Running a Successful Cutting Phase Part 1 48/84

Now that I've finished with the post on how to bulk, it's time to get after what it takes to cut successfully.  I think this one will definitely speak to more people than the bulking posts especially since the majority of people want to lose fat. Just like I did earlier, I'll start with nutrition first and then go on into the workouts tomorrow.

I've posted this time after time and I'm going to keep posting it forever because it's really important; nutrition is the single most important factor in weight loss. If you try to eat like crap and just change up your workouts or add some more cardio then you're going to fail. You need to make changes in what you eat each day if you ever actually want to make progress. Here are the biggest things I coach people through

- Just like when bulking, you need to find a baseline first but then eat a little less. You can do this by tracking calories or just base it off of what your body has been doing recently. If your weight have stayed the same then just eat a little less, if you've been gaining weight slowely then you need to eat a lot less

- Still hit 1 gram of protein per pound or body weight. As weird as it might sound, it might actually be MORE important to eat protein when cutting because you want to preserve muscle mass on a calorie deficit.

- Prioritize protein and veggies each meal. Try and get 1-2 palm sized servings on protein and 1-2 fist size servings of veggies per meal and eat them first.

- Pick either low carb or low fat but don't try and do both at the same time. You have to reduce calories some how and it shouldn't be from protein.

- Reduce calories slightly and stay there until weight loss stops, then reduce again until you plateau again. This is how my nutrition programs are set up for you.

- Try super low carb if you need to, but only for a short time. This can work well for a big time hormonal reset and help get some insulin sensitivity back, similarly to intermittent fasting.

- Base carbs off of workout volume for the day. If your workout has more volume than eat more carbs. Less volume equals less carbs, and non workout days should be low carb.

- Aim to lose 1-2 pounds per week. .5 isn't bad either but you don't want to lose any more than that consistently.

- Only cut for 3 months at a time then maintain. I wrote a whole post on this so I don't need to go into detail.

- Maintain for as long as you cut then cut again if needed.

- Have protein or BCAAs during workout and protein before bed. I prefer protein over BCAAs but if you're super calorie restricted the they can be ok to help maintain muscle.

- Try intermittent fasting. Again, whole post on this. Actually 3, so not a lot of detail here.

All in all it comes down to finding what works for you and sticking too it. Consistency is going to be the most important and without it the details don't matter. As long as you are consistently eating less calories than you're burning, being active, and taking maintenance lanes then you will be successful!

Running a Successful Bulking Phase Part 2 47/84

Now that you guys know how to eat to grow effectively, you'll need to know how to lift to grow too. To be 100% honest there doesn't NEED to be a huge difference between the workouts to get bigger or smaller if your diet is on point. Look at bodybuilders, there's not much of a difference between their bulking workouts and cutting workouts but they still manage to change a ton. With that being said, there are still some things you can do to help the process along and make it as effective as possible.

- Focus on strength first. If you worry about getting stronger then bigger muscles will come. This is, of course, if your workouts are programmed right.

- Get strong with compound movements. No one cares how much you can curl, like, no one. You shouldn't try to go heavy on an exercise like a bicep curl but you should go heavier and exercises like squats, deadlifts, presses, and pulls that use a lot of muscles. This is the best way to get strong and add quality muscle to your body.

- For these compound movements, keep your reps around 3-8. You can go higher or lower if you like but this is a great range to spend most of your time in.

- Do accessory work second. Once you finish your main lifts then you can move on to your accessory and isolation exercises. These can include exercises for your upper back, chest, glutes, and hamstrings then finish with things like biceps, triceps, neck, and calves.

- For these you'll want to go lower weight than with the compound movements and stick with 8-15+ reps for most. Things like calves, abs, and neck can go even higher as well

- Don't get confused, higher reps do not mean toning and they won't just help with muscular endurance. Not only can they still help build muscle but they're actually important in the process.

I have talked about this in the past but there are a number of ways you can split up your days and still make great progress. I have ones that I prefer and program often but I list a few options for you.

- Full body workouts. Hit the whole body 3 times a week and you're good.

- Upper/ lower. I did this a ton while I did my last bulk. I did 2 upper body and two lower body workouts a week. Sometimes I even added a third upper day just to work on some weak points.

