Intro 2 Nutrition 2 Macro Calculator 2 Myths of Nutrition 2 Truths of Nutrition 3 Simple Rules 4 The Calorie Deficit 4 Protein and resistance training 6 Are you eating enough to recover and GROW?! 6 Nutrition Hacks 7 80:20 Rule 7 The weekly budget 8 How to track your calorie intake 9 What if you really cannot track? 10 The 250 Method 10 Outsource The Issue 11 Training 12 What is functional training? 12 Can you build muscle with functional training? 13 Will doing cardio hinder muscle growth? 13 Are there more effective ways of building muscle? 14 1 Intro Welcome to my client handbook. These are some of the principles I live by and tools I use that have helped me create a lifestyle where I feel empowered, in control and free. It’s a system that enables me to stay consistent and hit all the health and fitness goals I set out for myself, whilst still enjoying my life to the fullest. Nutrition Macro Calculator So before we get ‘tucked’ in, for you to get the most out of the tools and information I’m going to share with you, you will need to know your Target Calories and Macronutrients. Therefore as my first gift to you please fill out the below macro calculator and then proceed to the ‘meaty’ stuff (sorry that was just too easy). Macro Calculator Myths of Nutrition A lot of mistakes and struggles with nutrition often occur due to common myths and misconceptions so let’s start this section by shooting them out the water shall we?! Myths: - I like food too much so I can’t follow a diet - There are things I should and shouldn’t eat to lose fat - If I eat healthy food and follow a meal plan, I’ll lose fat - Eating sugary / junk food causes fat gain - Fat / Carbs / Sugar / Gluten are the DEVIL! Most of these suggest that eating a ‘certain thing’ will either cause us to lose or gain fat rather than looking at our energy expenditure vs consumption. It also suggests that we must be 2 extremely restricted and rigid with the nutrition plan we are following in order to achieve our goals which is simply not the case. A lot of fitness industry concepts / products are based around selling 1 idea / 1 thing that will work such as cutting out all carbs or eating too early or late. This creates the ‘tightrope effect’ where people are walking around trying to stay on this really narrow path doing something that is really tough to do with zero room for manoeuvre. They may succeed for a short period but something soon enough will nudge them off just the tiniest bit and boom they're off the rope and totally off course (head deep in a bag of carbs with crisp crumbs around their lips and sugar stuck in their eyelashes...at 10pm at night god forbid). We want to create a mindset and structure that allows you the flexibility to enjoy a social life and the foods / drinks you love without thinking the world is going to end. We really can enjoy the foods we love, in more than pigeon portions and still look exactly how we wish if we do a little planning ahead and follow some basic principles. Truths of Nutrition - You can STILL gain weight by eating too much of the “right” food / stuff. At the most basic level if you eat too much food, you have to gain weight, there is nowhere else for that energy to go, it’s just science, the basic law of thermodynamics. If you consumed too much of any of the “healthy” foods that you see in all of the health books and articles (such as avocado, nuts, fruits) you will still gain weight, these calories for the most part are just the same as calories from “bad” foods although the macronutrient breakdown might be different. Whilst we’re at it, the macronutrients are Protein , Carbohydrates and Fats Protein and Carbohydrates contain 4 calories per gram and Fats contain 9 calories per gram. A combination of these go together in every food we eat to make a total calorie number which we use as energy. If we eat too many calories the body will store it and if we eat too little calories the body will search inside itself for energy from muscle, tissue, fat mass to meet its calorie needs. This is the fundamentals in how we change our weight. - You can lose weight by eating too little of the “wrong” foods / stuff We all know someone who is consistently slim / in good shape and seems to eat junk food all the time. It’s not metabolic magic, they are just respecting calories in vs calories out. If all you ate was one Mars bar each day do you think you’d gain weight or lose weight? Hopefully you think you’d lose weight as there are hardly any calories in a Mars bar (roughly 250) in comparison to any of our daily calorie needs. Our body will have to search elsewhere to get its energy requirements, usually from muscle or fat mass. 3 What I’m trying to outline here is that there is nothing magical about a Mars bar that makes us gain weight just as there is nothing magical about an avocado that makes us lose weight. They both contain calories, just calories that come from slightly different places which does matter but isn’t the main focus when dictating whether