I just wrote a guest post for Dr. Brian Russell called: 5 Reasons Kettlebells Will Fix Your Bad Back
If you have ever had a sore lower back, you need to check it out.
Read it here: Kettlebells And Back Pain
Have a great day!
~ Luke
xoxoxoxox
In my nutrition seminars I teach a simple order of importance for the different areas of nutrition.
They are:
So, if you want to change how your body looks and feels, you need to focus on what kind of food you’re eating BEFORE you start counting calories.
(Of course, this is exactly the opposite of where most people start. That’s why they’re fat.)
There are a bunch of simple one-line nutrition plans that trainers recommend. And guess what? They all focus on the first part of the nutrition hierarchy: What you eat.
Without further ado, here they are!
One Line Diet Plan Numero Uno: Meat, Leaves, and Berries
I first learned about the “Meat, Leaves, and Berries” diet from the legendary weightlifter and thrower Dan John.
It’s just like it sounds. Here is Dan’s own description:
It’s a very simple idea. My wife and I had gone on the Atkins Diet and really saw some fantastic results. What I started to notice almost immediately, was a real improvement in “general” health, especially in my skin, basic nasal congestion issues, that kind of thing.
This is right after I invented the Internet, so I started surfing the web and discovered others who were “Paleo-dieting.” Well, to simplify it, we start calling it “meat and leaves.” Basically, meat is fish, beef, poultry and eggs. Leaves are uncooked vegetables, salad and salad bar items, basically. After a while, we tossed in berries for all the antioxidant help. Then we started considering “in season” fruit, apples in the fall, citrus in the winter, and the whole thing fell into place.
I know that I thrive on eating like this, but I fall off the wagon sometimes and get fat, bloated and red faced. It’s an attractive look on me.
You can check out Dan at: http://www.DanJohn.net
One Line Diet Plan Numero Dos: The Dental Floss Diet
Basically, everything that’s good for you sticks in your teeth and you have to floss after eating.
(Yes, I know caramel gets stuck in your teeth. It’s not on this plan. Sorry)
Ice cream, Big Macs, donuts, white bread, etc are so processed that there is nothing left for your teeth to do.
Broccoli, steak, almonds, and spinach, however, get stuck up in your grill and are great for you.
One Line Diet Plan Numero Tres: Green Faces
I first heard about this one from the one and only Rachel Cosgrove.
On it, you only eat green vegetables and things that have a face.
This is a GREAT plan because it takes all ambivalence out of your eating. It’s a yes or no answer.
Can I have cheese? Nope, no face.
Veal? Yep, cute face.
Pie? No face, not even if you cut one in the crust.
Salmon? Yes, weird looking face.
Since Green Faces takes out all of the guess work, you end up eating only things that are good for you.
One Line Diet Plan Numero Quatro: 3 Steps From The Farm
This diet comes from Lou Schuler, the best-selling fitness author.
I don’t like this one quite as much as the others, because it allows things like whole grains, but here’s the gist: Don’t eat anything you can’t trace back to the farm in 3 steps.
Steak? Yes: Farm, Butcher, Store
Cheese? Yes: Dairy, Aging House, Store
Bagel? No: Farm, Dairy, processor, bakery, store
Snickers? Hell no: Too many to list
One Line Diet Plan Numero Cinco: Nothing You Couldn’t Get In The Wilderness With A Sharp Stick
Another one-liner that focuses only on natural foods.
You can get meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and eggs with nothing but a sharp stick.
You can’t get anything that depends on agriculture: grains, beans, dairy, etc.
One Line Diet Plan Numero Seis: Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.
This comes from In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
Pretty good rules to fit in one line, right?
Eat Food: Only eat unprocessed foods that your body knows what to do with
Not Too Much: Self explanatory
Mostly Plants: Dr. Russel always recommends that at least half of your plate is covered with veggies. Good idea.
What They Have In Common
All six of these nutritional one-liners focus on making GOOD FOOD CHOICES.
Cut out the crap and replace it with meat, leaves, and berries and your body will finally start changing!
