with solid form if I absolutely had to?” 

Your answer is your Reps In Reserve/RIR, or how many reps you feel you had left before failure.

Now that RIR is clear, let's dive into the three training best progression models for hypertrophy (building muscle) and aesthetics.

To my knowledge, credit for this progression model goes to Brian Minor.

As the name states, you're keeping RIR static across a mesocycle.

Applying A Static RIR Linear Progression:

STEP 1: Prescribe a rep range (aim for higher end of rep range) & RIR target for a movement in Week 1 of a mesocycle. Record reps/loads/RIR.

STEP 2: Going forward, add load to the movement weekly (e.g. +10lbs from last week - this will be very dependent on the client & movement), and aim to hit the same RIR target as last week, while keeping reps open-ended.

In practice, with online clients, this could play out something like...

[Week 1] 

↦ Prescription: 3x6-10 @ 2RIR. 

↦ Client #'s: 225 x 10/9/9 @2RIR.

[Week 2] 

↦ Prescription: Add 5lbs from last week, and hit 3 sets @ 2RIR. 

↦ Client #'s: 230 x9/8/6.

[Week 3]

↦ Prescription: Add 5lbs from last week, and hit 3 sets @ 2RIR.  

↦ Client #'s: 235 x8/8/5.

[Week 4] 

↦ Prescription: Add 5lbs from last week, and hit 3 sets @ 2RIR.   

↦ Client #'s: 240 x7/6/5.

In a nutshell, this creates a linear progression like we all learned about in the fantastic Muscle & Strength Pyramids books...

...but helps clients avoid the pitfalls of the traditional linear progression model because it's auto-regulated by RIR instead of specific rep targets.

In a linear progression model, you're tied to hitting a certain load AND rep increase to keep up with the progression. This can often lead to form breakdown in order to try to continue to keep up with the progression... basically, we can't progress linearly every week.

Adding the weekly load increases and RIR targets instead without specific rep targets allows this to be more auto-regulated.

So if you are progressing well (e.g. able to match last weeks reps with an extra 5 lbs), great. If not, you don't have to cut form/overshoot RIR to "keep up".

The downside of this model?

It's very easy to not push yourself hard enough if you're not accurate (or honest) with your RIR.

This is a great progression scheme for online clients chasing both hypertrophy and strength, and works very well for your big compound lifts.

Another model that I first learned about from Brian Minor. So it's no surprise that this progression scheme is similar to model #1: 

We're assigning a rep range & RIR target, and looking to progress reps and/or load with said rep range, while maintaining the same level of effort (RIR).

[Week 1]  

↦ Prescription: 3x8-12 @ 2RIR.  

↦ Client #'s: 155 x 11/9/8.

[Week 2] 
 

↦ Prescription: 3x8-12 @ 2RIR.

↦ Client #'s: 155 x 11/10/8. 

[Week 3] 

↦ Prescription: 3x8-12 @ 2RIR.

↦ Client #'s: 155 x 12/10/9.

[Week 4]  

↦ Prescription: 3x8-12 @ 2RIR.

↦ Client #'s: 165 x 9/155 x 11/9. 

The beauty of this progression model is the way it allows you to auto-regulate your training, and increasing loads/reps as your body adapts to what you've been doing in the past, without being "locked" in a linear progression you can't keep up with.

The biggest downside (as above) is that it's very easy to not push yourself hard enough if you're not accurate (or honest) with your RIR.

To my knowledge, a similar progression style to this was first championed by the folks over at Renaissance Periodization.

Here, you're progressing your (or your client's) RIR target across a mesocycle, usually decreasing weekly.

This will often play out as something like...

[Week 1] 

↦ Prescription: 3x8-12 @ 3RIR.

↦ Client #'s: 175 x 10/9/8.

[Week 2] 

↦ Prescription: 3x8-12 @ 2RIR. 

↦ Client #'s: 175 x 11/10/8.

[Week 3] 

↦ Prescription: 3x8-12 @ 1RIR.  

↦ Client #'s: 175 x 12/10/9.

[Week 4] 

↦ Prescription: 3x8-12 @ 0-1RIR.   

↦ Client #'s: 185 x 10/175 x 11/9.

[Week 5] 

Deload.

The reality of being an intermediate or advanced lifter is, we often need progression schemes built into our program to force us to get more uncomfortable, and keep pushing.

One of the primary benefits of this approach is the fact that since you're decreasing your RIR target weekly, in theory you should be able to push to add a rep or increase load slightly (relative to the same set and exercise) vs. what you did last week.

Using this progression model also removes the common fear of... 

"You're not actually training as hard as you think you are/not hitting your RIR target"

...because adding a rep or a bit of load every week to follow the RIR progression eventually forces you to reach failure (0-1RIR). 

The beauty of this progression scheme is, it ensures you're always pushing for progression. The last few weeks of a mesocycle before a deload will be intense, but the RIR progression allows clients lots of productive time training, without always being so close to failure that fatigue constantly outweighs recovery.

The con with this progression scheme?

It's much too easy to fall into the mindset of always needed to "beat the logbook". 

Because in theory, if we're decreasing proximity to failure on a movement by 1RIR from last week, we should be able to add a bit of load or a rep vs. last week.

Thus, it can be very frustrating to the client to see areas where they can't "beat the logbook".

The thing you need to understand to get the most out of this progression scheme:

You won't always be able to beat the logbook, nor do you always need to for progress. You shouldn't be sacrificing form to add a rep/load. 

Expecting to be able to add a rep or a bit of load every week to a movement for years is expecting to linearly progress. 

If this was the case, we'd all be able to squat 600+ lbs by this point - we just don't see linear progress week to week in the real world.

So understand that you won't see linear progression week-to-week with this model... and that's ok. You don't have to beat the logbook in a training session in order for it to stimulate further growth.

There are many confounding variables outside of just your training that can impact performance (sleep, stress, nutrition, etc.). And the fact that you haven't been able to add load or a rep vs. last week doesn't mean that you didn't make progress in the last week.

As long as you are within your range of needed volume and effort within your training day (and are taking care of the recovery part of things outside of the gym), you're stimulating further muscle building - these muscular adaptations just haven't added up to you being able to do another rep or more load yet. 

So in a nutshell, to successfully implement this progression scheme:

1. Be honest with yourself about your RIR targets. Don't go past the prescribed RIR or sacrifice form in order to "beat the logbook" from last week.

2. Understand that you won't progress linearly week to week on every set of every movement.

3. Fatigue will set in across sets of the same movement. So performance generally will decrease across sets of a movement. 

For example: if you squat 12 reps at 1RIR on your first set, we'd expect you to only do ~8-10 reps with the same weight at 1RIR by the 3rd set.

There is no perfect progression model. 

Each of the above has pros & cons, and by no means should you feel like you can only use one of these progression methods.

For example, with an online client, we might use a static RIR linear progression for their first few compound lifts of the day, and then a more aggressive progressive RIR approach for isolation work.

The key here is effectively walking the line between pushing hard enough to keep building the physique you want, without pushing so hard that you can't effectively recover from your training. 

So each of these models can work very effectively. But understanding context and your (or your clients) individual needs is key.

Ready to stop guessing with your training & nutrition, and start achieving the physique you've always wanted? 

Click here now to apply for online coaching with our team.  

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Before you start dieting, there are three crucial things you need to consider to make you’re able to stick to it for the long haul, and actually achieve the physique you've always been chasing.

(Don't worry, this isn’t one of those “Take our Personality Quiz to Find Your Perfect Diet!” articles.)

When you coach with us, we personalize your nutrition in a number of ways, by taking into account things like...

↦ Diet preferences 

↦ Goals

↦ Habits & lifestyle  

↦ Personality

↦ Training style

...I could go on, but you get it. 

We go to the extreme to customize your nutrition to you, because we know adherence is the most important aspect of a nutrition plan that actually gets you results that stick around for a lifetime.  

So while an unfortunate 95% of dieters will gain the weight back, gaining a deeper understanding of how your personality influences the way you should diet is the antidote.

Today's blog shows you how to design a diet that fits into your lifestyle, and will allow smooth sailing to the body composition you've always wanted.

Let's dive into the 3 unique traits you must consider to create a successful diet.

Figuring out your compliance foods and trigger foods can make your diet easier to adhere to, help you keep calories under control, and make it far more enjoyable. 

Compliance foods are anything that helps you stick to your diet. The base of your diet (about 80-90%) should be made up of nutrient-dense, whole foods. (Think: foods that grew from the earth, or had a face at one point... a.k.a. protein and produce.)  

But I recommend the other 10-20% come from things that you identify as your compliance foods.  

Compliance foods will be different for each person based on your preferences and taste. Most people skew more toward either sweet or salty foods they enjoy, and more toward either carbs or fats.  

Of course, these always taste best mixed together, but think...

“Would I rather have potatoes (carb) or cheese (fat)?"  

"Nuts (fat) or berries (carb)?" 

"Salty or sweet?” 

Whichever of these you have a preference for, you can add that salt, fat, starch, or sugar as a supplement or condiment to your base of protein and produce to help you enjoy them enough that you’re not craving other foods.

Examples of real-life application of this concept:

↦ Cheese on your salad 

↦ Cream and/or sugar in your coffee 

↦ BBQ sauce with your chicken 

↦ Ketchup on your burger patty 

↦ A chocolate square after dinner

You get the picture.  These are things that add enough pleasure to your food that it makes sticking to your planned foods enjoyable, but not so enjoyable that it makes you want to overeat it. 

On the other end of the spectrum, the foods that are so overly palatable that they create an urge to binge or overeat would be your trigger foods. 

These are things that you probably shouldn’t keep around the house, or should likely only keep in pre-portioned containers.

Trigger foods will be different for each person, but they're most commonly foods that mix salt, fat, sugar, and/or starch.  Things like chips, cookies, ice cream, pizza, doughnuts. 

Of course, this doesn’t mean you should never have these foods. 

Keeping your diet flexible is about increasing the ability to enjoy meals with friends and family, and allowing foods that you love. But allowing these hard-to-control foods in your house will make it harder to maintain this lifestyle long-term.  (Check out The Ultimate Guide To Flexible Dieting for more of the lifestyle-based nutrition strategies we use with online clients.)

I would encourage you to make a list of your compliance foods and a list of your trigger foods.

This is something our online clients have had great success with, and a strategy I recommend to most.  

We recommend all of our clients stick to whole, unprocessed foods (a.k.a. “bro foods”) 80-90% of the time.  That other 10-20% is made up of less nutrient dense foods, but the things that make your diet enjoyable.  

I would venture to say almost every lean insta-fitness-model you see eats in a similar way to this.  

You may think they’re eating nothing but dry grilled-chicken salads, but everyone needs just a little something added in to make their way of eating sustainable, and enjoyable enough to stick to for the long term (which is what is required if you want to have a lean physique for the long-haul.)

The concept of classifying yourself as an abstainer or a moderator came from author Gretchen Rubin.  As soon as I read about this concept I started using it to help clients design their environment to help them diet more easily. 

The names are pretty self-explanatory: 

↦ Abstainers do better with abstinence (e.g. mostly avoiding a food).

↦ Moderators are able to moderate more easily (e.g. consistently having a food available to eat In moderation). 

Gretchen Rubin describes them this way:

You’re an abstainer if you… 

– Have trouble stopping something once you’ve started.

– Aren’t tempted by things that you’ve decided are off-limits.

You’re a moderator if you… 

 – Find that occasional indulgence heightens your pleasure and strengthens your resolve.

– Get panicky at the thought of “never” getting or doing something.      

For moderators, having a small piece of chocolate after dinner makes their diet so much more enjoyable so it’s easier to stick to that diet.  They have no problem stopping after one small piece.   

For abstainers, one small chocolate after dinner is just enough to piss them off and make them want 20 chocolates.

You probably already know at this point which type you are, but let’s dive in further. 

Have you ever decided you’re “never having ____ food again!”? 

Whether that food is sugar, alcohol, bread, cheese, or anything else you’ve sworn off... think about your immediate thoughts following that declaration.   

↦ If it is relief, you’re an abstainer.  

↦ If it is anxiety, panic, or craving for that thing, you’re a moderator. 

Another example that may help is Halloween candy (or any other type of food you find yourself with an abundance of at some point.)   

↦ If you’re the person who can have one or two pieces daily and it lasts until Easter, you’re a moderator.  

↦ If you’re the person who either eats 10 pieces at once or throws it all away so you don’t eat 10 pieces at once, you’re an abstainer.

It’s also important to point out that you can be an abstainer with some foods but a moderator with others. 

Using myself as an example, I’m a moderator with most things, but an abstainer with trail mix, and some other salty and sweet mix snacks. You have to find out for yourself what you’re an abstainer with and what you’re a moderate with.  

