The Workout

I call it the “soul crusher,” but it was originally penned, “The Full Body Death Circuit,” by Brian Krahn. I’m currently working on a special project with Brian (who is one heck of a coach too), and this is our metabolic day from hell.

The Overall Workout Plan

This is just one day in a 5-day training cycle. The split is upper, lower, upper-specialty focused, lower-specialty, and metabolic (the full body circuit).

Bonus Tip(s)

• Your grip is going to give out sometime around the step-ups and the split squats, so prepare to use lighter weights. Then it’s a battle of wits once you hit the lunges.
• When you rest try to make sure you’re as fully recovered as possible. Intensity is the most important variable in this workout, so don’t rush through your rest period.
• This workout is great for fat loss and body recomp, and can even be used as a conditioning day in a muscle building workout.

“The Full Body Death Circuit”

How to do it: Perform this workout as a circuit, doing one exercise after another with as little rest as possible. After you complete all 8 exercises, take a 2-4 minute break. Then repeat 2 more times for a total of 3 circuits.

1. Dumbbell press x 12-15
2. Two-arm dumbbell rows x 12-15
3. Dumbbell step ups x 10-12
4. DB split squats x 10-12
5. Walking lunge x 30 reps per leg (ugh)
6. Bodyweight squats x 30 (because your legs don’t want to move)
7. Pushups x AMAP (as many as possible)
8. Reverse crunches x 10-15

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post Born Fitness Workouts: The Full-Body Soul Crusher appeared first on Born Fitness.

Mary Beth Eckersley’s story has so many entry points, so many rollercoaster-in-the-dark ups and downs, that it’s hard to decide. But it’s harder still to distill an entire life into “entry points.”

That’s what you come to understand after hearing her story and learning about her total life transformation.

Losing weight is a side benefit. Fitness and diet are all about making the attempt and taking the best possible step forward.

A life is epic. A life has meaning. Mary Beth Eckersley’s life – even just the past 10 years of it – is worthy of examination. Why? Because she’s one of the most inspiring people you’ll ever meet…

Your Past is Not Your Future

Ten years ago, Mary Beth Eckersley weighed 400 pounds.

Okay, technically it was 395, but coming in 5 pounds light doesn’t have quite the same psychological effect as, say, pricing a vacuum cleaner at $395 so you don’t feel like you’re paying $400. At that level of obesity, your heart, liver, and pancreas won’t give you credit for five pounds. For Eckersley’s part, she puts it dryly: “I was exceptionally large.”

She had all the baggage that goes with that kind of weight: Lousy diet, no fitness, low self-esteem, the works. At her age – then 45 – she knew that when it came to her long-term health, it was quite literally do-or-die time. She made some changes and she dropped 100 pounds.

Wow. Huge, right? That’s like losing a set of Michelins. That’s worth celebrating. And yet … Eckersley didn’t feel as triumphant as she thought she would.

For one thing, she’d plateaued and couldn’t seem to drop any more weight. For another, deep down she knew something no one else around her knew.

“My weight loss was half-assed,” she says.

“It happened, but it felt like a lie. I wasn’t eating healthy and I was still lying to myself. ‘I’m making healthy choices.’ No, you’re not. I reached a point in my life where I really had to look at who I was and what I was doing.”

That moment of self-honesty – what addicts call the moment of clarity – was one of the biggest in Eckersley’s life because it finally got everything out there.

“Part of being exceptionally large is that you still blame other things,” she says. “It takes a while for you to come to that honest realization that, yeah, you’re fat. You need to do something about it. It’s truly affecting your life and you need to fix it. No one will fix it for you.”

The problem? “I knew I had to move forward but had no idea how to do it. You know how you can get stuck in a too-much-information-and-don’t-know-where-to-start kind of thing? That was me.”

She shopped around for a while, followed some fitness folks on the internet, and finally signed up with trainer Adam Bornstein for Born Fitness online coaching in May of 2012. All was well. She was ready. Now she had the coach she needed. Then, as she describes it, things “went sideways” three months later.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“One of the worst emails I sent I had to send to Adam because I’d finally made it to the point where I wanted to fix my life and now I had this on my plate,” she says. “But Adam sent me the best response anyone could’ve sent,”

Today we get stronger.

