Good morning everyone and happy Saturday and merry Christmas Eve!!
I hope the holidays have been everything you needed to wrap up the year.
This week we are ending this year with another free article.
I wanted to give you advice about reaching goals and what it takes.
So, what does it take to reach your goals?
Last week we discussed workout splits.
With your amazing new split in hand, what do we do with it?
If your goal is weight loss:
Do you track your calories?
Do you track your workouts?
These are key.
Making progress does not mean being perfect.
You may be wondering how to continue to make progress. I will give you a few hints.
If you have been losing weight and it has stalled…
have you taken a second look at if you are really tracking your calories properly? Take two weeks and be on top of your diet completely. Weigh yourself daily and watch what happens. If nothing… move on to the next step.
If you checked your diet and everything is on point, reduce your calories by 10%. Don’t remove any calories from protein. Weigh daily and check back in with yourself in two weeks.
What about workouts?
If your weight has stalled, it’s worth noting how much effort you put into your lifts.
Track your lifts strictly and watch if you lift the same weights each week. If you do, this may be a big reason you don’t see changes — especially if your calories are lower than you’d like them to be. Intensity is key here.
Pushing hard week by week is how you are going to make progress. Up your intensity, make some ugly faces because your lifts are hard and push through it.
If your goal is gaining muscle:
I’m going to ask again…
Do you track your calories?
Do you track your workouts?
If you don’t, you know what I’m about to tell you (on top of telling you that you need to be 100% okay with gaining weight)
if you have stalled in your progress — surprise! Check your caloric intake again.
Track consistently for two weeks and watch your weight. Did it move? If not, increase your calories by 10% and see what happens after two weeks.
Tracking your workouts when gaining muscle are of upmost importance. This is where intensity is key.
Lifting heavier is the key here, so you need to be adding sets, reps, or weight to your lifts to get stronger and keeping intensity high to really encourage your body to grow.
Make sure you are really pushing hard at the gym.
Recover Hard
Sleep well and make sure you keep a consistent schedule to keep your body in a rhythm.
Make sure you get vital micronutrients in. This can be in the form of taking greens in the morning, taking vitamins, eating whole foods with dense nutrient profiles, and other supplements like creatine that help your endeavors.
Unwind at night. Reduce blue light (screen time) intake before bed by at least an hour to let yourself get into a night time mood. A wise doctor once told me “your bed isn’t for screen time, but there are two other things you can do there. One of them is sleep.”
Find a routine that works best for you to encourage proper recovery.
Stay the course.
You can only let time pass as you chug along.
Make sure you spend your time wisely.
Pick one goal, like weight loss OR muscle gain and stick with it for a while. You will be astonished at what you can achieve by honing in on one specific goal and you will be proud of yourself for doing so.
So many times (and I’ve done it myself) most people want to gain muscle and flip out when the scale goes up and then attempt to lose weight again the next day and put themselves in a “yo-yo maintenance” for the longest time.
Don’t be that guy.
If you need help, reach out. I have appointments available to see if I can be of help to you. Maybe 1:1 training is something that works for you. Whatever your goal, let’s reach them.
Thank you for reading the last of 2022. I hope you enjoyed today’s article and I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and a Merry Christmas.
The next post I put out will cover “when should I do cardio?”
Be on the lookout! See you next time and thank you for being a subscriber.