Winter is the ideal time to build a summer body.
Instead of putting on a winter layer, it’s the perfect time to focus on building that extra muscle to give you that toned sculpted look come Summer.
Think of winter as a preparation phase, you are preparing your summer body in this phase.
If you are wanting that summer body, if you’d love to be more toned and sculpted than last Summer then there are a few things you need to focus on.
- Strength training. Your training program should revolve around your weights training 2-4 times per week depending on your schedule. If you are an experienced lifter hit each body part at least twice a week. Regardless of being a newbie to lifting or an old hand at it remember; to build muscle you must provide enough of a stimulus for the muscle to adapt too. This means pushing your limits and progressively overloading your weights with a structured program.
- When you hit the gym have a plan and stick to the plan. Take the time and put together a training program that covers all the body parts, and then follow that training program consistently for 8-12 weeks. Don’t jump from program to program. Give your body time to grow.
- Food! If you want to grow your muscle to give that toned sculpted look you must eat. Protein should be a huge focus; aim to eat approximately 2g protein per kg lean body weight. You also need to eat in a slight surplus. Approximately 250-500 calories should be enough. The cleaner you eat the less fat you will gain.
- Reduce your cardio. Do not do excessive amounts of cardio. You want to give your body time to recover and build. Jumping in on heaps of classes and doing all the cardio you can, will not give you time to recover.
- Complete daily walks. 20-40 minutes will help with recovery and to minimize any potential fat gain.
This sort of phase ideally would last 3-6 months, but we know you don’t want to be fluffy over summer. So, a few weeks out from summer move into a calorie deficit to reduce body fat. In these few weeks focus on working as hard as you can with your weights training to maintain the muscle you have built and increase your daily walks by approximately 20 mins. You can even get away with one or two cardio classes if need be.
Once you’ve revealed all your hard work by dropping your body fat, you can bring your calorie intake up a little to sit at maintenance over summer.
Then all you need to do is rinse and repeat the process if you still want to increase the amount of muscle you must create more tone and definition.
Not sure how to go about this sort of a phase? Gym It has a Build Challenge starting in May that provides you with all the steps to help you build muscle over the winter months.
If you’d like to know more, grab a staff member and they’ll be happy to answer your questions.
