Get clear on what you want to achieve and the specifics you’ll need to focus on to achieve them. In this video we discuss how to make your goals clear and challenging and how to fortify your commitment to them with the right type of feedback.

Identifying our motivations for change is key to sticking with our efforts long term. There is a unique blend of internal and external motivations that allow us to each individually identify why achieving our goals are important and what we hope to think, feel, and do differently once we achieve them. The following 3 questions help to clearly identify those motivations.

If you’re like the guys we work with at builtXyou, you’re busy. Every moment of your time is filled with important things like family and career demands. Other times, life spills over into the time we would otherwise use to work on our health, fitness, and physique. If you want to make change, you need to carve out time and protect it from the other demands.

It pays to measure your progress systematically via a mixture of objective and subjective scales. Objective measures are often data driven and are helpful in guiding compliance, but don’t always paint a clear picture of the nuances of health, fitness, and physique progress. Subjective measures such as self assessment and comparison before and after pictures can be helpful in filling the gaps left by objective data tracking alone.

The 4 biggest ROI areas of health, fitness and physique change are likely to be exercise, nutrition, recovery/sleep, and stress management. Over the upcoming weeks, we will be adding layers of compounding effect to these 4 key areas, alternating week to week to allow you to solidify each habit and action before adding the next layer.

Walking is the simplest form of activity and is available to us all. The pros of having daily step count are many. It’s easy, can be broken up into small chunks throughout the day and it compounds over time, setting the base for greater intensity exercises like lifting weights, jogging, cycling, etc.

Focus on eating higher nutrient, lower calorie foods to stay fuller for longer, eat less total calories, learn which foods help you meet your health and performance needs, which foods taste best together, and which ones you prefer for which meal of the day.

We don’t get stronger/fitter from lifting weights, we get stronger/fitter from RECOVERING from lifting weights, and sleep is where that recovery happens. Before we add more stress (training) we need to make sure we have a plan to accommodate and adapt to it.

Our body doesn’t do a great job at separating stressors. It simply knows the total load of stress it can handle. This is called allostasis. Meaning that the stress we take on via a stressful day at work, being stuck in traffic, a hard workout, or a fast run is all processed the same way by our body.

Overlooking the fundamentals of training quality now leads to problems down the line. Injury, plateau, poor results, and burnout tend to come from overlooking training technique for more exciting elements like exercises variety, volume, and intensity. If training quality is off, then adding more volume only makes it unstable and prone to problems.

Once you’re getting 85% plus of your daily calories from nutrient dense foods, sources, you’re better equipped to manage the volume of the calories you’re consuming using simple and effective tool such as the hand portions guide.

Most guys need 7-9 hours of sleep a night to function at their best when they’re awake. If you’re thinking that you’re fine on 4-5 hours, it’s unlikely. It’s more likely that you’ve gotten used to operating 4-5 hours and rationalized that’s all you need. If you got the recommended 7-9 hours regularly, you’d be guaranteed to function EVEN BETTER.

The body doesn’t separate out the good stress from the bad stress, it just handles it all with the same systems. It pays to limit the negative stress coming into our lives where we can.

Training must also be specific and progressive. Often referred to as progressive overload, it might be better to think of this as progressive over stimulus. Meaning that “load” is just one variable we can play with to achieve the increase in effort it takes to complete a rep, set, session, or block of training.

Satiety refers to the feeling of fullness eating a certain food gives you when calories are equated. The food volume, fiber content, macronutrient make-up, texture, and density (liquid or solid) play significant roles in giving a food a higher or lower satiety rating. 100 calories of bananas is likely more satisfying than 100 calories of coca cola. Which one do you think will make you more full?

If you've improved the quality of your sleep and are making time for a greater quantity of sleep, then your sleep consistency has likely already improved. Here is another way you can improve the quality, quantity, and reliability of your sleep…by making it consistent.

Limiting stress and managing or tolerating stress in our lives go hand in hand. When we can’t limit the stress we are dealing with, we can still decide how we respond to it. Changing our perception of stressors and responding to them in a way that allows us not to be burdened by them where possible. We can use strategies that allow us to be supportive while also staying unburdened by a stressor.

