It was May of last year I began my weight loss journey.  My goal was simply to get my numbers down from 238 lbs @ 25% body fat to 200 lbs @ 10% body fat.  The programs I joined not only helped me with my weight loss, they helped me with athletic performance to such a degree that I’m in better shape now at the age of 32 than I ever was throughout high school and college, and I’m talking strength, cardiorespiratory efficiency, and body composition.

Here are some of the programs I’ve done over the past year, and the effect they’ve had:

1.  Precision Nutrition Lean Eating Coaching Program

The Lean Eating program is run by Dr. John Berardi.  It opens up every six months and you receive a full re-education on what proper eating is and isn’t as well as a complete workout program.  Before this program, I kid you not I couldn’t do a single pull-up to save my life (literally).  Never could.  By the time I was done with the program, I had lost 30 lbs and now I can do between 7 – 8 chin-ups in a row, alhamdulillaah.

2.  Tony Horton’s P90x

Everyone and their mom seems to know about this workout program in one way or another.  It’s really caught on, although there are some skeptics because of of infomercial advertising (which is notorious for low quality products).  In this case, I can tell you from first hand experience as well as family members who are professional trainers, this thing is the real deal (and in fact, I use it in the MM Fitlife Competition).  The emphasis in this program is athletic training, and the head fake, as the late Randy Pausch would say, is that you get fat loss with it – how cool is that? 

As a result of doing the program, one area I’ve greatly improved is my strength endurance, particularly the push up.  We work through so many variations and so many angles in this program, you’ll be surprised at what you can you do when you get through it.  When I began the program, if I could just get through 20 normal push-ups, that’d be it for me.  Now, I’m able to do the more advanced push-ups in the program, alhamdulillaah (and about that weight loss goal, I lost an additional 17 lbs and got to 191 lbs).  In the following video, you can see me performing the plyo-clap push-ups:

3.  Chad Waterbury’s Huge in a Hurry Program

This is the program I’m currently on.  I decided to take a break from the fat loss side of things and aim for muscle growth and increases in strength.  Not that that wasn’t already happening in the other programs, but I was looking for something more dramatic.

Waterbury’s program departs from the traditional bodybuilder split routines and advocates the use of total body routines which use compound movements (rather than single joint) to get the most bang for your buck.  He also advocates using extremely heavy weights, lifting them fast, and not focusing so much on the number of sets you complete so much as he’s concerned with the number of reps.  So on a “super-heavy” day, for example, we would want to choose a weight we can do 2 – 3 times per set (but not to failure – once you slow considerably or your form is compromised, you stop, no going to failure and grinding through reps), and we’d want to make sure to put in 15 reps total, so you’d be looking at somewhere between 5 and 7 sets. 

Results? My dumbbell bench press 1RM went from about 75 lbs to 105 lbs – 110 lbs.  I’ve also increased in size to around 205 lbs and my body fat percentage fell further to 15.5%, alhamdulillaah.  In the following video, I’m doing 3 reps of 100 lbs:

So Yeah, What’s With the Videos Anyway?

Glad you asked   Since my physical transformation as well the results leaking out of the MM FitLife Competition (alright, it wasn’t exactly top secret to begin with), I’ve received a lot of questions from people about doing their own work out programs.

In the works right now are videos (which will be better edited than the ones above insha’Allah, promise) in which I’ll demonstrate exercises for different types of work out programs.  I’m hoping to complete in the next two weeks:

• The Broomstick Cardio Workout:  In just 25 minutes, you’ll find yourself huffing and puffing for air (if you’re a brother).  However, this is specifically for sisters who can’t get out of the house because of kids and other household commitments.
• Get Back in Shape Beginner’s Training:  This is the program I began with years ago when I first trained seriously.  Credit goes to Olympic Australian strength coach Ian King for designing this program for Men’s Health magazine (about 10 years ago).  It went on to become one of the publication’s most popular workouts, and it was for me the foundation for all other fitness milestones I’ve achieved over the years.  It’s an hour-long workout requiring the use of dumbbells and bodyweight exercises, and is very similar to circuit training (well, the first 6 weeks of it, anyway, and that’s what I’ll be demonstrating, insha’Allah).

And yeah, the cost of viewing these work out videos is zero, and I’m told people don’t value things unless they pay for it, but meh, I need somewhere to re-direct all the emails coming in now   Anyway, if you have any questions or requests, feel free to write them below, insha’Allah.