Body Fat Loss > Weight Loss.

If you haven’t yet, check out this piece I wrote on why you should ditch the scale. I’ll sum it up: weight loss doesn’t matter. Body composition matters. Increasing bone density, better hydration, increased lean tissue, and reduced body fat are the things you should care about. Weight loss is useless unless you know what you’re losing. If you’re losing more than a couple pounds a week, it’s likely lean tissue or just water.

You don’t need cardio to lose body fat.

One of the biggest myths in fitness is that you need to do things you don’t like to lose fat. Mainly cardio – long runs, endless hours on the elliptical, and long bike rides. If you truly enjoy these things – by all means – don’t give them up. Fitness that’s fun is the fitness that works. Do what you love.

Lifting weights is key to fat loss

We’re going to use Coach Mindy as our case study. Over the last 9 weeks, Mindy has focused exclusively on resistance training, nutrition, hydration, and recovery. Over the course of those 9 weeks, Mindy has dropped nearly 4% body fat, increased her lean tissue by 2.5 pounds, and lost about 1.5 total pounds. By increasing her lean tissue, she’s increased her metabolism (resting metabolic rate), having a compounding effect on her fat loss.

Nutrition is simple

We tend to complicate things. Mindy made no drastic changes to her diet, but simply maintained consistency in a couple key areas:

• Eating more veggies
• Drinking adequate water
• Eating adequate protein

You don’t need to do anything drastic. You just need to maintain some semblance of consistency. It’s easy to be die-hard for 2-3 weeks. But, you won’t see any results in 2-3 weeks. Week 6 is where things really start to build up steam. Keep it simple, but keep it consistent.

There’s no magic “program”

Despite what every Instagram Coach tells you, there’s no magic combination of reps and sets that will help you look better. If you want to be generally fit, look good in a bathing suit, and feel better you just need to move consistently everyday, recover from training, and eat reasonably. That’s about it. No magic bullet or “6 Steps to 6-Pack Abs.”

Lifting weights unequivocally won’t make women “bulky”

The reason we use the InBody Body Composition Scanner is that numbers don’t lie. Often times we may “feel” one way about our body composition when the reality may be completely different. For those who are curious, Mindy has trained with a barbell everyday – doing our “Buns and Guns” program – and has eliminated any “cardio.” She didn’t get “bulky” from lifting weights – numbers don’t lie. She only increased her dry lean tissue by .9 pounds while eliminating 6 pounds of body fat. Using a segmental analysis, that means she only added ~0.3 pounds per leg and ~.15 pounds per arm of muscle tissue, BUT LOST nearly 6x that amount of body fat. The net result is a much leaner appearance although muscle mass increased.

The takeaway: fat loss is simple and weight loss is BS.

If Mindy only used a scale to measure her progress, she would only see 2.5 pounds of weight loss. The reality of her body composition is much different. A 4% reduction in body fat is a SIGNIFICANT improvement in body composition. Fat loss will improve all measurable health metrics along with a leaner physique. She accomplished this by making SMALL, sustainable changes in her diet. She did this by only lifting weights and doing ZERO “cardio.” Accounting for segmental body fat loss in her arms and legs, she actually became LESS “bulky” by adding a very small (less than 1 pound) of dry lean mass to her frame.

Check out Mindy’s progress chart:

Getting lean is simple with a little consistency.

I’ve been writing quite a bit lately about how we’re using the InBody Body Composition Scanner to show that weight loss only matters if you know WHAT you’re losing. Often times, rapid “weight” loss is usually water or lean tissue. With this piece, I’m going to show you how Coach Josh has achieved his best body composition ever with simple changes and consistency.

The numbers:

In the last 10 weeks Josh has gone from 16% body fat to 12.8% body fat. He’s lost roughly four pounds in the process. The goal going forward is to re-gain the weight loss as lean tissue. We tested this using Body Composition Testing.

Getting lean: the workout.

Josh’s training is probably the simplest it’s been in years. He does one workout a day and typically follows the Strength Track. He looks at it a few minutes before he does it, then works hard and will only “empty the tank” once every week or so. No extra work or complexity. Simple, efficient, hard work. Two times a week he’ll do some low-intensity practice with an empty barbell or gymnastics. No extra “cardio”, lifting, or anything fancy.

The small diet changes.