The Only Choice: Live

Mary Beth and Adam decided to work together through all her treatment. You rarely hear of people who exercise through chemotherapy, but Eckersley was resolute.

“I decided I’d face breast cancer with the best possible attack plan I could and be as positive as possible. I did small workouts. For some people they might not even qualify as workouts. But if you have a port in your chest and are doing chemo for a year, it’s a workout.”

At the gym, she would warm up on a spin bike. The first time she tried it, she lasted 10 minutes. Eventually she worked her way up to an hour and a half. When the really hardcore chemo started, a friend would stand beside her so she wouldn’t fall off the bike.

She found a rhythm with treatment, which repeated 3-week cycles. Week one: Your body is inundated with drugs. Week two: Your body gets rid of the drugs (“You can’t do anything that week,” she says). Week three: You heal, then start over. Her workouts ran the same cycle.

“Every cancer patient should be given the opportunity to be in a gym,” she says. “It really does make a difference in your treatment and how your body can process the drugs and refresh itself afterwards. For me, it was huge. It doesn’t matter how fast you go as long as you keep moving. As long as you’re moving, you’re moving forward.”

As exhausted as she felt on chemo – and she literally felt physically done – she’d force herself to climb on that bike. And always, once she warmed up, she got that pleasant surprise; she felt like doing more.

She’d do some floor work, crunches, maybe a half-plank and some light kettlebell work. “Exercise gave me a positive place to put the stress,” she says. “And physically it gave me more strength and stamina to deal with the next treatment.”

Success is Part of Life…If You Pursue It

Today, now 55 years old, Eckersley is a cancer survivor. She’s also dropped another 100 pounds. “I’m 30 pounds away from where my doctor would like me to be, 170. I’m half the size I was.”

Her message is simple: Anything is possible. You can change your life. When necessary, you can fight for your life. The key is making the choice to start. And it is a choice, she says, no one will do it for you.

Most importantly, you shouldn’t let the fact that you may be obese keep you from getting out and doing the work. Take Eckersley’s advice and start slow. But start.

“When people see someone who’s really large, they say, ‘Oh, they should just exercise.’ Well, you can say that to a woman who’s 180 pounds. But say that to someone who’s just over 400 pounds? You can’t.

You can’t say, ‘This is a burpee and this is how you do it.’ It’s not gonna happen.. You don’t have the reaction time. It’s embarrassing for you and you could hurt yourself. So you need to find the space that lets you learn that reaction time, learn how to get up off the floor safely and without being embarrassed.”

Bornstein helped by offering encouragement along with the exercises and healthy eating plan. She used her own bodyweight to start. She’d use a wall for support and go slow. Then she moved up to using a table. Then floor work. She did her very first half-squats while holding on to a TRX suspension trainer. Now those days are a memory.

“I wrote Adam a note yesterday,” she says. “For the first time in my life I did a squat with a 20 pound kettlebell and did figure-eights with it around my legs. I thought, This is cool. I have proper form and I have the strength to DO this.”

As the saying goes, you can’t out-train a lousy diet, and Eckersley had to change her eating habits as well. Bornstein helped with that, but during her cancer battle, she found an unlikely ally: Chemotherapy. And no, not because it made her feel sick and unable to eat.

It forced her, amazingly, to eat healthy foods. “If I ate something that was made with chemicals, it tasted disgusting to me, like a filthy ashtray or a science experiment. I ended up with a bizarre craving for spinach. I couldn’t get enough of it. Even though chemo is the nastiest thing in the world, it gave me clean eating that my body craved. So I ended up with an appreciation for clean eating that I never had before.”

Once she beat the cancer, however, the crap-food-cravings returned. Those aren’t easy for anyone. By then, however, Eckersley had been able to make new food rules like “no drive-thrus.”

