Get Shredded for Summer: Cutting Tips and Tricks

It’s that time of year again. Our bulks are coming to an end and whether you’re prepping for a show, want to look good on the beach, or just reset before your next gaining phase, these cutting essentials will help you get ready.

1. Don’t Go Too Hard Too Fast

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when you begin your fat loss journey is cutting your calories too fast. If you are used to consuming 4000 calories a day, immediately dropping to 2000 calories a day is probably not your best bet. This style of crash dieting can lead you to get burnt out fast and probably without reaching the level of leanness you were hoping for. Try to start by assessing your maintenance and dropping calories 300-500 to start and shoot for .5-1lb loss per week.

2. Incorporate Cardio

Going off of the information stated above, you’re probably not going to want to be doing 1hr+ cardio straight out the gate. If you’re not used to doing any cardio, try 25-30 min a couple times a week just to get started and increase time and frequency as you go. Whether you choose HIIT or LISS is up to you and your personal preferences/lifestyle.

3. Increase Protein

When you’re bulking, you can typically get away with less protein. When you’re cutting, and getting more and more depleted by the week, you’re going to want to increase your protein intake to around .8-1.2 grams per pound of bodyweight. You’ve worked hard for your muscle and this added protein will help you to hold onto it!

4. Do Your Best to Retain Strength

Increasing your protein is a big factor in retaining strength but a lot of it comes down to your approach and mindset. Many people think you want to go low weight, high reps when you’re looking to lose fat but this is not the case. Your training should not change whether you are bulking or cutting so it is just as important to lift heavy! When you are starting to drop fat and get depleted, it is inevitable that you will lose some of your strength but don’t let that deter you from pushing yourself.

5. Don’t Get Discouraged

Losing fat can be hard! We’re all built differently and can expect to see different results. The largest factor contributing to lack of success when dieting is giving up too soon. It is a long and difficult (at times) process so even when you think you’re not seeing any results, you have to keep pushing. When you start to get really lean, consider incorporating refeed days or cheat meals accordingly as well.

Learn More About Refeed Days Here!

Stretching: What You Need to Know

When you think about bodybuilding, the first thing that comes to mind is probably not going to be stretching. Stretching can often be neglected by weightlifters, but after you consider the potential benefits to muscle growth you will have no choice but to reconsider.

To most people, the main function of stretching is to loosen up before a workout to make sure that their muscles are warm. This warming of the muscles is thought to lower the likelihood of injury and potentially increase performance for lifters. While this may be true, there are many other valuable benefits that must also be recognized. Some of these benefits include:

· Improved range of motion

· Enhanced mind-muscle connection

· More blood flow

· Increased recovery

· Ability to overcome plateaus

For elite bodybuilders, stretching can even be incorporated into their workouts. One example of this is from world-renowned trainer Hany Rambod and his creation of FST-7. The FST stands for Fascia Stretch Training and is designed specifically to unlock muscle restrictions attributed to the deep fascia tissue to expand the space your muscles have to grow.

Learn More About FST-7 Here!

When you don’t stretch, you leave yourself vulnerable to overextending of muscles leading to tears as well as muscle exhaustion inhibiting your ability to recover. As stretching is important before working out as a preventative measure, it also has its place at the end of the workout. Stretching after a workout helps with muscle recover and can prevent knots, sprains, or cramps.

Some Examples of Stretches You Should Be Doing:

· Elevated Quad Stretch

· Bent-Over Hamstring Stretch

· Lying Knee to Chest Stretch

· Lunging Hip Flexor Stretch

While you may see guys in the gym who think they are too good to stretch or chalk it up as useless, you should not underestimate its importance. There is no excuse to skip stretching and if it can be increasing your performance or aiding in muscle growth, there is no reas

Digital Marketing Best Practices: Fitness Edition

As time goes on, the Fitness Industry is becoming more and more reliant on social media and digital marketing efforts. With the largest portion of the audience having at least one or more social media accounts, it is important to understand how to reach these individuals and start building your brand online. Just this year, Digital Marketing has surpassed traditional marketing efforts, marking a distinctive change in the way we market to others. If you are not optimizing your digital marketing strategy, you are putting yourself at a severe disadvantage and will likely experience limited success. Not to fear! These quick and easy tips will help you jumpstart your strategy and be on pace to reach your goals.

1. Establish Goals

Before one dives straight into the vastness of social media and digital strategy, it is important to identify what exactly you seek to gain from its utilization. There are many different social media platforms that help you reach your audience in different ways. Choosing these platforms should be based on actual research in your field and evidence of success from others. After you have identified your desired outcome, you can better focus on how you are going to get there.

2. Create Diverse Content

In digital marketing, there are a large variety of channels you can deploy to reach different groups of people. Therefore, it is important that each of these specific channels includes unique and relatable content that compliments that of the other channels. An individual does not want to follow multiple accounts that post the same cookie cutter content on all pages. Make sure that the content you are creating is something that your audience would want to see and is “engageable” to them.

3. Content Calendar

Reinforcing the importance of content, a content calendar helps you plan, organize, and even schedule what it is you will be posting across social media channels. By planning out the content to be posted ahead of time, it is easier to make sure that your themes line up and have a logical flow. In addition, creating a content calendar and keeping up with it allows you to better utilize your time on other important aspects of your digital marketing strategy.

4. Utilize Stories/Live

Stories are a very important tool that can get your brand more visibility on

Social Media. Because they appear on the Explore page, people that may not follow you may still see your content. Live streamed content is also something that could increase your ability to connect with your audience, asking and answering questions or highlighting a project you are currently working on.

5. Monitor Analytics

After you have your content squared away, it is just as important to evaluate how it performs after the fact. Looking at sentiment, engagement, views, likes, shares, etc. all help you to paint a picture as to what your audience prefers and how to make your content match these preferences going forward. There are many third-party analytics applications that connect directly with your accounts, but many platforms offer their own in-house analytics tools as well.

6. Build SEO

SEO is an important element of marketing that is often overlooked. To achieve higher rankings, drive traffic to your site, and increase overall awareness it is important that you develop a strategy for SEO. Some key things to focus on when it comes to SEO are keyword optimization, backlinks, and meta titles and descriptions.

7. Focus on Community

With all these aspects of Digital Marketing and Social Media to worry about, it may become easy to lose sight of your community. While followers and likes are important to a degree, the community you build is far more valuable.

8. Be Social!

When you think about the purpose of Social Media, we must remember to actually be social! Building a community requires actually communicating with your followers. This could mean responding to comments, liking posts or comments, or answering DMs. It is also important to engage with individuals outside of your network to expand it further. Social Media provides an outlet to find likeminded individuals similar to yourself and this aspect should not be ignored.

9. Provide Value

By providing your audience with valuable content that is relevant to their goals as an individual or a business, you can leverage the relationship into one that encourages profitable consumer action. Basically, you are providing free information to individuals in an attempt to build trust and demonstrate worth to your audience.

10. Be Authentic

At the end of the day, be yourself. Your audience will be able to see if you are truly passionate about what you are doing or if you are just trying to collect a check. Make sure your intentions are genuine and don’t be afraid to go outside your comfort

Looking for More? Check Out These First Hand Tips and Shortcuts!