Our philosophy has always been that simple, sustainable, incremental change leads to the best results. In Josh’s case, the nutrition changes were SUPER simple. The two changes Josh made to his diet were: 1. Eat vegetables at every meal and 2. Eat adequate protein. This means that, each week, he roasts a couple big pans of assorted vegetables and spreads them out over each meal. After tracking his meals, he found he needed to added 50-100 grams of protein a day. Nothing crazy or unsustainable. Just simple, sustainable change.

Getting lean: the takeaways.

If you’ve noticed a theme from these posts it’s this: changing your body composition is very simple, but difficult. Eat veggies and adequate protein, hydrate, avoid excess alcohol, and work out to the extent that you feel recovered. We tend to gravitate toward complexity rather than face the reality that change requires consistency. If your goal is to get leaner, choose a small change and stick to it for at least 8 weeks. From there, you’ll be able to make other changes.

Our theme this month is “Better is Better.” It started off as “less is more” but, universally, that’s not the case. But, better is always better.

I’d like to make the case for working out less. Kind of weird for a guy who owns a gym to advocate for less working out, so let me rephrase: If you’re struggling to get in the recommended 3-5 hours of physical activity, by all means, WORK OUT MORE. If, like many people who make exercise a lifestyle habit, you find yourself feeling like you need more work to see results – I’m talking to you.

 

This is my first public before/after picture I’ve ever posted. Admittedly I’m a little embarrassed, but I think it illustrates a very important point: You don’t get fit from working out. You get fit by recovering from working out.

In the picture on the left, I was training for 10-12 hours per week with each training session lasting 2-2.5 hours. The training sessions involved some type of olympic lift, a strength lift, and a conditioning piece. Sometimes this was followed up with additional “accessory” work. This work looked a lot like MisFit Athletics, The Outlaw Way, or CompTrain. Please bear in mind that there is nothing wrong with these programs. I simply didn’t pay mind that, in order to train competitively, I must also recover competitively.

In the picture on the right (taken in the same room, against the same wall, on June 7, 2017), I have been training the same way for the last 11 months – 5 workouts a week, 1 hour each. I do the gym’s CrossFit WOD (typically a version of the Development Programming Track) two weeks before the rest of the gym. I look at the WOD about 10 minutes before we do it and do whatever it says. If it says run a mile, I run a mile. If it says do 5×3 Front Squat, that’s what I do. I rarely do any extra pieces aside from some shoulder or glute rehab and activation.

I work really hard for the hour, but only “empty the tank” once every 10 days or so. If I’m not feeling great, I scale the intensity, weight, and movements way down. If I’m feeling great, I go all out. I try to always work out with someone else to gauge my effort. I always try to finish within the day’s “intent” to ensure I’m not slugging through a workout with too heavy a weight or too complex a movement. I focus on intensity and proficiency over weight and complexity.

The Stats

• Down ~4% body fat
• Average sleep up to 7 hours from 5
• Average weight 170 from 180
• Strength numbers (squat, deadlift, snatch, and clean) down an average of 7%
• Dropped 2 inches from waist
• PR Fran by 4 seconds

The Intangibles

• I’m rarely sore, nothing is achy
• Mood has improved
• Increased productivity
• Rarely need to “mobilize” – I do the same 10 minute warm up everyday and hit some movement-specific stuff maybe twice per week
• Training feels more like fun and less like a chore

What Changed?

Last year I decided to do an experiment wherein I placed twice as much effort into recovery as I did training. I figured out sleep – I use an eye mask, ear plugs, sun lamp, and sleep in a cold room. I make every attempt to go to bed and wake up at the same time everyday. I try to eat veggies, protein, fat, and carbs from whole foods that I prepared at every meal. I rarely use protein or carb supplements, “bars” or “shakes”. Oddly enough, you’d probably consider my diet “cleaner” in my before picture than the after (I opt for random treats and desserts these days). I cut out wine (to aid in sleep quality) during weekdays. I quit drinking coffee after 11:00am.

For my training, my goal was to fully submit to a program; to not react to a bad day of training by adding more. My goal was to not heap on “extra” work or use “lack of volume” as an excuse for poor quality and intensity on my part. The plan was to not use my knowledge of training (or perceived knowledge) as a way to micro-manage my own work; to not get distracted by Instagram programs and coaches.

I feel better than I have in years, I’m sleeping better, and I’m making better food choices. Training is fun – and less stressful – again. I’m no longer saying things like: “but I didn’t squat/do core work/do double unders/do cardio/do more today.” I’m just doing hard work to the best of my ability for one hour.