I remember the morning clearly. I called my little sister on the way home from the gym and said, “You know that sweet southern girl I was telling you about? She said the F-WORD during her workout this morning!”
The sweet, slow-talking girl I was talking about is Deirdre Reid, one of my first clients in Carson City:
And the exercise that made her swear? Negative Chin Ups:
Why do I bring this up?
Well, two reasons:
If you exercise hard at all, you’ve probably at least felt like swearing (even if you didn’t out loud 
)
And here’s something cool: A study from last August showed that swearing helps you tolerate pain!
Stephens R, Atkins J, Kingston A. (2009). Swearing as a response to pain. Neuroreport. 2009 Aug 5;20(12):1056-60.
The pain from exercise comes from a build-up of lactic acid. All this means is that you’re exercising and producing lactate faster than your body can remove it, and that’s a GOOD THING.
That lactic acid does make your muscles burn and prompt a few swear words, but it has some cool benefits for your body transformation, such as:
The abstract from the swearing and pain study is, well…. abstract:
Although a common pain response, whether swearing alters individuals’ experience of pain has not been investigated. This study investigated whether swearing affects cold-pressor pain tolerance (the ability to withstand immersing the hand in icy water), pain perception and heart rate. In a repeated measures design, pain outcomes were assessed in participants asked to repeat a swear word versus a neutral word. In addition, sex differences and the roles of pain catastrophising, fear of pain and trait anxiety were explored. Swearing increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing. However, swearing did not increase pain tolerance in males with a tendency to catastrophise. The observed pain-lessening (hypoalgesic) effect may occur because swearing induces a fight-or-flight response and nullifies the link between fear of pain and pain perception.
Luke’s Take Home Message:
You should be working out so freaking hard that you feel like swearing to relieve the burn!
A crazy mom a few years ago wanted to hire me to train her baseball star son. She wanted me to work on his rotational strength and forward speed.
No problem for the Lukester. Until I found out she had also hired:
And that was in addition to his normal baseball practice!
Oh, did I mention he was 8 freaking years old?!?!
I declined her offer. (I tend to rub other coaches the wrong way )
Also, I think sports should actually be FUN for kids.
Before puberty is the best time to play all sorts of sports, to build a wide base of motor skills and movement patterns. Kids who specialize too early are at MAJOR risk for burnout and injury before they ever get to college.
Here’s a quote from The Development Of The Russian Conjugate Sequence System (Myslinski):
“At an early age (approximately 6.5-9 years old+ 1 year), the initial preparation stage begins. This stage is the cornerstone in the pursuit of PASM (Process of Attaining Sports Mastery) and is characterized by the progressive development of motor skills through a traditional multifaceted motor preparedness and the creation of a functional groundwork for specialized perfecting of motor abilities. Its exclusive goal is to expose young athletes to a wide variety of physical skills, thus stimulating a healthy development and increasing their functional capacities, motor abilities and knowledge base. Additionally, exposing the pre-adolescent sportsman to a well-rounded curriculum negates the effects of early specialization and elevates their overall adaptation level”
Or, to put it another way, children should minor in all sports and major in none.
What practical advice do I have? (This Fitness For 10 Year Olds Series could just be a rant about overweight kids, but I want everyone to have some things to take action on)
That’s it! The take-home message for today is: Kids should play sports, and play a lot of them!
When you get your nutrition program really dialed in, your training program will work like magic.
One of the habits you need to get into is eating every 2-3 hours.
Meals are pretty easy to visualize:
But it’s harder to come up with good snack ideas. I mean, the time it takes to chew steak, spinach, and a bell pepper will use up a whole 15 minute break (and then you won’t even have a chance to pee!)
I was re-reading Primal Body-Primal Mind
by Sally Fallon) or a good homemade-style beef jerky sold at a natural foods-type meat counterThe secret: Fuel your body more often, not less. You don’t want to feel starved or deprived.
By fueling your body throughout the day you’ll keep your metabolism revving!
Maybe I’m just weird, but I don’t think Kim Kardashian is hot.
And she’s certainly not fit.
