THE EXERCISE PROTOCOL
THE EATING REGIMEN
THE ELITE COMMUNITY
THE FULL-BODY LIFT-OFF
Welcome!
We know you want to jump right in, but set your goals first! Fill out the survey here before you begin:
Alright, we have a formula for you that gives you the healthiest, most effective, and most efficient methodology for cutting fat and putting on lean muscle mass. The principles of the formula are backed by extensive research (check out the “Science Behind” sections here and here). We'll give you the steps. Now all you have to do is execute.
We want to emphasize that this will likely be a complete paradigm shift in how you view food and exercise. Our goal is to turn your body into the incredible fat-burning machine it was genetically meant to be, meanwhile allowing you to feel healthier, more energized, and more efficient at using your brain too.
Did you fill out the survey here? If not head on over!
It's important to clarify that we are not doctors (and so you should check with your physician prior to beginning the program); rather we're regular working professionals, who understand that time is critical: no one has enough of it. And yet health and well-being is essential. And so in the lenses of time-deprived working professionals, we've boiled everything down for you so you can maximize the minimum with your time, and you don't need to sift through all the research yourself. This is a life changing program, and we’ve designed it just for you.
TRACK YOUR PROGRESS
Before jumping into the basics of the program, one of the most important components of seeing success is tracking your progress. You will need to record a starting point by taking photos of yourself both from the front and from the side. Do this before changing anything in your lifestyle. Record your starting weight and your body fat percentage (either purchase a body fat percentage gage, use one from your local gym, or provide a rough estimate based on photos of others). You will need to track these every week, along with your meals and exercises along the way. Research shows that quantifying this progress along the way will lead to significantly faster and more effective results.
Make sure to track your progress--this is vital to your success with the program. Fill fill out the survey here if you haven't already.
To help track yourself as you go through the program, 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.
THE MEAL PHILOSOPHY
It’s been shown that roughly 80% of body composition can be attributed to diet. We’re giving you a template that’s meant to be followed as closely as possible. That said, just because you fall short on a meal or two, you are most certainly not off the wagon, and you should still get results. In fact we encourage some variations here and there, as it can help with resilience through the program. We’ll stick with the 80% rule here and say you should aim for a minimum of 4 out of any 5 given meals to be on point. If you’re like most people, you’ll feel so good and like the results so much, you’ll want to stick as close to 100% as possible anyway.
With most diets, people think of subtracting foods. Firstly, we prefer not to think of this as a diet, but rather a way of life with food. For a meal program to be effective long term, it needs to be sustainable and built into your lifestyle. So make the eating philosophy work for you, and enjoy your food! We will be adding key foods to our diet, and replacing some for others. We will not be counting calories, as the right food should be plenty filling, and you shouldn’t want to eat more than you need.
As we mentioned before, this will most likely be a paradigm shift in how you conceptualize food and its effects on the body. But we promise you, there is a mechanistic rationale and research backing every recommendation, and we will help you achieve the fastest, most optimal transformation possible. And the most important component will always be overall health. We encourage you to take a look at the “Science Behind” page for further details on the research.
You will teach your body to burn fat by consuming large amounts of healthy fats. Yes, this is a “diet program” that encourages you to eat copious amounts of delicious fats. The key here is that they must be good fats, and they should be in place of the carbohydrates you’d normally eat. We will teach your body to use the most efficient source of energy it knows, and to use not only dietary fat, but to take its own fat as a source for fuel!
When you’re ready, you can start looking through and understanding the meal philosophy here.
THE EXERCISE REGIMEN
Similar to the meal philosophy, we’re going to be giving you some unconventional advice when it comes to the workouts. And similar to the meal philosophy, we’re going to train your body for adaptation.
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.
There will be two main workouts a week, and there will be one 5-minute ab workout 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.
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. The spreadsheet can be found here, and here's how to use it:
Pick a weight you think you can do 10-12 reps of at a normal tempo.
Go to max effort and do as many as possible.
Record the weight and number of reps completed in the appropriate column for each.
The weight that shows up for each movement is your starting weight for each. Boom!
Important items to note:
This spreadsheet is for one time use only during Week 1. You won't need it after that!
Whether you do 3 reps or 15 reps, it doesn't matter. This is simply a tool to set you up for success during Week 1!
For the remainder of your 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 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.
On the off days, you should be consistent with the Cut Ab Circuit upon waking. It should be like a nice cup of coffee for you (seriously, you’ll feel awake afterwards). And it should keep you in the right mindset throughout the week.
The required equipment is up to you. 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 highest recommendation is to use machine weights for the 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.
You ready to get started?? Find the workout programs here!
Also, don't forget to download your ISO eBook here: