KronicFit - The Kronic Lifestyle 2020-02-24T08:00:00-05:00 KronicFit 2020-02-24T08:00:00-05:00 2020-02-24T13:25:44-05:00 5 Ways To Lose Fat Loss Without Tracking Macros Karon Hawkins I want to make it very clear before you dive into this blog: 

Tracking macros is probably the MOST accurate way to lose fat as you’ll have a better understanding of what’s going into your body. You’ll see how much protein, fat and carbohydrates are inside the food you’re eating. Once you do that for 6 months - 1 year you’ll earn the privilege to intuitively eat because you’ll be able to understand what it feels like to ACTUALLY be satiated with the data to back it. You’ll understand what a deficit feels like with the data to back it. You combine the feeling with the numbers and you have a recipe for repeatable results. 

But Not everyone is ready to track their macros religiously yet, so I wanted to give you 5 ways to start seeing results in your journey without having to track macros. Oftentimes, habits are the best way to start because they compound to create a sustainable lifestyle with nutrition. Let’s dive in:

1. What’s On Your Plate?

This strategy is so damn effective. You have basically everything you need to have a balanced, filling and nutritious meal. 

Half your plate is leafy green vegetables so you’re getting a highly nutritious meal with a ton of fiber and micronutrients (Vitamins A, D, E, K for example) which will fill you up while making you eat less calories (calorie deficit). 

Protein is the most satiating macronutrient of the three and costs the most energy to process in the body (Thermic Effect of Food  account for 10% of total calories burned per day). A quarter of your plate being protein is also going to help you feel fuller which will help you eat less (again, calorie deficit). Protein is also going to help you build more muscle (if you’re strength training) which will lead to more fat loss down the line. As you build more muscle, your body has to work harder to carry around that muscle thus leading to a higher calorie expenditure in all of your subsequent activities. 

The quarter of your plate being carbs would be the finishing piece of this strategy. Sweet potato, rice, quinoa, white potatoes etc. You ideally want to pick a fibrous carb that will help slow digestion and increase the satiety factor of that meal. 

The whole idea behind this strategy is eating foods that are dense in nutrition. These whole foods are grown from the earth and are typically lower in calories than more highly processed foods. They also communicate with the brain a lot differently than highly processed meals that don’t have much fiber, protein or many vegetables. Meals high in sugar, fat and or salt speak to the reward centers in your brain creating a hedonistic pursuit for MORE of that kind of food. So much so, that it can actually override some of the hormones that stimulate the feeling of fullness. It's a powerful, pulling force.

So balancing your meals to where 80% are highly nutritious and help your body recover from your training with 20% being pleasurable foods, you create a sustainable approach to your fat loss.


As a recap, with this strategy we cover a multitude of things:

  • High protein intake
  • High fiber intake
  • High micronutrient (Vitamin A,D, E K & Bs/Cs) intake
  • High satiety (fullness) 
  • Low calorie


2. Drink More Water or Seltzer Water

This may seem incredibly obvious…. and it is. 

A great goal water intake amount is half your bodyweight in fluid ounces + 15 fluid ounces per hour of physical activity. 

I’ll use myself as an example.

I weigh 166lbs. Therefore, I need 83 fl oz of water.

And if I did 1 hour of physical activity I’d also need another 15fl oz so that would total 98fl oz for the day.

And like I said in the title of this tip, it doesn’t have to ONLY be water. A lot of my clients love seltzer water as it supplements their water needs but also has a different feel than water due to some hints of flavors that can be added. They’re still calorie and sugar free as well so you don’t have to worry about it adding to your daily calorie intake. 

You’ll feel fuller more often and quite literally eat less (calorie deficit) contributing to the fat loss you desire. And besides the calorie deficit, you’ll be more hydrated so your training sessions will go way better. Dehydration is a KILLER for your training. You don’t really get a reward for over-hydrating, but you feel like shit when you’re dehydrated. 

3. CVS Is Your Friend On The Road

Combining a protein, fat and carb on the road is the best way to stay accountable. Having JUST a banana or JUST an apple will leave you feeling super hungry after. But if you combine an apple, with jerky and nuts, you’ll fill up more than you’d think. This strategy works SO damn well if you travel a lot and don’t “have time” to eat “healthy”. And typically these foods combined will be way less than something you’d eat on the road like McDonald’s, Burger King, Chic-Fil-A etc. However, you’ll still satisfy your body. It all starts with making that first choice to go to CVS, Rite Aid, etc instead of jumping to the fast food restaurant. 

