Want to transform your body?

Want to burn fat and improve muscle definition at the same time?

Then this article is right up your street!

Body transformations can be complicated and hard. However, there are some fundamental tips I can provide to help set you off on the right track.

Here’s the list:

1. Perform High Frequency Weight Training

2. Add in HIIT

3. Periodise your Carbohydrates

4. Cycle your Calories

5. Add in Strategic Refeeds

6. Take Caffeine & Green Tea

7. Sleep More

1. Perform High Frequency, Metabolic Resistance Training

High Frequency Metabolic Resistance Training is a combination of supersets, drop set and circuit based training. It allows you to cram in about 300% more volume, burn more calories, boost your metabolism for up to 48 hours and increase anabolic hormones.

It has dozens of studies supporting its use, with them all showing superior fat loss compared to typical resistance training. It’s also great for preserving muscle mass, due to increased protein synthesis, volume and frequency.

With High Frequency Metabolic Resistance Training, it’s important to pair agonist and antagonist muscles, for example, pairing chest and back, biceps and triceps and quads and hamstrings. For bigger muscles, such as your legs and back you can also use giant sets to target the same area. This overloads different joints and muscle fibre directions, while allowing for a large build up of metabolites that burn calories and boost your metabolism.

2. Add in High Intensity Interval Training

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is famous, providing drastic results in only 15/30 minutes of time and plays a big role in my gym classes.

Plenty of research supports the benefits of HIIT Training, including:

· Drastically increase metabolism

· Burns as many calories as a 45–60 minute cardio session

· Improves markers of health

· Burns body-fat

· Increases fat utilisation

· Deceases blood sugar levels

· Maintains muscle mass

· Improves aerobic and aerobic fitness (helping with the metabolic resistance training)

People are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of HIIT, however, there’s still one key issue.

Real HIIT is extremely explosive and performed at 150% intensity. After 20–30 seconds you should be absolutely exhausted-feeling the need to lie down on the floor to recover. This is the intensity they use in the studies and research, so it must be replicated if you want the same benefits.

HIIT is one of my favorite tools for body transformations. When your fat loss slows, HIIT is always a first port of call. The results are amazing.

3. Periodise & Tailor Your Carbohydrates

Carbs are a powerful tool if used correctly.

Get your carb intake wrong and you will struggle to lose weight and increase insulin resistance. However, get it right and you will boost training performance, recovery, anabolic hormones, metabolism and fat loss!

The key that most people ignore is carbohydrate periodisation and carbohydrate cycling.

With these two tools, you tailor your carbohydrates to your life, diet, goals and exercise regime. To tailor your carbohydrates, try 2 or 3 set days. For example, have some meal or macro plans for a high carb day, a medium carb day and a low-carb day.

Here’s some example macro percentages:

High Carb Days: 55% Carbs, 30% protein, 15% fat

Med Carb Days: 35% Carbs, 35% protein, 30% fat

Low Carb Days: 15% Carbs, 40% protein, 45% fat

4. Cycle Your Calories.

Calorie Cycling is in my opinion, one of the biggest breakthroughs in fat loss for many years.

If you understand the section above (i.e. everything should be tailored to the individual), this following point should be easier to understand.

As with carbohydrates, calories should be tailored to your daily needs. This includes your exercise session but should also include your general activity that day, metabolism, hormones, bodyweight, how many hours you were awake, etc.

Along with altering calories to match your daily needs, you should cycle them on over a periods of weeks to avoid metabolic damage and hormonal down regulations.

To cycle calories you may do mini cycles within a week OR longer cycles, here are some examples:

· The Weekend Cycle: 5-day calorie deficit of around 500 calories, 2 days at maintenance

· Davoodi’s Cycle: 11-day calorie deficit of around 500 calories, 3 days at maintenance

· 3 On, 1 Off: 3 Weeks in a 300–500 calorie deficit, 1 week at maintenance

· Monthly Cycle: 4–5 weeks in a 300–500 calorie deficit, 10–14 days at maintenance

5. Add in Strategic Re-feeds

Along with cycling your calories, re-feeds can help stop the issues of metabolic damage. Re-feeds also provide an important psychological break, allowing you to eat plenty of food but in a strategic and beneficial manner, so it won’t mess up your progress (like cheat meals do)!

The Re-feeds must be in place at the right time and programmed in advance. If you add them in too often or early, you will stall or slow weight loss. In contrast, if you wait too long then you may have suffered from some of the negative metabolic and hormone adaptations stated above. As you can see, it’s a fine balance.

Here are 2 recommendations for you to try. As always, you may need to adjust based on progress!

· 11 Day Normal Diet — 2–3 Day Re-feed

· 21 Day Normal Diet — 5 Day Re-feed

For the Re-feeds, I recommend around a 50% increase. For those that aren’t on an aggressive diet, you may only need a 25% increase in calories and macros. These extra calories can come from all 3 macros, just increase each one proportionally.

6. Take Caffeine & Green Tea

Caffeine & green tea have a TON of research supporting their benefits.

Caffeine is known as one of the world’s best supplements. It has numerous benefits, including:

· Increased Fat Oxidation

· Increase Adrenaline

· Increased Strength & Power

· Increased Higher Rep Weight Training

· Increased release of Stored Fat Cells

· Increased Energy & Focus

· Decreased Fatigue

· Decreased Rate Of Perceived Exertion (stuff feels easier!)

As you can see, it’s pretty impressive. Green Tea also compliments this well and they work synergistically together. Like Caffeine, Green Tea can have some special effects on your belly fat and help you get shredded.

7. Sleep More

Sleep is as important as exercise, diet or any supplement strategy. Sleep is extremely unappreciated and there is plenty of evidence and research showing it can help you lose weight, improve health, reduce disease risk and add muscle.

Several studies have highlighted that to start, if you have a bad night’s sleep you are:

· More likely to overeat that day

· More likely to make bad nutritional choices

· More likely to skip the gym

· Have decreased workout performance

· More likely to cut your workout short

· Have increased hunger and cravings

· Reduced Metabolism

· Reduced daily activity level (simple things like walking)

· Decreased Strength

· Decrease in Anabolic Hormones

· Increase in Cortisol

As you can see, it has a MAJOR impact on every aspect of body transformations! If you have a bad day’s diet or skip a training session, not much will happen, however, get a bad night’s sleep and it has a cascade of effects!

Try to sleep at least 8 hours per day, when training and dieting hard your body can require more.

Take steps to optimise sleep, the quality is as important as quantity. Aim for a deep and uninterrupted sleep:

· Remove any lights (even little red dots)

· Make sure your blinds / curtains block all or most of the natural light from windows

· Invest in a good mattress

· Block Blue Light, don’t use any electronic devices 60–90 minutes before bed

· Take relaxing supplements or sleep aids, such as 5-HTP, GABA, ZMA, Melatonin etc

I hope you found the above points helpful and take immediate action.