There’s a temptation as an athlete moves from novice to intermediate to believe that what you do is important. That there’s some special programming or combination of strength and cardio that finally get you to the place you want to be. As the intermediate athlete advances, he or she realizes that what isn’t nearly as important as why and how. And what you do is definitely secondary to how you recover from it.

All this month we’re talking about training volume.

What is the ideal amount of work you need to do to get optimally fit? This topic comes up all the time.

• Do I need to do extra work?
• Should I do a squat cycle?
• Should I follow a competitor program?
• Do I need to do extra “core” work?
• We didn’t work ___ today. Should I get some in?
• I didn’t feel sore the next day.

I appreciate that all of these questions are rooted in a genuine desire to get better. Unfortunately, they also tend to lead to negative results.

So, how much work do you need to do? The answer is super simple, yet highly complex:

The amount of work you need to do is the amount of work from which you can fully recover before your next training session.

At its core, exercise is simply Stimulus -> Response -> Adaptation. Stimulus is the work you do. Response is your body’s acute recovery mechanism – how well can you recover immediately after training? Adaptation is your body’s long-term adjustment to work.

To provide a concrete example:

Today I will run 1 mile (Stimulus). Since it is the first time I’ve ever run 1 mile, my body will have some acute soreness, additional caloric needs, and require some additional rest and sleep as a result of the new work I’ve asked of my body (Response). Let’s say I do this twice a week. After a few weeks, 1 mile will be no big deal. I’ll probably be able to ramp it up to 2 miles within a month (Adaptation).

We’ve written plenty on Stimulus and Adaptation, but our focus this month is on Response. I’ll harken back to my high school wood shop teacher for this one. He always used to say that – when you properly join two boards – the joint becomes stronger than the two boards being joined.

The same is true for training. When you work out, you’re actually damaging your body – you’re applying stress to your joints, tendons, metabolic processes, cardiovascular system, and muscle tissues. So, you could reasonably say that the physical act of working out is bad for your body. Working out becomes good for your body at the point that your tissues and systems RECOVER from that workout.

In the example of high school wood shop, the joint becomes strong once the glue fully dries. Try to manipulate your joined board with wet glue and you’ll have a broken board and a sticky mess everywhere.

So how much work do I need to do?

This is tricky but, speaking in broad strokes, an hour training session 3-5 times a week is just about right for most people. If you’re an elite athlete you’ll be able to manage 10-15 hours of weekly training. How can you tell if you’re an elite athlete? Here’s a pretty easy tell: You’ve lived at least 1 year on a salary or sponsorships that you’ve earned directly as a result of your athletic performance (sorry to burst your bubble).

This is not to say that some small bits of extra work here and there couldn’t benefit you and wouldn’t be a fun addition. But, before you go adding in work, ask yourself if you’re currently able to “pay the piper” with what that extra work will require of you. I’ve created a checklist to ensure that you’d actually benefit from extra work. Chances are, if you’re not able to check each box, you’ll experience a decreased level of fitness as a result of increased work.

• I eat at restaurants less than 3 times per week (sorry…Chipotle is still a restaurant).
• I’m a man that consumes 5 or less alcoholic drinks per week
• I’m a woman that consumes 3 or less alcoholic drinks per week
• I eat 7-9 cups of vegetables every day (for 6+ months…those 3 weeks you had it together don’t count)
• I drink my body weight in ounces of water daily and monitor my water loss during training sessions
• I sleep at least 7 uninterrupted hours every night
• I’m not experiencing Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) with increased training volume

Hopefully this provides a decent self-assessment for adding in extra work to your current training plan. If you’re struggling to see results and “gainz”, the chances of you needing to increase recovery are much higher than the chances that you need to increase your workload.

Open gym is a great chance to work on your skills, squeeze in a workout when you don’t have a full hour, or focus on a niche area of fitness for a period of time. Open gym can also be where you fitness goes to die. I’m as guilty as the next guy on that last point.

Open gym reminds me of all the ways I’ve wasted my time and gotten nowhere closer to my end goal.

• Trying to do my own graphic design…ugh.
• Diagnosing myself with 11 rare diseases. Thanks WebMD.
• Drafting my own legal documents…not exactly air-tight.