A lot of my clients are very busy business professionals who are often on the road every week. Just having this tool in their back pocket has helped them stay on track while not being able to meal prep. At the end of the day, it’s all about the in-moment choice. If you don’t have any plan or tools, you’ll just default to the EASIEST and most CONVENIENT option you KNOW is available. This alternative is just as easy and convenient as any fast food available.


4. Slow The Fuck Down

Here’s another easy tip that’s pretty obvious but makes a big difference: chew your food. Chewing communicates with the brain that consumption is happening allowing you to feel fuller sooner. A lot of the time when you’re in a rush to eat, you just inhale food. You don’t really take the time to chew and swallow. It’s just a vacuum. And I get it, you’re busy and don’t really have time to spend it eating. But even if you added a few chews per bite, you’d feel yourself getting fuller much sooner. This fact is another reason why veggies are hard to eat in high amounts: they take effort to eat.

Ever try to swallow broccoli without chewing much?… yeah, me neither. And it’s because you can’t! But french fries? You can just devour them without much chewing at all. Smoothies get crushed in two seconds. Juices? Two seconds. There’s no fiber to increase the digestive difficulty of that food. So you can, not only swallow it quickly, but you can feel it impact your body quicker. 


5. Eat As Close To The Earth As Possible

I’ve mentioned this tip earlier in the blog but this tip is the most important. If you eat close to the earth you’re inherently going to be consuming more nutrition dense foods that fill you more for fewer calories. Let’s use an example from my nutrition:


In this example I’m using two meals showing one I ordered and one I made myself. And I know what you’re thinking: that bubble tea! Yes, it’s an extra 200 calories that you can take off if you usually get water. If you do get a drink usually when you go out (alcoholic or not) that’s some extra calories in the equation. 

But for this example I will include the tea: 

Left Meal:

Protein: 47g

Fat: 42g

Ratio P : F = ~1.1g : 1g

Right Meal: 

Protein: 36g

Fat: 19g

Ratio P : F = ~1.9g : 1g

That may not seem like a lot, but most of my clients eat between 50 & 80g of fat for the ENTIRE DAY. 

That means in some cases they’re already close to their entire allotment for the day or at a large portion already.

Both meals are delicious.

Both meals are filling.

Both meals are high in protein.

It’s about the ratios that make the biggest difference between them. 

Just by me cooking it at home, I give myself more room for fat later in the day. Ordering out or eating out means more oils, more preparatory conditions (processing) which usually means more fat. 

Fat isn’t bad either, I’m not saying that. I am saying that you want the ratio to be skewed the most toward protein so your macros are the most optimal they can be. If you’re training in the gym 3-5 times a week, you’ll need a lower fat and high carb intake. It’ll replenish your fuel storage (glucose) you empty during your gym session. If you have too much fat and not enough carbs, you won’t have the energy to move at your best so you can get the most out of every session in the gym. 

I only go to the gym 2 times a week, but I’m quite active OUTSIDE of the gym. I walk a ton, play basketball often, climb, run, do mobility in the AM and shadow box everyday (just starting shadow boxing). So I need carbs even though I’m not lifting super heavy all the time. You WILL need different things based on your activity. But you still want a high protein lower fat ratio per meal.

In general, cooking for yourself keeping these macros in mind (not tracking, just making sure they're on your plate) is the biggest difference for your fat loss. 

Here’s a nice list of recommended foods for ya:

Protein: Chicken, Fish, Beef, Pork, Turkey, Greek Yogurt, Eggs, Protein Powder + Supplements (Protein Shakes, Protein Bars)

Carbs: Sweet Potatoes, Grains + Rices, Vegetables, Fruit, Quinoa, Oats

Fats: (Nuts, Nut Butters, Butter, Oils, Avocado, Fatty Fish, Seeds)

And you don’t need to “track” these macros just make sure one of each is involved in some way. Referencing the plate analogy, have the veggies, protein, carbs and add the fat as some kind of topping, side or oil blend. For instance, an olive oil blend, guacamole (or just avocados) and seeds are all great examples. Also, if you cook your chicken or veggies with olive oil, booya, you got some fat in your meal. So instead of using the non-fat spray, use butter or some kind of oil for your fat intake. 

Following these 5 tips will get you fat loss simply because you’re going to be eating a more balanced, nutritious “diet”. By increasing protein, fiber and water intake ALONE you’ll most likely eat less. If you find you need more help with your nutrition besides these 5 tips, sign up for a free call with me and I’ll give you some more tips.

