THE EXERCISE PROTOCOL overview

Similar to the Eating Regimen, we’re going to be giving you some unconventional advice when it comes to the workouts. And similar to the Eating Regimen, we’re going to train your body for adaptation.

We've also developed a monthly calendar for you, representative of how someone might typically plan their workout days. You can arrange your workout days how you like, and it does not have to exactly match what's shown here, but we do recommend spacing out the Strength Circuit and Speed Circuit days by a couple days so that you have enough energy in you to give everything you got.

Download Monthly Calendar

intensity

The crux of the exercise regimen will be intensity. Essentially, the time you thought you had to spend in the gym can be directly replaced with intensity. You need to force your body to strive for adaptations by making it a life or death scenario. This means push yourself to the limit, and take your body to absolute failure so that next workout’s failure won’t be as easily reached. For example, if you were running from a lion, or fighting to the death, your body would make sure that next time that situation was encountered, you were ready. Your body should be thinking, “that was way too close for comfort,” and “I need to be better-prepared next time.” You will need to simulate these same stimuli in your workouts. And we’re sorry to tell you, it should never become easy as long as you’re still striving for adaptation.

the workouts

There will be two main workouts a week, and there will be one 5-minute Cut Abs Routine that you will do on off days. Both of the main workouts will be full-body, where one workout focuses on overall strength; and one workout has more of a focus in speed and explosiveness. Both contain the essential ingredient of intensity. Intensity is the foundation to why we can get such incredible results in such a short amount of time per week. To maximize your success, you’ll have to maximize your intensity.

Choose two days out of the week that work best for you to dedicate 15-20 minutes to so that you can be consistent from week to week. If the workout days get pushed around a day or two, it’s no big deal. But make sure you get both in during the week--consistency is key!

the high intensity strength circuit

There will be a trial-run workout for your first week to determine how much weight to do in Week 1 on the High Intensity Strength Circuit. Jump over here to find out your starting weights.

For the remainder of your High Intensity Strength Circuit workouts, you’ll send us your numbers after you perform the workout, and we’ll send you back the weights for the following week. This is done on the form for the High Intensity Strength Circuit. This way we can customize your ideal amount of weight and provide feedback as you progress. We also encourage you to take notes in your exercise surveys. For instance, if you didn’t get good sleep the night before, or you were feeling extra energized that day, take note of it.

The required equipment is up to you for the High Intensity Strength Circuit. We’ve customized the program for you so that the workouts can be performed anywhere (gym machines, free weights, or body weight). That said, your goal should always be to continue progressing. That means you should always be upping the resistance or difficulty for a given movement. At some point you’ll need to implement higher weight than your body weight alone can provide. The body-weight-only version of the strength workout is recommended mainly for if you’re out of town, or if your situation for that week doesn’t allow for any weights.

Our strong recommendation is to use machine weights for the High Intensity Strength Circuit. There are several reasons for this, but a primary one is that you want to truly take your body to failure. With body weight or free weights, it’s difficult to take yourself to the point in which you truly cannot even hold the weight up (failure) without risking injury. Also, machine weights do the best job at taking stability out of the equation for how much weight you can push. We’re trying to spark the greatest possible stimulus for adaptation, and we do this by recruiting the biggest possible muscle groups and every possible muscle fiber in those muscle groups. It is difficult to achieve this stimulus when stability is a key factor in the amount of weight you can push (or in physics, the amount of work/energy you can perform). To make this intuitive, recall that dumbbells are much more difficult to hold without shaking than a barbell with the same amount of weight. This means that there’s a lot of wasted energy being expended just to keep the dumbbells from shaking. Check out the Science Behind page for more background on why the workouts are so effective.

THE high intensity Speed CIRCUIT

After doing the High Intensity Strength Circuit on Day 1, you'll have 2 or 3 days (your choice) of rest. We're calling these off days. During Days 2, 3, and possibly 4 you'll do the Cut Abs Circuit (see below.) Your next big workout is the High Intensity Speed Circuit, which you'll do on either Day 4 or 5. The goal of this, similar to the High Intensity Strength Circuit, is to create an intense hormonal response which forces your body to adapt by burning fat, depleting glycogen stores, and building muscle. All this is able to be in just 10 minutes of high intensity work. Check out the Science Behind page for more info on how and why this works.

the cut abs circuit

On the off days, you should be consistent with the Cut Abs Circuit upon waking. It should be like a nice cup of coffee for you (seriously, you’ll feel awake afterwards). It'll help keep your head in the game and get you cut abs. It'll be a part of your everyday life and the best part is that it takes only 5 minutes! Remember though, you're only doing this on off days. So you've done the High Intensity Strength Circuit on Day 1 and you'll do the Cut Abs Circuit on Days 2, 3, and possibly 4. Then you'll do the High Intensity Speed Circuit on Day 4 or 5 (depending on how many off days you had) and do the Cut Abs Circuit on Day 5 (possibly), 6 and 7.

warm up and cool down

If you're gonna perform at a high level and with high intensity you're gonna have to prep your body and mind for it. The Warm Up is designed just for that--it's brief and maximizes the minimum. Do it just before the High Intensity Strength Circuit or High Intensity Speed Circuit. No need to do it prior to the Cut Abs Circuit as the movements themselves serve as a great warm up.

Following each workout, once you've collected yourself (you'll see what we mean after you've done each High Intensity Circuit) do the Cool Down. You've just put your body through a ton of stress and you'll want to bring your system back to homeostasis. This will help to prevent blood pooling, relieve lactic acidosis, reduce delayed onset muscle soreness in the days to come, gradually bringing down your heart rate and body temperature, and restoring the optimal length/tension muscle relationships. In a nutshell it's super important--just as important as the workout itself. Follow the Cool Down below so you can come back refreshed for the next bout of high intensity work!

I. Exercise Protocol Overview (START HERE!)