Overview Program
Training Program
Our 8 week transformation program is our most comprehensive training plan to get you in the best physical condition possible. Think of it as training for a movie role, photo shoot or a high school reunion. The training principles used in this program have been refined and researched with ourselves and our clients in order to give you the best possible condition to change the physical composition of your body inside and out. In other words, we guarantee results as long as you stick to the program and give it your absolute best. Every single workout and conditioning workout matters and this system will work as long as you have the correct
mindset and environment to apply them. Your intensity and dedication needs to be there, this is not the time to just sail thru and be content. In order to have physical and spiritual change you must want it and that’s where your psychological fortitude will matter. We are ready to coach and support you through this amazing journey, and I hope you are too!
Training Overview
Think of the 8 week challenge as a way how movie stars and celebrities train for physically demanding roles. Whether you’re training to look like Batman or Wonder Woman, we provided the exact blueprint that we ourselves use for our own features/photo shoots on Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Tatler, KL Lifestyle Magazine and even Underwear modeling photoshoots. In addition to that, this blueprint will include dieting and conditioning plans that we use on ourselves and our clients to get in wedding photoshoot shape. There will be two main training protocols running during the 8 weeks challenge 2.0. There is the more aesthetic style training (Men’s)
and the higher intensity /functional style training (Women’s) which can help you get to whatever your physical goals may be. Now, even though we split the training into men’s and women’s, either sex are able to use any of the programs which would best fit them. A more overweight individual may benefit more from the higher intensity women’s training in comparison to a more aesthetic style physique training protocol. In the opposite end of the spectrum, an underweight female might want to pack on a bit more mass on the men’s program. Lastly, since this is a transformation program, cardio and conditioning is going to be extremely important in order to ensure that
1) We do not put on too much fat if bulking
2) We spike our metabolism via hormone release during conditioning
3) Ensure that we take care of our general wellness and health/fitness
4) Ensure that our bodies are constantly being stimulated to burn fat and maintain overall leanness
Thus, during this challenge, the cardio/conditioning component will start at 20 minutes base for week 1 and increase by 5 minutes to 25 minutes for week 2 etc. This is crucial to your physical transformation because at the end of 8 weeks, we want to make sure that our physiques will carry as little fat as possible to showcase a lean and ripped physique.
Training principles for Men
The men’s training is based on aesthetic fitness/training. The underlying principle is based upon the hypothesis that in order to look like a well conditioned/aesthetic athlete; you need to be fairly healthy with a good balance of muscle and low amount of body fat that comes from increased cardiovascular capacity. Thus, whether you are looking to add more muscle mass or get leaner, your cardiovascular fitness must be prioritized. In addition to that, to build as much muscle as possible within a short amount of time, your muscles must be stressed and stimulated in various methods and in higher frequency in order to ensure maximal growth. During training for aesthetics, strength will not be as important
as constantly feeling tension/stimulation on the targeted muscle group. Do not go through the motion, but be deliberate and maximize your gains via mind-muscle connection. As with all training programs, you need to ensure that you dial down your nutrition to maximize your results.
Here are some general principles you need to keep in mind during training;
1) Remember to mobilize and stretch before every session to ensure dominant muscles do not overcompensate for weak mobility which results in an imbalanced physique
2) Don’t worry too much about weight but keep focused on ensuring good technique to ensure maximal muscle stimulation
3) Ensure the rest times are short/as prescribed in order to maintain constant bloodflow to the targeted muscle to get maximum cell volumization
4) Remember that your 1RM is irrelevant to getting a ripped physique, focus on using weights that help you hit the required reps while building your mind-body connection
5) To decide whether to bulk or cut using this program, measure your body fat percentage and if you’re above 15% bodyfat, it would be wise to start cutting.
Bulking and Cutting
When bulking or cutting, it is imperative that we know roughly where our metabolism is at. From our experience with training clients, the majority of people who are overweight or have a body fat percentage of over 20% (males) tend to have a slower metabolism which means we would need to regulate our calories in case of rapid weight gain. Additionally, height plays an enormous role in regulating metabolism as taller individuals tend to have bigger mass and internal organs which contribute a lot to one’s metabolism. Thus, the taller you are, the higher your metabolism tends to be. Most important point, the higher your metabolism, the more calories you will be able to consume.
Bulking
In terms of bulking, it is important that you realize that there will be some form of weight gain in the form of body fat but NOT in the amount that hinders our gains and performance. Thus, if you are gaining weight of more than 3-4kg during the month, you’re more likely putting on too much fat. Thus, aim to gain 1-2kg a month. If you weight gain goes beyond 3-4kg, examine your nutrition, training intensity and cardio output. Bulking is fun, but eating a ton of clean meals might be difficult in a Malaysian setting. In general, we always recommend to at least get sufficient amount of protein (Read guideline) and if you need a cheat meal for sanity purposes, do it during your weakness (lagging body part) day. Try to keep cheat meals that is high in protein such as burgers, steaks, Korean BBQ, Sushi. Try to avoid food high in fats such as pizza, deep fried foods or carb rich foods such as pasta or most Malaysian coffee shop food.