Looking forward to chatting with you!

]]> 2020-02-13T21:44:00-05:00 2020-02-13T21:44:37-05:00 [Case Study: Steve] The Step-By-Step Process To Pain-Free Aesthetics Karon Hawkins More

I’m excited for you to dive into this blog because it’s going to paint the FULL picture of what a client of mine typically goes through to get to their goal. I worked with Steve for just over a year. I have to say that in the very beginning because whether it’s mobility, fat loss or building muscle, this shit takes TIME. A LOT of time. Adaptation in any physiological regard takes time. So if you expected to come to this blog and read some quick fix and short-cuts, you can bounce now. Because that’s NOT the case! Okay, let’s jump in.

I’d like to start with laying out where Steve STARTED, to show you what was going on in my brain as I created his first nutrition and training plan. You’ll see that I took many pieces of his life into consideration because as I’ve said in previous posts, EVERYTHING matters. Work schedule, sleep, stress, food preference, training history, injuries, EVERYTHING


Here are Steve’s specs:

Height: 5’10 

Starting Weight: 185 (EXACT same weight in each photo…)

Starting Fat%: 14 - 16%

Goals: Move in the gym how he wants while staying injury free, Increase Mobility & Strength, Get & Stay Lean

As you can see, Steve had a pretty good starting point with some solid goals. The main piece to his story was the lower back pain he was experiencing, some big inconsistencies in his nutrition, and his previous movement & training program initially which was keeping him from accomplishing his goals. Another big piece that he initially didn’t realize the impact of was his work schedule and overall enjoyment of his previous job. Let’s look at that:

How His Previous Job Impacted His Journey

He worked a 9-5 that sometimes turned into a 7-7 and had some late evenings. He also took some projects on the side that he worked during the weekends occasionally as a contractor. How does that impact training, nutrition & recovery? 

Training: Steve now trains in the morning, but before he trained at night. If he worked late it would throw off his training schedule pushing his gym time later and later which would make him MORE fatigued before he even started. After a 12 hour day working at a place you don’t really want to be, it’s tough to then go train after. Being a bit more tired than usual would mean less energy to put out in the gym, meaning longer rest periods, less weight at times and maybe even gassing out sooner than usual. 

That means his overall training volume (which we weren’t concerned about TOO much in the beginning since he was in pain) would decrease on average if he worked late. His motivation or drive to train would also be lower because of the stress he was taking on from work. And while it may not seem like the same, the stress from training and the stress from his job impact the body similarly if not the same. A stressor places a certain demand on the body and if the body can’t adapt, it becomes chronic stress which leads to a whole list of problems. And stacking chronic stress from life with stress from training just drains the body because it’s never TRULY recovering.

Nutrition: So how does his work schedule impact his nutrition? In a few ways. 

Firstly, he usually only had 2 meals a day with a protein shake after his training. Sometimes he’d have to push his last meal (after not eating since lunch at work so sometimes 6-8 hours later) which would push a ton of calories to late late at night. 

Secondly, it also would put a pretty big gap between his pre-workout meal and his training session which isn’t ideal for lifting heavy either. 

Finally, his nutrition later in the night doesn’t necessarily GUARANTEE digestion issues, but it’s a huge stress on the gut depending on how you sleep. You’ll see how we optimized his nutrition later on based on this issue. 

Recovery:  How does this schedule impact his recovery? Even if he only had a late night once a week or every other week, it would throw off his sleep schedule. Waking up EARLIER and leaving LATER while staying at the gym LATER is a combination for poor recovery. Why?

Sleep deprivation = stressor

Long work day = stressor

Training Session = stressor

Inadequate calories intake = stressor

It’s a nasty cycle. He gets stressed because he’s not sleeping enough which is creating MORE stress because he’s not recovering well from his gym sessions. Effectively, he’s just constantly breaking down his body without rebuilding it fully. Combine that with the irregularity in nutrition due to this cycle and you have a large amount of stress that you can’t recover from/ adapt to. 

We had a conversation about how much his previous job was impacting his goals and came to the conclusion that it was time to find a different opportunity. Sure, this is outside of the scope of a training/ nutrition coach but it was CLEAR that he did not want to be where he was. He told me he would DREAD waking up and going there. I knew EXACTLY what that felt like because I used to be in the same place at my previous job. It seriously drains you in more ways than you think. He was giving his energy, his time and his brain to something he didn’t care for. 

