Welcome to Summer School!! Every week of the Summer, I send out an email that teaches you how to Build Muscle, Get Lean, and Maintain your results without getting overwhelmed.
Make sure you do all the homework for each week!
Week 1: “Start Strong: It’s a Lifestyle, Not a Get-To-Summer Fad”
It’s been a while since i chatted with everyone about the concept of “goal cycling.”
This is a term I use to describe how we should move in and out of 3 important fitness goals so that we don’t mentally burn out or physically crash out:
- Build Phase – This is about laying down new muscle tissue because you either want to get stronger or you want to create more SHAPE in your glutes or shoulders or back, for example.
- How to eat: You need a slight calorie surplus – for women usually 100-150 calories is enough to keep unwanted fat off but also have the energy needed to stimulate new muscle tissue growth.
- Easiest time of year to kick it off: September – December – between football season and the holidays getting extra calories is easy. In addition the extra layers of clothes make any added bulk less annoying.
- Health/Maintenance Phase – This is a phase where training, but especially cardio, is reduced. This allows you to resensitize yourself to this stimulus come cutting season again. You want to REDUCE a lot of central nervous system fatigue accumulated from cutting ushering in a bit of intuitive eating is nice here w 1-2 weekly free meals.
- How to eat: 80/20 clean eating is great here. You don’t party like a rock star every single weekend but you’re definitely not bringing tupperware to dinner either.
- Easiest time of year to kick it off: June – August because you just got done dieting down for beach season. I also like for folks to consider January – February if the holidays were particularly rough for them.
- Cut/Lean Out Phase – this is your fat loss phase. You’ll enter into a calorie deficit here. Food tracking and macro counting take away the guesswork and frustration. Kick up the cardio too. It is this phase that allows you to fully show off all the progress you made during your build phase!
- How to eat: 90/10 and whole foods. Drop the going out to eat so much too. That’ll stall you quick. Alcohol needs to be reduced and for some eliminated.
- Easiest time of year: January – May – duh… aint nothing like getting into a bathing suit to help us do the hard thing.
And so… With the pools officially opened, it’s a great time to usher in a summer health phase and in my coaching experience this is the part that is most enigmatic for people.
People know (or think they know) how to diet down.
People also know how to pretend like they don’t care and eat like a jerk.
But… the middle ground? And the benefits of doing a health phases (aka maintenance phase) correctly… that is foreign.
So my goal this summer is to lead the way here… before we usher in our BUILD PHASE in August :)!!!!
First things first though… WHAT DOES SUCCESS LOOK LIKE FOR YOU IN 90 DAYS?
Head over to my IG and answer the survey on this reel: CLICK HERE
Summer School Week 2: “Pool Mode, BBQs, Road Trips: Stay on Track Without Missing Out”
Objective: If dieting down requires you to be on track 90-95% of the time, recomping aka “Gaintaining” requires an 80/20 lifestyle.
This week you will learn to:
- Quantify 80/20 into your lifestyle.
- Define “on plan” vs “off plan”
- Enjoy your off plan meals and wake up without feeling like you need to apologize Monday morning!
Lesson: What is 80/20???
If we estimate you eat 3 meals and 2 snacks per day for 30 days that means you eat 90 meals and 60 snacks in a month.
So if you want to skip the grilled chicken salad for lunch and head over to chik-fil-a to order a #1 combo 20% of the time that equates to 18 meals and 12 snacks in a month.
If we math that per week, you’re looking at :
- 4.5 meals off plan
- 3 snacks off plan
That’s really reasonable, dontcha think!!
But here’s what cannot happen… you cannot replace snacking on carrots with a bag of doritos daily and think that it won’t translate to fat gain so…
- In the fridge: The same foods that cut you, are the same foods that build you!!!
You still need a protein & plant filled mostly whole food based meal plan but there’s so much room to have fun too ⬇️
- Friday: 1 off meal
- Saturday – 2 off plan meals – lunch and dinner
- Weekday: Leave one off meal for Monday – Thursday b/c you know there’s going to be a work birthday party or crazy day at work where you’ll need room and space. If you end up not needing it bank if for Sunday.
- Snacks: Instead of a greek yogurt parfait go grab a frozen yogurt with kiddos or enjoy a cocktail at the pool. You get 3 per week.
- In the gym: You cannot eat more and move less and expect miracles.
With these extra calories you should be CRUSHING it at the gym! With that said, after many weeks of dieting down for the pool, it’s time for a bit more rest.
We will go into “muscle building mode” after the kids go back to school. If you were training 5-6 days a week, I want you to add in one more day of rest. If you were training 3-4 days a week, keep the days in the gym but take away a working set out of your training and this will cut back your time in the gym.
Work hard. Rest hard.
- In your head: Being off plan does not mean eating like an asshole.
Okay, it has to be said. If you head to a Mexican restaurant and eat an entire basket of chips and a bowl of cheese dip, order fried ice cream for dessert, drink a Mega-rita, and down 3 hard tacos, you just had 4.5 off plan meals rolled up in one.
Let’s define “on plan” so you can feel good about being off too.