So based on what we've discussed here, a few strategies we use with online clients to help them design their environments for success based on their types ↴

MODERATERS: 

 ↦ Decide which foods you want to keep around that will help make your diet more enjoyable.

↦ Have small amounts at whatever interval you decide on, and log it in your food log. (Example:  I’ll have one Hershey’s kiss after lunch and one after dinner. Log it in MyFitnessPal before anything else.) 

↦ Don’t attempt any diets that completely cut out any one food or food group. 

ABSTAINERS:

↦ Don’t keep treats in your house, rather go out for them when you want them. 

↦ Plan for less frequent but more substantial treat meals. 

↦ Don’t cut out entire food groups, but design your environment so that the harder-to-control foods aren’t near you at all times.

Considering these qualifiers, which type are you? 

One final exercise I like to have clients use to find their moderation foods, and their abstainer foods is creating a RED-YELLOW-GREEN LIST. 

STEP 1: I’ll have a client write down 3 columns with the titles Red, Yellow, and Green.   

STEP 2: Under the “red” column they’ll write down all foods they...

a.) Have a hard time eating small portions of 

b.) Don't find digest well 

c.) Don’t think will take them closer to their goals 

d.) Find makes them feel worse after eating 

STEP 3: Under the “green” column, they’ll write down all foods they...

a.) Can have in small portions without craving more

b.) Digest really well 

c.) Think will take them closer to their goals

d.) Feel great after eating

e.) Love the taste of 

STEP 4: Under the “yellow” column, they'll write down foods that fall somewhere in between. These may cause a small amount of bloat but are healthy (brussel sprouts are here for me), or they can have a small portion and leave the rest but it’s not taking them closer to their goals. 

With your Green foods - I recommend buying these each grocery trip, keeping them stocked in your fridge and pantry at all times, and creating meals centered around these. 

With your Yellow foods - I recommend buying these in pre-portioned packages, keeping them in opaque containers or out of sight in the pantry, or just buying on occasion. 

With you Red foods - I recommend not keeping these in the house.  These are things that are better off kept as a treat when going out specifically for that food.  (Example: I love ice cream, but never keep it at home.  We’ll go out and get a scoop when we want it together as a family.)     

This has worked really well for a lot of clients - one in particular that comes to mind that dropped 12 pounds in 12 weeks JUST by doing this and focusing on more protein.

I always preach that motivation will come and go, it’s more of an emotion than a thing you can acquire. 

But you can determine how aggressive you should be with your deficit based on previous experience.   

If you have a specific performance goal or aesthetic goals, like a powerlifting competition or a physique show, those should take precedence over your motivation type, but if you don't fall into these categories, use it to your advantage. 

↦ If you’ve tried the longer slower diets in the past and you get demotivated by slow progress, you may need a bigger deficit to start seeing some quick progress.

If you're someone who is motivated by quick progress and doesn’t need a lifestyle approach to work around social events and the like, you might start your diet out at a 20-30% deficit.   

It will be a really aggressive diet and will be harder to stick to, but you’ll see quick progress and can get in and out of the diet faster. 

Someone using this approach whose maintenance calories are around 2000kcal/day would start out anywhere from 1400-1600kcal/day using this approach.

Going back to the other personality traits, this is an approach where you may have to cut out even some of your compliance foods because there just isn’t enough wiggle room in your macros for them.  You may also need to use more of an abstainer approach, even if it’s against your nature.

↦ On the other hand, if you’ve tried aggressive diets and get burned out by the steep deficit, you may need a longer slower approach. This person would start out in a 10-20% deficit.

Someone using this approach whose maintenance calories are around 2000kcal/day would start out anywhere from 1600-1800 kcal/day using this approach.

Someone who wants to use a slower cutting approach will be able to keep more compliance foods in their diet, and can work around more social events, but will need to have more patience to see slower progress. 

Too many people try to shoehorn themselves into a diet that doesn’t fit their personality or their lifestyle (which is exactly why so many diets fail).  

A moderator probably shouldn’t try Whole30.  

Someone whose daily latte brings them joy probably shouldn’t cut out dairy or coffee. 

This is a factor we take into account with every client.  

Because some people will need that extra flexibility in their diet for lots of weddings, parties, or weekend drinks.  

But others will need to see the scale drop quickly for a bit in order to really get excited about the process. 

There are no right or wrong answers here, only different understandings about your to use to your advantage in your diet.  

You have to decide for yourself (or with the help of your coach) how to balance these and individualize these into the diet that fits you best.  

If you're sick of guessing when it comes to your nutrition, and are ready to start the process of truly achieving your best physique ever, click here now to apply for online coaching with our team.  

We apply proven, science-backed nutrition & training methods through individualized coaching to help you get the body you want, and teach you on how to keep it for a lifetime.

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Specific results NEVER happen without a specific plan. 

Despite all of the hard work you’ve put into the gym and the kitchen over the last few years, you still don’t have the physique you want (you might even feel like your progress has been stagnant for a while now).

And there’s one reason for this:

EFFORT alone isn’t enough (we both know you work your ass off when you have a goal - effort isn’t the missing piece for you in most areas of your life). 

You’re missing the planning, periodization, structure, and specificity (with both your training and nutrition) needed to finally achieve your best physique ever. 

2021 will be the year you change that… if you’re willing to take a more structured, evidence-based approach to transforming your body, and commit to learning how to properly plan your training & nutrition across the year. 

This time next year, you could have completely transformed your body… or you could be stuck in the same rut you’re in now. 

Choice is yours. 

So if you’re ready to finally achieve the level of aesthetics AND performance you’ve always wanted, today’s blog is your complete guide to planning out your year month-by-month for the ultimate physique transformation.

NUTRITION STRATEGY: BUILDING

We’re starting Month 1 off embracing one simple truth… most people haven’t spent enough time focusing on fueling their performance and building muscle. 

Instead, you’ve likely spent most of your training career dieting and trying to get leaner. 

And while your goal physique likely does entail you being a bit leaner than you are currently, we’re actually going to start this year off focusing on building rather than losing. 

This might sound counterintuitive at first, but really time dedicated to building is likely exactly what you’re missing. 

Because most men & women alike who start online coaching with us don’t yet have the amount of lean muscle needed to achieve the physiques they want. 

And for someone who’s been training as consistently as you have for 2+ years, you likely won’t be able to add much muscle without going through a proper building phase. 

Basically, what we’re doing now - although not instantly gratifying like starting with a fat loss phase would be - is going to set you up to have a much better body composition later in the year (and for the rest of your life). 

This is periodization in a nutshell - stepping away from the micro view of “what do I need to do to achieve the best physique NOW?”... which is the mistake most new online clients were making before working with us... and getting you to consider the macro view of “what does my next year(s) need to look like to achieve my greatest potential?”

Building Phase Guidelines

→ Rate Of Gain: Aim to gain .25-.5% of body weight every two weeks. 

Building muscle is a very slow process, and you just don't need to eat that many calories over your maintenance intake to build muscle.  

We also know that you can build muscle without eating in a calorie surplus (eating more calories than you're burning), but eating a bit above your maintenance intake creates an environment that's more optimal for building lean muscle.  

Unlike most body recomposition scenarios (where you're losing fat and building muscle simultaneously), here we're actively pushing you to slowly gain weight. 

We know that you're not in a calorie deficit, and therefore not losing fat. So if you're not gaining weight through the building phase, you're simply not building muscle.  

Again, seeing the scale increase is a scary thing for most people at first. But this is 100% necessary to continue to improve your body composition as a more intermediate to advanced trainee. 

Let's say last time you got super lean you were ~10% body fat at 170lbs. If the next time you get near 10% body fat, you again weigh 170lbs... we know that you didn't add much (if any muscle) since last time you got this lean - your body composition will be VERY similar. 

But, if next time you're near ~10% you weigh 180lbs, we know you have more lean muscle, and therefore a much better body composition.

Getting heavier at any given body fat percentage over time is a must to actually continue to progress your physique over time. Even when you're super lean, being heavier than you were last time you were here is good. 

→ Making Macro Adjustments 

You undoubtedly know at least one person who seems to eat whatever they want without gaining weight. Maybe you are that person. 

In reality, people like this either:

Haven’t accurately tracked their calorie intake before. They likely eat a lot - at times - and then subconsciously adapt by going long periods of time without eating. 

This is extremely common with new online clients that claim they can't build muscle or add weight.  

See, in response to overfeeding (eating in a calorie surplus), some people will naturally (without even being conscious of it) increase NEAT. This increases your daily calories burned, and in turn prevents weight gain, despite the fact that you're eating more. 

Now, how a clients metabolism reacts to a calorie surplus is highly individual (this is the beauty of having a coach - to see trends and adjust the plan specifically to you). 

So, if you’re NOT seeing increases in weight, body measurements (outside of the belly measurements), or strength in the gym after two week, it’s time to increase calories.

Increase your total calorie intake by 5% (via carbs). 

Continue this weekly until you're gaining in the recommended range. 

If you’re surpassing the recommend rate of gain for 2+ weeks, you’re likely adding unwanted excess fat.

Decrease calories by 5% (pulling from carbs). 

Repeat this weekly until your rate of gain falls back in the recommended range. 

Now, realize that like all things nutrition and training, this should be individualized & context dependent. 

I’m speaking to our most common new client with this recommendation (you’ve already trained for a good amount of time, and already what most would consider “lean”. But you want well above-average results.) 

If you’re not sure that the above applies to you, I highly recommend you check out The Definitive Guide To Periodizing Nutrition before applying the strategies in this blog.  

Similarly, if you’re not sure how to set your macros for a building phase, I would also recommend you check out The Definitive Guide To Periodizing Nutrition.  

TRAINING STRATEGY: HYPERTROPHY

As discussed, the missing piece from the physique most women & men want is taking the time to build a bit more muscle.  

Now, just eating the right way in itself won’t build muscle.

A smart, science-based training program like our online clients follow is what actually provides your body with the stimulus for building muscle. 

So your training is just as important as your nutrition here - if this isn’t on point, you’ll continue to spin your wheels. 

Since our #1 outcome here is building muscle over the first few months of the year, the way you’re training should be specific to that target outcome. So your first few months of training will be geared specifically towards building muscle (a.k.a. hypertrophy). 

Hypertrophy Training Guidelines

Most of our clients are chasing (in order of importance): 

1. Aesthetics  

2. Performance  

Basically, aesthetics and improving your physical appearance are your #1 goal... but you also want to feel your performance in your training go to a new level. (Think: the way you would imagine a high level Crossfit competitor looks & feels… but with a smarter training program.) 

You’re in the same boat as 90% of the online clients we work with. Here’s a glimpse at how we build out training programs for clients in your shoes: 

→ Training Split 

The keys to choosing the most effective training split for you: 

1. It needs to provide adequate volume (number of hard sets) to stimulate the muscle building effect you’re chasing. 

2. It needs to allow for you to train every major muscle group/movement pattern 2x/week+ (proven by science to be superior for muscle growth).

3. It needs to allow you to train in a manner that’s fun and engaging for your (underrated aspect of program design). 

 *Beginner-Intermediate - 4x/week Upper/Lower Split or Push/Pull/Push/Pull split 

For most individuals who have been following a smart, science-based training program for <1.5 years, both of these splits allow plenty of training volume to continue to progress. 

If you’re not new to the gym... but new to following an evidence-based training program like we build for our online clients, this is still an effective place to start. 

 *Intermediates - 5x/Week Upper/Lower/Upper/Lower/Upper or Lower/Upper/Lower/Upper/Lower or Upper/Lower/Push/Pull/Lower

You’ve been following a smart, science-based training program for ~1-2 years (which likely means you’ve already been following one of the 4x/week splits we mentioned earlier), but are starting to see progress slow considerably. 

Over time, your volume needs (again, number of hard sets) to elicit muscle growth rise - so most will need to add a training day eventually to keep progressing towards their goal physique. 

For clients in your position, a 5x/week training split is typically the best option.

There’s lots of room here for customization as well:

- For more upper body focus, go with an Upper/Lower/Upper/Lower or Upper/Lower/Push/Pull/Lower Split.   

- For more Lower body focus, run a Lower/Upper/Lower/Upper/Lower split 

*Intermediate-Advanced - 6x/Week Push/Pull/Lower/Push/Pull/Lower or Upper/Lower/Upper/Lower/Upper/Lower 

Been following a smart, science-based program for ~2-3 years or more now, and have also been taking a relatively intelligent approach to your nutrition? 

You can likely make great gains over the next few months following a 6x/week split.  

- My personal favorite training split is the Push/Pull/Lower/Push/Pull/Lower - it allows for 2x/week frequency, lots of volume, and isn’t excessively draining. 