How His Previous Training/Movement Impacted His Journey

Now we’ll see what Steve was doing before we started working together. All of this information is part of what every client sends to me in the beginning so I can make all these decisions of how I will later optimize all these relevant pieces to get them to their goals. 

He was in the gym 3-4 times / week doing an upper/ lower body split with high reps + low rest and a HIIT finisher at the end. He didn’t do much cardio (wanted to run) because it usually hurt his back. And he actually was having low back flare ups during his training so he took the previous week off before submitting the questionnaire to me.

He wanted to get lean while staying injury free, but also build muscle and strength. Here’s the thing: you can’t do both. You can’t get lean and build muscle and build strength. Well, you can, but it’s VERY VERY difficult and Steve wasn’t in a position to do so with his injuries and current habits. So we had to focus on just getting him injury/ pain-free while focusing on recovery. So let’s look at his training program:

He was doing a 3-4 day upper/lower split with high reps and low rest periods + a HIIT finisher. Building muscle requires progressive overload by slowly increasing the overall training volume overtime. If you’re doing high reps with low rest, there’s a good chance you’re not lifting too heavy. If your reps are high, your weight is low and if your reps are low, your weight is high. It’s important to train in ALL rep ranges to provide more rooms for progression in your training and thus more training volume. Strictly training in a high rep range with low rest times will only allow to lift so heavy. In addition, you’re not training all energy systems because your first energy system ATP-PC or adenine triphosphate phosphocreatine requires AT LEAST 2 minutes (sometimes 3-5 in some cases depending on the person) to fully recover. 

This first energy system is where you’re the STRONGEST and most EXPLOSIVE. But it only lasts for about 12 seconds. After that you’re switching to a different energy system that’s glycolytic or utilizes stored glycogen in your muscles to continue fueling your training. When you consume carbs, they are converted to glucose and then absorbed by your cells as glycogen. When you train and work for longer than 12 or so seconds, glycogen because the fuel source INSTEAD of ATP-PC. You’ll typically see a set of 1-3 reps being highly fueled by that first energy system depending on how long the lifter performs it for. 

And the fatigue you get from lifting heavy is DIFFERENT than the fatigue you receive when doing high rep training. When you lift heavy you are stressing your CNS or central nervous system that is responsible for stimulating your muscles to lift stuff. Central fatigue is different than that burning you feel from lifting many many reps. Your central nervous system essentially can’t communicate with those muscles as optimally to handle the stress of lifting a big ass barbell or dumbbell. Pure strength training is all about building a more resilient Central Nervous System by training that first energy system, ATP-PC. And if you’re ONLY lifting lighter weight for many reps, you’re never growing that resilience in the central nervous system to lift heavier and increase training volume over time. 

The high rep low rest training was  the first big problem with his program before. The second was his actual movement. You’ll hear in his video at the bottom of the page, but Steve was coupling a lot of his movements with his lower back. So when he wanted to move through his hips in a deadlift or squat, his lower back would do a lot of the work. When he was doing his HIIT work, he didn’t have the mobility to accomplish some of the positions he was doing previously, so his lower back got a lot of the stress. Combine the stress of training with poor mobility + HIIT with poor mobility and you have a lower back that has breached its capacity! And that low back or lumbar dominance showed up in a lot of other activities Steve liked to do. Let’s look at some still shots of his assessment videos he sent me in October 2018: (I no longer require these videos as I assess my clients now via IG video or Skype)


Keep in mind I gave him no exact cues (like poke you butt, lean this way etc), I just told him what to do. There are a few things that stick out but the main thing I want you to look at is his lower back. What’s happening in all of these photos? There’s a rotation point at the lumbar spine. What I mean is that all his movements are loading his lumbar spine like you’d load a bicep curl, leg extension etc. In all these movements, the lumbar spine is meant to be stable and in its natural NEUTRAL curve. Not into excessive extension or flexion. You can see the flexion in his squat:

That piece rounding there is lower back in a common fault people refer to as “butt wink”. The goal was hip flexion to achieve adequate squat depth, but instead of using his hips, his lower back did the work. In the lunge (while not as obvious) with a careful eye, you can see the same low back dominance (and I see this in MANY people):


A flaccid belly and thick waist means his core isn’t pulling TIGHT aka lack of IAP (intra abdominal pressure). And if there’s rib flare or a flaccid belly, that means the lumbar (or something else nearby) WILL stabilize the spine. And it’s important to test this movement without cueing anything because I don’t want him to assume certain postures or “core tightness” because it would be a false positive. When people aren’t THINKING about their movement, it shows their TRUE stability and mobility. That’s very important.


