How To Lose Fat Fast!

How To Lose Fat Fast!

Now, most of my posts are focussed on long term sustainable lifestyle changes, this is not one of those posts, this is a “Holy crap the suns out and I need to get shredded ASAP!” kind of post. 

1 - Only drink water, herbal teas black tea or black coffee, that’s it! “Oh but Andy can I have a couple of beers on the weekend?” “NO, JUST NO!”

2 - Track every session and increase the weight you lift each week

3 - Finish each session with HIIT for 2 - 5 minutes, for those of you who do 20 minutes of high-intensity interval training, you don’t fully grasp the concept of ‘high intensity’.

4 - Squat, squat and squat some more, once you finished squatting, increase the weight and fu#king squat some more!

5 - The majority of your exercises need to be highly compound, for example, squats, deadlift, bench press, military press, bent over rows, pull-downs, squats…..yes I know I put squats in twice

6 - Eat every 3-4 hours, okay, this will not increase your metabolism or any kind of voodoo magic in the wonderful land of make-believe, but what it will do is prevent drops in blood sugar that result in you tearing apart the biscuit cabinet

7 - Reduce calories, track your food for one week (use MyFitnessPal), then see if you gain or lose weight on that amount of calories (weigh and measure yourself), then adjust accordingly, reassess each week

8 - Only eat whole, nutrient-dense foods and focus on eating plenty of protein

9 - Increase current training frequency

10 - Be more active away from the gym - plan out active weekends, instead of going shopping, go for a long walk, or go to something like an indoor trampoline place, but don’t break your finger like I did the other day

Is It Just About The Calories?

Is it just about the calories?

Do we only need to focus on controlling caloric intake?

Best Rep Range For Fat Loss

Rep Ranges for Fat Loss

Summers coming and this is the time of year is when my inbox is full of people asking me what the best rep ranges for fat loss are.

The reason this is something that people just don’t fully understand is that it’s not simply black and white, however, that doesn’t stop people from saying “high reps are for muscle toning and low reps are for strength and muscle gain”, what the hell is muscle toning anyway?? You can’t just train a muscle to look toned, muscles will hypertrophy (get bigger) or atrophy (get smaller), you can’t train a muscle to look toned, the “toned” look comes from having a lower % body fat that reveals the muscle definition, aka shredded!

Let me start by breaking down some rep ranges for you:

Rep Ranges

High Reps (15+):

• Burn more calories

• Increase muscular endurance

• Improve aerobic capacity

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Medium Reps (6-12):

• Muscle building (sarcoplasmic hypertrophy)

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Low Reps (1-6):

• Strength (myofibrillar hypertrophy)

• Increase neuromuscular drive

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Okay, so if my goal is fat loss then it makes sense for me to perform a higher amount of reps to burn more calories, correct? Well not really!

If you want to lose fat, you should be trying to develop a decent amount of muscle tissue (in the gym), the more muscle you have, the faster your metabolic rate. 6-12 reps are gold when it comes to hypertrophy (muscle development). You can very effectively hit all three mechanisms of hypertrophy (three mechanisms of developing muscle):

- Mechanical tension (high resistance)

- Metabolic stress (pump/cell swelling) 

- Muscle damage (stretch)

Okay, so if my goal is fat loss then it makes sense for me to perform between 6-12 reps, correct? Well not really!

Possibly the biggest factor when it comes to muscle building is mechanical tension, putting enough resistance through your muscles to force them to develop. You will need to use heavyweight, therefore you’ll need to perform fewer reps (4-6 reps) to optimise this mechanism.

Okay, so if my goal is fat loss then it makes sense for me to perform between 1-6 reps and life heavier, correct? Well not really!

You’ll need to have plenty of rest between sets when lifting very heavy, so you won’t be burning a high amount of calories.

I can hear the shouts....”Andy……I’m confused…..How many reps will help me to lose fat??’

Well, you need an element of all three. You can include each element in each of your gym sessions or a more effective plan would be to incorporate this through phases/cycles. 

Rep Range Example: 

- Month one mainly higher reps with the odd strength session

- Month two mostly medium reps with the odd bit of strength work

- Month three should be strength-focused, I don’t mean spending the full session training between 1-6 reps, instead start the session with heavy compound exercises like squats or deadlifts (after your warm-up of course), then increase the reps through the session. Once you come to the end of this phase you should have increased strength, that would be the goal of this phase.

Here is an example of how you could structure these sessions:

Month one full-body example session:

A1 - Leg press - 12 reps x 3

B1 - Cable row - 12 reps x 3

C1 - 45 degree hip extension - 12 reps x 3

D1 - Seated shoulder press - 15 reps x 3

E1 - Lateral raises - 15 reps x 3

Month two full-body example session:

A1 - Front squat - 10 reps x 3

B1 - Bent over row - 10 reps x 3

C1 - Lying leg curls - 10 reps x 3

D1 - Military press - 10 reps x 3

E1- Horizontal cable pull - 12 reps x 3

F1 - Dead bugs - 15 (each side) x 3

Month three full-body example session:

A1 - Barbell back squat - 6 reps x 5

B1 - Cable pull down - 8 reps x 4

C1 - RDL’s - 8 reps x 4

D1 - Barbell bench press - 10 reps x 4

E1 - Cable tricep push down 12 reps x 3

F1 - Rowing machine 200m x 5

You can see by these examples that we are not pushing to the extremes, we are not focusing on doing 20 plus reps and we're not doing a 1 rep max set, instead, we're keeping within a set range dependant on our phase objective, this is between 6-15 reps. 