- The Upper/Lower/Upper/Lower/Upper/Lower split is also very effective, as it allows you to rack up A LOT of volume per body part weekly - this can be a good thing OR a bad thing, as it can be extremely taxing. 

Now, a few things you need to understand about training 6x/week: 

1. You don’t have to train 6x/week to make great progress… even if you’ve been training a considerable amount of time. If this just isn’t realistic for the rest of your life, you can still make excellent progress following a 4x/week or 5x/week split. 

2. Even if you’ve been training a good amount of time, one of these higher volume splits might not be needed/the best fit for you. A big part of what we focus on within online coaching is teaching clients how to master execution and get MORE out of every single set… so often, the same amount of volume you’ve been doing creates more stimulus than ever before.

If your nutrition and/or recovery haven’t been on point much during your training career, you likely don’t need to train 6x/week to see good progress. 

3. We can make a major difference by improving how you fuel your training and recovery… until we have these mastered, more training won’t create better results. 

Number of training days is really just a tool we use to regulate training volume.

IF you have solid effort and execution of your movements within your training (it’s a big if), you’ll likely need to adjust training volume over time to maximize your results.

⠀ 

So how much volume should YOU be doing?

⠀ 

Like all things training and nutrition, it’s very individual to you. Personally, I like to assess more advanced client’s training performance, recovery, biofeedback, and progress, and adjust volume (or not) from there.

⠀ 

But, some smart guidelines to follow....

Signs You're At Or Near Your Ideal Volume (Number Of Hard Sets): 

- Your strength is consistently increasing (you're usually able to add a rep or a bit of load vs. last week's performance on the same movement).

- You're consistently a bit (but not excessively) sore.

- You're getting good pumps.

Signs You're Doing Too Much Volume:

- You feel beat up/run down.

- Motivation to train is low.

- Strength is stagnant or decreasing.

- No pumps.

(It's key to understand context here - sometimes this is something we'll do intentionally the last 1-2 weeks before a deload.)

Signs It's Time To Add More Volume

- Recovery is good. 

- Strength is stagnating.

- You're rarely sore.

- No pumps.

→ Exercise Selection 

When it comes to building, some exercises are inherently better than others. 

So in order for you to get the most out of your time building at the start of the year, understanding how to choose the smartest exercises for hypertrophy is a must. 

Here are the guidelines we use when programming for online clients: 

1. Target muscle group is the rate limiter - When the goal is building lean muscle, you want the "rate limiter" (the thing that forces you to eventually stop a movement) to be the specific muscle group(s) you're targeting.  

2. Compoundedness - Basically, compoundedness means that a movement works multiple muscle groups & joints simultaneously... A.K.A. compound movements.  

Compoundedness is important because it leads to more "bang for your buck" & efficiency when it comes to building muscle. 

Now, this isn't to say that you shouldn't do isolation exercises. But most of us simply don't have the time required to build the body composition we want through a program composed purely of isolation work. 

3. Range of motion - When squatting, the more knee flexion (bending at the knee) you can achieve on the way down, the more quad stimulus you'll get from every single rep, because your quads are being forced to work through a greater range of motion. 

So a lighter squat well below parallel would stimulate more muscle growth in your quads than a heavier box squat, due to the greater range of motion/knee flexion. 

As an added bonus, a movement with a greater range of motion will also be less taxing on your joints and nervous system, because you're using a lighter load (but achieving the same or better stimulus). 

Thus, the "stimulus-to-fatigue" ratio of a movement with a larger range of motion is better. 

4. Eccentric Component - We know that muscle damage has a strong correlation with muscle growth. We also know that the eccentric (a.k.a. lowering) portion of a movement is where a large degree of muscle damage is happening. 

So movements without a controlled eccentric will be much less conducive to muscle growth. 

It's smart to focus on controlling the eccentric of each rep for 2-4 seconds.  

5. Ability to overload - Finally, we know that the ability to progressively increase load on a movement over a long period of time is essential to stimulating continuous growth from said movement.

→ Rep Ranges 

Since the goal here is building, you’ll want to train in the 5-30 rep range.

Studies seem to show that as long as you’re training relatively close to failure (think: 3 reps or less in the tank at the end of a set), you’ll stimulate similar muscle growth. 

Dipping below this mark likely means you won’t be providing adequate tension per set (so you’d need to do more sets to create the same amount of growth). 

Generally, focus on progressing your compound movements in the 5-15 rep range, isolation lifts in the 10-30 range.

→ Progression Schemes

Utilizing a smart progression scheme is essential to actually making progress in your training. Here's one of our favorite progression models to use for intermediate to advanced trainees:

Ok, I know we covered a lot here… but this is essential to setting yourself up for years worth of successful physique transformation, so take time to absorb the above. We’ll be moving faster from here on out.

NUTRITION STRATEGY: BUILDING

You’re continuing to follow the nutrition guidelines laid out above.

By this point, you should have gained ~.5-1% of your body weight.

Remember, since we don’t want you in a calorie deficit right now (eating fewer calories than you’re burning), most should be gaining a bit of weight in order to be gaining muscle.

So don’t stress the scale increasing right now… this is exactly what’s going to make your physique this year above and beyond anything that you’ve accomplished before. 

By this point, you should already be noticing the difference your nutrition is making in your training - you’re feeling better fueled, more motivated to train, and making quicker progress in the gym than you have in quite some time. 

A few important nutrition considerations for Month 2:

→ Hunger should be low - In our online clients metrics trackers, we’re looking for hunger to be a 2 or less. Muscle is a very "calorically expensive" tissue - it takes a lot of calories for your body to build & maintain. 

So if you're hungry often, your body will be sensing that calories are not abundant. When this is the case, it would make sense for your body to prioritize building something that takes a large chunk of calories, as calories are already sparse. 

So we consistently want to see hunger in the 1's & 2's during a building phase like this. If hunger is high, I would first ensure that you’re eating 80-90% whole foods (these will keep you full much longer than their highly processed counterparts). 

From there, if you’re falling within the desired rate of gain, I would increase macros. 

→ Training performance & recovery should be high - Training performance is a key part of actually triggering the results you want in the building phase. 

Recovery is how you cement those results into tangible changes in your physique. If you’re feeling slugging going into your training or under-recovered: 

- Ensure nutrient timing is on point (check out this blog for our nutrient timing recommendations).  

- Ensure you’re sleeping 7+ hours per night. 

- Ensure you’re falling in the desired rate of gain - if not, increase calories. 

- Ensure you’re taking a deload every 4-6 weeks. 

If all of the above are on point and performance and recovery STILL aren’t solid, you likely need to adjust training volume (again, your volume needs for optimal results are very individual, and part of why we monitor this with online clients constantly.)

TRAINING STRATEGY: HYPERTROPHY

Your body is an adaptation machine... it’s extremely skilled at “getting used to” whatever you throw at it. 

Specific to your current goals in the building phase, this means that the same amount of training volume you used last month won’t stimulate quite as much in terms of building as it did a month ago. 

So to counter this, we typically "layer on volume" (a term I’m borrowing from Steve Hall) monthly. 

[*NOTE: This strategy is definitely speaking to the more intermediate-advanced crowd. Beginners, you don’t need to stress this much.] 

Here’s what I mean...

Let’s say that through your first mesocycle (a.k.a. training phase), you were doing sets of 7-10 Dumbbell Bent Over Rows. Maybe 3 sets, maybe 5 sets, depending on your needs.

In the second mesocycle, we might add in something called a "down set" to slightly increase volume. 

Here’s how implementing down sets looks in the Truecoach app our online clients use: 

So basically, you’re doing a few “heavier” sets, followed by “lighter” down sets.  

Now, we’ve been defining volume as “number of hard sets”, but the most technical definition is “Sets X Reps X Weight”. So generally, a down set will lead to slightly higher rep ranges and more training volume than the heavier set.  

By implementing more down sets as your building phase goes on, we’re effectively “layering on volume” without having to dramatically increase (if at all) the number of hard sets you’re doing/time in the gym. 

As an added benefit, working with these slightly lighter loads will be less taxing on your joints, and prevent you from getting beat up as the building phase progresses.

NUTRITION STRATEGY: BUILDING

Here, you’re continuing to do more of what’s already working.

Be sure that you’re seeing the desired rate of gain. 

The reality is, you likely will feel a bit fluffy by this point. 

The important thing to remember here is that the building phase is essential to reaching your goal result. 

We always make clear to our clients the concept that muscle gain happens very slowly, whereas fat loss happens quickly.  

Basically, gaining 1-2lbs of muscle in a month is GREAT progress. But with a smart diet, you can lose 1-2lbs of fat in a single week. 

So while you can (and will) lose any extra bit of fat you’ve gained quickly in the fat loss phase, you can’t go back and make up for months of NO PROGRESS building, due to under-fueling your body during the building phase.

TRAINING STRATEGY: HYPERTROPHY

By this point, you’ll be seeing considerable progress on all of your compound lifts and your strength in the 5-30 rep range (which is indicative that you’ve built a good amount of muscle already).  

Similar to last month, when you start your third mesocycle/training phase (these don’t always align perfectly with the calendar month, as most of our client’s mesocycles last 5-6 weeks when including a deload), slightly increasing the number of down sets relative to your second mesocycle would be smart to continue to layer on volume.

NUTRITION STRATEGY: BUILDING

This is likely your final month of building.  

The reality is, for many of you this will be the first time that both your nutrition and training have been working in sync to propel you towards a specific goal (building). 

So, you’ve also likely seen much quicker progress at this point than ever before - this is extremely common with new online clients, as most underestimate how much a smart, individualized approach to nutrition can improve their training (and results).  

We’ve taken the first four months of the year to capitalize on the fact that you haven’t had both training & nutrition perfectly in-sync before, and thus are capable of building quicker than you’d expect.  

By the end of month four, you should have added a good bit of muscle to your frame, which will result in a much improved physique as you get leaner over the next few months. 

But for now, it’s time to finish the building phase strong in month four. The same guidelines as before apply.  

[*IMPORTANT NOTE: Again, this process doesn’t always align perfectly with the calendar months, and the more advanced you are, the slower building will typically be. For a more advanced client following 6 week mesocycles/training phases, the end of this “4 month mark”  would actually be reached 24 weeks into the process.]

TRAINING STRATEGY: METABOLITE

Over the last three mesocycles, you’ve been layering on more and more volume… but this can’t keep increasing linearly forever. 

So your training volume “peaks” (relative to your recent training history) during this metabolite phase.

We’re adding in more down sets, and often slightly decreasing the % of load used in down sets (i.e. decrease by 15% instead of 10%).  

To add to this, we’re implementing more intensification techniques - things like… 

→ Supersets: Two movements done back to back with little/no rest. In the metabolite phase, we’re most often using this in a “pre-exhaust” fashion to target a specific muscle group (I.e. Leg Extensions x15-20 supersetted with Walking Lunges x15-20). 

→ Dropsets: Taking a set to/near failure, decreasing the load, and immediately repping out more. This can also be done by moving from a mechanically weaker to stronger position as a set goes on. 

For example:

Here, adjusting the bench moves you from a weaker to stronger position as fatigue sets in, allowing you to extend the set for an absolutely brutal training effect. 

→ Myo-Reps: Start by taking a weight to or very near failure in the 9-20 rep range. Rest 3-5 breaths, before hitting 3-5 more reps. Repeat in this fashion for 3-5 mini-sets of 3-5 reps. 

...lots of different techniques we implement in a metabolite phase, but you get the gist of it. 

Now, we could define “metabolic stress” as the burning feeling you get when you do an intense set. 

Basically, metabolites are accumulating in your muscle cells, leading to cell swelling, hormonal changes, and a variety of other factors that are thought to influence muscle growth. 

So obviously in the metabolite phase, this metabolic stress is what you’re chasing... but realize that your entire training program should NOT be supersets, downsets, and myo-reps. 

Continue to progress your compound lifts with top sets and down sets. After training your primarily lifts, choose 1-2 muscle groups for training day to implement metabolite techniques with. 

NUTRITION STRATEGY: MAINTENANCE

For the next month, you’re simply sitting at maintenance (a.k.a. you’re not trying to lose or gain weight).  

We typically will put a maintenance phase at the end of an extended building phase or fat loss phase for an online client.

The reasoning behind this is - your body basically needs time to cement all of the changes you’ve made as it’s new normal (be that additional muscle tissue, or a decrease in fat mass). 

From a habit perspective, this also gives you time to ensure that you know exactly what your lifestyle needs to look like to maintain your result. 

We're looking for biofeedback to stay in a good place, weight & body measurements to stay stable. 

In a nutshell, we're taking the time to establish this as your body's new settling point before pushing for any further changes.

TRAINING STRATEGY: STRENGTH/RESENSITIZATION

As we’ve talked about, your volume needs to elicit considerable progress increase over time, as your body adapts to your current amount of training volume. 

