Bond18′s guide to getting ripped
Disclaimer: It should be noted at the beginning that I am not a personal trainer or have any legitimate health credentials. The contents from this article are mostly the result of research, discussions with my personal trainer who has been involved in bodybuilding about a decade, and personal experience.
I decided to make one of my 2010 goals to get down to 6% body fat. I had always enjoyed working out, but the idea came to me when I was reading an article in Mens Health about celebrities who had transformed themselves for a film roll. Generally, they had gotten things done in about 3-5 months and made an enormous change in their appearance and health, and naturally I figured “Four months, that’s it? Fuck it, I can do that.”
This led me to hire successful Australian bodybuilder Allister White as my personal trainer, who owns and runs Doherty’s Gym on Flinders street station in Melbourne. I asked him for reading material and wound up reading numerous articles on www.tmuscle.com, as well as doing separate research on bodybuilding forums and having conversations with other guys who shared the interest as well as trainers around the gym. As always in the case of health, there’s a lot of conflicting and confusing information out there, so I’ve tried to boil down what appears to be more or less unanimously agreed upon without getting overly technical.
First off, let’s discuss what the goals are. Your personal fitness goals should depend on the function of your training. Are you training for a specific sport? For aesthetic purposes? To run a marathon? To get much stronger? Are you trying to be huge and look like you could destroy people, or just toned so you fit into clothing well but are sexy without? You might even need to have multiple goals; if you want to look like Gerard Butler in 300 but you’re 510″ and 130 pounds you’re going to have to add weight and lean muscle mass to your frame before you can cut down and get the defined look.
This article is going to focus on toning up, weight loss, and aesthetics. My personal goals were improving general fitness, slowing the physical aging process, and becoming the build that I believed to be optimally aesthetically appealing to women. Obviously, not all women prefer the same look of men, but the closest they have on consensus is that they like a muscular looking guy who is not overly big with well defined abs that still fits into clothing well. Think Brad Pitt in Fight Club, Christian Bale in American Pyscho, or David Beckham at all times. You will find that people generally associate being “buff”, “ripped”, or “fit” with muscle tonality and not necessarily size. Many people find that when they lose weight and overall body fat people actually comment that they look more buff or huge, even though they’ve actually lost size.
Achieving this look generally revolves around bringing your body fat % down to a pretty low number. Some basics on body fat %: There are two kinds of body fat, essential body fat and and storage body fat. Essential body fat is necessary to maintain life and your bodies daily functions. Storage body fat consists of adipose tissue which helps to prevent internal organs and your chest/abdomen. Essential body fat on men is 3-5%, and on women 8-12%. Professional body builders will actually dip below these numbers, but usually only for a few hours leading up to a competition and will look to restore and replenish their body immediately following the contest.
Again, how you will look at certain body fat %’s is going depend on your height, overall lean muscle mass, and genetics. Here’s an excellent link from a bodybuilding forum that contains many links to pictures of guys at various stages of dropping their body fat %: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showpost.php?p=20622431&postcount=226
Generally, I’d say the ideal health and aesthetic combination for a man to maintain is 7-10% (though there is a pretty substantial difference between each one percent when you get this low.) Attempting to maintain under 7 is not recommended from a health standpoint, and rising much above 10 will prevent having well defined abdominals.
So, how do you do it? Let’s assume you have enough lean muscle mass on you that you’re ready to do a what many bodybuilders call a “cutting phase” and lose weight in order to tone up. The consensus among bodybuilders seems to be that when it comes to fitness and particularly cutting phases, your results will be 80% diet based and 20% training based. Tons of guys work their ass off in the gym but are very slack on the diet aspect, and never see the results they think they deserve from their long and hard hours of training. As the saying goes, “abs are made in the kitchen”. Let’s break the topics up separately.
Training: Most bodybuilders do a form of training that hits one muscle group hard then gives it a full week to recover. Most guys do 3-5 days of training, breaking things up by muscle groups that are involved in each others lifts. My personal routine goes:
Sunday: Back
Monday: Legs
Tuesday: Biceps/shoulders
Wednesday: HIIT
Thursday: Pecs/triceps
Friday: Off
Saturday: HIIT
I’ve seen some guys be more specific and isolated, some be less. Exactly how you should break yours up should depend on personal preference, time restrictions, and will benefit from a consultation with a professional trainer. Training six days a week is not mandatory, and many guys do 4 or 5. In fact, some bodybuilders don’t even incorporate cardio days for cutting phases, instead making the entire shift about diet. This is because cardio (and cutting phases in general) have the effect of slowly deteriorating muscle fiber. Luckily, the idea is that you lose far more fat than muscle and wind up with a lean, toned, and athletic look.