Much of her eating is now based on a simple change in attitude she learned from Bornstein.

“Now I remind myself that I’m worth a healthy meal. That I have the right to prepare a healthy lunch or dinner. A lot of the reason so many of us are overweight is that we have no confidence in ourselves. We don’t think we have any value. Now I see the value in myself. Now my lunch bag is filled with vegetables, protein bars, hummus, and fruit.”

It’s underselling it to say that Eckersley has a new life. Or that she is a walking inspiration not just to people who want to lose a lot of weight, but fight through a cancer diagnosis. It’s a matter of making your decision. Asking for help. And fighting every day.

“Even going through chemo I managed to get healthier and fitter than I’ve ever been in my whole life,” she says.

“Now my goal isn’t to lose weight. I want to be healthy and stronger. Losing weight is a side benefit. It’s all about making the attempt and taking the best possible step forward.”

The post Real People, Real Results: The Total Life Transformation appeared first on Born Fitness.

I rarely start people with carb-starve plans, even in fat-loss scenarios.

I know this is a surprise for those that read Engineering the Alpha, or for anyone that has ever looked at a fat loss diet plan. But “low carb” is one of the  most misunderstood terms in all of nutrition, and removing carbs is not my typical approach or one that seems to work in the long run.

Super low carbs can also cause a drop in libido. No cake or sex? I think I’ll pass.

If you want to be deceived, drop all carbs. If you want to lose fat and keep it off, there’s a much better approach.

When creating diets for Born Fitness online coaching, I look at the entire system. I’ve been lucky to work with Alan Aragon, Mike Roussell, Nate Miyake, John Berardi, and John Meadows. They are some of the best in the world at creating diets and nutrition plans, and each takes a different approach to help their target client.

While they each have developed their own style, learning from them has made three things very clear:

1. Science works. Neglecting or ignoring what we have learned is pure ego and stubbornness.
2. Beyond science, every body is different. So if you’re going to work with people, you better consider the person and not just make blanket assumptions.
3. If it’s not sustainable on some level, then it probably sucks. I don’t waste my time on quick fixes that are little more than a short-term solution that causes a bigger long-term problem.

And that’s exactly why going no carbs for fat loss is a huge mistake.

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post No Carbs for Fat Loss (And How to Build Your Diet Plan) appeared first on Born Fitness.

People just love playing word games with themselves and each other. When you work in the health and fitness industry, you often encounter the word “change.” You could argue that it’s the most common word you hear.

“I want to change.”

Do it because you can do it. It’s your life, your health, you don’t want to not try.

“I need to change.”

“I’m afraid to change.”

“Why is it so hard to change?”

Change in habit. Change in physique. Change in health. Change in mindset. Change is hard for a lot of people because admitting you need to change is admitting failure.

In other words, you were wrong.

Now there’s a word, “wrong.”

Some folks have a serious problem with being wrong. You can also add that change is all sorts of unpleasant words, from “painful” to “intimidating” to “[insert preferred profanity here].”

Simple words dictate our actions, and that explains the lack of change we see again and again. People start, people quit. Some never start at all.

If you’ve had a hard time getting the change you want – in habit, physique, health, and mindset – it’s time you met Lindy Cunningham and her husband, Chad. She’s thirty-two, he’s thirty-one. They have a two-year-old son and live in Nashville, Tennessee.

Not long after their son’s birth, they decided together to make some changes.

Lindy wanted to dump the baby fat and get back to her pre-marriage weight. Chad wanted to gain weight and get back in shape; he’d had a recent bout with mono and had lost 30 pounds.

They found trainer Adam Bornstein through his Twitter feed and eventually signed on so he could guide them to two very different goals, though both would be based on eating better and exercise.

Like most folks, they were jarred by the sudden change – adjusting their eating style, upping activity, logging workouts. But both of them had been athletes in high school. They stuck with it.

They changed.

Chad found it amusing that he had a harder time gaining weight than Lindy had losing it. Six months passed. Their son grew. Their bodies changed. They found change – or dedication to change – to be a good thing. Lindy was 5 pounds away from her goal weight.