The problem here? 

As we increase training volume over time (given intensity is adequate), our body adapts more and more to this style of training. This means we need to keep increasing volume to further push growth. 

Another interesting adaption is your muscle fibers.

Your muscles are composed of primarily two fiber types: 

→ Type 1 “slow twitch” fibers - These fibers are geared for endurance. They fatigue slowly, but also are poor at creating explosive movement, and have very limited potential for muscle growth. 

→ Type 2 “fast twitch” fibers - These fibers are geared to be explosive. They fatigue much quicker than Type 1 fibers, but also have a much greater capacity for growth. 

Whereas it used to be thought that muscle fibers were stuck as either slow twitch or fast twitch, it's now been shown that your muscles sit somewhere on a spectrum of slow to fast, and move more towards one of the other, depending on your lifestyle and how you train. 

When we’re training for hypertrophy, which is generally includes lots of relatively higher rep (10+) work,  it’s thought that our muscle fibers actually shift more towards “slow twitch” characteristics, as an adaptation to the fact that you’re hitting your body with primarily higher rep sets, where endurance can become more of a priority than being explosive. 

Since slow twitch fibers have a smaller capacity for growth, a shift towards slow-twitch is obviously not conducive to your muscle growth.

This is where Strength Phases or Resensitization Phases come into play.

The goal here is shifting your focus away from building for a period of time, in order to re-sensitize your muscles to lower training volumes. This decreases your “volume needs” in the future, and will allow you to make more progress with lower training volumes.

(Again, Steve Hall and the team at Revive Stronger deserve the credit for pioneering the idea of "Resensitization Phases". They have an excellent ebook on the topic here.) 

Implementation:  

→ Reps - 4-8. 

As we'll discuss shortly, the goal in the resensitization phase is to decrease volume, and increase intensity. The lower rep ranges are more conducive to this. 

→ Sets - Decrease by ~40% of your minimum effective volume (the minimum number of hard sets you can grow on) per muscle group. 

For example, if you could start seeing glute gains at 15 hard sets per week, you would decrease to 9. 

→ Intensity (Meaning Load) - Should be higher here. I like to use the resensitization phase as a “Strength Phase”. The increased load per set here helps compensate for the decrease in volume. 

It's also smart to use a progression scheme that brings your sets closer to failure (increasing intensity) over the course of 3-4 weeks, before deloading. But generally, you'll be training with anywhere from 3 to 1 reps in the tank. 

→ Length - 3-4 week blocks.  

Post resensitization phase, you can expect to come back to hypertrophy-focused training with increased sensitivity to training volume, better pumps, and overall quicker progress. 

Timing this during a nutritional maintenance phase makes most sense, because...

a.) Calorie needs won’t be as high due to the lower training volumes, so this will prevent excess fat gain. 

And...

b.) Calories won’t be as low as in the (upcoming) fat loss phase, but volume will be much lower during this phase than before. Since it’s thought that volume needs are potentially slightly higher during longer fat loss phases, pairing the lower volume strength phase with maintenance calories is smart to retain all of the progress you’ve made the last few months.

NUTRITION STRATEGY: FAT LOSS

Now it’s time to uncover all of the changes you’ve made to your physique over the last 5 months. 

By being patient, and committing to long-term periodization, you’ve set yourself up for a dramatically improved physique.

You’ve built a good amount of muscle and likely added a bit of fluff. 

Now, we’re going to be cutting all of the fat from your frame and ideally continuing to build a bit of muscle (although at a slower rate), or at the very least maintaining what you’ve currently built. 

When the fat loss phase is over, you’ll be as lean/leaner the ever before, with the additional muscle on your frame from your time building. This is the recipe for a dramatically improved physique.

Fat Loss Phase Guidelines

→ Rate Of Loss -  Within a fat loss phase, we'll typically be decreasing or increasing your macros based on your rate of loss. Really, there are tons of variables here... but generally, most will do best aiming to lose .5-1% of body weight per week.  

→ Monitoring Biofeedback - When you’re in a Fat Loss Phase, keep a close eye on your biofeedback. This is one of the main metrics I use to measure how close to a "fat loss wall" you are/how soon we need to transition you to the next phase of nutrition periodization.  

Some signs it’s almost time to transition out of a Fat Loss Phase include multiple weeks of… 

1. High hunger levels. Some hunger is normal for dieting, and a good sign that you’re eating fewer calories than you’re burning. That said, we usually want this to be somewhere on a 2.5-3.5 (scale of 1-5). 

Once clients get into the 4-5 range consistently, we know it’s probably time to change phases, as constantly high hunger makes the diet hard to adhere to for most. 

That said, context is super important here. If you're already pretty lean and trying to get leaner... it's likely that you'll just have to deal with a good amount of hunger. That's part of pushing your body below a "comfortable" level of body fat. 

2. High cravings. Again, some cravings are normal in a Fat Loss Phase. But when these are consistently high, adherence and results starts to suffer. 

3. Low motivation. When clients start ranking their motivation level 1-3, I know that they’re starting to accumulate a lot of diet fatigue. 

4. Poor mood. Similar to motivation, when a client consistently starts to rank their mood poorly in their biofeedback tracker, we know that the diet is starting to take its psychological toll, and it’s near time to transition out. 

TRAINING STRATEGY: PERFORMANCE HYPERTROPHY

When it comes to training, you really have two options: 

1. You can essentially “start the process over” that we broke down in the first 5 months, choosing new exercises that you want to progress (or the same, if they haven’t gotten stale). 

2. Continue to follow a similar style of training, but with a few tweaks to make it more of a "performance hypertrophy" approach. 

In this “performance hypertrophy” style of training, we’re following very similar guidelines as far as exercise selection, rep ranges, and progression schemes go, but we’re also implementing more strategic conditioning.

In a nutshell, this means smart energy systems training that will both help push your fat loss along quicker and help ramp up your performance. 

This can take on multiple forms for clients: 

*An entire day devoted to conditioning. Something like...

Rowing Machine 

- Week 1: 5x1000 @ 2:00/500m pace (2 mins rest) 

- Week 2: 5x1200m @ 2:00/500m pace (2 mins rest) 

- Week 3: 4x1500m @ 2:00/500m pace (2 mins rest) 

- Week 4: 3x2000m @ 2:00/500m pace (2 mins rest)

*Training day finishers that are effective for both building muscle and conditioning. Like... 

AMRAP (As Many Rounds As Possible) 

- Week 1: 5 mins of... Rowing Machine x10 Cals / Push-Up x10-20 / Farmer's Walk x50m  

- Week 2: 6 mins of... Rowing Machine x10 Cals / Push-Up x10-20 / Farmer's Walk x50m  

- Week 3: 7 mins of... Rowing Machine x10 Cals / Push-Up x10-20 / Farmer's Walk x50m  

- Week 4: 8 mins of... Rowing Machine x10 Cals / Push-Up x10-20 / Farmer's Walk x50m  

*Using more tools like supersets and EMOMS in a smart manner. Something like... 

Alternate movements every minute, on the minute (EMOM) for 8 mins:

- DB Bent Row x8-12

- DB Deficit Push-Up x10-15

Basically, we’re still ensuring that you’ve getting adequate training volume to ensure that you’re progressing (or at the very least, maintaining) your current level of lean body mass. 

But we also know that you’re not going to be able to build as quickly in a fat loss phase.  

So, to keep your training engaging and challenging, we’re focusing more on performance (and again, the increased calorie burn will slightly speed up fat loss as well).  

To learn more about how we typically program for this style of training, check out this video:

NUTRITION STRATEGY: FAT LOSS

Outside of potentially adjusting nutrition to ensure you’re falling in the desired rate of gain, no adjustments are likely needed here. 

TRAINING STRATEGY: PERFORMANCE HYPERTROPHY

Similar to the above, you’re continuing to follow the progression we’ve laid out - it’s unlikely you’ll need any major adjustments here. 

NUTRITION STRATEGY: FAT LOSS

You’ve cut off a good chunk of fat by this time, and should be seeing a much improved physique by this point.  

After 8 months of hard work, this is REALLY where you start to see the fruits of you labor, as you’re unveiling a body composition that’s above and beyond anything you’ve achieved before. 

You’re also 8-12 weeks into the diet by this point, which means it’s smart to take a diet break at some point this month. 

Diet Break Guidelines

→ Frequency - Every 6-12 weeks for most. The leaner you are, the more frequently it makes sense to take these (as you're at a higher risk for muscle loss, and your body has less fat stores to pull from for energy).

→ Duration - 1-2 weeks for most. 

→ Calories -Total calories should be returned to somewhere between your current deficit calories and your current estimated maintenance intake.  

As we're not sure that returning exactly to maintenance produces all of the physiological benefits (which was the old argument for returning to maintenance on a diet break), a diet break does not have to return calories all the way to maintenance levels.  

That said, to reap the psychological benefits of a diet break, we want to make sure that calories are high enough to keep hunger and cravings low across the course of the break.  

For most online clients, I've found that this means the deficit at least should be cut in half. (So if you were in a daily deficit of 500 calories, add back 250 calories per day.) 

→ Macros - Protein should stay at .8-1.2g/lb (don't decrease your current intake). Increasing carbs to refill glycogen stores is smart. So it's likely most optimal to increase calories to maintenance almost exclusively via carbs, keeping protein and fat where they were on the diet. 

→ Food Choices - The biggest mistakes people make is thinking a diet break is a time to just constantly eat lots of calorie-dense foods. This pretty quickly puts you OVER your calorie goal, and isn't a realistic picture of how you need to eat long-term to sustain your results. 

Stick mostly to the foods you normally eat, just in greater quantities. When you try to work in too many calorically-dense foods, you can easily eat MORE calories but be less satiated than when you're on your diet. 

→ Weight Gain - You’ll likely feel a bit fluffier and weigh a bit more. Your body is holding more water, & your gut content has increased. This doesn't mean you’ve gained fat back.

If calories in = calories out, you won't gain fat.

TRAINING STRATEGY: PERFORMANCE HYPERTROPHY

Still following the progression model we laid out so in-depth earlier. By this point, you’ll be feeling lean and well-conditioned in your training.

NUTRITION STRATEGY: FAT LOSS

The final month of fat loss. Your physique looks much different than it did 9 months ago, and that’s not by accident. 

By actually taking the time to focus on building first, you’ve finally broken free from always dieting but never feeling as lean as you want, thanks to the additional muscle on your frame.

TRAINING STRATEGY: PERFORMANCE HYPERTROPHY

No changes here. 

Although it’s smart to follow a similar progression to your first building phase across the 4 months of the fat loss phase, I would not likely run a metabolite phase here.  

You’re in a calorie deficit, and your body is much leaner than it’s been in quite some time - not ideal conditions for something like a metabolite phase (which is much better suited for a building phase). 

NUTRITION STRATEGY: REVERSE DIET

Reverse dieting is the process we use to find your new maintenance intake after you've achieved your goal level of leanness. 

We implement this process when you're completely done focusing on fat loss for the near future.

Coming out of a deficit is a scary process for most people… especially if your client's weight has rebounded post-diet in the past.⠀⠀ 

Even for our clients that are coaches themselves, the fear of coming out of a calorie deficit is real. 

This is the best time to again remind clients, it all comes down to energy balance.

If you’ve been losing ~1lb/week, you’re eating ~3,500 calories less than you burn in a week. 

So we know that to maintain, we can add back in ~3,500 calories to your diet on a weekly basis… or 500 calories per day, without worrying about fat gain. 

Gaining even 1lb of fat would require eating ~3,500 calories more than your maintenance intake. If you have a smart plan for the diet after the diet like we provide within online coaching, you don’t need to worry.

Reverse Dieting Guidelines

→ Step 1 - Return to 90% of your estimated maintenance calories.  90% instead of 100% just to be sure we don't overshoot maintenance, as clients generally want to take extra precautions here to avoid excess fat gain. 

Most of the increase in calories here will come from carbs (which give you more physiological benefits, plus better training & recovery), given you’re already eating above ~.3g fat/lb of body weight daily (the “fat threshold” clients need to hit for hormonal health & preventing fatty acid deficiencies). 

→ Step 2 - Watch how that impacts your weight & measurements. One of the biggest mistakes people make post-diet?  

They suddenly stop hopping on the scale and taking body measurements.

This is a huge problem, because this is the exact data we use to determine how the amount you’re currently eating is impacting your body composition.  

Without this data, it’s easier to regain fat, as you're not sure how your body is changing. 

Now, we're expecting the client to see a few lbs of weight gain due to increased glycogen storage and gut content. It's also normal to see an increase in the 2" below the navel measurement (most reactive to gut content) over Weeks 1 & 2 of the reverse diet, but we shouldn't see major shifts in any of these metrics. 

→ Step 3 - Adjust nutrition based on the metrics.