So when I caught this commercial where she endorses QuickTrim weight loss supplements, it made me sad.
The music makes me think of 70’s porn films (don’t ask me how I know that), as does the whispered voice over.
Then she shoves her chest at the camera and asks “How hot do you want to be?”
Quick note: QuicTrim didn’t give her those breasts. Sorry.
But since I’m curious by nature, I decided to check out the ingredient list and see just exactly WHAT so many people are putting in their bodies.
You can read the product info at: http://www.quicktrim.net/supplement_facts.html
Ok, the “burn and cleanse” capsules contain 400mg of caffeine – which is equal to 4 or 5 cups of coffee. They also contain black pepper and willow bark, both of which boost the potency of caffeine.
The caffeine in there is designed to raise your metabolism, but unless you burn a lot of calories while you jitter around, it won’t do much for your body.
There is also green tea extract, which might contain caffeine. Green tea in its liquid form is good for you, concentrated forms are not.
And since it might contain caffeine, along with all of the other sources and boosters in the pills, if you wash this down with a cup of coffee you could overdose on caffeine and really mess up your heart.
The “IsoCleanse and Flush” pills have TWO kinds of laxatives:
These pills are designed to speed up the movement of food through your intestines. And unless you’re severely constipated, this is a BAD IDEA.
You’ll get dehydration and diarrhea (“How hot do you want to be?”), plus loss of nutrients. On the bright side, you’ll weigh less. Your body fat won’t have changed, but you’ll be nice and sick.
And even better, your system will become dependent on these pills for bowel movements, so you’ll become constipated if you ever stop supplementing. You’ll also gain all the water weight back right away if you ever stop.
Bloated and constipated. (“How hot do you want to be?”)
These pills also have a lot of diuretics in them, which will cause even more water loss and dehydration, without leading to any fat loss.
Added bonus: The ingredients juniper berry, uva ursi, and horsetail extract all become toxic over time. Hooray!
Again, you’ll lose water weight, but not FAT weight. And you’ll put every ounce of it back on.
While you’re dehydrated from these pills some of the side effects may be:
The rest of the supplements in this system are just more of the same: laxatives, stimulants, and diuretics. Boooo.
Bottom line: These pills won’t help you lose weight, and they’ll do your body internal harm if you take them.
(Even flappers in the jazz age were taking weight loss pills. Check out how fat Jane became slim Jane!)
Paleo eating is awesome.
I used to have a t-shirt that said “Eat Like A Caveman”, but it got destroyed during a brutal tire-flipping workout
What is a primal diet? Basically, it is a way of eating that gives your body the foods it was designed to use, and gives you optimal health, fast fat loss, and tons of satisfaction.
I go deep into primal diets (and primal fat loss) in my nutrition seminars, too deep to cover here. Take a look at the list below.
Do you:
If you answered yes to any of the questions above, you need to look into primal eating.
Check out this testimonial one of my personal trainer friends received on his website:
I’m 56 years old and have been a type 2 diabetic since I was 32. When diagnosed, I went on the American Diabetic Association exchange diet, which is 50%+ carbohydrates. Believe it or not, the diet worked for a while, because as high in carbs as it is, it was still fewer than I had been eating. Over the years I made an effort at taking care of myself, but medicines increased. At the first of this year I was injecting 10mcg of Byetta twice a day, 22 units of insulin at night, and taking 2 grams of metformin in the evenings. I was unable to predict what my body’s reaction to meals would be. I had frequent lows, because I was trying to maintain healthy blood sugars. I had been doing some studying – read Dr. Bernstein’s book, Taubes’ book, etc. Anyway on January 4th I began my first steps at becoming primal.