Then everything changed.

Falling Down and Getting Up

On a ski getaway in Jackson Hole in January 2013, near the bottom of a long run where several trails filtered together, Lindy hit an ice patch or caught an edge – no one is quite sure – and she fell. She slid to the edge of the trail and hit a signpost, back-first.

“Nothing crazy,” Chad says. “Nothing fast. It just happened.”

“It” was a life-altering moment: Lindy had a burst fracture in her C5 and C6 vertebrae, which is technical terminology meaning the bones in her lower neck shattered and damaged her spinal cord.

She was paralyzed from the armpits down.

Lindy sums it up this way: “Being young, being married to someone I was just crazy about, having a baby, being close to a six month goal when it happened, the only word that touches it would be sorrow.”

Lindy, however, would not stand pat on that word. She had lung function, so she didn’t need breathing help. Her brain was fine, as well. That made everything else a work in progress, and a goal to strive for.

She has impaired arm function – her biceps work, but her triceps run at about 10 percent. Her finger dexterity is sketchy, but she can grasp things.

In July 2014, after 18 months of almost daily PT, she graduated to walking therapy assisted with harnesses. But no one knows if she’ll ever truly walk again.

“Who can tell how many thousands of hours she’s worked just to get to that point?” says Chad. “Or earlier on, to eat with an adapted fork. I don’t have anything to compare it to.”

But an interesting thing has happened in the last year and a half. All those negative terms we attach to change are still there, of course, and always will be.

Find Your Pulse

It turns out that Lindy’s approach to a new and difficult daily life isn’t all that different from the approach she first took to lose her baby weight and get results. And that fact alone has made a monumental difference not just to her own well-being, but the mindset of everyone around her.

You can hear the marvel in Chad’s voice as he describes it all.

“From the whole time it happened, the moment I found her, to the hospital, to now, Lindy’s never freaked out, never panicked. She was always good. She’s been kind and pleasant and positive and hopeful as you could ever want someone to be. She has bad days and bad times like anyone, but every day she works really hard, she’s good to whoever’s helping her, she’s nice to all her doctors and therapists and nurses. She does what they say and tries to do anything she can. She tries to help other people who have her injury. She tries to make the absolute best of it which for me and everybody else around her makes it doable.”

Lindy, true to form, deflects credit.

“How you approach a spinal injury depends on where you are in your life at the time – how are your relationships, etc. Fortunately, at the time I was surrounded by so many wonderful people. There was an incredible outpouring of love, support, and encouragement. That made it easier than a lot of people have it.”

Part of that support came from the man, who, despite her accident, still finds himself as Lindy’s trainer.

Immediately after the accident happened, Bornstein was interacting with Chad offering support and trying to find answers. And within a week of hearing the news, Bornstein wrote a bog post about her accident – ending with the hashtag “#BelieveInLindy.” It went viral.

Suddenly there were fundraisers. T-shirts. Posters. A Facebook page and endless hits on social media. And the Cunninghams found themselves buffeted on a wave of incredible and constant positive energy.

“It was a rallying central theme, what everyone circled around,” says Chad. “It was a really big deal for her recovery. Something like that helps you move forward, head towards something, and try to make things better.”

Bornstein still acts as a trainer and motivator, culminating in the Cunningham’s visiting Los Angeles when they were finally able to spend time together, after 2 years of interacting without ever meeting face-to-face.

Lindy’s workouts are a little different, of course. Each day, in fact, is one long workout. But Lindy says that one piece of advice from Bornstein stands out from the rest.

“Be strong and be relentless.” she says.

“That translates really well into a rehab situation. Do it because you can do it. It’s your life, your health, you don’t want to not try. You have to do everything you can to get the max, you know?”

As if that by itself isn’t enough, Chad puts her effort into even clearer perspective.

“You have to understand, the injury is like a nonstop 24/7 assault on your body between therapies and the sicknesses and infections and skin problems and urinary issues. It’s something all the time. To be able to work through all that and stay positive, it’s impressive.”

