Train Like an Athlete by ATHLEAN-X (Video Podcast)

If you want to get a lean, ripped body and keep it year round you are going to want to watch this video where I share how I do it. Be forewarned, there are no secret shortcuts or gimmicks to doing this. As a matter of fact, there are many sacrifices that have to be made in order to get to an ultra lean body fat level and you will have to ask yourself whether it is worth it to you to proceed. That said, here are the major components of how I do this year round.

First, I believe it’s important to discuss when you are deciding to first make this your goal to be lean and ripped. If you are doing this for the first time in your life in your late thirties or even older, it is going to be much more difficult to achieve ultra lean levels of body fat than had you started training and watching your nutrition in your teens or twenties.

This is mostly due to the habits that are required to maintain the discipline to get this ripped as well as the fact that hormonally you are providing an opportunity to improve an already impressive body comp the more lean and muscled you are as opposed to someone who has much higher levels of body fat and lower levels of lean mass.

That said, there is no reason to be discouraged about starting at any age. You can look absolutely amazing no matter where you start from and it takes a dedication to the following main areas when you do decide to start.

We first start with nutrition. As a matter of fact, your diet or how you eat is going to be the absolute most important part of how lean you look. There is nothing that can overcome a bad diet when it comes to getting ripped (even cardio as we’ll talk about in a second). When it comes to nutrition many will opt to be exclusionary to either fat or carbohydrates in their pursuit of leanness. I think that this is a long term mistake.

It is never a good idea to adopt an eating style that requires you to eliminate or drastically cut down one of the three main macronutrients from your diet. Instead, it is much healthier and successful long term to consume all three but to make wiser food choices from within the categories. I share in the video some of the repercussions I faced early on from being exclusionary when it came to dietary fats in my eating plan.

When it comes to training, there is no truth to the myth that you should train with light weights and high reps to get ripped. As a matter of fact, you can actually build muscle using light weights if you do it properly and it’s something that you want to make sure that you do along with lifting heavy weights and training to eccentric failure. It’s not a choice of one over the others. Your job, when you are trying to get ripped and lean, is to train with all of the options in your arsenal to build as much lean body mass as possible knowing that it is going to help you long term to maintain very low levels of body fat.

Other things I do are I take my supplementation seriously and aim to provide my muscles with the highest quality ingredients at the times that are most likely to satisfy their needs. The ATHLEAN-Rx supplements are heavily relied on here as well as some one off vitamins like green tea extract or raw foods like ginger and cinnamon.

Sacrifices, as mentioned earlier, are going to have to be made however if you want to achieve this level of leanness and maintain it all year. I for instance, do not partake in drinking alcohol or eating sweets (but for one or two times a year). Is this a requirement for you to look lean and muscular? Not at all, however to maintain very low levels of body fat you will likely have to forego some of your current habits and that may not be something you want to do.

Ultimately, the choice is yours. I just wanted to be able to share with you the process I go