we lose or gain weight. How MUCH you eat is more important than WHAT you eat. By no means am I suggesting you go away and eat Mars bars all day and that's us done with our nutrition section because what we eat does still matter but I want to simplify the science enough so you can see “how much” as the most fundamental thing that we are managing. The key is having variety and a diet that meets your needs. That's what a healthy diet is, getting enough fruits, vegetables, minerals and nutrients but also consuming the right amount of calories for our goal whether that be fat loss, muscle gain or just feeling damn good about our performance. Within our daily allowance we should definitely focus on consuming wholefoods that supply us with enough protein (for muscle and tissue repair), carbohydrates (to fuel our activity and performance) and fats (also for energy and to help absorption of vital nutrients) but also enjoy and not be scared of foods we love. Don’t create a prison (I’ve been there and it’s a seriously sad place to be). I am still a strong believer in meal prepping as this dramatically increases the likelihood of us eating nourishing foods during the 80% of our time that we can control. However, by having the basic understanding and knowledge of the above principles, we allow ourselves the freedom to enjoy meals out when they come up, a glass of wine with our dinner or if we simply just REALLY don’t fancy the chicken and rice box that we have prepped on an occasion (and Pizza becomes LIFE). By having this understanding we can take the foods we enjoy and fit them into our own meal plan whilst still hitting our desired outcome. This is the way we create a consistent approach that becomes part of our life rather than just a period of time. Just hit your numbers, no more, no less...nutrition really can become that simple. A “healthy” diet is one that includes enough of what you need, there are no bonus points for more nutrients, enjoyment is more important. 4 Simple Rules - All successful weight loss diets have ONE thing in common: A CALORIE DEFICIT - A calorie deficit / surplus influences your weight. Deficit drops weight, Surplus adds weight. - Protein intake and resistance training influence the ratio of muscle to fat at a given weight - We need muscle to hold the shape you want - Low enough body fat to have toned appearance The Calorie Deficit You’ve heard it a million times before I’m sure but here is my super simplistic outlook on the subject. It kills me when clients get confused and bogged down by the vast number of fads and supposed miracle fixes out there: low carb, high fat, intermittent fasting, miss your meal times by a second and you’re screwed...the list goes on. All of which are effectively ‘The Calorie Deficit’ packaged up in different ways. By cutting out an entire food group...guess what? You’re more likely than not going to end up slashing a huge portion of your daily calorie intake putting you into a ‘calorie deficit’. By narrowing the window in which you eat to 8 hours and therefore missing a whole meal or two which you would have normally consumed...guess what? You’re going to slash a huge portion of your daily calorie intake putting you into a ‘calorie deficit’. You see where I’m going with this. Back to the topic, a calorie deficit is simply expending more energy than you are putting in. This can be manipulated in 2 ways: 1 - consume fewer calories 2 - Burn more through daily activities and exercise A happy medium between the two is usually the most sensible and sustainable option. Calories consumed Calories burnt The first step I take with my clients is to calculate their BMR (basal metabolic rate) - which is the number of calories your body needs to perform its most basic functions. 5 Once we have this number we then need to take into account your activity level ie are you sat at a desk all day vs carrying cement up a ladder? Do you pop to the gym to do bicep curls a couple of times a week vs training for an Ironman? (not that there’s anything wrong with bicep curls but you catch my drift). Depending on this determined activity level we will add a number of calories onto your BMR to find your total daily calorie expenditure. For someone looking for fat loss I will usually use a calorie deficit of 15% which I find is enough to see a consistent reduction in body fat but also allows them to still feel energised and perform during their workouts which leads to higher motivation levels and therefore consistency and adherence. Without getting too much into macronutrients, we must work out our daily protein target because this will allow us to recover from our training sessions and also preserve our lean mass ensuring the weight we lose is predominantly fat. We want to look at anything from between 1.6 - 2.2 times our body weight in kgs depending on your training volume. Stay under your total daily calorie intake by a 15% deficit + hit your daily protein target and you will be well on your way to achieving your fat loss