Flex and Paint

What does this all mean? Why should I devote time to my physical skills and creative mind?

I’m going to give you the tools that you can use to build muscle and lose fat—and learn strategies to maintain the flywheel of a fitness lifestyle.

This course mostly focuses on the benefits of weight training. I’ll cover principles of weight training, then we’ll talk about philosophies to think long-term, build consistency, and fight obstacles that keep us from being our fittest, healthiest selves.

Don’t forget to download the PDF!

In order to succeed in fitness, you have to identify as someone who likes moving their body.

Use weight training as your primary vehicle for building muscle and reducing fat.

Three fundamental fitness concepts I’ve used in my exercise journey to look and feel my best!

1. Understand muscle imbalances. We try to avoid pain in the gym because we're in it for the long haul, consistency wins!

2. Utilize Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands to get the adaptations you want.

3. Pay deliberate attention to how you’re feeling when you exercise.

The most basic principle to understand is the SAID principle, which is Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands. Consider that your body is in flux for your entire life; whatever constraints you put on your body, it will adapt. We want to progressively overload our constraints so that they become more difficult over time, thus adapting with more muscle, increased cardiovascular function, or better mobility.

Understand that a program (of 3×10 or otherwise) is usually a set of guidelines—so long as you’re imposing sufficiently difficult demands on your body, you’ll grow.

You need to stay in control of the factors which determine true muscle growth—nutrition and rest.

Consider your overall muscle balance when adhering to a program. Every action you take impacts your muscle balance.

Build body awareness to leverage the endorphins of the gym for consistency and to target areas of growth.

We all have different motivations for exercising. Lean into the one that gets you started—intrinsic motivation will come!

Leverage small steps to build consistency. Identify what your “perfect” vision for fitness looks like, then scale that down into a single step.

Do any of the “hard” parts of exercise ahead of time so that it’s easier to take a single action to get fit: just get to the gym.

Maintaining a “fitness identity” makes the process of getting fit much easier. You can fake it till you make it!

Using the ground to root our fitness foundation is essential. Typically, fitness enthusiasts start with floor workouts because you can build body awareness and master exercise staples. Explore any tightness or kinks in your body by stretching on the ground, and dive deeper into bodyweight movements!

I always encourage those who are on their exercise journey to adopt a practice which connects you to your body. Stretching and mobility is a great start because you’re doing things in a controlled environment without external forces. It allows you to understand your mind-muscle connection even better.

Adapted from my gym session:

3×10 seated shoulder press

3×16 shrugs on a Smith machine

3×10 single leg RDLs

3×10 cable crunches or reverse crunches!

3×10 seated lateral raises

Here’s a simple workout:

• Kettlebell bench press / pushups

• Kettlebell two-hand curl into overhead tricep extension into front lateral raise

• Kettlebell split squat

• Kettlebell single leg Romanian deadlift

Try this and let me know what you think!

All you need is a piece of paper and a moment to focus on your body.