Going back to October last year I got a DEXA scan. If you don’t know what it is, think those in body scan things but actually accurate (let’s not get into my thoughts about those things now though).
As most people do, I thought I was leaner than what the results came back as…
I wasn’t in bad shape but as just a few percent above what I was expecting. So as most people do I went about creating a plan to help kick myself into gear and get my bodyfat percentage back down to something I was a little happier with.
Over the next 6 weeks I lost 7kg, got leaner than I had been in years and alongside that I was still hitting decent numbers in the gym, so much so that 2 weeks after the 6 week period I took first place in the strongman contest I decided to compete in.
You may think I had some special program I followed during that time and a great diet…
Here’s where it got interesting…
I drank alcohol every weekend of this period (not much but significantly more than I did going into it), I ate burgers most weekend and overall looked from the outside that I was leading a pretty normal life.
What did I do then to get such a drastic result?
I rowed every day for about 20minuted from about the 3rd week in.
The few weeks before I was just training normal with my standard 4 day strength training split. No hard conditioning except some strongman medley work once a week.
Basically all I did was add some easy exercise on top of my normal training and watched my diet eating around 12 calories per pound of bodyweight (where we start for most athletic guys trying to lose fat)
Some days it was shorter, others it was longer. Some turned into interval work others singular sprints trying to break PB’s but the only thing that mattered was that I did it every day.
Part of being successful in losing fat is making it easy to do. What would be easier, adding a comfortable paced row, bike, walk (whichever you prefer really) for 20 minutes a day or trying to do a full on heavy interval training session each day?
Most people are going to agree with me that the easy training would be easier to do. But i’ll often get the question:
“But wouldn’t the harder workout get better results?”
The answer may be yes individually but the question that comes back is..
Could you do that everyday?
Most people’s answer out loud is yes but in reality it’s a no…
Plus when you’re already in a deficit energy reserves are already being pushed a bit and if I wanted to flog myself everyday I wouldn’t have the energy to give back to my clients and to me that’s more important than seeing the scale drop marginally quicker.
So if you’re already training and your goal is to lose body fat
Maybe you’re answer is doing some light exercise everyday on top of your training rather than trying to do more hard stuff…
Try it out and you’ll more than likely experience some of the results I was able to when I tried it.