Try your best to stick to the diet guidelines provided and eat as clean as possible. In order to eat a lot of calories, try splitting them up into 4-5 meals whereby the largest meal comes after/before your workout. Using meal replacements can help too. The main principle is to start at a baseline and slowly build up your calories whilst minimizing fat gain via increased cardio/conditioning output. Cardio is extremely important to minimize the amount of fat when bulking whilst increasing one’s metabolism which increases overall food intake threshold. Additionally, it increases endorphins in your body, stimulates protein synthesis and takes care of your overall health. For bulking, we would recommend interval cardio routines as opposed to steady state cardio. Keep track of your weight during this phase as if you are losing weight, you might want to cut down the amount of cardio or increase the amount of calories consumed.
Cutting (Men/Women)
When it comes to cutting or losing weight, the most important thing to control is obviously one’s intake of calories. From our experience with cutting, many people overestimate the amount of food they should consume to lose weight and bodyfat so try to start with a base and check on a weekly basis if you are in fact losing weight. A non moving scale would probably mean you are not losing bodyfat as intended. Thus, when it comes to training and dieting for cutting, maintain a low calorie diet that is high in protein, medium fat and low carbohydrates (sticking to leafy greens and avoiding high glycemic carbs altogether) will ensure that the weight on the scale will be constantly dropping every week. On top of that, it is important to keep your food as clean as possible, which means, whole foods, leafy greens and lean meats as sources of food during the cut. IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT THE WEIGHING SCALE GOES DOWN EVERYWEEK.
Additionally, the cardio/conditioning component of this program is going to be of outmost importance in order to ensure that you spike your metabolism and burn as much bodyfat as possible. Keep in mind that muscle wastage will be kept to a minimum because of the inclusion of resistance exercise that is being done during training days. In order to make sure your cardio is significant enough for you; you can try starting your cardio with a higher base as opposed to the recommended 10 mins and adjust as the weeks go on. Other tips to help lose weight would be to wear thicker clothing during conditioning exercise to maximize the shedding of water weight during exercise. When it comes to training, it is important to keep doing resistance training to stimulate protein synthesis on a daily basis thus reducing possibility of loss of muscle mass, increase strength and build muscle which will increase overall metabolism of the body.
Think of it as building a metabolic machine. You main aim during training is to keep getting stronger/maintaining strength and performance whilst your weight drops on the scale. Thus, increasing your strength to weight ratio is one of the best ways to getting that lean, dense look that most cover models have. Thus, don’t be afraid to add on more weight and push through the pain barrier especially during the last 4 weeks as the cardio component increases.
Female Training
Before reading, kindly read the cutting portion of the training guide as all principles should be applied to females.
The female training protocol comes from the desire of most of our female clientele that wants to get strong but not increase in size either. Additionally, most of our female clientele tend to come to us for specific training on how to just get generally smaller and leaner. Thus, this training protocol is aimed at getting women functionally strong (natural movement strong) and conditionally fit. This is a lot harder in terms of intensity and overall work volume in comparison to the men’s training protocol. This is because it uses high intensity functional movement to increase work capacity/Crossfit style principles but with targeted muscle groups rather than just varied movements. You should expect to see significant changes in your overall health and wellness, weight loss and overall leaness of the body. Methods here have proven that as long as your nutrition is in place, your physique will move a dress size or two down. Since the women’s training involves a lot of volume, kindly scale the workouts accordingly as it might be too much for the untrained individual which can lead to rhabdo, nausea and light headedness. Additionally, although the women’s workout has lots of cardio components in it, you are still required to do the recommended cardio work after every session to maximize the amount of fat burning during a session.
You should expect to see significant changes in your overall health and wellness, weight loss and overall leaness of the body. Methods here have proven that as long as your nutrition is in place, your physique will move a dress size or two down. Since the women’s training involves a lot of volume, kindly scale the workouts accordingly as it might be too much for the untrained individual which can lead to rhabdo, nausea and light headedness. Additionally, although the women’s workout has lots of cardio components in it, you are still required to do the recommended cardio work after every session to maximize the amount of fat burning during a session.
IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE, THIS TRAINING WILL HELP YOU LOSE WEIGHT AND GET LEANER OVERALL. YOU SHOULD BE GETTING SMALLER AS THE WEEKS GO ON.
Now, plenty of authors will tell you that due to the hormonal structures of males and females, it is impossible to get “big” as most women would put it. However, we have a different philosophy altogether. If you feel you are getting big then it is enough for us to warrant that a change in training stimuli in order to reduce some of the possible gains in size. Thus, it is important for women to be constantly monitoring your weight at least twice a week and keeping measurements of your body parts. This means measuring your shoulder width, arms (bicep and triceps’ circumference), waist, hips and thighs. It is important because you do not want to see a significant increase in overall size whilst on this program. If that does happen, the first thing you would want to examine is your nutrition and then training intensity. As stated in the cutting guide, you might want to start at a higher base than 10 mins for the cardio component and increase as the weeks go on. When it comes to female metabolism and weight loss, some of these have helped our clients greatly in their weight loss journey as it resets their leptin levels (hormone regulating metabolism) and overall metabolism. This is in the assumption that you are on some form of a caloric deficit.
1) Intermittent fasting – fasting at least 16 hours before first meal
2) Eat up day every 5 days after eating on a deficit – eating up to your resting metabolic rate (est: 1800-2000) calories
3) Getting 8 hours of sleep
4) Eating foods rich in Omega 3 fatty acids
5) Eating foods rich in nutritional value – Broccoli, blueberries, herbs, peppers