After the first 1-2 weeks of the reverse diet process (where again, some increase in weight & measurements is normal), we’re looking to increase calories to start pushing the clients “maintenance calories” up. 

But again, tracking metrics is key to knowing that what the client is doing with their nutrition is leading to maintenance and not gaining. 

TRAINING STRATEGY: HYPERTROPHY

Across the reverse dieting process, we’re feeding you more and more calories. Thus your body will be better able to handle more training volume than you likely could during the diet (and you can start making quicker progress building again).  

So if you we’re running 4 week mesocycles/training phases, it’d make sense to transition back to a more hypertrophy-specific style of training (i.e. how you were training during the building phase).

But again, most of our online clients run 5-6 week mesocycles, so the end of the 4th mesocycle (after which we’ll typically implement a strength phase) would actually align perfectly with the end of the reverse diet (coming up in month 11).

NUTRITION STRATEGY: REVERSE DIETING

This is likely when your reverse diet will end (it’s typically a 4-8 week process for online clients).  

The degree to which we can increase a client's maintenance without fat gain is primarily dependent on how adaptive their metabolism is/how much they tend to increase NEAT as a response to consuming more calories. 

For some online clients this process only lasts a few weeks, for others we can ramp maintenance up for quite some time.

When To End A Reverse Diet

Two things to look for here: 

→ #1 - We’re looking for trunk measurements and weight to stay relatively stable (fluctuations of +/- .25 are normal). So larger increases here indicate you've likely passed maintenance. 

That said, realize that most clients will also be capable of building muscle at maintenance. So sometimes we'll see an increase in weight across the course of weeks. 

This is why it’s important that we’re also tracking body measurements. 

Most online clients will have a “trouble spot” they really wanted to focus on losing fat from during the diet.  

Conveniently, the last place we seem to lose fat from also seems to be the first place we regain it (I have no science to prove this, only anecdote). 

This means that in a case where you're client is gaining a bit of weight, but you think it could be muscle not fat, it makes sense to look at measurement increases at the “trouble spot” as a sign that you’re potentially gaining fat (for 90% of clients it will be navel measurements, but occasionally hips).  

If we start to see consecutive weeks of measurement increases at the trouble spot, it’s a good sign that body fat is being gained. 

→ #2 - Biofeedback is normal. We all have a certain body fat percentage “floor”.

Below this body fat percentage, you'll struggle with hunger, being food focused, low energy, poor hormones, & buildin muscle is very unlikely. 

See, many of your hormones are a product of the amount of body fat you’re carrying - so no matter how much food you’re eating, you’ll still feel shitty below your “body fat floor”.

While you can dip below this “floor” for short periods of time (e.g. for a photoshoot), living below it is not healthy or sustainable. 

So the reality is, occasionally clients will have to add back a bit of body fat in order to return biofeedback to healthy levels and quit feeling like a zombie.⠀ 

If a clients' biofeedback (weekly measures my clients submit for things like sleep, stress, motivation, mood, training performance, etc.) is still poor, they likely need to continue the reverse diet. 

Similarly, normalized biofeedback is a good sign you can end the reverse diet process. 

TRAINING STRATEGY: HYPERTROPHY

The same approach as month 10 applies here.

NUTRITION STRATEGY: MAINTENANCE

Month 12 - you did it. An entire year of smart, periodized, and science-based training & nutrition. 

If the year we just laid out sounds completely foreign to you… realize that’s probably a sign that it’s time to change your approach. Because if what you’re currently doing was working, you wouldn’t have read this far 😉

You’ve added a good amount of muscle to your body in the building phase. You’ve maintained (or even continued to build on) said muscle during the fat loss phase. 

Now, you’re undoubtedly at a physique that’s above and beyond anything you’ve ever achieved before.

Similar to month 5, it’s time for us to cement this result as your body’s new normal with a maintenance phase, before setting new targets for next year.

TRAINING STRATEGY: STRENGTH/RESENSITIZATION

Just like above, another strength phase to resensitize your body to training volume, and put you in a good place to push towards your next goals. 

And that is how to plan and periodize your most effective year of training and nutrition yet.

If you're ready to stop guessing and start achieving, click here now to apply for online coaching with our team. 

We apply proven, science-backed nutrition & training methods through individualized coaching to help you get the body you want, and teach you on how to keep it for a lifetime.

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42 days until 2021...

Which means 42 days until every starts scrambling to get "summer ready"... but not until after the holidays, right?

If you're someone who decided to "wait until after COVID is over" to take control of your body... you're already well aware of the flaw in "waiting until after ____ to build the body I want".

There will always be another reason to procrastinate taking action (or a never-ending pandemic).

One thing we tell our online clients...

"The holidays are the time most of the population regress drastically. To to be able to truly KEEP your results for a lifetime without us (which is 100% the goal for anyone we work with), one of the most important times we can coach you through/skills you can learn, is how to manage your nutrition over the holidays. Until you learn this skill, you'll be stuck in the cycle of "starting over" every January."

Today's blog gives you the exact strategies we give our online clients to help them enjoy the holidays, while also continuing to progress towards their physique goals.

Over the next few weeks, we're celebrating 3 days: 

1. Thanksgiving (second best holiday)

2. Christmas (Best holiday, and it's not even close) 

3. New Year's Eve

That's 3/42 days. 

It's impossible to gain that much fat in 3 days. 

If you ate to the point of completely stuffed all 3 days, you could maybe gain 1-2lbs of fat. 

Remember that to gain 1lb of fat, your body needs to absorb 3,500 calories above your maintenance intake. 

The average person maintains somewhere from 1,800-2,800 calories. So to gain a single pound of fat in a day, you'd have to eat 5,300-6,300 cals... this would be VERY hard to do. And we're talking about the amount needed to gain a single pound.

On top of that, eating 3,500 calories doesn't just = 1lb of fat gain.

You body has many mechanisms to prevent weight loss and weight gain. 

When you eat more: 

-  The thermic effect of food is increased. 

- Not all of the calories you intake are necessarily absorbed by the body. (This varies by the type of food you eat - unprocessed foods are typically harder to digest, meaning we usually absorb less of the calories we eat here. The more processed a food is, the easier it is for your body to digest & absorb.) 

- Many people tend to move more as a response to overfeeding. 

Point of this is, even if you're eating like an absolute animal on these 3 days, you STILL can do very little "damage" on the actual days we're celebrating.

The two things that actually cause people to gain lots of fat over the holidays:

1. Seeing the scale spike up 3-5lbs, and (incorrectly) thinking this is fat gain, leading to the "f it" mindset. Really, this is primarily just water weight from all the extra food, sodium, etc. The scale will return to normal in the next few days. 

Remember, to actually gain 3lbs in a single day, you'd have to eat over 11,000 calories. (Most of the "eating challenges" you see on YouTube are people intentionally trying and failing to eat 10,000 calories.)

2. Eating like it's a holiday most every day for the next 42 days. Remember, it's just 3/42 days. Not every day needs to be a celebration 😉

To quote John Berardi: 

 "If a food is in your house or possession, either you, someone you love, or someone you marginally tolerate, will eventually eat it." 

Translation: if you constantly put yourself in situations that force you to rely on purely on willpower, you'll cave in eventually. 

This doesn't make you weak, or a bad person - just a person that needs to focus more on environment design. 

Our most successful online clients aren't the ones with the strongest willpower. They're the ones that learn how to put themselves in situations that don't require a lot of willpower in the first place. 

When we're talking about how to take willpower out of the equation, you first need to understand how habits are formed.

Enter: The habit loop 

 The habit loop is the process through which a habit is formed. Something like this:

Cue → Craving → Response → Reward 

 1. Cue - The behavior trigger. Habits start with a cue.

Cues signal us that a “reward” (a physically or psychologically pleasurable experience) is available. Our brains are constantly on the lookout for rewards.
 

Example Cue: You walk by the candy bowl on the kitchen table

Reward: All the delicious candy corn (top 3 candy) inside 

If you don’t experience the cue, the habit is never triggered.

 

2. Craving - The cue is immediately followed by a “craving” for the reward.

You crave the state change the habit provides, not the habit itself. 

You don’t crave the physical act of eating the candy corn, you crave how good it makes you feel. 

Cravings are the motivation behind every habit. If a cue doesn’t produce a craving, you have no reason to act. 

3. Response - The response is the physical or mental action that occurs after the craving. The actual habit being performed.

Example: the physical act of grabbing the candy corn from the bowl. 

If performing the response is too hard, the behavior won’t happen.

4. Reward - The reward delivers the state change you were craving.

When a reward is satisfying, we begin to associate rewards with particular cues, creating a habit loop. 

Example:

The cue (seeing the candy bowl) leads to a satisfying reward (candy corn on your taste buds). You now associate this cue with a positive reward, and are more likely to act on it in the future. 

Conversely, if the reward is unsatisfying, you won’t form a habit.

If any of the pieces of the loop are missing, a habit won’t be formed. 

Breaking The Habit Loop

To make or break a habit, dissect it into the four pieces of the habit loop... 

→ Cues - Remember, cues are what initially trigger the habit loop. Get rid of the cue, and the habit doesn’t happen. Make the cue as hard to see, feel, or experience as possible. 

Common cues: 

 1. Time - Example: You habitually snack at 6:30 P.M. every night, hungry or not. 

2. Location - Example: Every time you walk through the kitchen, you mindlessly open the fridge. 

3. Preceding Event - Example: Your phone buzzes. You pick it up without thinking.

4. Emotional state - Example: Every time you get stressed, you “tense up” through your neck area. 

5. Other People - Example: Every time your kids get home from school, you have the urge to pour a drink. 

When possible, relocating to an entirely new environment is helpful - it’s much easier to create new habits when you’re not constantly running into the old cues that trigger your bad habits. 

Unfortunately, you don’t always have the option of relocating to a new environment.

In this case, look to make your cues either obvious or invisible. 

Case study: My Dad’s post-meal peanut butter binges.

My Dad used to have a habit of eating nearly half a jar of peanut butter nightly.

The interesting thing is, this would happen immediately after dinner every night. 

He'd walk straight from the dinner table to the pantry, and chow down on peanut butter.

It wasn't that he was hungry, just seconds after dinner… it was just a habit. 

Dad’s habit loop:

Cue - Time (Immediately after dinner) → Craving -Peanut butter → Response - Walk to pantry, start eating → Reward - Pleasure of eating some delicious peanut butter. 

Now that we’ve dissected the habit loop, let’s look at how we could've broken Dad of his PB habit: 

1. Make it invisible - The simplest option - don’t buy peanut butter. If a food isn’t readily available, you’re going to have to put in much more conscious effort and work to get it. 

Now, for my saint of a mother, not buying peanut butter isn’t a viable option. She has other mouths to feed. 

But, the peanut butter is the first thing you see when you open the pantry. Right at eye level. What if Mom put it way up at the top, behind some cans where it wasn’t visible?   

Dad would be a lot less likely to snack on it. At the very least, it would take a lot more effort. He’d have to consciously decide to perform the behavior, instead of just following habit. 

If eliminating the cue entirely isn't an option, make it harder to see or access. 

 2. Make it obvious - Let’s hypothetically say Dad just didn’t like my Mom’s cooking, and actually was still hungry after dinner. 

So instead, Mom wants him to eat a lower-calorie snack.

The best bet? Make low-calorie snacks as visible as possible. Leave a bowl of fruit out on the counter. Put quality snacks at eye-level when he opens the pantry.

If “make it invisible” isn’t an option, try to make foods congruent with your goals visible and readily available. (Apply this strategy for any other “good habit cues”) 

→ Cravings 

There’s a lot of stuff you know you should be doing, that you’re not.

Problem is, most behaviors with huge long-term payoffs, offer very little instant reward.

You know a behavior is good for you... in the long-run. 

But the lack of instant gratification makes it much less attractive. 

Example: Exercise. Often challenging in the moment, rewarding long-term. 

On the other hand, you’re currently doing a lot of stuff you know you shouldn’t be, because it’s immediately gratifying. 

In this case, to break a habit - Make it unattractive.

Creating community with people with similar goals to yours, or that behave how you want to behave, is a powerful behavior change tool. 

We all want to feel accepted and liked. If a behavior goes against the norm of the group (e.g. your new friends are shocked by your rampant cocaine use), the behavior is much less likely to be repeated - you won’t feel like you “fit in”.

Make friends with people you want to look like at the gym.

Join a Facebook group of people with similar goals. Invest in a coach to keep you accountable.

→ Responses 

Responses are habits in action. The mindless things we do without thought.

If performing a response is too hard, the behavior won’t take place. 

To make a habit - Make it easy.

To break a habit - Make it difficult. 