Technique is the cornerstone of long term successful training progress and can be summarized as the following “3 C Standards”…

1. Control

2. Consistency

3. Connection

Mindfulness simply means paying attention to what you’re doing right now. By drawing your attention to the present moment, you can manage your nutrition choices, your effort in the gym, your response to stress, and your distraction from getting to bed on time. Nutritionally speaking, there are some simple, high impact, and scalable strategies we can use to help us abide by the principles of health improvement, fitness support, and physique change. They are…

In order to improve the quality and quantity of your sleep so that you can wake feeling rested, recovered, and ready to keep working hard on your goals, day in and day out, it pays to have a sleep routine. Here are 10 things you can do to improve your sleep routine.

There is some stress that we want, some we want to avoid and/limit, and unavoidable stressors that we can learn to manage and improve our tolerance of, such as intense periods of work stress. We can reduce the intensity of the stress we experience by engaging in stress reduction techniques.

High effort is only as good as the technique you’re using, and technique is only useful if you work hard. One without the other can get some results, but leaves gains on the table and makes progress unreliable if not impossible in the long run.

Calorie counting is a tool. As such, it takes practice to get proficient with, there is always a built in risk of incorrect use/measurement, and it takes time and effort. It doesn’t need to be accurate, but it does need to be consistent.

When we sleep, our body is working to slow down and rest major systems to recoup and recharge for tomorrow. If it’s having to keep the digestive system running so as to process a large bolus of food as it is trying to shut down other systems, you’re going to deal with sleep disturbances.

At builtXyou, the first component of all of our programs is helping our guys understand and manifest what we call “The 4 Mindsets”.

For most guys - time is the limiting factor. If you want to grow the MOST muscle, then having a higher training frequency is generally advantageous. There are only so many quality sets with good technique and high relative effort you can perform within a given session before accumulating fatigue disproportionately to stimulus.

Macronutrients are the foundational nutrients that make up our food and therefore calories we consume. Protein is the building block of muscle tissue and we need to consume it to survive as well as to maintain/grow muscle. 1g of protein contains 4 calories.

Exercise is good. Sleep is good. Exercising close to sleep is likely bad for both. Exercising close to sleep increases heart rate, breathing rate, body temperature, and alertness. All things that the body works to downgrade as much as possible to allow for optimal sleep.

Research shows that men who have a positive support system are more likely to meet their lifestyle change goals and maintain their achieved success than those who don’t. If you aren't feeling supported, progress will decline and participation in continued efforts will cease. Social support has been shown to increase adherence to physical activity regimens and prevalence of healthy diet choices.

After training frequency, the next limiting factor for most guys training is likely going to be the cadence with which you can train. Only once we have your training frequency and training cadence mapped out, can we move to the in session considerations such as exercise order, sets, reps, load, rest etc.

Carbohydrates (carbs) are the body's preferred form of energy. This means the more active you are, the more carbs you’ll need. Carbohydrates also help support muscle maintenance and growth when consumed after weight training by refilling muscular energy stores.

Supplementation is helpful, but it’s not magic. It’s a supplement. Meaning it’s an aid to an existing, mostly high functioning system. It’s like putting 93 in your car instead of 89. Both work, one just burns a bit cleaner. But if your tires are flat, your radiator has a hole in it, and your brakes are shot, then adding high octane fuel isn’t going to make things better.

We all live in a world where our environment is largely dictated by our work, demands, technology, and products/services. It has never been easier to get anything and everything we’ve ever wanted within moments. That’s why it’s so important that we create and curate our environment to support our goals. There are 8 mechanisms that help us design an environment conducive to goal aligned action…

For the most part, putting your bigger, more compound (multi-joint / multi-muscle) exercises first allows you to produce the force needed to perform enough work (sets X reps X load) to grow muscle.

In a single session this might look like

Deadlift, squat, or bench press first, followed by pulling exercises, single leg/arm exercises, followed by isolation exercises (triceps, biceps, delts, abs, calves specifically).

Fats are essential for healthy hormone production, brain function, and digestive efficiency. As long as you consume enough to hit these health minimums, fats can be adjusted most specifically to aid body composition improvements while having the least impact on your physical performance.

If you don’t drink alcohol, don’t start because of the health benefits, because there really aren’t any that contribute to a net positive health outcome. If you do decide to drink, consider lower alcohol and/calorie alternatives (see free guide below) , drink with awareness and restraint (consider no more than 2 drinks per instance), and stop drinking 4 hours before sleep for the most feasible and least disruptive effects.

Social pressure is something we all deal with and juggle. It’s not easy, and our personal unease and ability to deal with it likely stems from deeper beliefs and past experiences. We’re all working towards the same goals.