With my doctor’s consent, I discontinued the Byetta and began eating a low carb diet (he also agreed I could stop taking the statin I was on). Initially I was eating 90g of carbs or less a day. That soon dropped to 75g and now I am eating <50g a day. I had to start lowering my insulin dosage within two weeks and was off the insulin in 6 weeks. In 6 months I was off the Metformin, so I am now free of diabetes drugs, though I have not yet been able to get off some others. I have hope for the future. The only exercise I used to do was tai chi, which I enjoy a lot, but was not all I needed. I found out about burpees on this web site and began doing those as well. I also found out about grass-fed beef. I was able to locate a farmer about 75 miles from my home who raises and sells grass-fed beef and recently bought half a cow! I’m eating organic raw cheese. I have cut out artificial sweeteners with occasional lapses. I have cut out all grains and starchy vegetables. I do often have one square of a Lindt 85% cocoa bar – it is about 1.5 grams of sugar (never more than one in a day). Otherwise no sugar. No trans-fats. I find I am very sensitive to carbs so the only fruit I eat is berries, in small amounts. I have increased my fat intake in hopes of raising my HDLs, which historically have been < 30 most of the time. I have added coconut oil to my diet. My low testosterone had risen by 200+ points at my last check up. I hope for a further increase at the end of next week when I have another check up. If that happens, I can begin reducing the medicine I am on for that. I feel great and look forward to continued improvements in my health as time goes by. I wish I had known this 24 years ago.
After reading this, one of my clients asked me for a few resource recommendations for someone interested in learning more about the primal eating lifestyle.
The Vegetarian Myth
If, like me, people have tried to pound vegetarian arguments into your head, this book is a must read.
Lierre Keith was a hard-core vegetarian activist for 20 years, speaking at world conferences and being an advocate for vegetarianism however she could. Until she started to notice all of the health problems that vegetarians have.
(Did you know that 100% of anorexic and bulimic teenage girls start as vegetarians?)
In The Vegetarian Myth Keith looks at vegetarianism from health, political, and environmental standpoints and offers an alternative view: That we are designed to eat animals.
She describes her lifestyle – which is very primal in nature – and how she managed to make the decision to live cruelty free while still eating a healthy (primal) diet.
But be forewarned – Keith is also a feminist and doesn’t care who knows it. I really enjoyed the book, but it turned a few people I know off (both men and women). It won’t impact your nutrition education, but I don’t want any more angry emails
Bottom line: I read this book twice through in 2 days and keep it on my desk. If you’re interested in nutrition and health, get it.
Primal Body, Primal Mind
I’m going to be honest about this: I don’t understand this book’s subtitle. Main title? Easy. “Primal Body, Primal Mind.” Nora Gedgaudas is writing about having a healthy body and a healthy mind with primal nutrition.
It’s the subtitle that throws me: “Empower your total health the way evolution intended (…and didn’t)”
The “…and didn’t” is confusing. Oh well. That aside, this is a great book.
I use it as a reference manual more than anything. Want to know about nutrition and ADD? It’s there.
How magnesium and zinc support your total health? Right in the index.
This is another book I use as a desk reference.
Paleo Diet
This is a good all-around introduction to primal eating.
It’s an easy read (where Primal Body, Primal Mind is more technical).
I don’t like the focus on low-fat in the diet, but other than that, this book is a solid read.
Paleo Diet For Athletes
By “athletes,” the author is referring to endurance athletes such as marathoners and triathletes. The recommendations aren’t for strength and power sports like baseball, volleyball, or wrestling.
BUT, if you are involved in any endurance sports, this book is a goldmine.
The culture of endurance sports has lots and lots of high-carb supplements like powerbars and Clif bars that aren’t supporting health and optimal performance.
Here’s the deal: If you’re into distance biking or running, get this book. If you just want weight loss and health, you can skip it.
Neanderthin
This is the book most of my top trainer friends recommend for their clients.
For some reason, the info in this book is very easy to remember.
If you want to be a modern day hunter-gatherer, this book has all the goods.
The Primal Blueprint
Mark is THE MAN when it comes to a complete primal lifestyle. He can explain diet, exercise, and lifestyle without sounding like a froot loop. (Always a danger when writing about paleo diets!)
His ten primal commandments are excellent, and he lays down very clear guidelines, nothing vague.
If you only get one book off of this list, make it this one!
Good Calories, Bad Calories
This isn’t really a “primal” book per se, but it takes a very detached look at carbs and fat, and how they affect our health.