- Push/pull/lower. This is what I'm doing now. I do deadlifts and pulling Monday, pressing Wednesday , and legs Friday. Just like above, sometimes I add a pump day on Saturdays.

- Bodybuilding splits. I'm not a huge fan of these for most people but they still can work. A basic example would be to separate chest/triceps, back/biceps, shoulders, arms, and legs. Abs can be sprinkled in there as well.

Once you decide what kind of split you want then use these guidelines to build your workouts.

Do 1-3  compound exercises
Do 2-5 isolation exercises
And do 1-2 exercises per muscle group

You really don't need a ton more than that once you add in the rep schemes from above. Usually 2-5 sets per exercise is plenty. One thing I often see sf people doing way more volume per muscle group than they need to. You don't need 5 exercises for chest and another 6 for triceps to grow and more is not better.

Hopefully these guidelines can help you build a good workout and let you run a successful bulk. If you cutting then save this for the winter and also stay tuned until tomorrow when I get into the details on how to cut successfully. Finally, I'm still accepting a couple more people for my workout test group. If you're interested in working with me for free for a month then subscribe via the pop-up and you'll get added right in

See you tomorrow

Running A Successful Bulking Phase Part 1 46/84

I'm not going to lie, bulking is way more fun than cutting. I don't think this would be news to anyone, especially because of the look on their face when I tell my weight loss clients that I'm trying to gain weight. With that being said, it's not the free-for-all that people think it is, and so many people do it way wrong. Bulking is not about eating all the food and getting as big as possible as fast as possible. That mentality is a really good way to get fat. Bulking is about gaining quality muscle mass while maintaining as much of the leanness you worked so hard for on your cut. The process should be slow, just like weight loss, and it needs to be just as well planned. In this post, I'll go over the nutrition points you need to focus on when bulking and in Part 2 I'll go over the workouts.

During a bulk, your goal should be to gain about 1 pound per week for men and closer to .5 for women. Any more than that and you are probably not gaining quite as much lean muscle as you can. Obviously, you're going to get a little bit of body fat while you're bulking but the goal is to try and keep it to a minimum while still gaining a good amount of muscle. There are a few main points that you should spend most of your time focusing on. I'll go through those as bullet points to make it easy.

Nutrition

Whether you're bulking or cutting, nutrition is going to be super important to making sure you actually make progress. Here are some basic recommendations that I live by when bulking

- Find your baseline then eat a little more. If your weight is stable right now then all you need to do is add a little more food and you'll start gaining weight. If you want to get more precise there are some macronutrient recommendations you can use.

- Aim for .8-1.0 grams of protein per pound that you weigh. Most people don't get enough protein each day and this might be all the extra calories you need to hit point 1. This mean a guy weighing 180 pound would need between 145 and 180 grams per day.

- Aim for .5-2.0 grams of carbs per pound that you weigh. Yes, I know this is a broad range but it depends on the volume and intensity of your workout for the day. On days you do workouts that are higher volume, you should eat more carbs and days you do less you should eat less cars. most workout days will be closer to .8-1.5 grams per pound. Conditioning days will be on the lower end, even if the "feel harder".

- Fill in the rest of your calories with healthy fats. If you are tracking calories and macros this will just make up the remainder if you daily calories.

- As you progress through your bulk, carbs and protein stay about the same but fat increases. There is a number of reasons for this; protein and carbs have optimal ranges that they should be consumed in but fat doesn't, and fat has the most calories per gram meaning you need to eat less to get more. Want to make this simple? Add a scoop of peanut butter to the end of each meal.

- Still focus on getting protein and veggies with each meal and spread you carbs and fats pretty evenly across your day. Make sure you still eat about 1 cup of veggies per meal, you're going to want the fiber with all the food you'll be eating.

- Make sure you're getting you intra-workout shake each workout. Not only will this help you get more calories in each day but it'll help prevent any potential muscle loss from workouts

- Get protein and fat right before bed. This will help you recover faster and prevent muscle loss when sleeping, I like to blend 2 scoops on whey with peanut butter but if you can get casein protein that will be much better.

- Once you stop gaining weight, increase fat by a couple servings a day and maintain that until you stop gaining again.

- Just like cutting, you'll need to take a maintenance phase about every 3 months to get your body used to your new weight. If you don't you'll quickly lose the weight you worked so hard to put on.

