The truth about Transforming your body with Exercises 

Your body is a wonderful machine. It has an amazing capacity to adapt and even physically transform itself in response to the activities you do regularly.

That’s what happens when you get fitter – a workout which is hard when you first do it feels easier as you repeat it because your body responds by changing itself so it can better cope with the same workout next time.

One of the ways most people go wrong is they think, that’s it, they can just keep repeating that easier workout and changes will continue to happen in their bodies.

Not so, I’m afraid. Changes happen while your body adapts to the new activity, once your body is used it no more change is necessary.

The other big mistake is continually adding duration to sessions of doing the same exercise – running, cycling or swimming further, spending longer in the gym, dong back-to-back studio classes, etc. This is fine if your training goal is solely to increase your levels of endurance, but for most people this is not their main motivation. Most people’s motivations are some combination of wanting to get leaner, fitter and stronger. Unfortunately this training strategy can actually be detrimental to that, 

You love exercise you’re already good at

So, given that doing only one type of exercise can cause injury, sap motivation and pull us in the opposite direction to our goals why on earth do so many people still do it?

Mainly because hardly anyone wants to tell people they need a varied exercise schedule.

Fitness and exercise are big business and most of the advice pumped out by mainstream media comes from people and organisations with something to sell – if someone wants you to buy their yoga DVD, or running shoes, or join their trendy new class they’re unlikely to tell you about the other types of exercise you should be doing alongside those in order reach your goals.

There’s also a very prevalent idea that the best advice to give to people is to simply find a type of exercise they enjoy.

The problem is, people enjoy the types of exercise they’re already good at, but they often benefit most from the types of exercise their body hasn’t already adapted to (which they come to enjoy more as they do adapt and get “fitter at”). See what I mean? Doing the exercise comes first, enjoying doing it comes as part of the process.

But any type of exercise is better than none, right?

Usually, within reason, yes.

However, if you only do whatever type of exercise you enjoy, or most feel like on the day, you need to understand that it won’t necessarily produce the result which is your main motivation for doing exercise in the first place.

Since I started sharing my own experience of the difference switching daily running for the type of training I do now, I’ve helped literally hundreds of people struggling in the same way I was. They’re exercising regularly and feel like they’re doing everything they should be to get the lean, sculpted body they want, but nothing is changing for them.

These are among my favourite type of clients, I relate to their frustration, but it’s also because they tend to see progress quite quickly when they start my programs and it’s fantastic to share the experience with them as that body they’ve striving for, for so long, starts taking shape.

Now I’ve got a rep for being very results focused, people also often come to me wanting an exercise program optimised for results simply because, right from the get-go, they don’t want to spend a lot of time on exercise which won’t get their bodies in the condition they want to be in.

So, yes, any type of exercise can be better than none at all, but if you’re exercising because you want to get leaner, fitter, stronger, more sculpted or you have any particular goal in mind, it makes sense to exercise smart.

If you want results, train smart

To illustrate what an optimised fitness program looks like I’ll outline what’s included in my awesome new workout program, Forge (I’m so proud of this one!). But this isn’t only for people interested in joining my online gym and doing the Forge program. I’m sharing the “secrets” of why Forge produced such fantastic results for the test group so you can apply the same principles to your own exercise schedule (but, of course, if you do join I’ll have taken care of that for you).

Forge is a 12-week results driven workout program, split into three four-week phases, exclusive to members of my online gym. Members following the standard Forge schedule will exercise for 30-minutes per day, with me via workout videos, six days per week. There’s a different workout every day of the week and after four weeks, you move on to the next phase which has a new set of six daily workouts to conquer.

The “before and after” photos on this post show just a few examples of the results the pilot test group achieved. I’m really excited to see the transformations that occur now Forge is open to all members of my online gym.

So here’s what’s in the mix:

• Strength workouts to build lean muscle
• Speed and agility training, to torch calories
• Plyometrics to create explosive power
• Something I call Unified Strength and Conditioning, with exercises which fire up muscles across the whole body
• High intensity interval training, proven to produce maximum fat burning
• Flexibility and athletic movement work built into the workouts

Keep in mind these seasons are only 30 minutes long, including warm-up and cool-down. In the videos I guide everyone through the training, explaining how beginners can modify or build up to any advanced moves. At the same time I drive people to push harder than they ever would if exercising alone and get them to push themselves to max in a very short amount of time. This is fantastic for fat burning as it increases calorie burn for up to 24 hours after the session is over, it’s also great for fitness and strength gains because people get out of their comfort zones, often exercising at an intensity they thought they couldn’t manage – and that’s what makes changes happen.

You can try out the Forge Accelerator workout and experience this for yourself right now, totally free…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOihYtZ2W1o