In each of these examples, I relied on my own perceived expertise to circumvent the advice, service, or council of professionals that literally dedicate their entire lives to the practice of one niche thing. In what universe could I do a better job than the experts?

Open gym can be a lot like WebMD. Hell, you have Instagram right? Pretty much anything you’d ever need to know about body mechanics, programming, and physiology can be found right in your feed… or maybe not.

I was at Kelly Starrett’s Movement and Mobility seminar several years ago. An attendee asked: “what’s the best cue for an early arm bend on the snatch?” Kelly quickly replied: “A cue is a historical event, not a mechanical event. A cue represents the relationship between athlete and coach and is delivered at the time the athlete is ready to receive it.”

As an athlete develops, their coach will allow certain mechanical faults to remain while correcting others. In the example of the snatch, it’s not until an athlete sets up properly that we can address bar path. It’s not until bar path is consistent that we can address torso angle. It’s not until we address torso positioning that we can address arm bend. It’s not until we address arm bend that we can go back and address arm positioning as it relates to the hip.

In short: WHAT you do matters very little compared to HOW YOU DO IT. 

The reps, sets, and workout on the whiteboard are insignificant compared to how you approach the workout. Programming means nothing without intent. WHY > HOW > WHAT

How does this relate to Open Gym? At the beginning of the post I mentioned that Open Gym has the potential to be the place where fitness goes to die. This happens when what you do takes precedence over how and why you do it.

Ever thought any of the following?

• Didn’t do any lifting today. Better get some in.
• Didn’t do enough cardio today. Better get some in.
• Didn’t do “abs” today. Better do some crunches.

You get the idea. This represents reactive training. Reactive training prioritizes what over how and why. I can’t remember who first said this, but my favorite quote in strength training is: “Lifting weights won’t make you stronger. Recovering from lifting weights will make you stronger.” You can see how a reactive approach violates this physiological principle.

Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t utilize Open Gym. It’s an amazing tool to get some “me time”, work on a specific skill, or focus on a more biased approach to fitness. Follow this guide to maximize your time and fitness. I’ve broken the guide into athlete types to help you identify who you are.

I like to do competitions and feel I need some extra work.

Excellent! We program a daily piece of extra work that can be found here: http://crossfitmemorialhill.com/wod We recommend you do the daily WOD with a group first, and then do the extra piece. Nothing beats the competitiveness of a group class. Find your rabbit and go hard on the WOD, recover for 5-10 minutes, and hit the extra work in Open Gym.

I want to get my first ________.

I have a 5 minute rule for acquiring new skills – spend 5 minutes a day (no more, no less) until you’ve acquired the new skill. We have a Pull-Up Program, Muscle-Up Progressions, and other drills to help you nail down your skill. Spend your 5 minutes before or after class. Don’t overdo your practice sessions though – it’ll lead to fatigue, poor practice reps, and frustration.

I’d like to focus on _______ for a period of time.

Training for a marathon, doing a strength bloc, or doing gymnastics for a period of time are all great pursuits. Go into your venture knowing that other areas will suffer, however. Specialists inevitably will have consequences to specialty – body composition change, changes to your metabolism, and affected gains in other areas. We have pre-written programs for pretty much any area of focus. Just reach out to your Crew Captain and they’ll walk you through it.

My schedule is crazy today.

We get it. Sometimes you only have a quick 1/2 hour to squeeze in a workout. Get in here and get it done! Our recommendation is that you follow these guidelines if you don’t have the time to do a class:

• Do the lifestyle track
• Keep the weight light
• Keep the gymnastics very basic
• Hop on the Assault Bike for 5 minutes, then hit your WOD
• Take a cold shower after

We didn’t work ______ today.

This is probably the biggest hurdle for people seeking improved fitness – reactive training. Over the course of 2 weeks of programmed group class you will have done enough “leg work,” “ab work,” pressing, and pulling to achieve world-class fitness. Randomly moving weight around will certainly diminish any gains you realized in programmed work. Again, we have plenty of plans and programs available to you if you want to focus on any particular area of fitness.

Takeaway: Open Gym is an excellent tool to grow and maintain incredible amounts of fitness. It’s a great way to squeeze in the day’s WOD quickly and efficiently. It’s also a great place to work through any prehab or rehab assigned by your Physical Therapist. Don’t let it be the place where your fitness dies – have a plan, prioritize the day’s WOD within its intent, and look to your coaches for guidance.