Let’s face it, who doesn’t want to be sexy? And once you hit that goal of yours, people aren’t going to stop staring. They’ll be talking about you left and right! But if you want to get to that point, you need to follow a well rounded, progressive program that increases muscle mass and gets rid of that stubborn fat. And despite what you may think, weight lifting is incredibly important to have a solid foundation, along with good nutrition.
How do people like Hugh Jackman, Brad Pitt, and those other actors and actresses get the bodies you drool over? There’s no secret program, and there’s no complicated method that can only be found in “Men’s Fitness” magazines, and there are certainly no crazy supplements. They do it through these simple steps:
1. Build Muscle: Gives you a better, stronger, healthier look. Also, more muscle means higher metabolic rate, to help with fat loss.
- Strength Train. More strength means more muscle. Also strengthens joints for better performance and fitness. Also prevents the “skinny-fat” look people get from doing cardio alone.
- Progressively overload. Increase weights or reps of the exercises as you progress. Allows the body to adapt by building muscle.
- Lift More Weight. The more lifted, the more effort needed, the more calories burned (to help with fat loss).
2. Lose Fat: Allows for body definition. People desire low body fat percentages, that’s the kind of stuff you see on all these magazines.
- Cardio. Burns calories, increases cardiovascular fitness.
- Reduce Sugar Intake. Lower carb intake means less is stored as fat.
- Build Muscle. Go Figure.
3. Eating Healthy: Help maintain performance and energy
- Eat whole foods, less processed foods. Processed foods have a lot of added sodium and sugars. Stick to whole foods like vegetables, meat, rice, etc.
- Eat Protein. Needed to build muscle. Helps make you feel full longer and has a higher thermic effect.
- Eat Healthy Fats. Eating fat is not what causes people to have high body fat, it’s excessive eating and being sedentary. Healthy fats (such as from nuts and fish) help with a lot of body functions and help keep you full for longer (meaning you’ll eat less, better for fat loss).
The point is to find a program that helps you build muscle and lose fat. I typically recommend circuit workouts since they incorporate all of these concepts into one concise regiment; cardio, weight lifting, explosive movements, etc… Perfect for beginners. When I say circuit, I am basically saying a set of exercises that are done back to back with little to no rest in between. This set of exercises will be repeated multiple times, which I call a “round,” with about a minute or so rest between each round.
Here is an example of a great beginner circuit you can try at home if you have a set of dumbbells:
- Dumbbell Clean and Press: 12-15 reps
- Jump Squats: 12-15 reps
- Split Lunges: 10 reps (each leg)
- Pushups (wall or knee pushups if regular too difficult): 12-15 reps
- Mountain Climbers: 10-15 reps (each leg)
- One arm Dumbbell Row: 12 reps each arm
- Crunches: 12-15 reps
Completing these 7 exercises counts as 1 Round. Complete this round 3 times for the full circuit. If you feel like you cannot complete the number of repetitions written here, feel free to drop the number and work your way up. You aren’t expected to be able to do the same number of reps each round; the point is keep working until you can do it.
Try this workout for 3 weeks, working out 3 times a week on alternating days; for example, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Increase the number of reps done each week, to keep the progressive overload. And remember, maximum 15 seconds rest between each exercise, with 1-2 minute rest between each round. Again, this is for beginners, so if you feel this is too easy, try another one of the programs that I will be posting up.