targets. Protein and resistance training Protein is the macronutrient that our body needs to repair muscle tissue and grow. Resistance training acts as the catalyst and stimulates the body to adapt in a certain way depending on which stimulus you hit it with (hypertrophy, absolute strength, power, muscular endurance etc). The body will only be able to reap the rewards of this training if we provide it with enough protein to repair, enough calories to refuel and grow and enough rest / recovery to let the magic happen. Even if your main goal is to drop body fat you’ll still want to be doing some resistance training and hitting your protein number to ensure you hold onto your shape. If you set off training like a mad person but weren’t hitting anywhere near your required protein whilst also not eating enough calories, your body would go looking for energy from inside of itself. And because it doesn’t have enough protein to maintain its muscle tissue, that is the first place it’ll go to rather than stealing the energy from fat stores. This means we will be losing weight but that weight will be from muscle not fat, so our fat percentage will actually be increasing at our new weight...booooo, bad! We want to hold onto every bit of muscle we have, as this will help keep our metabolism higher, keep our shape as we drop weight and it’s pretty hard graft to build in the first place. Hitting your required protein number whilst in a calorie deficit will ensure the majority of the weight we lose will be from fat and help us hold onto as much of our muscle as possible, creating a more toned appearance as we drop weight....yaaaay, good! 6 Are you eating enough to recover and GROW?! So I’ve mainly spoken about losing weight or fat so far and the main reason for doing this is that the reality for most is that this is the most logical and optimal place to start. It is very rare that I have someone start up and tell me that they are at their ideal fat percentage, they may not be far off and feel more than happy and content in their body but most will answer that they would like to be even a slight bit leaner. Even if we get the numbers bang on, going into a calorie surplus big enough to build a considerable amount of muscle will always lead to the person feeling slightly less lean for a period of time. Once the desired shape has been achieved we can drop back down to maintenance calories whilst keeping training volume high to lean up fully again. What I’m getting at with this is that the most motivating place to start is to drop a bit of fat mass as this will immediately give you a more defined look and give the illusion of being more muscular without even putting on any actual muscle mass at all (mini win for sure). The fun part!! :) Once you have got down to your desired level of lean or happen to be there already (well played you), it’s time to have some fun and REBUILD. Now before we get too carried away (sorry, I know I can be a bore) and start ordering pizza for breakfast and doughnuts for dinner everyday, we’ve just worked jolly hard to get to this point so during this process we want to keep as close as possible to our optimal body fat whilst consuming just enough calories to allow our bodies to build and grow the amount of muscle we want. If you’ve decided to train with me I assume you have no desire to look like the michelin man but want to build enough muscle to give a strong athletic look. The way we go about doing this is going on a calorie surplus of 200-500 Calories / 10-20% on average per day. This will be enough for us to slowly gain muscle with minimal body fat alongside. During this time it is super important that we put in the work at the gym and hit the volume required on the main movement patterns to stimulate the muscles wanting to grow / get stronger. When we overload the muscles during training, a signal is sent saying “blimey if they are wanting us to do this every week we better damn well call in some more recruits to make the task easier, that was far too much effort today”. So during rest and recovery, the body will lay down more muscle fibres to be able to better cope with the stress they've been put under next time around. 7 Nutrition Hacks 80:20 Rule This is a rule I live by and one that has allowed me to really relax in my approach to nutrition. We’ve discussed previously that there are no magical foods, Mars bars don’t automatically make you gain weight just the way avocados don’t automatically make you lose weight. So you could technically lose weight with a diet of junk food all day as long as it equated to less than your daily expenditure. This may sound fantastic for a few days, however if you decide to go down this route I’m guessing you will end up feeling pretty rubbish, skinny, but rubbish...which is misguided when we are trying to create a lifestyle where we feel, look and perform better. This approach also isn't good from a hunger and satiety perspective, junk food tends to not leave you feeling very full, so staying under