If “on plan” means your lunch plate has: 400-500 calories
- 30-50 grams grilled chicken breast
- 150 calories worth of a starchy plant like a potato and 2 TB greek yogurt instead of sour cream to dress it.
- A side salad with a low fat dressing
- Before bed a ninja creami with a few Lily’s dark chocolate chips
Then “off plan” means: 600-800 calories
- 30-50 grams of grilled chicken thighs with lots of yummy BBQ sauce that isn’t low sugar!
- You’re definitely keeping the potato and greek yogurt but you’re absolutely going to add some cheese to that.
- You’re happy to enjoy the side salad but you’ve been eyeing the ranch all damn week and you’re not apologizing about it.
- The kids wanted a bit of mac and cheese so you grabbed a spoonful too.
- And oh, you’re ninja creami is getting twice the chocolate chips than usual and spoonful and a spoonful of PB
Homework:
- What does “on plan” and “off plan” look like for you?
- When will you take your “on” and “off” plan meals this week?
You brave enough to show me your homework this week? What about letting me see you’re enjoying an “off” plan meal too? Tag @sweatlocal on IG and lemmee see! Use #sweatsummerschoolhomework
Summer School Week 3: Resensitizing To Cardio & Training Volume
Objective: You will learn how to resensitize your body to intensity in cardio and in the gym and why it matters in the long term.
This week you will:
- Pick between one of two approaches to reducing cardio and WHY it’s important in the long run
- Implement an added rest/recover day or reduce gym time by 25%
- Learn how to schedule “deloads” around vacations/long travel so you won’t feel pressured to find a gym when its inconvenient.
Lesson: How 60-90 days of LESS will help you improve MORE.
In fitness, we use the acronym F.I.T.T. to describe the 4 levers we can push and pull to target a goal.
F – FREQUENCY – how often the activity(ies) are done. For example:
- How many cardio sessions per week?
- How often will you need to train glutes to grow them?
I – INTENSITY – how much effort will be required to achieve the goal. For example:
- How heavy or at what tempo will you train your glutes?
- Will you use supersets, giant sets, 21’s
- Will your cardio sessions be HIIT, MIIT, LISS, MISS or a mix
T – TIME – how long you spend doing activities. For example:
- How long will each cardio session be?
- How long will your training block be?
- How much rest time will be between sets?
T – TYPE – what kind of activity(ies) are required:
- Even runners could use training sessions on a bike or stairs and develop speed strength training.
- Even gym rats can develop better endurance spending time on the treadmill incline walking or kicking up the resistance on a recumbent bike.
In a nutshell, the greatest mistake people make in fitness is pulling every F.I.T.T. lever simultaneously and thinking they have to keep going just that hard to both achieve and keep their results.
NOT TRUE!
And here’s why…
After a long bout of “Pushing to the Pool” (or any big goal) your body becomes desensitized to the cardiovascular stimuli and training volume for muscle growth.
In other words, it adapts to the stress making it less responsive to further training. This is why more never equates to more in fitness (or in dieting).
Wanna make gainz later? Take the summer to RESENSITIZE!
Taking a period of rest or reduced training (deloading) allows your muscles to regain their sensitivity to growth stimuli. This means they’re more likely to grow when you return to a higher volume training phase.
- Benefits of Resensitization:
- Increased Muscle Growth: Muscles that are resensitized can grow faster and more efficiently when they return to training.
- Reduced Injury Risk: Resensitization can help reduce the risk of overuse injuries by allowing muscles to recover and rebuild.
- Long-Term Success: Embracing resensitization is crucial for long-term muscle growth and strength gains.
How to resensitize: Here are some ideas for cardio & weightlifting!
- Deloading Cardio:
- F: reduce how often you do do cardio
- I: reduce your cardio intensity
- T: reduce how long you do cardio
- T: change the type of cardio
- Week 1: Immediately reduce intensity. This might mean speed work, hills, or HIIT.
- Week 2: Now that intensity is gone you can either or both reduce frequency and time. This largely depends on your love of cardio or endurance sports.
- Week 3: Take out an entire day of formal conditioning work and make room to rest and play
- Week 4: Bored of running? Time to bike or swim. Tired of the treadmill? Hit the trails.
- Deloading the gym:
- F: reduce how often you go to the gym
- I: reduce lifting intensity
- T: reduce how long you spend in the gym
- T: change the kind of weight training you do.
- Week 1: Immediately reduce intensity. Take out supersets, burnout sets, 21’s. Aim for training using only straight sets.
- Week 2: Take out an entire day of weight lifting and add in a recovery day. You know you always talk about needing more mobility. Nows the time to invest in that!
- Week 3: Take out ONE working set from each movement. If you were doing 4-5 sets of squats you’re doing 3 sets for this training block. (Promise your form will improve immensely this way too)
- Week 4: If you finished a push, pull, legs split have your coach program a Push/Hinge, Pull/Squat program, for example.
YOUR HOMEWORK: Figure out what you want to deload, and write down your personal plan. When you’re done, comment on THIS INSTAGRAM POST and let me know what you’re working on!
Come back next week for Week 4!