Now, a big thing you need to consider when putting your training plan together is how likely you are to stick with that plan, if you do the same session every single day then this will be completely soul-destroying. You need to consistently mix it up (month by month) allow every workout to take you one step closer to where you want to be.

Now, in order to maximise your potential, you'll need to support your training with a nutrition plan, calorie intake and macros breakdown specific to your goals.

If you wish to take your training and nutrition to the next level you can request a free consultation where I can advise you on the best training methods specific to your goals, along with some advanced dietary strategies, you just need to fill in the form below...

Progressive Overload

What Is Progressive Overload?

“Progressive overload requires a gradual increase in volume, intensity, frequency or time in order to achieve the desired goal of the user. In this context, volume and intensity are defined as follows: Volume is the total number of repetitions multiplied by the resistance used as performed in specific periods of time.”

Progressive overload is absolutely key to your training programme, regardless of your goal, be that strength, hypertrophy or endurance. Without progressive overload, your body will progress and develop to a point, but if you want to see further development then you need to exert greater demand on the body by training hard and training smart. If you don't progressively overload the muscles by forcing them to do more than they're accustomed to, then they have no reason to make further adaptations.

Think about it this way, if you go to the gym and do the same exercises with the same amount of reps, sets and resistance, then run 1km at the exact same pace each time, do you think your body will develop? Does it need to?

The answer is NO, your body will not develop unless it needs to! The body needs to be incrementally challenged in a structured manner in order to see continuous improvements in performance.

To effectively overload the muscles, you need to implement these methods:

1.  Increase Load/Resistance

Increasing the resistance/load is the most common and effective way of progressively overloading a muscle. To give you an example, week one you complete 4 sets of 8 reps on the back squat using 100kg and week two you perform the same amount of reps and sets, but you increase the load up to 110kg, this is the simplest form of progressive overload, progressively increasing the load in order exert greater demand on the muscles.

2. Increase Reps

Consider our example of the back squat again, instead of adding additional load, you could instead perform 4 sets of 10 reps, rather than the initial 8 reps.

Note that with this method, you're limited as you should train within certain rep ranges specific to your goals, for example, if you were training for strength you would not want to incrementally increase the reps until you're hitting 15 + reps as you would then be moving towards muscular endurance. You would increase another variable, like load, frequency or time as this is more aligned to your goal.

On that note, below are the recommended rep ranges for several common goals:

Strength 4-8 reps
Hypertrophy (muscle building) 8-15
Muscular endurance 15 reps +

These are based on the conclusions of a meta analysis by Brad J Schoenfield et al, who found that lower reps with higher weight leads to increased strength, whereas higher reps with lighter weight led to hypertrophy. As you’d imagine, the rep range for endurance is the highest, which echos the findings of a randomised controlled trial by Gerson E Campos et al from the European Journal of Applied Physiology, who found that higher rep ranges lead to the individuals who are better adapted for submaximal prolonged contractions and increased aerobic power and time to exhaustion.

3. Increase Volume

Volume is simply sets multiplied by reps multiplied by resistance. You can increase demand on your body and muscle groups by adding more exercises, reps or sets. Instead of performing the 100kg back squat for 4 sets of 8 reps, you can do it for 5 sets of 8 reps. Alternatively, you can lift the same weight, reps and sets, but add in an additional exercise that targets the same muscle group, for example, you could superset your back squats with lunges..... if you're feeling brave.  

In a review by William J Kraemer et al from The American College of Sports Medicine, it was recommended that changes in total training volume (reps, sets, load) be made in increments of 2.5% to 5.0% per week to avoid the possibility of overtraining.

4. Increase Frequency

 Increasing the training days per week is a very simple and effective approach, but is limited as you need to take sufficient rest days in order to recover and grow. Training needs to enrich your life, not take over it and overtraining can have a detrimental effect on your progress.

5. Reduce Rest Between Sets

This is one of my personal favourites, especially with busy clients who have limited time per session to train. It’s a great way to achieve more volume per session, equating to a significant increase in total volume per week. This can be achieved either through less rest between sets, or by using a training system, such as supersets or tri-sets, where there is no rest between different exercises. This allows you more time to adequately train multiple muscle groups within a session but sets per muscle group should be kept at an appropriate, optimal level for you. The only drawback to limiting rest relates to those training specifically for strength gains; it's vitally important that you have adequate rest between sets in order to sufficiently recover for the next heavy set - you’ll need to be ready for it.

What have we learned?

First and foremost, progressive overload is key, regardless of your goal; it’s the catalyst for seeing real progress and pushing the body to do more. There are several ways in which to elicit progressive overload at our disposal, but it’s vital these are fully understood so you can engage the method which is best aligned to your goals, lifestyle and training experience.

If you are looking for an Online Personal Trainer who can provide a bespoke training plan, with progressive overload at its core, sign up today.

Healthy Snacks

Top 10 Quick Healthy Snacks!

You have found this blog because you're looking for some quick and simple snack ideas that are complementary to your health, fitness and body composition goals!

As a rule of thumb, you're looking for something high in protein, high in nutrients, and low in calories (if your goals are fat loss), or simply a bit of both.

These might not all be perfect, but they are quick, simple, taste damn good, and they sure do keep you out of the biscuit tin.

1 - Protein Shakes 

2 - Rice Cake with Peanut Butter

3 - Greek Yoghurt (you can even add a scoop of protein)

4 - Raw Veg

5- Boiled Eggs

6 - Fruit

7 - Protein Bars

8 - Nuts and Seeds 

9 - Chicken Strips

10 - Harley's no added sugar Jelly

If you want to completely change your body composition and health, then you will need to be following a training and nutrition plan that will complement your goals, these snacks will simply assist you in that process.