your calorie target on these foods alone leaves you feeling unsatisfied and a little miserable which in turn makes the task of consistently hitting your calorie number extremely tough. This is where the 80:20 rule comes into play. I eat “clean” (think about me grimacing whilst saying this as I’ve come to hate this label) wholefoods 80% of the time and then make up the other 20% with the “naughty” bits (or SOUL food haha). Having wholefoods make up the majority of my nutrition ensures I am getting all the nutrients I need to allow my body to recover properly and feel at its very best. They also keep me feeling full / satiated which makes balancing my energy intake far easier, allowing me to also look the way that makes me feel at my best (sidenote, have you ever tried to overeat white fish and broccoli...It’s mighty hard work I tell you that!). In the remaining 20% I can enjoy the “naughty” food I also love. Creating this blend allows you to look badass without feeling deprived, enjoy social events without feeling like the “boring” fitness freak and generally live with freedom. Taking good care and ticking all the boxes with 80% gives you peace of mind that you can do as you please and go with the flow during the rest. Daily Example of this put into practice: Breakfast - Protein Oats with PB Pre Workout Snack - Almond Croissant Lunch - Chicken Meatballs, wholemeal pasta, broccoli Dinner - Salmon, Sweet Potato, Asparagus Post Dinner Snack - 2 cookies The way I put this into practice on a weekly basis leads us to the next tactic we can utilise... 8 The weekly budget A really great way to look at your calories is as a weekly budget. If you were given £1000 to last you for the week how would you go about making this possible? There has been this jacket that you’ve wanted to buy for aaaaages (£300), it's one of your best friends birthdays and they've organised a big night out where you’ll probably spend £150, you’ve also booked a dinner date with your partner / hot date which comes to £200 (a bit of a touch for london). This leaves you with £350 for general life, food, travel etc, if this is plenty then fantastic but if it means you’re going to struggle to pay your rent and have to live off baked beans and rice all week are you ok with this? If not then we have to take a look at those big purchases and see if there are ways we can cut the costs in order for us to live more comfortably. Eg Can we go to the birthday night out and tell everyone that we’re not drinking and save on that expense? Or do we need to prioritise and totally cut one of these costs out? Do we REALLY need that jacket this week? Now relate this to your weekly calories, we can keep that birthday night out as an example with all the liquid calories, as well as the date night where you enjoy a steak and chips sharing a bottle of red wine, and then we love to treat ourselves to an almond croissant from time to time (great choice right). Calculate what the damage of these big events will come to and then you can reverse engineer to see what calories you need to hit during the remaining time to stay within your numbers. If we’re left with an ample amount where we can create a sustainable routine then fantastic but if like the above example we’re left trying to survive off dust, this is a plan that we will not be able to be consistent with so we must revisit the bigger events and see what can be done to enable the rest of our week to feel sustainable. Can we go to the night out and not drink, have steak with a side of vegetables instead of chips on our dinner date or maybe we even need to prioritise and cut a few events out here and there for a period of time until we’re where we want to be. Most of us will be sitting somewhere in between these two extremes so we can use hacks on the day of these events where we know our calories will be higher like reducing our breakfast / lunch to allow us to enjoy the events to the fullest. Looking at your calories in this weekly fashion allows you to “steal” calories from the days you are able to control and save them up for the days where you have social events that will inevitably knock you off piste here and there. It’s all a balancing act that over time will become so automated that it will allow you to feel like you’re living with full freedom. These little moments of planning ahead give you total control. 