Are you sick of hitting the gym hard everyday and not being ripped? Welcome to the world of fitness, where hard work doesn’t equate to being shredded. Weight management is a billion dollar industry that is led by people selling snake oil, pipe dreams, and fantasies. Some people are even selling drugs, that well… work extremely well (and kill you slowly - looking at you instagram posters who eat pizza with candy on it but are 3% body fat). What actually works? Are there shortcuts? Are you broken and worthless? Just kidding about the last one, but it’s something I’ve been told as a coach - and you’re not.
Look, there are no shortcuts. Most of being lean comes from what you’re putting in your mouth. People spend hours in the gym but don’t pay enough or any attention to what is going into their pie hole. For this reason, they get into great shape (based off of things like cholesterol, strength, VO2 max, ect.) but don’t become lean. The old adage, “abs are made in the kitchen”, is one-hundred percent true. You will not find a muscular individual, female or male, who is lean and eats like shit (unless of course they’re doping - back at you instagram models). This doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy yourself and eat things like pizza on occasion, but it does mean exactly that - it must be occasional.
What actually works, is hard work. Hard work with food comes down to investigating three important things: how many calories do I burn daily, what type of training am I doing (and how should my food reflect this), and am I deficient on any important micronutrients. Figuring out how many calories you burn can be tricky, but generally it’s A LOT LESS than you think. This is the first mistake most people make. Somehow their daily training equates to ten thousand calories and then go on a free for all to “replenish” what they’ve burned. With this mindset, you’re not replenishing anything, but you will grow your fat stores. Start at a modest # of calories. Men, 2000-2500, women 1500-1800. Once you’ve locked in this caloric intake for a week, check your metrics. Have you lost weight and inches to your waist, if so, how much? Your goal should be to lose 1-2lbs per week. Anymore than that is much too aggressive for staying comfortable (wrestlers and weight class sports, welcome to uncomfortable land if you waited too long to start cutting). If you gained weight, or stayed the same, reduce the # of calories you’re intaking and try again. Weigh yourself everyday and look at the overall trend per week. On average, have you lost weight? If yes, you’re heading the right direction.
Gaining weight is simply the opposite of losing weight. Kind of… If you want to gain muscle and get lean at the same time, DM one of your favorite instagram models and ask then where they get their drugs. If you’d like to keep your kidneys and liver, hold on tight, you’re going to play a game of leapfrog. Gaining and staying somewhat lean is a game of adjustments and body image tolerance. Before any sort of massing, I highly recommend cutting to not go overboard on the gain. For instance, let’s say that I’m starting a mass at 20% bodyfat. Well, by the time I’m done massing, I’m probably going to look like a gelatinous cube and will be sitting at a lovely 25-30% body fat (women you hold more body fat, these are mens numbers). Now, if I start at 15% bodyfat, and only jump to 20% body fat while massing, I’ll just be a nice looking stay puft marshmallow man with some fluff, but nothing too crazy in the anti-fit direction (who doesn’t like a good mallow, am I right?!). This is why we cut before we mass.. That and the fact that it’s easier to cut weight at a lower percentage of body fat due to hormones anyway, so leaning back out will be easier too. Where the tolerance portion of this comes in, is the leap frogging. Basically after the first initial cut, we gain (hello lovely calories) until we’re uncomfortable with our body image or bodyweight. During this period it is highly recommended to lift heavy and often and walk or slow jog to keep cardio, but not burn off excess calories. Once we’ve hit this point we cut again. When we cut back to being as lean as we were before, 15% in this case - we should have gained a few lbs. This weight is the muscle your heart has so desired and you will noticeably look bigger than before when you’re lean. Want more? Simply rinse, wash, and repeat.
On to training. At the end of the last paragraph I started talking about what you should train like when you’re massing. To clear some things up, I don’t really care how you train, as long as you’re doing it intelligently. If you’re a strongman, CrossFit isn’t going to cut it. If you’re CrossFitter, training like a marathon runner isn’t going to cut it. Get the point? There is no singular way of training that is correct. In my opinion, an amalgamation of the best training practices should be used to create the overall best athletes. These protocols can be stolen from bodybuilding, CrossFit, weightlifting, powerlifting, gymnastics, marathon runners, triathlon athletes, etc. The main thing you have to do is know what you’re training for and what it is that you’re trying to achieve. If general fitness is your goal, CrossFit is a GPP program. If strength is your goal, power lifting or weightlifting is your ticket. If you want to look like a bronzed greek god, try out bodybuilding and spray tans (and bring a mankini, fellas). No particular training protocol is bad. Bad movement, bad programming (kitchen sink programming that has no direction, and bad coaching, is bad. Don’t settle for mediocrity and spend some time thinking about what is important to you. If that’s running a sub six mile, you won’t get there by focusing on a 1rm back squat. A coach I respect once told me that training is like spinning plates. We spin the plate we’re focusing on the fastest, but must constantly go back and spin the other plates so they don’t fall off completely. Try looking at training this way, and write down what plates you’re trying to spin in a hierarchy of 1-5. If you have a list of 5+, get rid of the ones you don’t care about as much. Five skills at once is enough.
As always, train hard, be smart about your training, and feel free to ask any questions!
P.S. - I didn’t go over micronutrients or macronutrient breakdown to specific training types. This has been covered in past articles.