1. Make it easy. To make it easy, you need to remove as much friction as possible. 

Examples of friction: 

- That person who always stops you in the gym mid-workout to talk

- Most anything on your phone actually 

- Fumbling around for workout clothes, keys, etc. when you wake up in the morning 

- Having to drive home strictly to change into your gym clothes, instead of bringing your gym bag to work 

You get the idea. The more friction a habit has, the less likely you are to perform it. 

Let’s say you want to be able to use #entrepreneur on all your Instagram posts... so you quit your job, with aspirations of becoming a fitness blogger. 

You quickly find the self-employed life poses some challenges... 

1. You don’t have to get up at any specific time. When you had a boss, you “had to” get up. Now, it’s easy to hit snooze for an extra hour or two.

2. You’re highly addicted to your phone. You need to be writing to make this career switch work... but it’s still easiest to spend most of your day on your phone in bed.
 

An easy routine to solve your #entrepenuer woes: 

1. Before you go to bed, set your alarms, and leave your phone across the room. 

2. Mix up a caffeinated drink, and leave it right next to your phone, as well as tomorrow morning’s clothes. 

3. When your alarm sounds - it’s easier to get up and shut it off, than to lie in bed and listen to - quite literally - the worst noise in the world. 

4. Now that you’re up, caffeine is ready to go. You don’t even have to “decide” to mix it up rather than get back in bed. 

5. Set another alarm (~6-minutes), and hop in the shower. I easily waste 20+ minutes of my morning in the shower without this. Not a problem when my phone alarm is annoying the hell out of me. 

6. Find the farthest point in your house from your work station. Shut your phone off, and leave it. If your phone is close, you’ll habitually check it, and waste away a lot of time. Now, checking it requires conscious thought and effort. It’s easier to just sit there and keep writing. 

"Wooooow. So you’re saying it’s easier to get up if your alarm is across the room? Mind-blowing." 

Hey listen, I don't like your tone right now. Yeah, it's pretty underwhelming... but that’s exactly the point. 

You won’t suddenly have a life-changing epiphany that leads to endless willpower. You change by putting yourself in situations that require minimal willpower. 

Make good habits the path of least resistance.  

→ Rewards 

To turn a behavior into a habit, the cue needs to result in a pleasurable reward.

Behaviors that lead to a positive reward are much more likely to turn into habits. 

To break a habit - Make it unsatisfying or painful. 

One of the easiest ways - get an accountability partner or coach.

Letting someone down, and showing them that we are unreliable and/or untrustworthy is extremely painful. Investing money increases the pain even more. 

Letting yourself down repeatedly is somewhat painful, but not uncommon.

Repeatedly paying someone, admitting you let them and yourself down, and wasting said money is extremely painful. 

Putting yourself in this situation makes failure much less likely. 

“Bad habits repeat themselves not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong systems to create change.” 

-James Clear, Atomic Habits (highly recommended reading, and the inspiration for this entire section)

Going into each holiday, you first need to weigh what's most important to you. 

We discuss this with each of our online clients going into the day - you need to know what what you specifically need to do throughout the day to feel fulfilled & guilt-free. 

- For some clients, this means not stressing any strategies, and just eating as they please and enjoying family time. These clients simply get back on track the next day. 

- For other clients this means bumping calories to maintenance levels the day of the holiday (and sometimes the surrounding days) but still hitting their macros.

- And for others yet, this means staying on point with their fat loss macros straight through the holidays.

There's no right or wrong answer here... so it's best to think about what you want most out of each day beforehand. 

For my online clients that do want to approach the day strategically, here's the plan: 

→ Go for a 30 minute walk first thing in the morning - Days like this, your movement takes a big hit. Offset some of this by getting in some morning movement. If you can hit the gym, even better (but don't sweat it if you don't want to spend extra time away from your loved ones). 

→ Intermittent fasting until noon (or 90 minutes before the main meal) - Nobody takes much "emotional value" from breakfast on holidays. We're all scrambling to prep the later meals (or in my case, to order a present on Amazon so I can at least say "it's on the way" for our family gift exchange.)

Skipping this allows you to save up calories to spend on the later meals. 

→ Protein + veggies at noon (or 90 minutes before the main meal) - The main goal of this meal is satiety.

You're going to be pretty hungry by this point, and very tempted by all the tasty foods around you - so this meal will fill you up, and tide you over until the main meal. 

Protein is the most satiating food, with fibrous carbs coming in second. You're ticking both of those boxes here. 

For the protein, I'd focus on something leaner to save up calories - something like chicken breast, lean ground turkey, non-fat cottage cheese or Greek yogurt, tuna, or even a few scoops of protein powder. 

For veggies, it's hard to go wrong really. Just eat a large bowl. You can also add (or substitute) fruit here.

Since you'll have quite a bit of fiber and protein in your belly, it'll be much easier to eat a reasonable amount of food at the main holiday meal, without feeling tempted to overdo it, simply because you're so full.  

If the main meal isn't until later in the evening, simply repeat this protein + veggies meal 1-2 more times - you want to avoid going into the main meal famished. 

→ Eat lots of protein at the main meal - The beautiful thing about holiday meals is, they're typically abundant with protein. Turkey, ham, roast beef... it's great. 

Load your plate up with at least 3-4 palm-sized servings of protein. Be sure to add at least 1-2 fist-sized servings of veggies as well. Fill the rest of your plate with whatever.

Eat all of your protein and veggies first. 

By this point, you'll be relatively full. You'll still be able to enjoy the other foods, but eating your protein and veggies first encourages moderation. 

→ Go for another 15-30 minute walk after the main meal - Again, we're making up for the fact that you'll likely be sitting most of the day. Recruit the whole family for this one (this will also aid digestion, and help everyone feel much better than the typical holiday food-coma.)

A single day of over-eating is easily correctable by decreasing calories the next few days (or a few days beforehand). 

As long as your weekly deficit is the same and you’re hitting your protein goal daily, you should get very similar results. 

Within our coaching service, we call this shifting calories. 

You’re saving up calories ahead of time or eating less in following days to keep your weekly calories on point. 

This approach is amazing for our online clients, because it gives them a lot more flexibility within their diets. Understanding this concept also allows many to finally be free from the “F it” mindset that's so easy to get sucked into after a single high calorie day.

So if you really feel like you overdid it on a holiday, simply reduce calories by 200-300 on the subsequent days, and work to get an extra 2,500 - 5,000 steps.

You'll easily make up the difference.

Here, we're not talking about just on a specific day, but through this 42 day stretch as a whole.

Because let's face it, the holidays are when most typically let their training fall to the wayside. But as a reader of this blog (because we know our audience ;)), you still have physique goals that involve adding muscle, and potentially losing a bit of fat.

Letting your training become an afterthought for the next 1.5 months is simply going to push you further & further from the physique that you want long-term (and we're all about long-term planning & periodization around here). 

Make training at least 3-4x/week a priority.

Really, if you've struggled with your training over the holidays in the past, I would 100% push you to invest in a coach HERE. 

The next 42 days don't have to be a time where you watch your physique dramatically regress like every other year... you're fully capable of using this time as a launchpad for your 2021 physique transformation.

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When you ask women what they want to look like, you’ll hear things like... 

“Toned, long and lean, fit but not bulky.”  

Basically, most women want a physique with some shape to their shoulders and glutes, but few actually know what that means, or how to get there. 

You'll hear some fitness professionals complain about using the word "toned", because people say it without really knowing that "getting toned" and "building muscle are the same thing.  

But c'mon... we all get what toned means...  someone who looks athletic, with some shape to their shoulders, a tight core, and lines in their legs.  

The problem is that many women chase this look by doing things like yoga and pilates, when what’s really needed is some time building muscle.  

That shape you see to women’s shoulders, legs, and glutes is actually developed muscle, paired with a low body fat percentage. 

In order to reach that goal physique, you’re going to need to take time eating enough and training intelligently in order to build muscle, and then intermittent periods of calorie restriction to lose body fat.

Ladies, today's blog is your step-by-step guide through the physique development process.

Most women are perpetually dieting, eating as little as possible as often as possible, and hoping they’ll eventually reach the body they want if they have enough willpower.  

The major flaw with this approach?

It’s unsustainable.  

Eating as little as possible isn’t a game plan. It’s not something that can be done over a long period of time, it’s not motivating, and it’s not conducive to the training performance needed in order to build any muscle.  

Problem is, most women already don't feel as lean as they want to be... so the thought of not dieting is a scary one.

Now, to determine if you actually need to diet, or are better off focusIng on building muscle, you need to understand a concept called P-ratio. 

P-ratio stands for "partitioning ratio", and is the ratio of muscle to fat gain.

As a female... 

—> If you're above 25-30% body fat, you'll likely gain more fat than muscle when in a Building Phase.  

—> If you are leaner than that, you will build more muscle than fat.  

For this reason, if you are above 25%, I recommend you start out with a cut, get to a comfortable level of body fat, optimize your P-ratio, and improve insulin sensitivity before going in to a building phase.  

If you are already at a comfortable level of leanness and are maybe even classify yourself as closer to “skinny-fat”, you may need to start with a Building Phase to add muscle and shape.

If you are in a situation where you need to lose fat before you start a building phase, you first need to assess how you’re currently eating.  

Nutritional assessment and learning to properly track macros are important key first steps, because many times you may think you’re eating very few calories... when a diet recall will open your eyes to hidden calories.  

When we bring on new online clients, one of our first steps is teaching you how to properly track your intake, then take a deep dive into your food journal to see whether you are actually under-eating, or if it's simply a tracking error.

Now the reality is, if you've already been dieting for a long time on low calories, you might not be ready for a diet yet. (Because we always have your long-term health & the SUSTAINABILITY of your results in mind as our biggest priority.)

If this is the case for you, we could very we push start your process with a reverse diet, followed by a primer phase... all before ever actually push you to lose fat.

To fully understand the application of the reverse diet & primer phases, check out our blog The Definitive Guide To Nutrition Periodization.

The duration and intensity of a diet should be inversely related.  

Meaning, if you slash calories pretty severely, you need to keep it short.  

If you are in a small calorie deficit, you can sustain that for a longer period of time.   

 In my opinion this needs to be based on your lifestyle, because adherence is the most important factor in a cut.  

—> If you know you will have a hard time sticking to a severe deficit, have a lot of social obligations, or have regular big family dinners you don’t want to miss out on, a rapid fat loss protocol will most likely be the wrong choice.  

—> On the flip side, if you know you won’t want to stay in a deficit for a long period of time, don’t have a problem feeling hunger, and can structure a strict diet into your lifestyle, a long drawn out cut may not suit you best. 

These will be on a continuum, but for the sake of writing out these two different types of fat loss approaches, I’ll divide them into “rapid cut” and “lifestyle cut.”   

 Let’s break down each approach...

Rapid Cut 

—> Duration: 6-12 weeks 

—> Who it’s for:  Anyone that can stay strict with fewer calories, few social obligations, experienced dieter, not a lot of fat to lose and wants to get to building quicker 

—> Execution:  In a rapid cut you’ll aim to lose about .8-1.2% of bodyweight per week.  Let’s use a 160 pound woman for an example.  

She can expect to lose 1.3 to 2 pounds per week.  

Let’s say we decide on 1.8 pounds per week loss as the target rate of loss.  

We know you need to create a 3500 calorie deficit to lose one pound, so she'll need a 6300 calorie deficit across the week/900 calorie per day deficit to lose 1.8 pounds.  

Since you’ve spent time at maintenance, you know your intake required to maintain your weight, so you’ll subtract 900 calories from that number.  

Now, let's say our 160 pound example woman maintains her weight on 2200 calories per day... that puts her at 1300 calories per day on this rapid fat loss protocol.  

(That’s a pretty severe cut, which is why this is kept very short.  Be honest with yourself and do not go for this type of cut if you know you won’t stay consistent at this steep of a deficit.) 

Lifestyle Cut 

—> Duration: 12+ weeks 

—> Who It’s for: Anyone who wants a more sustainable cut and needs to allow flexibility around events, less experienced dieters, more fat to lose.

—> Execution: In a lifestyle cut you’ll aim to lose 0.5-1% of body weight per week.  

Our 160 pound woman will lose .7-1.5 pound per week with this approach, so let’s use a 1 pound per week target rate of loss as an example. 

She needs to create a 3500 calorie deficit over the week, which is 500 calories per day.  Since she maintains at 2200 calories, we know she needs 1700 calories per day to lose 1 pound per week. 

Protein

From my experience as a coach, women are almost always under-eating protein. Protein is important in both fat loss and  building phases.  

• It's most filling macro
• It has the highest thermic effect of food
• It's muscle-sparing in a cut
• It's the raw material your body needs to build muscle

You can set protein intake anywhere from 0.8-1.2 grams per pound of bodyweight.  I like to set it at 1 gram per pound to keep it simple, but it can help to go higher a bit higher in a rapid fat loss phase to keep you full. 