Taubes explains how the low fat, high carb diet came into the mainstream, as well as presenting a history of low carb diets that had info even I had never heard of!
It’s a little harder to read than other books on this page, but well well worth it.
Paleo Cookbooks
If you want to get started on Primal eating TODAY, these cookbooks are instant downloads.
They are what I use to try new recipes.
And guess what…. there’s COCOA!! That’s right, one of the add-ons is a book of primal dessert recipes.
Amazon doesn’t carry these, so you can check them out here: Paleo Cookbooks
That’s it for today! Pick one or all of these and get reading!
Lots of people ask me what I do to stay lean. They don’t believe I eat lots and lots of fat, never do aerobics, and stay away from grains like the plague.
A big part of my success is having a healthy breakfast every day.
And every morning it is almost exactly the same thing. My alarm goes off at four a.m., and by 4:15 I’m chopping vegetables for the day.
I call this monster the “Hyper-Veggie Scramble.” Since you never know what your day will bring, I like to “front-load” and try to get as many vegetables as possible in early. (Now remember, I’m 225 pounds. This is what I eat. You’ll probably want to cut the portions down some.)
Without further ado, here’s step-by-step photos and directions of how to make your own Hyper-Veggie Scramble!
Luke’s Awesome Breakfast Step One: Take Stock
Here’s what I use: asparagus, bell pepper, green onions, baby spinach, swiss cheese, eggs, and pico de gallo.
Luke’s Awesome Breakfast Step Two: Chop The Pepper
I prefer to use red bell peppers when I cook, because I really like the flavor and they’re full of health benefits.
Here’s a full blog post (including recipes!) about the virtues of the red bell pepper: Fit Body Fuel
Luke’s Awesome Breakfast Step 3: Chop The Asparagus
I usually use six stalks of asparagus with breakfast. The problem is, I grew up in Eastern Washington and used to be able to get super-fresh veggies that had just been cut. It makes a big difference in flavor.
First, cut off the fibrous base of the asparagus. Then chop it into tiny rounds.
Luke’s Awesome Breakfast Step 4: Chop The Onions
I get organic green onions at Raley’s or Whole Foods. They don’t add a lot of vitamins, but they are full of flavor.
Chop off the scraggly root parts, and the top of the greens. Then dice it all up!
Luke’s Awesome Breakfast Step 5: Start Cooking!
I put everything in a non-stick pan with high sides over medium-high heat. It’s very important that you keep everything moving through the whole cooking process, too long in one place and the veggies will burn.
While the peppers, onions, and asparagus are cooking, I measure out four cups of either spinach or mixed spring greens. If I use greens, I chop them first so they don’t make big lumps in the eggs.
Luke’s Awesome Breakfast Step 6: Add The Spinach
When the peppers are cooked through, toss in the spinach and stir it all up. I flip everything over so that the spinach hits the hot pan.
It looks like a lot in the picture above, but check out the difference in volume once it cooks down:
Luke’s Awesome Breakfast Step 7: Eggs!
I eat five eggs with breakfast. As to the eggs, I get local when I can. Eggs from chickens running around a farm are a lot healthier than eggs for a chicken with no beak that was fed chemicals. If there are no local eggs to be had, I get omega-3 eggs or at the very least, cage-free eggs.
Luke’s Awesome Breakfast Step 8: Yum, Cheese
The cheese is the only non-paleolithic food in this dish, but it is so delicious I make an exception.
Once the eggs are almost done, I tear up a slice of cheese and stir it in. (Swiss goes great with the eggs and asparagus!)
Luke’s Awesome Breakfast Step 9: Toppings
Dump everything out on a plate (mine are black, everything looks more slimming in black and top with either pico de gallo or garlic salt.
Luke’s Awesome Breakfast Step 10: Eat!
Enjoy! My little sister laughs that it only takes me 5 minutes to clear my plate, but it’s so delicious I can’t slow down!
Give this recipe a try when you want something quick, healthy, and tasty!
Everyone complains about their metabolism “slowing down.”
I get messages every day from people who have a “slow metabolism” as their excuse for not losing weight.
