30 days to lean and mean

How often do you come to the gym and repeat the same moves, lifts and routine? If you're saying "regularly" to yourself, then you're going to love this plan I've put together.

While having a routine helps, it also becomes a liability to building your body because when done long enough without enough change, it actually will hurt progress and create greater injury risk.

This plan is something that has taken me 15 years to learn, months to practice and more years to refine. But like everything that is incredible quality, it looks simple on the outside, but that doesn't mean it's easy.

An example of things looking simple on the outside is like in the recent Olympics, and specifically Michael Phelps. He makes it look so easy, but on the inside, tons of work, nuances and more work. Further on the point of simple, everything that is simple is actually very complex, because if it were simple, people would be doing it. Take the simple act of drinking enough water during the day.....every day. How often does that happen consistently? And yet hydration is fundamental to building great health and bodies.

So, now that you're about ready to ditch your old routine to try mine, consider your old routine 'the-way-to-where-you-are-physically' plan. It showed you some things to do to improve your body and health, but now it isn't delivering. This is simply because you need a new "rulebook" to get to the next level.

Old rules gave you what you have, new rules will get you to the next level, and so on. So once you get the rules learned for this plan below, it will be time for new rules. At the end of the article, I'll talk more about how to get a new 'rulebook' for the next level.

Training Plan Overview

I broke this plan into 3 days of total body work, and 3 days of recovery training. Yes, there is dedicated training for recovery and if current you're plan doesn't have that piece, then you are not going to get the those sought after, consistent results along with a guarantee that you will run into a health problem- injury, pain, plateauing, fatigue. It's just a matter of time. My clients understand that they choose their recovery days first, and then their workout days second when we a design a new plan. It's that crucial.

One day of the plan is a total body program and the other two programs split the body into lower and upper.

Workout A will be done on Monday, Workout B on Wednesday and Workout C on Friday.

Recovery training will be done on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Each week, the workouts will also rotate to improve progress and side-step things getting stagnant. 

Something new for many in this program is called Tempo. This is speed of how you move during any exercise. Do not overlook this key ingredient.

See the week-by-week layout example below:

Pre-workout warm up (before every workout). If you don't want to get hurt, then do not skip the pre-workout stretch and warm up. You'll pay the price at some point if you skip it.

More what to stretch at the end of article.

Workout A:  There are six exercises with a movement in each direction to make sure you have balance in your program. It's total body and you'll do three sets of 10-15 reps per exercise. Do each exercise one after the other without much rest until you've done all six exercises. Rest for 1 minute and then do two more sets. 

It's a quick workout, so if you finish it in under 30 minutes you did not do something wrong.

Recovery Session A: Do 20 minutes of non-intense cardio, such as stationary bike, elliptical, stairmaster. It needs to be light intensity, so a heart rate of 65% of your target heart rate.

To figure target heart rate, take 220 minus your age. Then take 65% of that number which will give you the heart rate range for this recovery cardio.

After the 20 minutes is over, follow the stretching for Recovery Session A (see at end of article).

Workout B:  For this workout, you'll have a section of abs in the beginning. Do those four exercises in a row without rest. Then move on to the upper body part of the workout, doing two sets back to back (super-set), resting for 30 seconds and then repeating the set. After the second set, move onto the next part of the workout and so on.

Recovery Session B: Do 15 minutes of non-intense cardio, such as stationary bike, elliptical, stairmaster. It needs to be light intensity, so a heart rate of 65% of your target heart rate. 

After the 20 minutes is over, follow Recovery Session B (see at end of article).

Workout C: In this lower body workout, you'll again start with abs. Do all four of the abs exercises in a row without rest, then move to the next part of the workout. For the lower body parts, do four exercises in a row without rest. Rest for 60 seconds, then repeat all four exercises for another set. Then move onto the next part of the workout, doing the same format you just followed.

Recovery Session C: Do 20 minutes of non-intense cardio, such as stationary bike, elliptical, stairmaster. It needs to be light intensity, so a heart rate of 65% of your target heart rate.

To figure target heart rate, take 220 minus your age. Then take 65% of that number which will give you the heart rate range for this recovery cardio.

After the 20 minutes is over, follow the stretching video for Recovery Session C.

Nutrition Plan Overview

The nutrition part of the plan coincides with your workouts, so that they work in tandem, giving consistency with your results. Too ofter do people make the mistake of not lining up their eating with their training on a long term scale. For example, drinking a protein shake after each workout is short term focused, but the long term will become a problem since the body will require that after each workout and protein shakes will cause inflammation at some point. No bueno for the body and six pack.

If you want your testosterone flowing and your muscle-wasting hormones low, then you have to make sure your digestive system (gut) is working right.

If it doesn't work right, then you can all the protein shakes in the world and not only will it not help, it will make things worse for your body, health and results.

So for Week 1, you're nutrition guidelines are to drinking enough water, drink hot water right after you wake up and after each meal. As for meals, you're going to pick 2-3 meals per day (starting with just 2 meals) and make sure you have more green, cruciferous veggies than you do protein or carb. Good luck with that one, because I have clients where it's taken them two months to master that. But once they did, their results spoke for themselves.

See green veggies list below:

Week 2 you'll continue doing what you did the first week, but every meal will have more veggies than protein or carb. Having the veggies like this  along with drinking enough water and it being hot gets the digestive system not only working, but working better. 

See carb and protein list below.

Week 3, you'll continue with Week 2 targets.

Week 4, you'll carry all the prior week targets with you and eat from the carb list below.

Closing notes- take this program slowly and don't skip or rush anything. I never skipped anything when I developed my training methods and never skipped anything my mentors taught me. It pays for itself.

You can download this whole program into a PDF (along with getting videos of each workout) by clicking here along with getting more details about extending this plan and learning the next set of rules or next 'rulebook' if you're interested.

Will Maloney is is a men's healthy lifestyle blogger who writes about building a reliable, healthy body. He's a nationally-ranked Equinox trainer, a former strength and conditioning coach at Stanford, and founder of Metabolic Kitchen.