Fat

Fat is an essential macronutrient, meaning you need it in your diet to stay healthy.  It’s essential to maintain hormonal health, and helps with hair, skin, and nail growth.  

0.3 grams per pound of body weight is a good start, but can be adjusted if you’re on either extreme of the body fat scale (very low or very high). 

Carbs 

Carbohydrates will make up the remainder of your calories.  

When cutting, it’s helpful to keep about 65-75% of your carbohydrates around your workout to help with training performance. 

Real-Life Application:

Let’s say our 160 pound woman needs to get to 148 to be at a level of leanness where she can start building. 

Rapid Cut   

—> Total weight loss needed:  12 pounds 

—> Weeks committed to spend dieting: 8  

—> Planned weight loss per week: 1.5 pound 

—> Deficit needed: 5250 over the week, 750 per day 

Maintenance calories are 2200, so daily calorie intake to start this rapid cut will be 1450.   

—> Calories: 1450  

—> Protein: 170 

—> Fat: 50 

—> Carbs: 80 

Lifestyle Cut 

—> Total weight loss needed: 12 pounds 

—> Weeks committed to dieting: 20 

—> Planned weight loss per week: 0.6 pound 

—> Deficit needed: 2100 over the week, 300 per day 

Maintenance calories are 2200, so daily calorie intake to start this lifestyle cut will be 1900. 

—> Calories: 1900 

—> Protein: 160 

—> Fat: 50 

—> Carbs: 200 

Side Note: This math seems like it’s perfectly laid out, but every body is different, and things will need adjusted along the way.  Your maintenance intake is a range not a set in stone number, so things may not happen exactly as expected without some individualization & coaching.

Although your total calories & macros are the most important things here, there are some things to know to make the diet easier to adhere to, keep you healthy, and to make this process sustainable: 

—> Log your food the night before. 

This may seem tedious, but I guarantee it'll make a night and day difference when it comes to consistently hitting your macro targets. 

This is something we have online clients do (and we review), when they get started coaching with us.  This serves three purposes:  

1. It ensures you are thinking ahead and not just winging it. 

2. It gets you planning your meals so you have food ready to go

3. It helps educate you on what foods contain which macronutrients. 

—> Follow the 80/20 guideline 

 The 80/20 guideline: 80-90% of your calories should come from whole, unprocessed nutrient dense foods. 10-20% can be filled in with anything that fits your macros.  

This can be chocolate at the end of a meal, salad toppings that make that lunch salad way more palatable, or a full meal occasionally.  

You’re still hitting your macro targets here, but some food that’s just there for taste will make the diet feel more indulgent and (most importantly) more sustainable. 

—> Supplement where needed 

These are optional, but can help fill some gaps, especially in a rapid cut where you can’t fit in as many nutrient dense foods as needed.  Some things I recommend are: 

• A multivitamin 
• Fish oil 
• Magnesium citrate and/or glycinate 
• Creatine

Once you have dieted down to a comfortable body fat percentage, and ready to focus on building, you need to start the reverse dieting process to transition out of your fat loss phase properly.

Learn all about how to reverse diet properly here.

After reverse dieting and finding your new maintenance, it's smart to spend a bit of time simply focusing on "practicing maintenance" - you're not trying to lose or build... simply allowing your body time to cement it's current size as the "new normal". (A "cementing phase" like this is helpful when it comes to maintaining a leaner physique - both from a physiological and psychological perspective.)

Now that you've (ideally) spent 4-8 weeks in this "cementing phase", it's time to add calories and focus on building.  

I get it... this seems scary for women, because we’re always trying to be smaller, right? 

But keep in mind that the shape you’re wanting to see is muscle, and muscle takes energy (a.k.a. calories) to build.  

With the right approach (like you're learning in this blog), you can build muscle with minimal fat gain, and end up leaner at the end of your building phase.  Even if you do happen to add a very small amount of fat during your building phase, you can lose it quickly in your next cut. 

Now, building muscle is a very slow process.  Really, you only need to add a small amount of calories, about 10%, in order to build muscle. 

Let’s say our 160 pound woman dieted down and got to a new weight of 148.  

From there, she reverse dieted back up after the cut and has been maintaining on 2050 calories per day. 

So, to add 10% of calories to her maintenance you multiply by 1.1. 

2050x1.1=2255 calories (We'll round that to 2250 to make it simpler.)

So, her new building intake will be 2250. 

Macros for building will be set in a very similar way they are for cutting, meaning... 

—> Protein will be set at bodyweight x1

148x1=148 grams protein (but lets round that to 150 grams for simplicity).  

—>  Fat will be set at 0.3 grams/pound

148x0.3=44.4 (round to 45 grams)  

—> Carbs will fill up the remainder of your calories

So, calculate calories from protein (150x4=600) + calories from fat (45x9=405). 600 + 405 = 1005 cals are taken up by protein & fat.

2050 - 1005 = 1045. That's the amount of calories you have left to fill with carbs.

1045/4=261 (round to 260 grams).

Once you have your calories and macros nailed down, you can start to play with nutrient timing.  Nutrient timing is simply how you distribute the different macronutrients over the course of the day and around your training:

Nutrient timing is more important during a building phase than it is during a fat loss phase, because you are really trying to maximize your training quality, and partition the extra carbs you’re consuming toward building muscle.

Now that we’ve gone through how to optimize nutrition for building muscle, let’s get into the training. 

The biggest problem I see with most women’s training is the over-reliance on cardio or circuit training, and not enough focus on progressive overload. 

Progressive overload is a principle that involves constantly increasing demands on the muscular system to continually make gains in size, strength, and/or endurance.  

Simply put, your muscles won’t make any improvement in strength or size unless you give them a reason to, so you need to be working harder over time. 

 Progressive overload doesn’t have to just be lifting more weight over time (although I’d argue this is the piece most women are missing).  Progressive overload can be accomplished by...

• Adding weight
• Adding reps
• Adding sets
• Increasing time under tension
• Increasing range of motion
• Decreasing rest time
• Improving form
• Lifting the weight faster 

You've might've heard it's not "feminine" to work HARD in the weight room, but that’s what it takes to develop your physique into one you admire.  Effort, sweat, and unlocking your inner badass are necessary here.

Choosing Your Training Split

Deciding which training split to follow should first start with how many days a week you can consistently commit to strength training.  

Regardless of what is "most optimal", that won’t matter if you don’t consistently get the sessions done.  so decide first how many days per week you can be in the gym on a consistent basis, then choose your split accordingly. 

Options broken down by frequency are: 

3 Days/Week: 

—> Full body

—>Upper/Lower - Using an ULU, LUL schedule 

4 Days/Week: 

—> Upper/Lower 

—> Full Body

5 Days/Week:

—> Lower/Upper/Lower/Upper/Lower - This one works well for a lower body emphasis 

—> Upper/Lower/Push/Pull/Legs

—> Upper/Lower/Upper/Lower/Full Body 

6 Days/Week:

—> Push/Pull/Legs/Push/Pull/Legs

Now that you know your training split, and know you need to strive for progressive overload, it's time to design your training program. 

The foundation of your program will always be compound lifts.  

Basically, you need to include all of the major movement patterns:

1. Hip dominant 

2. Knee dominant 

2. Push

4. Pull 

5. Core 

These are the foundational movements that almost every program will include in some fashion. (For more on our programming methodology, check out The 5 Movement Pattern Framework For Building Your Own Training Program.)

Hip dominant movements: 

• Barbell Deadlift
• Romanian Deadlift
• Hip Thrust
• Glute Bridges
• Good Mornings
• Kettlebell Swings
• Death March 

Knee dominant movements:

• Back Squat
• Front Squat
• Goblet Squat
• Hack Squat
• Lunge
• Split Squat
• Step Up 

Push movements:

• Bench Press
• Dumbbell Bench Press
• Pushup
• Shoulder Press
• Incline Press

Pull movements: 

• Rowing variations
• Face Pulls
• Pull-Ups & Chin-Ups
• Pulldowns

Core movements: 

• Plank variations
• Anti-rotation & rotation movements
• Loaded carries
• Flexion movements 

Now, most women want to put an emphasis on growing their shoulders and glutes. 

I would also argue that focusing on the back, specifically the lats, would be a good idea for most women because it will give the illusion of a smaller waist. 

Let’s break down each of those muscle groups, and how to grow them.

Your shoulders are made up of 3 muscles, the anterior (front), medial (side), and posterior (rear) delts.

In general, you’ll want to place the most specific emphasis on the rear delts & side delts, whereas the front delts need less direct focus.  

Your rear and side delts get the least amount of direct volume just by doing the main compound lifts, whereas your front delts get a lot of work in both horizontal and vertical pressing movements, so they typically don’t need much direct work.

—>  Rear Delts

Anecdotally, rear delts are the hardest to effectively work.  

Their function is horizontal abduction (reverse fly motion) of the shoulder, and vertical depression of the shoulder (straight arm pulldown motion). They are more of a secondary mover of each of these motions, so getting the primary mover to take LESS of the load in these movements can be difficult. 

Exercises 

Rear Delt Fly

The best cue for a reverse fly or other shoulder abduction to really target the rear delt and keep the back from taking over is to "hunch your back over". This way, your back muscles can be “turned off,” and the rear delts can take over.

Rear delt flys can be done seated or standing, and with dumbbells, cables, or bands. 

Face Pull

The face pull can be done with a rope and cable, a band, or a suspension trainer. 

Machine Reverse Fly

If you’re lucky enough to have a gym with a reverse fly machine, these are great for isolating the rear delts. 

—> Side Delts

The main function of the side delt is to raise your arm out away from your body, or abduct.  It’s also heavily involved in vertical (overhead)  pressing movements. 

Exercises 

Overhead Press  

These can be done with a barbell or dumbbells, seated or standing.

Lateral Raises 

One of our favorite movements to program for online clients working the side delts in isolation.

Upright Rows

Dumbbell, barbell, and cable variations are all solid here.

Your glutes are a group of 3 muscles, the glute maximus, glute minimus, and glute medius. 

The main function of your glutes is to extend the hips, and abduct your leg (move your leg out away from the body.)

Exercises

Barbell Hip Thrust 

One of our favorites, for the way it allows you to overload your glutes in their shortened position.

Glute Dominant Back Extension

These really allow you to train your glute muscles without loading the spine heavily.

Abductions

Remember, one of your glutes functions in abduction, so it's smart to train this.

For a very in-depth guide to how we program to help our online clients achieve superior glute gains, check out The Complete Guide To Glute Training [Bigger, Stronger Glutes]

Building your lats will help give you a v-taper... basically, it will make your waist appear smaller.

Exercises

Lat Pulldown 

A staple in most programs, this is an excellent way to train your lats without the limiting factors of movements like pull-ups.

Pullup/Chin Up

Want to feel like a badass in the gym (and build a great back to boot)? Master these. Check out this blog to learn how to master your first few pull-ups.

Barbell or Dumbbell Bent Row

Another back training staple, this is a great way to hit many muscle groups of your back simultaneously.

First, realize your sets and reps will be dependent on what you’ve been doing previous to now, and how much volume you need to grow. 

Typically, women start coaching with a history of doing very high reps with lots of circuit training, so it can be beneficial to start out with heavier, lower rep (e.g. 5-15) training with plenty of rest between sets. 

If you’re new to this type of training, you can usually add strength linearly for a very long time before needing to change things up.  

That’s a very good thing, because that means you can get really good results in both strength and hypertrophy (muscle growth) without needing to switch up the training plan for a while. 

—> I recommend starting with one to compound movements that you focus on adding load to week to week (refer to our Five Foundational Movement Patterns from earlier). 

—> Next, add auxiliary movements that add volume, and incorporate more of the foundational movement patterns. 

—> You can finish with some isolation movements and/or a “finisher” where you can scratch the circuit itch with a short burnout that gets your heart rate up, gives your target areas some extra volume, and is fun.

Let's look at an example week’s training for an online client following an upper/lower split, with extra emphasis on their shoulders and glutes:

Monday - Upper Body 

a1.) Seated Military Press, 4x7-10. 1 RIR. 

b1.) Chin-Ups, 4x5-8. 1 RIR. 

c1.) Dumbbell Bench Press, 4x8-12. 1 RIR. 

d1.) Dumbell Rows, 4x8-12. 1 RIR. 

e1.) Dumbbell Lateral Raise, 3x15-20. 1RIR.

f1.) Alternating Dumbbell Curl, 3x10-15/side. 1 RIR.

f2.) Tricep Overhead Extension, 3x10-15 reps. 1 RIR. 

