Advanced Fitness | Best Fitness Guide

Years ago, if you asked me about cheat meals and cheat days, I would have said they were beneficial for helping you stick to your diet and reach whatever goal (typically losing fat ) you set out to reach. Back then, I was regularly recommending this “cheating” approach to others, providing guidelines for it in my articles, and using it within my own diet on a regular basis. But now?  I do not use or recommend it at all . Here’s why, and the much better approach I’ve been recommending in its place. What Are Cheat Meals And Cheat Days? You know how most diets require you to avoid eating certain yummy foods? For example, typical junk food (e.g. cookies, chips, candy, ice cream, cake, sugar , etc.) is almost always off limits. On certain “ clean eating ” diets, foods like white rice  and white potatoes might also fall into the off-limits category. The same is true of carbs on a low carb diet , fat on a low fat diet, grains on a Paleo diet, and on a...

As you probably already know, I wrote a super comprehensive (and awesome) guide to creating the workout routine that is best for you. You know, this: The Ultimate Weight Training Workout Routine Since finishing that workout guide, I’ve made a few brief mentions of the fact that I was working on an equally comprehensive (and awesome) guide to creating the diet plan that is best for you. Well, guess what? It’s here. Allow Me To Introduce… The Best Diet Plan The Best Diet Plan is a step-by-step guide to creating the diet that is perfect for you, your body, your specific goal (losing fat, building muscle, etc.), and your exact dietary needs and personal preferences. It covers everything from ideal calorie, protein, fat and carb intake, to what to eat before and after your workouts, to supplements, to cheat meals , and so much more. Check it out and let me know what you think: The Best Diet Plan Basically, if you want to improve the way your body looks, feels or performs...

Not too long ago, I covered how to lose fat . The thing is, there’s a second important topic that always needs to be covered right along with it. And that is: how to lose fat WITHOUT losing muscle . Wait… what?!?!?! Did I just imply that you can lose your quite hard-earned lean muscle mass while only trying to lose your ugly body fat??? Yup, I sure did. It’s happened to me and countless others plenty of times, and it can definitely happen to you. To understand why and how this is possible and (more importantly) how to prevent it from happening, you first need to understand an important fact… Weight Loss vs Fat Loss: It’s NOT The Same Thing! People often say they want to lose weight . This is sort of a dumb statement, because “weight” can be a few different things. For example… water, glycogen, muscle or fat. Hell, you can cut off a leg and you’ll lose “weight” just fine. In reality however, what most of us want to lose i...

Do you bench press? Cool. With a barbell? Also cool. Here’s another question for you… do you always have a spotter? I do not mean only sometimes, or just when you’re going extra heavy. I’m talking about ALWAYS, as in every single time you bench press? If so, awesome. You’re smart. But if not, there’s something that can happen, and it’s something that I’ve seen happen first hand dozens and dozens of times over the years. In fact, it’s even happened to me on more than one occasion. You Might Get Stuck Now, if you’ve been training in a typical public gym long enough, you’re probably seen it happen before. Hell, it may have even happened to you at some point too. And if it hasn’t, I can almost guarantee that the possibility of it happening has crossed your mind at least once. And let me tell ya… getting pinned by a heavy barbell on the bench press when you have no strength left to push it back up AND no spot...

Welcome to A Workout Routine ! The goal here is quite simple: to provide you with everything you need to create the workout routine that is BEST for you. Skip the intro and get started… Create My Free Workout To do this, I’ve put together a completely free step-by-step guide that will walk you through every aspect of building the workout program that will work best for your body, experience level, schedule, preferences and specific goals. Which means, if you want to… Build muscle. Lose fat. Increase strength and/or performance. Improve your health. Look great naked. Or all of the above. …then I’m going to help you create the workout routine that is custom tailored for reaching that goal as quickly and effectively as possible. That means that the workouts you design, the exercises you select, the training split and schedule you set up, the weight training (or cardio) volume, frequency and intensity you plan to use, and more. I’m going to show you ho...

Below you will find 3 versions of my own beginner workout routine that I most often recommend to beginners with any weight training goal (building muscle, losing fat, increasing strength, etc.). If you haven’t already done so, be sure to read my intro into beginner workouts and routines to confirm that you ARE indeed a beginner and to learn what the main guidelines and goals of a beginner workout routine truly are. With that out of the way, let’s get to what you came here for. Here are the full details of the program I simply refer to as The Beginner Weight Training Workout Routine . The Schedule The first thing you need to know about this program is what weight training split and weekly schedule it will use. If you’ve ever read any article I’ve ever written about weight training frequency, splits/schedules or just beginners in general, then you definitely know what split we are going to be using. I’m of course talking about the 3 day full body split , wh...

After the full body and upper/lower splits, the push/pull/legs split (aka PPL) is one of the next most simple, popular and proven workout schedules around. It’s also one of the most intelligent and effective… assuming of course it’s actually done right. There’s a few different versions of it that can work well, and a few different ways to structure it over the course of the week (some of which are definitely more or less ideal for certain goals and situations than others). So, let’s now cover all of this and more… What Is The Push/Pull/Legs Split? The push/pull/legs split is a weight training schedule that revolves around splitting the body up into 3 groups: upper body pushing muscles, upper body pulling muscles and legs . Each group is then trained separately on its own workout day. The “push” workout would train all of the upper body muscles that are involved in pushing exercises. This primarily includes Chest, Shoulders and Triceps....