• Self confidence.

• Acceptance.

• Positive self image.

We talk more about this topic in the accompanying ebook below. But for now, here are 3 strategies you can use to manage social pressure in your health, fitness, and physique efforts.

Exercise order within a session helps dictate your training split and the amount of sets you can confidently perform to grow muscle. For the most part, it pays to perform 1-2 large compound lifts at most per session and have them target different body parts and muscle groups.

Meal timing or cadence is important as it allows you to better adhere to the principles of caloric constraint by mitigating hunger, and macronutrient split by giving you enough meals throughout the day to hit your goal targets.

Too many guys fall in the trap of thinking that more is better. It isn’t.

Better is better.

The more skilled and better at training you get, the better your technique, the harder you can push each rep/set (high relative effort) the less sets and reps you’ll likely need to do.

After about 3 months of dieting, the amount of calorie restriction needed to continue losing weight becomes oppressive. You begin to risk injury from working out with increasing fatigue and your body’s compensation mechanisms are in full force to make continued weight loss harder and harder. You need a break to allow your body to recover from this stress, ramp metabolism back up, and stop compensating for the caloric restriction.

This is often where guys go first - jumping right to the in session nitty gritty of set, reps, load.

But without technique, high relative effort, and training structure being considered, training quantity is almost certainly inaccurate and likely ineffective (or at least less effective than it could be with some basic consideration and forethought).

By focusing on nutrient dense, single ingredient, whole foods we increase the likelihood of feeling satisfied, limit instances of overeating, support our health and performance goals, and set ourselves up for long term physique transformation success.

By standardizing where we get our calories and macronutrients from, we are able to more efficiently and effectively organize our day to day meal plan so that we fuel our training, recovery from our efforts, and stay full and satisfied.

Recovery is a bit of a catch all phrase thrown around these days without any specific definition in reality, recovery is anything that helps you optimally overcome the deficit that previous training stimulus put you in.

2 things to note there. Optimally and overcome.

After a hard training program and diet phase you will have built foundational strength, accumulated tons of volume to build muscle as well as having strategically and diligently worked to manage your calorie intake, get your macros right, and lose significant body fat.

With all of that, you’ve built up a significant amount of fatigue. You can’t continue to diet beyond your limits lest you plateau and burnout and the same is true for your training.

Training intensity techniques are great tools to help us squeeze even more juice out of our training efforts, providing we are already following the training principles noted throughout his 52 weeks course. Overly focusing on new exercises combinations, body part split programs, and random exercise set-ups at the cost of standardized technique, high relative effort, and specific and progressive programming is akin to having turbo engine on a unicycle.

From my personal coaching experience, hydration is likely not the limiting factor many perceive it is, as oftentimes, thirst is dysregulated due to lack of activity and movement. Once we increase the amount of activity we do through general daily movement (walking to and from the bathroom, tapping our feet, taking the stairs etc.) and physical exertion through specific efforts (like lifting weights, a cycling class, or walking the dog), thirst tends to self regulate.

Maintenance is arguably the most important part of any diet or training program, and one that most guys overlook or just ignore. If training and diet is flying the plane, then maintenance is like landing it. The journey isn’t over when the diet is complete, we must land the plane, taxi the runway, get our passengers safely exited, clean, refuel, and restock the plane, let the crew recover, and plot our course for our next journey.

It pays to use the same exercises within a single block or phase of training (usually 12-16 weeks). This allows you enough time and opportunities to improve technique, increase load deliberately and accurately, and overcome sticking points in progress. All too often we see guys do different random assortments of variations of exercises and single workouts each week. This limits their ability to abide by the 2 fundamental principles of muscle growth. Specificity and progressive overload.

A specialization phase is exactly what it sounds like. A phase of training and corollary diet adjustment to increase progress in a certain areas of performance or growth.

If you’ve gotten your foundational training, nutrition, stress management, and recovery dialed in, and you’re applying consistently high effort to the simple but most impactful actions each day, then you could benefit from the addition of nutritional supplements to maximize your gains. Then, there are 4 nutritional supplements that have been extremely well studied and proven to be effective.

That’s a wrap. 52 weeks of specific and progressive training, nutrition, recovery, and stress management skills and actions built into a curriculum that if followed with consistently high effort, will transform your health, fitness, and physique.

As a special gift for completing the 52 week program, I’m offering you the chance to win a month of free 1-on-1 coaching.