So today I thought I’d shed light on what your metabolism really is, and how to get it more revved up than a Jack Russell on Amphetamines.
What does metabolism mean, anyway?
Here’s wikipedia’s definition: “Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that happen in living organisms to maintain life. These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. Metabolism is usually divided into two categories. Catabolism breaks down organic matter, for example to harvest energy in cellular respiration. Anabolism uses energy to construct components of cells such as proteins and nucleic acids.”
Basically, the sum of all buildups and breakdowns happening in your body.
Now, if you’re reading a blog about fat loss and fitness, we can probably skip all the boring stuff about nucleic acids.
Here we are interested in one thing: CALORIE BURNING.
Your body burns calories through the 4 components of metabolism: the calories it takes to keep you alive, the calories you burn by exercising, the calories you burn through eating, and a tiny bit of calories burned according to your genetic makeup.
1) Wold Fitness Metabolism Component Number One: Keeping Your Butt Alive
When I was studying exercise science in college, we spent a lot of time studying your Resting Metabolic Rate (or RMR).
I always explain RMR as the calories you would burn if you spent all day in bed. The energy would be used for pumping blood, repairing muscles and organs, thinking, etc.
Your RMR is the bulk of the calories you burn every day, about 50-75%.
Because this is such a large chunk of the calories you burn every day, it makes sense to spend the most time focused on this, right?
And the way you can rev up your resting metabolic rate the fastest is to do two things:
During one study in college I slept in the exercise science lab hooked up to an open circuit spirometer to measure how many calories I burned while sleeping. It turned out that I had so much lean muscle at the time that I would have burned just over 4,300 Calories if I had spent the entire day in bed!
Now, I was a big muscular dude, so this number was off the charts. Mostly we were trying to see how many Calories lean muscle would add to your daily metabolic burn. It’s a lot. Most exercise physiology textbooks have settled on a simple formula:
One Pound Of Muscle = 50 Calories Burned Daily
So if you switch out one pound of muscle for one pound of fat, you would weigh exactly the same, but burn an extra 50 calories a day!
And the second way to raise your resting metabolic burn is to activate what muscle you have to burn a bit more calories every day.
I call this Firestorm Training (You can see a sample training Firestorm program here: 6 Week Workout For Fat Loss).
Studies have found that training to activate your lean muscle will keep you burning calories for a day and a half after your workout!
Why? Well, if you remember above, a big part of your resting metabolic rate is repairing your muscles. If you train really hard ON THE RIGHT PROGRAM, you’ll get just the right amount of breakdown for you metabolism to fix.
And then you’ll keep burning calories long after you’ve left the gym.
Wold Fitness Metabolism Component Number Two: Keeping Your Butt Moving
Every time you move, you fuel your muscles with calories. Otherwise they wouldn’t have the energy to contract.
The scientastic name for this part of your metabolism is Physical Activity Level (or PAL).
Your PAL is about 10-30% of your daily metabolic burn. If you exercise you’re obviously going to burn more calories than if you don’t.
Of course, this isn’t just exercise at the gym. This is any physical activity. Walking the dog, climbing the stairs, running from the cops, all count as part of your PAL metabolic burn.
When you get right down to it, the more you move, the better your body is going to be.
Wold Fitness Metabolism Component Number Three: Keeping Your Butt Fed
One of the coolest ways your metabolism burns calories is with the Thermic Effect of Feeding (TEF).
This is the energy you use chewing, digesting, transporting, and eliminating food in your body.
TEF is about 5-15% of your daily metabolism, depending on if you know how to maximize the benefits of your eating plan.
The two best ways to boost your thermic effect of feeding metabolic burn are to:
A great study of Japanese boxers showed the power of the Thermic Effect Of Feeding:
The boxers were divided into two groups. Both were fed 800 Calories a day. They trained like maniacs (boxers are crazy!). One group ate twice a day, the other ate 5 times a day.
So the only difference was in meal frequency. After 14 days, both groups had lost the same amount of weight – 15 pounds.
The group that ate twice a day lost 13 pounds of muscle, 2 pounds of fat. The group that ate 5 times a day lost 13 pounds of fat, 2 pounds of muscle.