9 How to track your calorie intake The best and easiest way I have found to track your calorie intake and macro balance is by using an app called MyFitnessPal. It will allow you to manually input the numbers we calculated using the macro calculator at the start of the nutrition section and set these as your daily targets. As you input all the food / drink you are consuming throughout the day, MyFitnessPal will automatically tally up all the calorie and macro numbers so you can easily see how many calories, protein, carbs, fats you have left to hit in the remainder of the day. MyFitnessPal has a vast number of foods already saved in its library so you can type in ‘chicken breast’ for example, select from the list that comes up and then input the weight or quantity using the boxes already provided on the app. If the food is not on the list, you scan its barcode instead and the app will usually find it. If you already know the exact macros of your meal, you can quickly input manually. I go through a 2 week period every time I decide to manipulate my calorie intake to either try to build muscle and get stronger, or lean down slightly / get lighter for a more endurance based competition, where I track everything so I know exactly what is going into my body. By doing this it allows me to set a benchmark and then gradually push in whatever direction I want to go, so I’m not just stabbing in the dark hoping for the best. For building muscle and strength I will increase my calories by a certain amount, see what happens, if my weight / training numbers stay the same I’ll add a little more calories, this process continues until I start seeing the shift I want. This may sound tedious, and it really can be but I rarely do this for a sustained period of time. Usually by the time I have seen the shift I want I have pretty much automated a daily / weekly nutrition routine where I know the calories and macros I am consuming without having to input into the App. For example, I know off the top of my head whilst writing this that my daily breakfast of 120g Oats, 2 scoops Vegan Protein Powder, 50g Crunchy Peanut Butter comes to bang on 1000 Calories (78 P, 85 C, 35 F). I have calculated it so many times before and it’s one thing in my routine that doesn't change so therefore I will never have to calculate this again. This can be related to your fitness journey, you’ll have to go through a period of “pain” where you’re having to track but once you get to your desired goal you can chill out a little. Your calories will return to a maintenance level, which you’ll want to keep stable unless you decide to 10 manipulate your weight again and by this point you will have a solid understanding of what you are able to consume within a day / week whilst not gaining nor losing weight (without tracking / inputting). By being aware of how your own body feels and using all the tools we have gone through you should be able to balance and manipulate pretty easily based on intuition. Feel like you’re becoming less lean, pull back on calories from here and there, feel like you’re losing too much or dropping in strength / energy, add a snack into your routine. If you feel like your routine has changed a lot and you’re losing a bit of control, get back onto MyFitnessPal, track for a week or so until you know where you’re at again. What if you really cannot track? The 250 Method If you really cannot stand tracking your food or can’t on occasions due to social events then here is a really nice tool to give you the peace of mind that you are still sticking to your numbers. The 250 Method allows you to eyeball things and guesstimate the calorie amount on the spot rather than having to track in your phone or start to weigh and measure everything. We’re going to guess on the calories of something and then round up to the nearest 250 calories. A small chocolate bar or similar is usually 150-200 calories so we round this up to 250. A sandwich or baguette is usually 300-400 calories so we round up to 500. A meal of chicken/fish, rice/potatoes and veg generally comes to 500-750 in a restaurant so we put it down as 750. Pasta when eating out is 700-800 so we call it 1000. Pizza is normally just above 1000 depending on size so we put it down as 1250. You can continue to put any foods into these brackets. By always rounding up we ensure we stay within our numbers even when calculating things at a glance. We can easily create a day like this now, if we said we had a sandwich for lunch, chocolate bar as a snack and then pasta for dinner we have hit 1750 calories so we know how many calories we have left to play with for the rest of the day. You will obviously get a much more accurate and better result if you are tracking properly. This is what I would highly recommend doing for at least a solid period of time until you have learnt how much you are putting in your body, where things can then come a little more automated. The 250 method is however a really nice tool to use when you are out for the day or having adhoc meals out here and there. 