Fit-Bullets Friday: November 11th, 2022
Fit-Bullets: Shocking Your Body, Male vs Female Training, and The Holiday Season
Happy Fit-Bullets Friday!
Here are 3 things I wanted to share with you this week...
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Why "shocking" your body won't produce better results
If you've been looking into different ways of training for losing fat and getting stronger, you've probably come across the concept of "shocking" the body by doing different things every time you work out.
The theory is: doing something different during each session means your body will be forced to constantly adapt, leading to a better rate of fat loss and faster strength gains.
This is wrong for a couple of reasons.
First, because workouts don't burn as many calories as you think. Yes, you need to work out while losing fat. Strength train to get stronger and preserve your muscle, and do cardio for better cardiovascular health - but NOT because they burn calories.
You can do the most intense and most shocking workouts in the world, but if your nutrition habits aren't putting you in a calorie deficit, there ain't gonna be any fat loss.
And second, because you don't get stronger with random workouts.
You get stronger by doing the same 2-4 simple workouts for 4-6 weeks at a time, focusing on doing an extra rep or using a slightly heavier weight each time we repeat a workout.
Is that more boring than doing random workouts?
Sure, it can be.
Will following a program like this make you stronger than doing random workouts each time you train?
Abso-f*cking-lutely it will.
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Male vs female training
I often get questions from women about strength training.
Questions like "what strength exercises should I be doing as a woman?"
Or "how often should women strength train?"
Here's the thing....
Gender shouldn't dictate how you train.
Your goals dictate how you train.
Sure, there are some differences between men and women. Women tend to do better with a little more training volume. And women might need to moderate the intensity of their workouts according to their cycle.
But aside from that, the only reason that a man and a woman would need to train differently would be because they had different goals.
And, generally speaking, men and women do tend to have different goals.
Women tend to want to change how their glutes, back, and triceps (the muscles in the back of your arms) look, whereas men tend to want to change how their pecs (chest), shoulders, and biceps look.
But if a woman wanted bigger pecs, shoulders, and biceps, her program would look similar to the kind of program you might more typically see a guy following. The only tweaks I would make to her program would be to make sure all exercises are appropriate to her unique movement abilities and body structure.
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The Holiday Season is here
With Thanksgiving coming up in less than 2 weeks and companies all across the world now showing us Xmas-themed advertisements, I think we can safely say the holiday season is here.
And with that can come the belief that it's going to be practically impossible to stay on track and get results.
Here's the thing...
There are 50 days left in 2022.
Sure, you're not going to be in a calorie deficit - or even at maintenance - on Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, and perhaps 2 other specific days you might be celebrating.
Which is 5 days.
Out of 50.
That's 10% of the days left in 2022.
Which means you can still crush the remaining 90% of days.
But Daniel, I have so many events in between those days too! It isn't going to be just 5 days!
Cool. That's a good point.
So let's say you have another FIFTEEN events - a lunchtime celebration here, a get-together with friends there, random dinners, etc. - between now and the end of the year.
Basically, another 15 meals that you have no control over.
Well, most of us eat 3 times a day - so those 15 meals are the equivalent of 5 days.
Now we're up to a total of 10 days where you'll be at maintenance or in a small surplus between now and the end of the year.
Which still leaves 40 days where you can be on track. That's 80% of the time left in 2022.
Focus here. Focus on the 80%.
Focus on staying on track during the meals where you're not celebrating - which is going be 80% of your meals from now until the end of the year.
That's the VAST majority of meals.
And it's enough for you to be able to, at the very least, see a little more progress between now and January.
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See you next time,
Daniel