Tuesday - Lower Body 

a1.) Barbell Squat, 4x6-10. 1 RIR. 

b1.) Romanian Deadlift, 4x8-10. 1 RIR. 

c1.) Walking Dumbbell Lunges, 3x10-15/side. 1 RIR. 

d1.) Lying Leg Curl, 3x10-15. 1 RIR. 

e1.) Glute Bridge W/ Band Abduction, 4x20, 1 RIR. 

e2.) RKC Plank, 4x20-30 seconds 

Thursday - Upper Body 

a1.) Barbell Row, 4x7-10. 1 RIR. 

b1.) Dumbbell High Incline Press, 4x10-12. 1 RIR.

c1.) Machine High Row, 3x12-15 reps. 1 RIR

d1.) Dumbbell Arnold Press, 4x10-12. 1 RIR.

e1.) Face Pull, 3x15-20. 1 RIR.

e2.) Dumbbell Upright Row, 3x15-20. 1 RIR.

f1.) Deadbug, 2x10/side

f2.) Hanging Knee Raise 2xMAX

Friday - Lower Body 

a1.) Barbell Hip Thrust, 4x6-12. 1 RIR. 

b1.) Bulgarian Split Squat, 4x8-12/side, 1 RIR. 

c1). Glute Dominant Back Extension, 3x15-20. 1 RIR. 

d1.) Goblet Squat, 3x12-15. 1 RIR. 

e1.) Death March, 3x10 Steps/side. 0-1 RIR.

e2.) Leg Extension, 3x20. 1 RIR.  

Finisher: 50 Kettlebell Swings as fast as possible.

Follow this and push for consistent progressive overload - you will see incredible improvements in your body composition and strength. 

Ready to take on a periodized nutrition & training program built specifically for you, and finally build the lean, strong, badass physique you’ve always wanted?

Click here now to apply for online coaching with our team.

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Few things in the gym are more empowering and exciting than finally being able to do your first pull-up. 

As anyone who's accomplished this knows, you'll feel like an absolute badass in the gym after the first one.

Problem is, the pull-up is a hard lift to “work up to”, because you can’t just "try harder" at it when you’re stuck at zero.  So many people train for years, and never achieve a pull-up.

In today's blog, you'll learn the exact process needed to finally get your chin up over the bar.

The first thing you need to understand to achieve your first pull-up, is what muscles you’re working.  

To do a pull up you’re going from a dead hang on the bar, to arms flexed and chin over the bar.  

So basically, all the muscles of the back and the biceps are involved... but let’s break down the biggest movers:

—> Latissimus Dorsi (Lats) -  The function of the lats is to extend, adduct, and internally rotate the arm.  It’s origin goes all the way down to the iliac crest (hip bones), and inserts at the back of the top of the humerus (upper arm bone), so this is a really big muscle that covers a lot of the back. 

—> Trapezius (Traps) - The traps retract, rotate, elevate, and depress the scapulas (shoulder blades).  Although it is all one muscle, you’ll usually hear traps referred to as upper or lower traps.  Upper traps are up above your shoulders on each side of your neck, and lower traps are your upper middle back.  The pull up will primarily work the lower traps.   

—> Biceps - The biceps flex the elbow joint.  They also supinate, abduct, and internally rotate the upper arm.

The pull-up is a body weight exercise.  You can be really strong, but if you have a high body weight it may still be a challenge for you to do a pull-up or other body weight exercises (e.g. push-ups and pistol squats). 

First, you need to assess whether your weak link is actual strength, if your body weight is higher than optimal, or both.  

A good way to gauge this is your strength on other exercises.  

- If you are relatively strong on other lifts like a pull down, deadlift, or row, your weak link may be your body weight.  

- If you are a pretty slim person but weak on those movements, you just need to get stronger. 

Another weak link in the pull up could be grip strength.  

You will need to be able to hold on to the bar tight enough and for long enough to be able to complete the lift.  

- If you feel like your back is strong, but your forearms burn and give out first, you need to work on your grip strength. 

 The last thing that may be holding you back from getting a pull up is mobility.  

The lats are internal rotators, so if your lats are tight, and you are hunched forward it may be hard to get your arms straight overhead without pain.  

- If this is you, mobility needs to be your focus.

Now that you've identified the weak links in your progress for a pull-up, time to attack it. 

 Reducing Body Weight:

This one is simple, but not easy to address.  If you need to get your body weight down to improve body weight exercises, you need to start eating in a calorie deficit a.k.a. eat less calories than you burn.  

The caveat is you don’t want to lose strength or muscle in this process.  

To set up your diet in a way that will get you losing body fat without sacrificing strength, apply for coaching with our team, or check out this blog for an in-depth explanation on setting up your diet to sustainably lose fat, not muscle. 

Improving Strength: 

So the question posed earlier...

How do you get stronger at a movement you can’t do?  

The answer?

Regression Exercises.

Our favorite way to help someone achieve their first pull-up, is to program regression exercises in a smart manner.  If you can’t do a pull up at all, there’s no option to just “work harder” at them to improve.  You need to use exercises that work all the same muscles as above, and a similar movement pattern to get you there. 

A few of the most effective pull-up regressions we implement with online clients:  

—>TRX/Ring Row

Grab the handles and lean back with the rings/TRX supporting your weight.  You’ll have to experiment to see how much resistance you need; the further back away from the anchor your feet are, and therefore the more upright you are, the easier the movement will be.  

The further your feet are underneath the anchor, and the more horizontal you are, the harder it will be. 

Once you get fully horizontal and need to progress further you can elevate your feet onto a box or bench and/or add weight in the form of a weighted vest or plate balanced on your chest.  

When you find the right amount of resistance you pull your chest up toward the handles, squeezing hard between your shoulder blades at the top. 

This is a great regression from the pull up because you’re still using your back and biceps to pull, but you can move your feet back as far as needed in order to decrease resistance, and complete the lift.

—> Lat Pulldown

Select your weight, grab the handles and sit down in the machine, (usually anchoring your knees under pads).  Initiate the movement by pulling shoulder blades down and back, then driving your elbows down toward your waist, squeezing your lats and pulling your chest up at the bottom of the lift. 

This is a great regression, because it is the same motion and angle as the pull-up.  If you have a lat pulldown machine, you can gradually work on adding more and more load to the lift.  

You can also work on a variety of grips, for example you can supinate your hands (palms back toward you), to simulate a chin up, or use a neutral grip (palms in toward each other), to simulate a neutral grip pull-up.

—> Negative Pull-Up

This one of our all-time favorites to program for online clients, because you’re actually doing the pull up, but with help up to the top, and lowering yourself down slowly.  

You can get up to the top of the pull-up with the help of a box, a band, or by jumping.  

Then, lower yourself down to the bottom as slowly as you can.  The goal here is to go slower and slower over time.  

From here, a few less specific, but still very solid exercises we program to help online clients get stronger at pull-ups are include...

—> Barbell Rows

These will primarily work your rhomboids, biceps, and grip.

—> Barbell Deadlifts

These are a lat strengthener, but mostly from a function of isometrically contracting throughout the movement. While these don’t directly carry over to the pull-up, they work your lats and grip enough that they can be worth adding in, and they’re such a good overall strengthening exercise that they’re a good movement to have in your program when your goal is strength.

—> Bicep Curl

These will strengthen your biceps, which are a prime mover in the pull-up and chin-up.

—> High Machine (Or Cable) Row

These will strengthen your biceps, which are a prime mover in the pull-up and chin-up.

Improving Strength: 

Next up on the list of weak links to address is grip. This could also fall into the strength category, because it’s just the strength of your hands and forearms.  

The good news is, all of the above exercises will also be working your grip strength, because you have to hold on to the bar.

There are a lot of options to work on grip strength, but a few of our favorites to program for online clients working towards their first pull-up:

—> Dead Hang

Here, you hold on to the pull-up bar as long as you can with your arms extended as if you’re getting ready to initiate the pull up movement.  You can hold for time, and/or you could add weight around your waist with a dip belt to progress resistance. 

—> Farmer's Carry

Here, you'll deadlift two heavy dumbbells or farmer’s carry bars and walk.  You can progress this by either:

-  Performing them for distance, and see how long you can hold on.

- Have a set distance and see how much weight you can carry.

Mobility:

The final thing that could be holding you back from your first pull-up?

Mobility.  

Many of us are in front of our phones or computers most of the day, and end up with hunched forward shoulders, and forward head posture, which is often referred to as upper cross syndrome:

Along with the hunched posture, upper cross syndrome comes with tight pecs, shoulders, and traps and a weak upper back.

This combination of weakness and tightness needs a combination of strengthening and stretching exercises. 

To address the tight pecs, we like to program a doorway pec stretch:

To perform this, you’ll stand in a doorway with your forearm and upper arm at 90 degrees, and lean your upper body forward until you feel a stretch in your chest and shoulders.  

Hold this for 2 minutes.  At the end of 2 minutes you’ll push your arms into the doorway as if you’re trying to do a pec deck exercise.  Hold that for 10 seconds then relax.  

Pull your arms back away from the wall until you feel your upper back and rear delts cramp. Hold for 10 seconds, then do the pec stretch again for 20 more seconds.  

 To stretch out tight lats, I like to program a banded lat stretch:

This stretch is smart, because you can relax into it and let the band pull your muscles while you move your lower body to get the best angle.

Hold this stretch for 3 sets of 20-30 seconds on each side. 

Finally, to counteract the tight pecs and lats it’s smart to strengthen the upper back.  

Our top three favorite exercises for this: 

—> Band Pull-Aparts

—> Cable Facepull

—> Handcuff With Rotation

To wrap this up, let’s look at an example of how we'd put this all together into a training program for an online client.

Let’s say you’ve come to us for online coaching, and you want to improve your body weight movements, get stronger, and improve your strength to weight ratio.  

Your main goal is to do your first pull up, and you’re fairly new to training.

We schedule a call to talk over your situation, and decide a 3 day per week, full body program would be best for your schedule.

Your program could look something like this:

Day 1

5 minute cardio warmup.
 

Banded lat stretch. 3x30 seconds/side. 

Handcuff with rotation. 3x5. 

Primer - 3 rounds. No rest. 

-  10 Face Pulls 

- 10 Scap Pullups 

- 10 Dead Bugs 

a1.) Ring/TRX Rows. 3x8. 1 RIR. 

b1.) Pushups, elevated on a box.  3x8. 1 RIR. 

c1.) Single Leg Squat To Box. 3x8 each. 1 RIR. 

c2.) Lat Pulldown. 3x10. 1 RIR. 

d1.) Single Leg Dumbbell Deadlift. 3x10/leg. 1 RIR. 

d2.) Single Arm Overhead Press. 3x10 each. 1 RIR. 

Finisher:

4 Rounds, As Fast As Possible. 

- 50 Step Farmer’s Carry 

- 20 Bodyweight Squats 

- 10 Pushup Planks 

Day 2 

5 Minute cardio warmup.
 

Hip Flexor Stretch. 3x30 seconds/side. 

 Doorway Pec Stretch. 2 minute hold, plus tension for 10 seconds each way. 

 Primer - 3 Rounds, no rest. 

- 10 Band Pull Aparts 

- 20 second side plank each side 

- 5 Broad Jumps 

a1.) Barbell Deadlift, 3x6. 1 RIR. 

b1.) Dumbbell Step Back Lunges. 3x10 each side. 1 RIR.

c1.) Lat Pulldown. 3x10. 1 RIR. 

c2.) Dumbbell Chest Press. 3x10. 1 RIR. 

d1.) Chest Supported Dumbbell Row. 3x10. 1 RIR.

d2.) Dumbbell Lateral Raise. 3x12. 1 RIR. 

Finisher:

8 Minutes. As many rounds as possible.

- Max dead hang time 

 -20 Crunches

Friday 

Day 3

 5 minute cardio warm up.
 

Banded Lat Stretch 3x30 seconds/side. 

 Primer - 3 Rounds, no rest. 

- 10 Superman Lat Row 

- 10 TRX/Ring Facepulls 

- 5 Ball Slams 

a1.) Negative Pull Ups. 4x5. 1 RIR. 

b1.) Incline Dumbbell Bench. 3x10. 1 RIR. 

b2.) Dumbbell Split Squat. 3x8 each. 1 RIR. 

c1.) Barbell Row. 3x10. 1 RIR. 

c2.) Dumbbell RDL. 3x10. 1 RIR. 

 d1.) Seated DB Overhead Press. 3x10. 1 RIR. 

d2.) 4b. High Cable Row. 3x10. 1 RIR. 

 Finisher: 3 Rounds.

- 20 Alternating Dumbbell Death March 

- 20 Alternating Dumbbell Bicep Curls
 

- 10 Dumbbell Tricep Kickbacks 

And that’s how to finally achieve your first pull up. 

For a training & nutrition protocol specific to your body composition goals, plus expert coaching through every step of your transformation process, click here now to apply to work with us.

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