If you can get good at these things and combine them with the workout blueprint I'll be posting tomorrow then you're definitely going to have a successful bulk. Remember to take is slow and enjoy the process, don't just try to rush to the end. Finally, if you want to see what it's like to work with me for totally free then subscribe here and you can join the group of workout testers that I'll be starting with this Monday. You can read about the workout HERE and see the post I but up about it on Facebook HERE. Anyone is free to join so let me know!

See you tomorrow!

Facebook: Greg Herceg - Personal Trainer
Instagram: @Greg.the.Trainer
Email: gsherceg@gmail.com

Should You Try To Bulk Or Cut? 45/84

One of the first things I talk to everyone about when we first meet is their goals. Some people are very clear on what they need, because either they know they need to lose a significant amount of weight or they are already pretty lean. Although a lot of people fall into that, there are a ton of people who are conflicted and don't know which way to go.

Some people are already kind of skinny or kind of lean, but still want to get bigger and have bigger muscles. They may have some muscle already, but also still have some extra body fat. So for those people the question can arise of "which one do I tackle first?" Do you start with bulking and trying to get bigger? Or do you lose that extra bit of fat first? Let's figure it out.

The main question you need to ask is "How lean are you already?' There are a number of ways to figure this out but usually the best for the average person is a skinfold pinch test of some kind of bio-electrical impedance like InBody. If you have access to a Bod Pod, hydrostatic weighing or Dexa Scan those would be better but not everyone will have that option.

Once you know your body fat you can decide which way to go.  If you're a guy, I would recommend getting down to 10-12% body fat and for women you probably want to be under about 20% or less. Until you get to be this lean, you shouldn't worry about bulking at all. There are a couple reasons for this

For one, you're going to look more muscular or more toned when you get leaner. It sounds kinda weird but as you lose that extra body fat the muscles you already have are going to be more visible and you're going to look like you've added muscle. Definite bonus. Combine this with the small amount of muscle you can add in a cut and some people might just be good there.

Second, you're body works better when you're lean. A big part of that is attributed to hormones.  When you have less fat on your body, your insulin sensitivity is better (your ability to tolerate carbs), and you have better amounts of testosterone, growth hormones, and estrogen. If those things are out of wack (like when you're overweight) trying to add muscle won't work out too well and you'll probably end up gaining just as much fat as muscle.

When you're lean, it's easier to add muscle to your frame without adding too much fat. You'll probably still add a little but nothing too bad (if you're doing it right). If you have too much fat when you start, way too much of the weight you add is going to be fat and not muscle. This goes back to the hormones I mentioned and is obviously no good.

So the biggest question to ask yourself is how lean you are already. If your body fat is too high then cut first. If you're pretty lean already, you can start to add some quality mass. For my next few posts l detail how to run a successful cut and how to run a successful bulk. Once you decide which goal to work for, you'll have a good blueprint to follow to get there. If you still feel like you need more help then please reach out. I help people change their lives every day and I would love to help you too!

See you tomorrow!

Injury Free Training 44/84

Let's be honest here. Most people's goals should be long term. Unless you're competing in a sport, part of your goals should include building healthy habits and a sustainable lifestyle. Usually this means the goal is to not get hurt, and make consistent progress over years. Getting injured can put a huge damper on any progress and make a lot of people give up entirely. Even though there's usually way more you can do when hurt than people think, it's always just better to not get hurt in the first place. Here a few tips you can take and use to help make sure that you're preventing injury while still making gains.

-Work in your mobility/ flexibility

Although being more flexible doesn't automatically make you less likely to get injured, it's still important to be flexible enough and mobile enough to be able to get in the proper positions for exercises. Take the deadlift as an example. Although an extremely important and effective exercise, if your hamstrings don't allow you to get your back flat when the bar is on the floor then it becomes rather dangerous and not worth it. I'm situations like this, decrease the range of motion to a point where you can do the exercise perfectly.

-Barbells are not all that functional

Should you train with barbells? Probably. Do you have to? Not necessarily. Are they really all that functional? Not really. During every day life you're more than likely not going to be lifting a perfectly balanced bar with a grip width that fits your hand perfectly. Although I do include them in all of my programs, you need to train with other implements such as dumbbells, kettlebells, sand bags, medicine balls, and bodyweight exercises. Getting a good mix of all of those and making sure you're moving them properly is going to help ensure longevity.