Your first focus in training should be in maintaining excellent form to prevent injury. You can get lazy on your sets and reps if you really want, but another popular gym saying goes “When you cheat in the gym, the only person you cheat is yourself.” Even if you can’t afford a trainer on a consistent basis, it’s worth consulting with one a few times in order to make sure your form is correct for the exercises he recommends or you’ve decided to do. Second, when doing a cutting phase you’ll want to try and keep rest between sets in the one minute area. This keeps your heart rate elevated during the training and makes lifting sessions more comparable to a cardio session. Third, you’ll want to immediately get an influx of protein in your body within 45 minutes of finishing weight lifting (preferably within 30) in order to help the rebuilding of the muscle fibers torn during lifting. Fourth, you’ll want to be doing sets in the 8-12 sets area and at an intensity that takes you to failure or very close. Don’t be a pussy and not push for that last rep or two, but also don’t be overly proud and risk injury when your body is telling you that it’s at failure. Get a gym buddy to be your spotter to crank out those last couple of reps. If you don’t have a friend to go with you, just ask guys around the gym for a spot and make some conversation, everyone there has a mutual interest and most guys are very easy going and approachable.
Your cardio training should be in the area of moderate intensity and not excessively long. Ideally, your cardio sessions should be about 30-60 minutes, and normally somewhere in the middle there. I normally do 40 or 45 minutes. The point during cardio isn’t to make yourself a bad ass marathon runner or have the worlds best VO2 max, it’s about keeping your heart rate and metabolism elevated so you body is always in fat burning mode.
An excellent way to quicken the entire cutting phase is to add a cardio session to your routine many mornings of the week, and before you eat anything that day. Doing cardio on an empty stomach causes your body to burn fat more efficiently, and it’s a great way to crank your heart rate at the start of your day, which you’ll likely find will increase your focus throughout the morning.
Another type of training to consider is what are known as “HIIT” workouts, High Intensity Interval Training. Recent studies have shown that you can gain the benefit of cardiovascular exercise by instead doing a high intensity type of exercise that has short bouts of active rest in between the strenuous periods. Where as cardio sessions tend to run 30-60 minutes, HIIT workouts are normally recommended to be in the 20 minute area, and some of that will be rest. The difference is that during the active periods of the HIIT workout you’re going all out. Here’s an article with further information and ideas on what you can do to create an excellent HIIT workout: http://www.healthhabits.ca/2008/06/09/4-steps-to-a-great-hiit-workout/
Additionally, here’s an excellent article from www.tmuscle.com that discusses using sprints as this form of workout: http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/sprinting_towards_single_digit_body_fat
Personally, I do two HIIT workouts a week in the form of boxing training. I usually warm up with about 20 minutes on an exercise bike, then move into the boxing hall where I stretch out then do 3 minutes of shadow boxing and moving around in the ring, followed by 1 minute rest, followed by 3 or 4 rounds working the bag and moving around for 3 minutes at a time with a 1 minute rest in between. I’m fucking drenched by the end; it’s nasty, but clearly effective.
Remember that in all forms of training you have to work up to a certain degree of fitness before you can exert yourself to the maximum. If you haven’t exercised in years and hang around 25% body fat don’t think you can just leap into a hardcore routine and not exhaust yourself; you’ll need to build it up more slowly than that. Additionally, when you begin your training be mindful of listening to what you’re body is telling you. Over training is a realistic possibility if you go too far without preparation and will sideline your progress if you force a state of exhaustion or cause an injury. If you’re body is stiff and aches to a degree out of the ordinary, there’s nothing wrong with taking one or two more days off than usual to let it rest. Your body needs time to repair, which is why you should be getting at least 8 hours of sleep a night when attempting something like this, preferably 9, and there’s nothing wrong with getting a bit more than that.
At my current level, I’m doing 4 weight lifting sessions a week, two HIIT sessions, and six sessions of cardio in the morning on an empty stomach. I didn’t start this way and whether I choose to try and maintain it all the way through my cutting phase depends on how I feel. It’s far more work than most guys doing a cutting phase usually engage in, but it suits given I have plenty of free time, flexibility, and an obsessive drive towards achieving my goals.
Diet: As I mentioned previously, your diet is actually going to be more important in the kind of results you see than your training. It’s also the aspect which seems to have more disagreement and discourse amongst professionals so I’m going to try and boil it down to the things that are proven facts or that the majority agree on.
As near everyone knows, to lose weight you need to in take less calories than your body burns over the course of the day. However, it’s not as simple as just reducing calories and suddenly getting jacked. Where those calories come from is equally important if not more so, not to mention how you eat them.
