Ok, so there are three kinds of people who are screwing up their workouts:
1.) The people who have been doing the same workout for like a year
2.) The people who jump on a new workout program every week
3.) The people who don’t have a program, OR who do totally random workouts all of the time (same thing)
What You NEED To Do For Maximum Results 
You are going to get the best results by FOLLOWING A PROGRAM TO COMPLETION
Your program should have MULTIPLE PHASES
and each phase should have A FEW DIFFERENT WORKOUTS
So we see that a workout shouldn’t be random. If someone asks me “Is this a good workout?” I can’t tell without seeing how it fits into the phase that they are in.
And long term – I can’t tell if that phase makes sense, without seeing the phase before or the phase after – seeing what their whole program looks like.
If You’ve Been Doing The Same Thing For A Year
If you’ve been following the same program for a year, what you need is a whole new program – you need a program with multiple phases.
You need to start the program, do all of the phases, and then after completing it, you need to start a whole new program.
A new program may be: A different style of training, a different philosophy, a different set of tools, a different set of movements (usually pick one of these to be different, not all of them).
For example –
going from a kettlebell only program to a bodyweight only program or a barbell only program would be a program level of change.
Or going from a core strength focused program to a pressing strength focused program or pullup strength focused program.
Or in fat loss, going from Turbulence Training to The Stubborn Seven Pounds or The Trouble Spot Solution
In other words, a new program should be a drasitically different focus and intention from what you’ve been doing.
You need to change programs every 3-12 months.
Within A Program, You Need Phases
So you know you have a good program, at a base level, when the program has different phases. A phase should last 4-6 weeks, though there are exceptions.
A lot of people in the kettlebell community are essentially doing sports performance programs. And in a sports performance program, you may stay in the same “phase” for a very long time – creating an efficiency to it. What ever you do – you want to get more efficient at doing it – and that’s why Power to the People or Naked Warrior are so effective at making you strong – you get really efficient at two movements, in one set and rep range.
In other words – if you want to create performance – do the same thing a lot and get good at it.
But my clients don’t really care about that.
My clients just want to look hot.
So we do the opposite.
We start a phase, we get good at it, and then we change it. We actually want to create an adaptation to something, then we do something else. We don’t do what we are efficient at forever.
Let me repeat for emphasis – the best way to get fat loss results is to do a program, get efficient at it, and then change to a phase that you aren’t efficient at. This is a 4-6 week process.
Some Ways to Change a Phases:
Going from low reps/high sets to high reps low sets:
From 5×5 to 2×20,
or from 4×8 to 3×15
Going from straight sets to density:
From sets of 4×8 with 3 minutes rest to “how many sets of 8 in 20 minutes”
Changing the Volume and Rest Periods
from 4×8 with 3 minutes rest to 8 x 8 with 1 minute rest
from 3×5 with 5 minutes rest to 10×5 with 1 minute rest
What all these have in common is that they are changing a phase within the same program. The essential philosophy or style of the program hasn’t changed, but we change the phase of the program so that you don’t adapt.
Program: Should last 3-12 months
Phase: Should last 4-6 weeks, and be part of a program
Ummm, So This Cool Workout I Saw On The Internet?
It’s ok to do a random fun workout once in a while…. for fun. There are lots of things you can do for fun that don’t necessarily get you results.
But no individual workout is going to provide you with great fat loss results. Each workout you do, needs to be part of a phase. And each phase needs to be part of a program.
Even that famous late night infomercial DVD set, which prides itself on “muscle confusion”, was written by someone smart enough to NOT DO THAT. It’s a 3 month program that has 3 phases. It repeats the same workouts within each phase, and each phase is in the same rep-range.
While the marketing speaks to randomness, the program itself, isn’t. Which is good.
What you want is this:
Workouts -> that are part of a -> Phase -> that is part of a -> Program
This is the key to fat loss results in the short term and in the long term.
It’s faster results than random workouts. It’s faster results than doing the same thing forever.
If You Need A New Program
I think that Holly Rigsby’s Trouble Spot Solution would be a good fit for most of my readers.
It’s a drastically different Program (style and focus) than anything I’ve done, but we have the same philosophy (compound movements + circuits) for fat loss.
You should know who Holly is already – she’s transformed thousands of mom’s bodies with Fit Yummy Mummy. This is her first fat loss product that isn’t “mom’s only”. She’s like the super mom-trainer.
As a side note – I’ve gotten tons of emails from women who weren’t moms, but used Holly’s stuff anyway, just because she makes really effective fat loss workouts.
And also – I know a lot of us in the kettlebell side of training get locked into these basically sports performance kinds of ideas for training (which are great) but I think it would be really fun and effective for you to get to do a program that really is just for looking hotter.
The program uses dumbbells, bodyweight, and kettlebells, and has three phases. You could very easily do the program dumbbells/bodyweight or kettlebells/bodyweight, if that’s what you have.
And of course – Holly is the real deal – she lives it:
Like I mentioned in yesterday’s blog – I asked Holly if I could do a sale for you.
This isn’t one of those big sales where a thousand blog authors are all pushing super hard to sell something – this really is a discount just for you and the other readers of this blog. I’ve kind of been hounding her team about it.
So check it out – see if you dig it.
The reason I pushed so hard for Holly to have a sale for you is just that she lays everything out so completely – she teaches in video every movement, she has follow along videos for every workout, she has a follow along video for warm ups, cool downs… everything. It’s just really clear and simple and complete and effective. And I know that clear and simple and complete and effective is good for you.
There are two days left in this special sale:
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