Last week I spoke about how to create the perfect training program for your body type, your lifestyle, your level of fitness and most importantly – your specific health and training goals. This week I would like to elaborate a bit more on how to customize your program by discussing the importance and value of perfecting your sets, reps and calories. I’m hoping that some of the information that I’ll share with you below will allow you to continue to take your physique to the next level as well as give you a few ideas as to how to combine both your training and nutritional plan all together.

Sets & Reps
One of the most common questions I receive when it comes to training is how many sets and reps a person should do to achieve maximum results. As most of you know I do not believe in giving blanket statements or providing one size fits all answers. The amount of sets and reps a person does for an exercise and for their own workout will depend on many factors:

Beginner – If you are new to the gym or are just getting back into training after a long lay off my recommendation is to keep your sets between 3-4 per exercise and your reps between 15-20. I would also suggest that you keep your total amount of sets at no more then 18-20 per workout. At this stage of your training you should be more focused on form and learning how to do all the exercises properly. This will allow you to progress faster and prevent any injuries from occurring.

Intermediate – If you’ve been training for a few years and are an avid lifter then my recommendation would be to perform no less then 4 sets per exercise and no more then 15 reps per set. Again, this will depend on your goals however for the majority of our clients who have been training with us for more then a year we try to keep them in the 10-15 reps range for 4 sets for maximum results.

Advanced – If you are an athlete and are training 5-6 days a week in the gym you are most likely an advanced lifter. If this is the case then you need to train smart and efficiently so that you do not overtrain your nervous system and risk injuring yourself or burning out all together. When working with advanced lifters I do not recommend following a particular amount of sets and reps. At this point in their training the person has conditioned his or her body to deal with the physical demands of intense exercise. Therefore it’s important that this type of person learns how to shock their body and constantly change up their rep and set schemes. When working with an advanced lifter I make sure to incorporate tons of drop sets, supersets, giant sets and have them focus on stop and go rep schemes, negatives, etc. If all the above seems foreign to you then you are not quite an advance lifter just yet and perhaps need to hire a coach to help take you to that next level.

Calories
It seems as if I talk about the importance of a good diet almost every week. And there’s a reason for that – It’s that damn important! I can’t tell you how many years I wasted in the gym not achieving the results I wanted all because my diet wasn’t in check. Training is easy. Anyone can go to the gym, in fact most people who workout enjoy going to the gym. Diet on the other hand is much more difficult and much more complex to understand then many people may think.

To understand how many calories your body needs for you to produce the results and obtain the physique of your dreams, you have to have an understanding of your body and know your specific health and fitness goals. Because proper nutrition is such a vast topic I could go on forever describing how to go about constructing your own customized diet plan. However to keep things simple (and short) I will just provide a few basic rules I use to apply when designing a safe and effective meal plan.

What’s Your Goal? – If your goal is to lose weight then obviously you just need to decrease your calories. However if your goal is to lose weight, build and retain lean muscle mass then you cannot just “decrease your calories” as you will also have lost all of your hard earned muscle when doing so. Whether your goal is to lose or gain weight or to just become overall more healthy you need to understand that a calorie IS NOT JUST A CALORIE.

Forget About Calories! – I have designed hundreds of nutritional plans over the course of my coaching career. During this time I’ve never counted calories. I’m only interested in counting macronutrients. And even then I’m more interested in focusing on the quality of those macronutrients that I am incorporating into my meal plans. I have dieted many people on more calories then they have ever consumed in their entire life even when they were overweight and yet they continue to lose body fat and build muscle while following my plans. The reason for this is because their bodies are utlilizing the calories they give them to their advantage. Quality will always overcome quantity even when the body is suppose to be in a caloric deficit.

Understand Your Body – No one will every know or understand your own body as much as you do. You live in your body and you know how you are feeling on the inside and looking on the outside on a daily basis. By the time we reach adulthood most of us have a good idea as to whether we have a fast or slow metabolism and whether or not it’s easy for us to gain or lose weight. But what most of us don’t know is how to fuel our bodies properly and burn fat efficiently regardless of our gender, age, bodyweight, lifestyle, etc. It’s important that you understand how your body responds to certain training methods and specific nutritional plans. You would not believe how many people I work with who find out they have an inactive thyroid or a particular food allergy or even a specific physical limitation that they were unaware of until we start really focusing on everything that goes into their bodies and what they are doing during their workouts. Once you have an understanding of what works and what doesn’t work for your body, the results you achieve with your physique will start to appear at a rapid rate.

If you are serious about taking your physique to the next level and/or tired of not seeing results from all your hard work then it’s time to sit back and assess both your diet and your training. Just because a certain diet plan or training program worked for you a few years ago does not mean either will work for you now. Our bodies change as we become older. Therefore it’s important for us to learn how to adapt to these changes and switch up our training methods and dieting philosophies along with time.

Take care of your body by keeping your workouts fresh and challenging. Achieve results with your physique by trying new and healthy foods and rotating your macronutrients. Always push yourself to the best of your ability both inside and outside of the gym with your training and your diet and you will always continue to produce results both physically and internally.

Yours in Good Health,

Nick Cosgrove