You see it happening every year, every summer when the sun’s rays and warmth fill the air, and people who have worked out during the winter start showing off their sculpted physiques on the beach, with their tops off, while you are sitting there in your extra large T-shirt, beating yourself up over your appearance and why you didn’t do anything to make your body more appealing.
There’s hardly a person who hasn’t experienced this. It’s a terrible feeling of regret, where by the time summer comes, it is already too late to start a program that would give you any meaningful results. The only thing left is to make a promise to yourself that you will not allow another summer to go by where you aren’t ripped and you will follow a good training regimen to make it happen. Here are some very straightforward and simple tips that will make this process a lot faster.
1. Train at least 4 days per week
As long as you do something, it doesn’t matter what it is. Just about anything that will make you sweat, will do. Whatever you choose, whether soccer, volleyball, basketball, or standard weightlifting, just start doing something. If your goal is to look good when the summer comes it is essential that you put your best effort into building something that is worth showing.
In order to do this, it is not enough that you spend lots of time lifting weights, you should also do activities that will really make you sweat. And you need to do this every single day, or at least every other day. You should also keep in mind that you need to get plenty of rest to recover properly, so you would be able to do it all over again. Rest is one of the main pillars in your quest of building a stunning physique.
2. Eat salads every day
In your quest to shape your body into something that is really above average and exceptional, eating vegetables is extremely important. Almost as important as consuming large quantities of protein. Without getting ample amounts of vegetables your body won’t have all the essential nutrients it needs to keep on functioning, and the good thing about veggies is that it will fulfill this mission without too many calories.
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You can make all kinds of salads. You can even add fruit in some combinations. You can add spinach which has protein to help you build more muscle and recover faster. You’ve got all kinds of greens which will give you a nice dose of Vitamin C, to keep flu and colds at bay. Vegetables will also make you feel full for prolonged periods of time while consuming a few hundred calories. This might not seem like much, but after several months, it slowly adds up.
3. Do deadlifts!
So much has been said about the benefits of deadlifting that it’s really of no use to go into too many details. Some say deadlifts are even better than squats. In short, they are incredibly effective at building above-average strength and they are efficient in burning overall body fat. This makes it an ideal movement to add to whatever training program, not just for building a beach body.
It’s not necessary that you go all-out with heavy weights on every training session, so it’s preferable that you do one session with really heavy weight with fewer number of sets and reps (1-3), and then do the other session with relatively light weights where you will put a greater focus on your speed of execution and do a greater number of sets and reps (8-12) and lastly you will do the third session with moderate weight where you will focus on doing them with a slower tempo and a moderate number of sets and reps (4-7).
4. Intermittent Fasting
Fasting has become a very popular nutrition tactic in the past decade and you can read a million articles about its many benefits on the Internet. And it really is incredibly beneficial, not only for helping people cope with the psychological impact a diet might have but also with shedding the extra fat as fast as possible.
There are lots of ways in which you can do intermittent fasting, but the most popular way is that you fast for 16 hours and then cram all your daily calories into an 8-hour eating window. For those who want a challenge, you can try going one or two days per week completely without food, though it’s generally recommended that you work up to it slowly instead of jumping in right at the start. Fasting will not only help you lose fat faster, studies have also shown that it improves your heart’s health. And it does all of this without messing up your muscle gains.
5. Eliminate deep fried foods from your diet
That’s not to say you’re not allowed to have a cheat meal with fried food in it once in a while. In fact, that would be the only way for your diet to work in the long-term. It’s just that in order to shed the excess fat as fast as possible, fried foods need to be avoided. They have a huge number of calories and will quickly add new fat deposits around your waist.
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Here are some of the foods you should be wary of: french fries, chicken wings, donuts and, sadly, almost anything else that is delicious. We’re kidding, of course, as we already said, you should let yourself experience tasty food maybe once a week and enjoy it, but you should be really careful with tracking your calories and macros, as it is really hard to eat all that junk food and still lose fat.
6. Start doing full-body workouts
Full-body workouts have been proven to be one of the most effective training methods when it comes to losing fat. This type of workout uses heavy weights and short rest intervals that will not only increase your strength and muscle size but will also help you get rid of the excess fat a lot faster than conventional bodybuilding training programs.
You can also incorporate some kind of circuit training into your workout regimen. You shouldn’t worry about what some people say it can hinder your progress. Doing supersets of burpee pull-ups and thrusters will make wonders for you and is vastly superior to running on the treadmill.
7. Calculate the number of calories you need every day, then eat 300 less
Calculating your daily caloric needs is the first thing you need to do if you plan on getting shredded. You can lose a very decent amount of fat just by adding more vegetables to your diet and keeping track of all the foods that you eat, however, a time will come when progress will start diminishing. When you get to that point, dieting will get a lot harder if you have no idea how much you are eating.
There are many of methods/formulas to calculate the number of calories you should be eating on a daily basis. One of them is the Katch McArdle formula, which is pretty accurate since it takes the body’s fat percentage into account, and determines the number of calories you should ingest based on how much muscle mass you have, not your whole bodyweight. This is a huge deal when calculating your daily caloric needs.
8. Add sprinting to your training programs
You will find that sprinting is one of the most bad-a*s workouts you could ever do. Its many benefits include increased athleticism, increased fat loss and massive burning of calories. And the best part about it is that you don’t need any fancy equipment or gym membership, you only need a running field and your two legs. It’s not difficult to incorporate it into your training regimen either, you just need a bit of planning.
There are many variations but the best one is finding a steep hill and doing hill sprints. This is a lot more challenging than sprinting on a flat terrain and it places a greater emphasis on your quads. This is a great way to relieve the DOMS you get from deadlifting three times a week. Strive to get at least 2 sprinting sessions in one week, with each one lasting at least 15 minutes.