“For spinal cord injuries, so much of it is an emotional and mental battle,” Lindy says. “What Chad and I have discovered is we have so much to be thankful for. I’ve had positive results in my therapy and I’m learning to walk again. There’s so much joy to be had and things to look forward to.”

Their two year old son is a big part of that. “He’s an inspiration point for Lindy,” says Chad. “We laugh a lot.”

Building Unstoppable Motivation

Now … take a pause.

Let’s let some of this sink in.

First, we state the obvious: Lindy Cunnigham’s tale should serve as an inspiration to all, especially those perfectly mobile humans who use word games to get in the way of discovering real, positive change.

Second, and less obvious: Finally admit what’s really holding you back.

It’s not a word or collection of words.

It’s an emotion.

A corroded piece of consciousness. Fear? Resignation? Self-loathing?

We’re not regressing into word games just now. All people have their reasons and the real tragedy is allowing those reasons to rule. You can change.

Do it because you can.

Be strong. Be relentless.

And #BelieveinLindy. Doing so means that you believe in the power of you. 

What’s Your Story?

You have something amazing within you. Whether chapters have already been written or the book has just started. If you’re ready to write the ending, learn more about joining the Born Fitness Family.

The post The Unstoppable Force of Change appeared first on Born Fitness.

—

A few people have asked me why online coaching? They see that I have plenty of knowledge, experience and motivation of my own, so what am I getting from it? Given it’s not the first time I’ve been asked, I took an hour or two put down my thoughts.

Regular readers will know that I am currently working with Adam Bornstein, one of the industry’s leading authorities on all things health and fitness. What you likely don’t fully appreciate is the extent to which we are working together.

Sure, it goes without saying that I get good advice from Adam on diet, nutrition, exercise programs and the like. But to great joy, I am also finding that Adam’s interests, knowledge and experience reach far beyond simple (are you kidding?) health and fitness. Frankly, it’s much more like having a life coach in your corner, one that just happens to be a health and fitness expert!

Here’s what I am loving most about working with Adam so far:

• He cares. Not simply in the way that any good practitioner cares about their client; Adam cares like his very life depends on it. He cares like I am family. He cares way more than he probably should. He cares so much, that I can’t tell if I am a client or a friend; of course, I am very much hoping it’s the latter at this point.
• Perspective. No matter what the situation, no matter how bad things seem, no matter how much I whine, complain, question, wonder, worry, ponder or stress, Adam brings immediate perspective. A perspective that is ultimately grounding, filtering out the noise and providing clear, actionable guidance on the topic at hand — seemingly, no matter what the topic.
• Positivity. In the great many exchanges I’ve had with Adam, I have yet to receive a message that is not steeped in positivity. And I am not talking random motivational quotes or showering me with a tirade of simple superlatives; Adam’s energy flows sanguine from a genuine belief that he can help me, and, more importantly, that I can be helped! Of all things, this has been the most uplifting part of our work together, for without belief, progress often seems all but impossible.

My early work with Adam was in the context of Getting Shredded: a shared, group experience that started with the express goal of getting as lean as possible. And it worked. However, that program has since grown and evolved into a full-fledged community where members can work together with Adam toward either getting lean, or gaining muscle. This is yet another example of how Adam works tirelessly to help as many people as possible; he quickly recognized that as the community goals diverged, a different approach was needed to keep people moving forward.

[Eds note: The Getting Shredded Community is no longer accepting new members. For other group coaching style opportunities, click here.]

So what now?

For me, it’s continue with the personal coaching. Since reaching my shredded goal, I want to start adding muscle to my frame, and to do that, I’ll need help. Help with the programming, help with the diet and help shaping the vision and belief system that is necessary for transforming both mind and body.

-Paul T.

Is Born Fitness Coaching for Me?

Don’t sign up for a program before you know. Born Fitness coaching offers free consultation calls for anyone interested. For more information you can sign up here.

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post Why Born Fitness Online Coaching appeared first on Born Fitness.