11 Outsource The Issue Motivation comes and goes so don’t leave your nutrition to chance... Joining the Fresh Fitness Food team over 3 years ago now has honestly been one of the most impactful decisions I have made to date. As those who are close to me know I can be an utter weirdo when it comes to food, totally seeing it purely as fuel. Before FFF I would have the same food day in day out which sounds bad enough as it is, but 3 out of 4 meals would also be identical. Overnight protein oats in the morning with a dollop of peanut butter for good measure, followed by 3 meals of chicken breast, sweet potato and broccoli (or Salmon and asparagus when I was feeling a little frisky). I’d got to a place where I didn’t feel the need but also didn’t have the mental energy to mix things up....how sad right! Starting FFF reignited my love for varied and flavoursome foods whilst still ensuring I hit my fitness and body composition goals. After tackling our days at work and bossing our training sessions, knowing our Nutrition has been taken care of in order to keep our bodies firing on all cylinders is one thing but the time it gives back each day (whether it be to read, walk, meet up with friends, even have a nap) rather than in the kitchen is just totally priceless. We can all hype ourselves up and get motivated to start a healthy way of living but a long list of external factors can soon see that motivation dwindle. This is where you must have made this healthy way of living a habit (something that you do often and regularly, sometimes without knowing that you are doing it) in order to stay on track, being with FFF automates a huge part of this lifestyle and puts healthy food in front of you whether you are having a super motivated day or not. 12 Training What is functional training? By definition Functional training is a type of exercise that uses the movements you make in your daily life . (Squat, Hinge, Push, Pull, Carry, Drag). This has then been developed into a way of training that allows you to seriously improve your fitness levels whilst keeping huge variety and fun. The wide range of equipment used - Barbells, Dumbbells, Kettlebells, DBalls, Plyo Boxes, Running and a range of cardio machines (Row, Ski, Bike) allows us to challenge the stated movement patterns in different ways as well as challenge the full range of energy systems. One of the main reasons I love functional fitness is because it’s based around performance rather than just aesthetics (the way we look). Training for performance keeps an element of fun and personal competition to our training, aiming for mini personal targets, consistently ticking off mini wins each week / month both add to motivation and help build momentum. We can keep hitting and celebrating short term targets rather than feeling overwhelmed / unmotivated by solely focusing on the end result / image and all of a sudden that momentum is unbreakable. And the real beauty of it is that in most cases before we know it we end up looking the way we wanted in the first place, if not better, without really even focussing on it. I also find training for performance extremely empowering. Dialling in on a training program and feeling your body getting fitter or stronger as the weeks go by, no one else has been able to do those reps or the work for you, YOU have taken control, YOU have had the discipline, YOU have taken action...How powerful is that. Feeling your strength grow within and the sense of control that comes with it oozes out into all other areas of our lives too. 13 Can you build muscle with functional training? Enter the Power of compounds! Exercises can be broken down into two different categories: Compound movements and isolated movements. Both are beneficial and utilised within most exercise programs. A compound exercise is any movement that involves two joints or more in the body, resulting in the engagement of multiple muscle groups. Think of a squat, which moves both your hip and knee joints and engages your core, glutes, quads, hamstrings, calf muscles and more. This not only recruits as many muscle fibres as possible at the same time but naturally creates a larger response through the body by maximising your total energy output, allowing us to also improve our cardiovascular system and VO2 max at the same time. Compound movements should make up the foundation of any good strength program as they enable us to move much heavier loads which in turn build much more overall strength. Sufficient evidence suggests that due to the use of such a large number of muscle fibres some of these compound exercises promote a hormonal response within the body (human growth hormone and testosterone) which help you develop lean muscle mass and aids in fat loss. Basically getting us way more bang for our buck (winner winner). Hitting multiple muscle groups within the same exercise also allows us to be way more time efficient with our training. A simple circuit of 10 x Squats,10 x Push Ups, 10 x Deadlifts, 10 x Pull Ups x 4 Rounds will hit almost all the muscle groups in the body. Now imagine having to hit all these muscle groups with one isolation exercise each, you’d easily increase the length of your session by 2-3 times. There is certainly a place for isolation movements in any training program as they can help address any specific imbalances in the body, target certain areas whilst letting others recover and well, just get a damn good pump on (channel your best Arnie voice) (who doesn’t love a Friday arms day from time to time?) however, they do not expend as much energy as compound movements and very rarely do they challenge the cardiovascular system. So by comparing the two differing types of categories we can see how the use of compound exercises has a big list of benefits. Whether you are wanting to lose weight, build strength, improve overall performance in training, or in life due to the dynamic nature of these exercises, then “the power of compounds” is unquestionable and makes functional training a great way to build lean muscle and strength. 