My 6 week transformation challenge
Back in June 2016 I was going through the motions of training not really training to get anywhere or have any goal which is never a good thing but I fell into that trap like many other gym goers. Im sure a lot of you can relate.
I have always been the personal trainer to show that if I can do it then you can do it, I have ran marathons I have competed in different sports and I have managed to gain muscle going from a small 8 stone 20 year old to a now 11 stone 8 pounds.
So transformation time kicked in, I was not in the best shape I have been in as you can see from my before photo’s little bloated and soft.
Below is how I trained, my diet, and my journey.
The diet.
As we all now getting great results is mainly down to dieting, my diet has never been the best in fact you can say that it was pretty bad! First things first this was my priority.
Calculating your macronutrients is one key thing if you really want to ensure your results stay on track. Now to the normal person a lot of people don’t know what that is, well whatever your goal you can tailor your macronutrients to it, whether it be lose body fat, maintain or build muscle and that is the case for both men and women.
A really simple way of working out your macros is using a macro calculator, there are many you can find on the internet and there all pretty easy to use. Here is the one which I used if you want to give it a go.
Here is how I regulated my diet over the 6 weeks
Week one to week four
CARBS: 303 G PER DAY. PROTEIN: 202 G PER DAY. FATS: 75 G PER DAY.
Week five to week six
CARBS: 176 G PER DAY. PROTEIN: 176 G PER DAY. FATS: 39 G PER DAY.
So as you can see the diet was regulated by these values, simply looking at what foods I was taking in and ensuring I got the amounts which my macronutrients allowed me.
Now here is the problem I ran into, im a vegetarian and getting that much protein in a day was always going to be a challenge. I had been using a product called “huel” https://huel.com/ which is a Vegan natural product which is very high in protein per serving, Huel came to my rescue as a lot of protein shakes contain a lot of sugar and unwanted carbs. I recommend if you are struggling with your diet check out Huel. It does take a while to get used to, I mainly did two shakes during the day with four scoops in them and then worked out a meal in the evening sticking to what I had left in my macros.
Now I won’t lie my results would have been better if I had cut out alcohol for the 6 weeks but that was hard as I had a lot of social events during the time, the great thing is though people you can still get great results and treat yourself once a week in moderation.
The training
Leading up to the 6 week challenge as I said early I was going through the motions with training, not very planned and very random. Which in some ways is not that bad when you are lacking motivation doing new things and mixing it up can help. For myself the way I needed to motivate myself was through having a detailed plan for the whole 6 weeks.
Week 1
Monday - chest and triceps
Incline dumbbell press 5 sets 6 reps
Superset with incline fly’s 4 sets 8 reps
Cable standing fly’s 4 sets 6 reps
Flat bench press barbell 5 sets 6 reps
Tricep tri set 3 rounds 6 reps on each performed one after the other with a break after dips
Cable rope extensions
Single arm reverse tricep extensions
Tricep dips
Tuesday – back and biceps
Wide grip weighted chin ups superset with barbell rows wide grip 5 sets 6 reps
Closed grip weighted chin ups superset with closed grip barbell rows 5 sets of 6 reps
Barbell shrugs superset with high pulley rows 5 sets 6 reps
Bicep tri set 3 rounds 6 reps on each performed one after the other with a break after dumbbell curls
Cable rope curls
TRX bicep curls
Dumbbell curls
Wednesday - quad, hamstrings and calves
Front barbell squats superset with static lunge 5 sets 6 reps
Stiff legged deadlifts superset with kettlebell swings 5 sets 6 reps
Calf raises on leg press 5 sets 6 reps
10 minutes HIIT training on rower 20 secs sprint 20 secs recovery
Thursday – Shoulders and abs
Arnold press 4 sets 6 reps
Frontal raises super set with prone fly’s 4 sets 6 reps
Later raises 4 sets 6 reps
RMT club single arm swings super set with Barbell shoulder press 3 sets 6 reps
TRX pikes superset with TRX single leg tucks
Cable standing pivot point 3 sets 6 reps each side
Friday
Teach my regular spin class 45 mins
Saturday
HIIT training mixture of boxing, skill mill sprints, rowing sprints, battle rope, skipping. 40 mins
Sunday
Rest
This was then cycled over 6 weeks with rep ranges changing as follows
Week 2
Rep range changed to reps of 12 nothing else changed structure still stayed.
Week 3
Rep range went to pyramids sets of 5 went to 15, 12, 10, 8, 6,
Week 4
Was a test to see how much strength I had gained, I went back to the first cycle of rep range of 6.
On most areas I had increased by nearly 4%
Week 5
Rep range went back to 12
Week 6
Rep range went to pyramids again. 15,12,10,8,6 on sets of 4 rep range was 15,12,10,8
Here is how the results panned out over the 6 weeks, I used boditrax machine in the gym to measure. https://boditrax.com/
Week 1
76k weight
13.3% body fat
63.3k muscle mass
Week 2
74.7k weight
12.3% body fat
63.2k muscle mass
Week 3
75.3k weight
11.6% body fat
63.6k muscle mass
Week 4
77.4k weight
11.5% body fat
64k muscle mass
Week 5
76.5k weight
11% body fat
64.1k muscle mass
Week 6
75.5k weight
10.5% body fat
64.3k muscle mass
These results are not 100% but the transformation challenge was about aesthetics, when start and undertake exercise to change the way you look and make you more confident ensure to always go by photos and measurements and not the scales.