The majority of bodybuilders in a cutting phase undergo an incredibly strict diet that involves very high protein intake and a minimum of fats and carbohydrates. Let’s break down those three groups separately:
Protein: Anyone who’s ever held a dumbell before probably knows that protein is essentially to muscle growth. This is because protein is used help repair he muscle fibers torn during exercise, which is why I early recommended you get it in your system not long after your work out. Your major sources of protein should be from clean sources like lean meat; things like chicken, tuna, salmon, and turkey. Other meats are good too, but not as optimal as those ones. Don’t rely on dairy to get your protein during a cutting phase, it’s high sugar content makes it detrimental. In fact, most bodybuilders won’t even touch dairy during a cutting phase. Additionally, using a supplement form of whey protein is recommended. Mix your shakes with water and if you’re going to eat protein bars, make sure they are very low on carbohydrates and sugars (which few are.) Generally you should lose the bars during a cutting phase, but we all have our weaknesses (I know I do.)
Your main goal for protein intake should be in the area of 1-1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight every day, though some guys shoot as high as two. If you want a long list of articles to read up on protein then here you are: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/category/nutrition/protein
Fat: Not as scary as it sounds. The important part about fat intake during training is that you consume the healthy forms of fat and keep the unhealthy ones to an absolute minimum. The healthy form of fat is known as unsaturated (which is split into two groups, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated, though I assume the poly fatties get laid more), the unhealthy known as saturated. Saturated fat is essentially your ultimate enemy in weight loss; just turn over any junk food or candy wrapper and realize that it is loaded with the stuff. Meanwhile, unsaturated fats help reduce cholesterol, maintain healthy skin, helps transport vitamins throughout the body, and are used much more efficiently by the body. Generally, bodybuilders aim to have fats be around 20% of their food intake over the course of the day. Good sources include nuts, alvacado, fish, and cooking oils, especially olive oil.
Carbohydrates: As many know, the loudest debate in health these days seems to stem from carbohydrate intake. The basic idea is this; when losing weight and aiming for a very low body fat % you should avoid processed carbs like the plague and minimize unprocessed carbs. The problem with carbohydrate intake is it causes your body to release insulin, which puts your body into fat storage mode, the opposite of our goal. There are still good sources of carbohydrates that can be incorporated in your diet though including vegetables, fruits, beans, legumes, nuts, oatmeal, and whole grain breads or pasta.
However, for attempting something as ambitious as getting to 10% body fat or below, many bodybuilders almost entirely cut carbohydrates out of their diet with the exception of vegetables and in some cases, a small influx of them in the morning to provide energy throughout the day. Other fitness enthusiasts are not quite so strict, but my personal trainer put a major emphasis on reducing my carb intake in order to maximize the efficiency of this process.
Here’s a quick overview of the diet my trainer created for me, which was designed as a combination of attempting to achieve this goal, and prevent me from having to make any food during my hours of work when I only have 5 minute breaks available to me every hour:
Meal 1: Bowl of oatmeal and a protein shake.
Meal 2: Can of chicken and 200g of broccoli.
Meal 3: Can of chicken and a serving of spinach (I don’t recall the exact amount as I don’t have it in front of me and switched it out.)
Meal 4: A protein shake immediately following work out.
Meal 4: 50g of cashews
Meal 5: One medium sized steak and a side of garden salad or vegetables.
All I drink is water, black coffee, and the protein shakes (which are naturally mixed with water.) I was also recommended salmon and flaxseed oil to help balance my in take of healthy fats.
I’ve modified the diet slightly to personal preference and through some trial and error. I replaced the spinach with a carrot, and have removed the 50g of cashews because I found that keeping them around the house caused me to overeat on them. I also generally have two low carb protein bars spaced out over the course of my day to keep me from wanting to kill myself. The consequences of a low carb diet can include feeling lethargic, loss of concentration, and finding yourself increasingly moody. I haven’t experienced much of that yet but it’s only been about a month.
The main goal of your diet should simply be this; many small meals over the course of your day that are high in protein and moderate or low in healthy fats and unprocessed carbohydrates. Eating actually activates your metabolism, so by eating every few hours of the day you keep it constantly working. The end result is that I never feel overly full, rarely feel truly hungry (unless I’m stoned), and miss looking at something as simple as bread and saying “Yea sure, I’ll have some”. If you think you’re going to have diet slips then don’t keep food you’re not allowed around the house. Marajuana use is obviously not recommended for attempting a cutting phase (and from a strictly health point, ever) but I love that shit and when I get bad munchies I simply eat more chicken.
If you follow everything here, train hard, create a diet that you actually follow and don’t slack on, then you can get results surprisingly fast. Good luck with your goals, and see you at 6%.