14 Will doing cardio hinder muscle growth? Cardio doesn't hinder muscle growth. If anything it will actually aid our strength sessions. The stronger your cardiovascular system (your heart and lungs), the quicker we will be able to recover in between sets, sessions as a whole and generally work at higher intensities. It’s all a win. What will put a halt to any strength and muscle gains, or any fitness adaptations at all for that matter, is us not allowing our body to recover adequately. As mentioned before we do not actually gain muscle / fitness during our training sessions but during the time in between sessions. We need good nutrition to provide enough protein for the muscles to repair and grow, and enough carbohydrates and fats to refuel and enhance our recovery. On top of this we must also get enough rest, relaxation and the king of all SLEEP. Think about your body as a battery, we hit a big morning weights session which drains the battery a fair amount (minus 20%), we have a solid breakfast whilst getting stuck into some tasks for work with a glorious smelling coffee by our side, here we are refuelling our energy stores and in a physically rested state allowing the good stuff to happen (add 10% back to our battery). It’s a lovely day so we get outside for a lunchtime walk, not strenuous but it will still eat into our daily energy stores (minus 5% from our battery), back for lunch (Chicken poke bowl with brown rice as a base...ooooh you’re on good form today, add 5% back to the battery). We blast through work physically resting again (add 5%). After work it is still glorious outside and we fancy going for a run to clear our head a little before settling down for the evening (minus 20%). We now find ourselves at dinner time with 20% of our battery to recharge, knowing we’ve had a solid training day we cook up a generous portion of pasta bolognese (what a win, add 10%), we then spend some quality time with loved ones before heading to bed in time to ensure we get a good 8 hours sleep (add 10%). We wake up in the morning fully charged with non shrivelled muscles ready to rock another day. This is obviously an extremely basic analogy. It doesn’t mention the energy your body will burn just to perform its fundamental tasks and cope with external stresses (I’ll save that for another lesson). There is also a point beyond where you can keep expending energy and be able to refuel enough in order for your body to recover fully (although training volume needs to be extremely high for this to come into play). But back to the point, what I’m trying to get at here is that if we are enjoying cardio elements within our training program and the benefits that come with it, then all that is needed is for us to balance out this added energy expenditure by consuming slightly more calories. What a shame!! ;) 15 Are there more effective ways of building muscle? Maybe? But if we can build whilst having fun you will be more consistent and stick with it for the long term. Your traditional bodybuilder bro splits can be an extremely effective way of building muscle mass but what says we can’t utilise the hypertrophy rep range, throw in some isolation movements but also keep the fun and enjoyment by including dynamic and engaging workouts within the same session / program. If having a fun (still well thought out) finisher at the end of some of our sessions has us leaving the gym feeling elated and like we’ve accomplished something then this will be a plan we are more likely to stick to for the long run. Finding a balance between “the most effective way” and “fun and variety” is the key to creating a program that moves us towards our goals whilst keeping the engagement and buy-in level high. Yes we must fall in love with the repetition of the main lifts and doing these consistently at certain rep ranges over the different phases of our program, giving the body time to reap the rewards of progressive overload. Watching these incremental improvements really does become addictive, however I find many coaches forget that not everyone wants to fall into that robotic mindset, of course they want to see progress but also want their training to feel fun and need an element of variety to keep them wanting to come back for more. As mentioned already, the best program is one that continually overloads the body but also the one that we can stay consistent with week in week out, for life! If muscle growth / strength improvement is the aim, just remember to balance out that added energy expenditure: more calories, enough recovery time, job done! 16