-Use single arm/leg for muscular imbalances

Have you ever watched someone do a back squat and it just looks like absolutely crooked garbage? I have, and that's part of the reason most of my clients don't do barbell back squats until a while into our programs. When I do have a person like this, I often take them away from two leg squats for a while all together and work on single leg squats, step ups, and lunges. Things like this can help identify  and fix imbalances that can cause issues. If you just try to power through bad technique you could end up hurting yourself.

-Don't train to failure

Training to failure is a great way to burn yourself out and kill progress. You should be pushing yourself but alway leave 1-2 reps in the tank. Not only can this help you stay in the game longer, but there's not even any real research to prove training to failure results in more muscle gain.

-Don't get overhyped

Again, a great way to fry yourself out and kill progress. Things that fall into this include tons of preworkout, smelling salts, getting slapped up, and yelling/ grunting through reps. If you're going for a big deadlift PR then these things can help you smash weights, but they are definitely not things you should do every day or even every week.

-Don't to hard every day

This is kind of a culmination of the last two. You don't need to go hard and give 100% every single time you go to the gym. Killing yourself on every metcon, hitting rep PRs on every lift, and crushing yourself every day is going to lead to over training, burn out, and potentially injury. Work hard and try and do a little more every week but don't kill yourself. You'll be better off for it in the long run.

How Your Mindset Can Guarantee Success 43/84

Before you've even started a new challenge you've usually already decided wether you're going to succeed or not, even before your first step. It doesn't matter if we're talking about health, fitness, business, relationships, or anything else: the attitude you have when you start is almost always going to decide if you're going to be successful or not. Do you want to lose weight? Then you need to have to mindset of weight loss from day 1. Do you want to make more sales for your job? Then you need to have the mindset of a successful salesmen each and every day. If you don't believe that you're going to be successful then you've already decided that you won't. Because if you have that negative mindset when you start then you're going to be your own biggest barrier preventing yourself from doing it. That might sounds crazy to some people, but it might sounds super familiar to others.

Think about a time you've tried something and failed. We've all been there before. At first, you're probably making good progress, but pretty soon progress starts to slow and you start to doubt yourself. As soon as you start doubting yourself you start to think of all of the reasons why you won't be successful. Or, you start to think of all of the reasons why you don't really NEED to be successful. You start to justify failure in you're mind, you come to peace with it, and you quite.

Not let's look at the same vague example with a success mindset. You start making quick progress and everything is great. Then, when progress starts to slow, you realize that success comes in waves and that you just need to hold out until the next wave comes. You survive through the down period, making slow progress, then BAM! The wave comes back in and you start making huge steps again. When everyone else would have quit, the fact that you decided on success from the very beginning got you through the tough times and allowed you to continue.

If you've ever had a successful sales based job you know exactly what I'm talking about. Sales are always based on momentum (like most success) and when you hit that momentum you need to ride it as long as you can and do whatever you need to go keep that momentum up as long as you can. This really goes for anything.

You need to check your mindset and see where your thought are taking you. Can you see yourself succeeding in all of your goals? Can you see yourself 50 pounds lighter with a new life? Can took see yourself making twice as much money as you are now, with a new house and car? If not then you need to work on it, because this can be the single most important factor in your success if you learn how to harness it.

The biggest thing that has helped me so far is to try and learn every single day. Whenever I'm driving I have my phone plugged in with an audiobook or podcast playing. Every single time. When I wake up I listen too or read a book while I'm getting ready in the morning because it helps me each day with the right mindset. For me it's usually something fitness based, but I also listen to a lot of business and success books since it is just as important for me to be a good business man as it is for me to be a good trainer.

Adopting daily disciplines like this can be absolutely life changing. Maybe not overnight, but maybe so. I've been doing this for a few years how and I can honestly say I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't, and you wouldn't been reading this right now.

So think about how you can take advantage of this. How can you change your mindset so that you guarantee yourself success? What books could you read or podcasts can you find that will make you better? We're about to start a new week of a brand new month, seems like there's not better time to start than right now, so go get after it!

See you tomorrow!