Which group is going to keep their strength, health, and metabolism? The ones that lost fat instead of muscle, of course!
Eating healthy foods more often is the key to maximizing your Thermic Effect of Feeding.
Wold Fitness Metabolism Component Number Four: Your Genes
Something called Nonexercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) is up to 5% of your daily calorie burn.
Unless they make a big breakthrough in stem cells, there isn’t anything you can do to change this, so we don’t focus much on NEAT.
I just wanted you to know it’s there
The Wold Fitness Metabolism Big Idea Of The Day
A “slow metabolism” just means you aren’t taking care of the three main components of your metabolism we looked at today.
Why does your metabolism “slow down”? Usually it means you’re moving less, not keeping your lean, toned muscle, and eating the wrong foods at the wrong time.
You can totally kick your metabolism in the butt and get it in gear.
It’s up to you.
Have fun!
I call my metabolism based training system “Firestorm Fat Loss” since it rapidly accelerates the rate at which you burn fat both during and AFTER your workout.
You hit the road, and your metabolism hits overdrive.
This six week workout is what you need if you want to lose more fat in less time – 30 minute bootcamp style workouts – than ever before.
Secrets Of This 6 Week Workout
Why Your Metabolism Will Burn Extra Hot
Firestorm Fat Loss programs are designed to maximize fat loss through resistance training. Here are the 3 main principles this workout is based on:
How To Ignite Your Metabolic Furnace
Do each of these total body burning workouts once a week, with your “cardio” workouts either immediately following or on your in-between days. (Here is a complete fat loss cardio plan I wrote: Interval Training)
Example:
The workouts in this 6 week bootcamp are planned as a circuit, so you go from one movement to the next without resting. Once you’ve completed one circuit, rest for 90 seconds and go again. 3 circuits for beginners, 6 if you’re more advanced (or determined to lose the most fat in the least time!)
6 Week Progression
This workout will be effective for about 6 weeks. After that your body will adapt and stop raising your metabolism so high.
Try to lift a bit more weight weight each week you cycle back through the workouts.
The Right Resistance
In this workout, use the heaviest weight you can to complete all of the reps in perfect form.
Warming Up:
Here is the best warmup you can do (pictures and all!): Wold Fitness Functional Warmup
Workout A:
Exercise One: Front Squat and Push Press
Reps: 4-6
Exercise Two: Swiss Ball Reverse Crunch
Reps: 12-15
Exercise 3: Chin Up
Reps: 4-6
Exercise 4: Kettlebell Windmill
Reps: 4-6 (each Side)
Exercise 5: ValSlide Pike OR Swiss Ball Pike
Reps: 12-15
Rest 90 seconds, and repeat circuit 3-6 times.
BONUS EXERCISE: Prone Cobra
2 sets of 2 minutes
Workout B
Exercise 1: Power Snatch/Overhead Squat
Reps: 4-6
Exercise 2: Swiss Ball Roll Out OR ValSlide Reach Out
Reps: 12-15
Exercise 3: Kettlebell Tactical Lunge
Reps: 24
Exercise 4: Two Point Dumbbell Row
Reps: 8-10 (each arm)
Exercise 5: Swiss Ball Dumbbell Woodchopper
Reps: 16-20
BONUS EXERCISE: Wall Planks
2 sets of 1 minute
Workout C
Exercise 1: Romanian Deadlift/ Bent Row Combo
Reps: 6-8
Exercise 2: Med Ball Kneeling Shoulder Press
Reps: 8-10
Exercise 3: Mogul Squats
Reps: As Many As Possible in 30 seconds
Exercise 4: Swiss Ball Atomic Pushup OR ValSlide Atomic Pushup
Reps: 10-12
Exercise 5: Medicine Ball Russian Twist
Reps: 20 (10 each side)
BONUS EXERCISE: Extended Hamstring Bridges
2 sets of 90 seconds
Conclusion
If you really want to lose body fat quickly, this program WILL work. Head to the gym, get your favorite music rocking, and get after it!
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