I hope everyone is having an excellent afternoon and ready for another installment of the 12 week body transformation series.

This week you will focus on three things: Learning to train to muscular failure, continue with moderately intense aerobics and moderate calorie restriction. As you can see week 2 will be pretty much like week 1 but with a few adjustments.

Weight Training

Your weight training program now becomes a little more serious and intense (in terms of effort). More time will be spent on learning to feel the muscles contract to help achieve this increased perception of intensity. Remember that increasing ones lifting intensity requires extreme mental focus and determination. I often tell my clients to get a little angry when they lift weights.

The reason is because an angry person is a strong person because of the increased adrenaline production. This may be one reason men tend to be more intense with exercise, since, perhaps, women are raised to be calmer and nurturing and their demeanor reflects this. I believe this is why women often find it difficult to be aggressive when they train, particularly if it means grimacing or exerting themselves in public.

Regardless of your gender, you must make an effort to increase your level of effort this week and during subsequent weeks as well. I do realize that if you are new to exercise, any stimulus can be overwhelming at first. Don’t let this distract you from what you are capable of doing. When the muscles can no longer contract against the resistance then you’re there. Just because it gets uncomfortable doesn’t mean you should terminate the set. This is the zone you want to encourage and extend as long as mechanically possible.

Now that you’ve had some decent practice in the first week, it’s now time to adjust the number of sets you perform to match the level of exertion ( as described above) that you are experiencing. This means that the harder you work, the less sets that are needed to get the job done.

Once this number has been determined you will begin to increase the demands each week until your tolerence to weight training is at it’s threshold. For now however,  just focus on adding reps to each exercise every workout. It doesn’t need to be a lot, just more than you are accustomed to.

You will also need to change your routine to 3 workout split to allow for greater focus and volume per muscle group. If you follow a Monday/ Wednesday/Friday schedule ( as most do) you’d be advised to use something like this:

1. Mon- Back and Chest
2. Wed- Lower Body
3. Fri- Arms,shoulders,abs

or another option would be

1. Mon- Chest, shoulder and triceps
2. Wed- Lower Body
3. Fri- Back and biceps

Aerobic work and nutrition.

Nothing much changes here. Keep your heart rate around 60% of your HRmax. Trying to do more while simultaneously increasing the weight training demands will only result in sub optimal recovery and eventual burnout. The aerobics are best done on your off days, between weight training session to facilitate recovery and not hamper it. If you must perform it on the weight training days, understand that your strength and muscle building potential may suffer.

Your calorie consumption also must not change, in order to cope with the aforementioned training needs.

This should get you through week 2 of your 12 week body transformation. We”ll pick things up from here in the next post in the next post.

Please share your comments and progress if you’re giving this challenge a try….