The Halfway Point 42/84

Hey everyone! Big day today. On May 21st I started my weird journey of 84 blog posts in 84 days with almost no idea of what I was doing. What I did know is that I wanted to put a ton of free content out to anyone who would be willing to listen and try and help as many people as possible. Working as a personal trainer, it's my job to help people and I seriously love it. But the only issue is that I really wasn't able to help that many people, seeing as I only have about 20-25 clients. I realized that if I wanted to reach more people then I was going to have to use the power of the internet to do so. So far, it seems like its working a bit, my Facebook followers and post engagement is going up as well as clicks on my page. Those things don't mean a ton but it does mean that people are seeing what I put out and, in turn, hopefully I'm helping these people in one way or another.

This blog alone (really with my Facebook page) has given me the ability to go from helping a few people to helping a couple hundred people, and that's totally amazing! But I want to go bigger. A few hundred people is great but I want to get to a few thousand, or a few million, because I know that I have information that really can change people's lives. So far, I haven't posted a ton of those life changing stories because people seem to be a little self-conscious about me posting their progress pictures (which is totally understandable), but you better believe the proof is out there, and it's coming soon. An interesting correlation to increase my online presence is that my clients are starting to make better progress then they ever have before. I'm not 100% sure why that is happening but I'm not complaining, and neither are they! It probably has something to do with that fact that I have had to increase my already high amount of personal development that I was doing each day in order to have enough content to post to you guys. It also probably had something to do with my mindset of success which naturally projected onto my clients (weird stuff like that happens constantly). But whatever it was it's happening, my client are absolutely killing it and I love it! Hopefully, soon I'll have some progress pictures that I can post for you guys so you can see for yourself, but until then you'll just have to take my word for it!

In honor of this half way post I want to talk a little bit about the future and some new things that are going to be coming so that I can expand my help to as far as I possibly can. Other than these posts, I plan on getting more into making videos for you guys as well. I talked about this quickly on my first video but  I want to continue doing more in the future. The big reason behind that is because I realize that not everyone (most people) don't want to have to read a written post every day. Personally, if I could watch a video or just listen to audio then I would rather do that most of the time. This is going to be a big part of opening up a new YouTube channel for all of these to be posted on, which will help me reach more people by itself. On that channel, I'm also going to start recording and posting exercise demonstration videos for those of you who like to do the free workouts I post. This way, I'll be able to hyperlink right from the post on there to the direct video on exactly how I like exercises to be done. This alone will decrease a ton of the questions that people have and make it easier for you guys to get the workouts done the best way. Honestly, that's my next big step and I don't want to reveal too many of my other secrets for the future.

As the other part of this half way post, I want to link in a few of my most popular posts that I have published since this endeavor started. Obviously, these are the posts that people enjoyed the most so I want to make sure that as many people see them as possible!

To date, my most popular post is about what supplements I take. You can read it HERE if you haven't yet

Not surprisingly, my posts that include free workouts are the next few that are getting the most attention. This post on my women's fat loss and muscle building program is super popular and I really love that workout. Actually, to a point where I have my wife doing it

My other big free workout is the one that I am currently doing which is the Anti Dadbod workout. I've been doing it for 3 weeks now and I'm loving it. You can see the workout explained in Part 1 HERE and Part 2 with the workout HERE

My super informative post on toning came in up towards the top too, which is awesome. I had a lot of people at the gym ask me about this one in person so I'm glad I could get some good info out there. Learn what toning really means HERE.

The last one I want to repost is not one of my top posts, in fact it's BAR FAR my lowest. I still have no idea why because I believe it's a pretty important post, but to date it has an astoundingly low 10 views (which is hilarious)! THIS post is about why you need to worry more than just what the scale says and some other metrics you can use to track progress.

I'm super excited for the future with you guys and definitely these next 42 days, even though I'm running low on ideas! At least good ones. But regardless there are definitely some big things coming and I'm really pumped to be able to help as many people as possible. Finally, my newest and possibly best program is finished but I want to make it available only to my subscribers long before I give it out to the public. If you want to be one of the lucky few to test this new program for me then check out my last post and make sure you subscribe ASAP! I want to get a small group of people together to go through this workout together so let me know if you want in! I'll only be accepting 10 people for this so don't wait.

 See you tomorrow!

Facebook: Greg Herceg - Personal Trainer
Instagram: @Greg.the.Trainer
Email: gsherceg@gmail.com