Finally, let’s look at his shoulder flexion (overhead):

Same thing, except now his lumbar spine is in EXTENSION being pulled because of the rib flare you see. There’s no extension at the upper spine (upper back) and ALL  his extension is at the lumbar spine. If that’s tough to see, look at the angle of his waste. If he truly was NOT extending at the lower spine and flaring at the rib cage his waist would be small and parallel to the ground. His rib cage and pelvis are separating essentially causing that angle at the waist. And because his low back is extending and pelvis is rotating forward (anterior pelvic tilt) you see the waist is angled downward. 

I love this image from  Premiere Movement from their article about a similar topic:

You can see the angle issue I was talking about. Without that cannister analogy or the unopened coke can, you don’t have stability at the torso. In addition, you’re putting a ton of load on the lumbar spine. Check out their article here:


So Steve had these dysfunctions just in body weight screenings. Now imagine these dysfunctions being LOADED time and time again in the gym. His lower back taking the load from squats, deadlifts, lunges, benching, rowing, EVERYTHING. And his body changes its structure to adapt to that movement. Add in his desk job sitting in lower back (sitting isn’t the issue, the stability is) and his lower back is being loaded 24/7 and can never be stable. 


This analysis is not DIRECTLY saying the dysfunctions are causing back pain. Pain is complex in nature and is a response to the brain not feeling safe in a certain situation, loading, environment or emotion/ memory. However, it definitely contributes to inefficient loading and shear force on the lumbar spine. So in time, pain can certainly result as it did. It’s important for you to pick out these small dysfunctions in your own training. It’s not nitpicking, it’s performance enhancement. These issues with his back held him back for so long. But after we tackled them and improved his mobility and stability, Steve was crushing weight no problem. Making him more aware of these movements faults he had, helped him be smarter with his training and know his limits. 

And besides the pain he was experiencing, he wasn’t building muscle because the actual tension he wanted to occur (in his hips, for instance for squats) was NOT happening therefore he was not optimally loading the muscle fibers he wanted. His body couldn’t be in a position to ACTUALLY build his legs and glutes. So even if you’re not in pain, if your movement is dysfunctional, your growth will be dysfunctional as well. You won’t grow where you want to. 


How His Previous Nutrition/ Dietary Habits Impacted His Journey

Nutrition was also a HUGE part of helping Steve make this transformation. Steve actually wasn’t under or over eating. His calories were in a good place following ideal maintenance calorie intake. To test out where he was, I had Steve track his macronutrients via MyFitnessPal for 5-7 days. Of course 5-7 days is not necessarily indicative of his calorie intake completely, but it’s a good start. So here’s what I gathered from Steve’s first 5 days of tracking:



























Protein: 142g

Carbs: 189g

Fat: 156g

Calories: 2726

Supplements: Multivitamin + Whey Protein after workouts [Occasionally consumed fish oil]

Speaking on his macros first, His protein was a bit too low and his fat was a bit too high for his activity level. 

Protein should be somewhere between .8g - 1.2g/ lb of bodyweight depending on the current goal of that nutrition periodization block. 

At 142g he was at .76g /lb of bw. We’ll talk about how I phased Steve’s protein intake a bit later.


Fat should ideally fall somewhere between 20% and 50% of the total daily calories based on activity type and goals. 

At 156g that made up 51% of his total calorie intake based typically on activity and goals. And you may be saying that it’s just from the high day, but without knowledge of that high day and the facts about palatable foods (which we’ve discussed many times) this high day would just happen again. Steve was getting in the gym about 4 times a week so he needed way more carbs and way LESS fat to properly fuel and recover the energy systems he was stressing in the gym. When you lift weights for longer than 10-12 seconds (first energy system) you dip into your glycolytic energy system which is science for carbs. That energy system is fueled by carbohydrates being converted into glucose, then absorbed into the body’s cells as glycogen as discussed before. Once the training happens and the stimulus is received for a long enough time at a high enough intensity, glycogen is converted to glucose in the body and used as energy to produce force and lift. Properly fueling that energy system leads to better recovery, increased performance and thus lifting heavier weight for more total training volume over time. 

High fat diets are typically best used during periods of recovery focused nutrition or when intense training is not going to be utilized as much. Then we wouldn’t need a higher carbohydrate intake. And keep in mind that the calories wouldn’t change. This particular analysis is on the DISTRIBUTION of those calories amongst the macros. And we’ll speak on this distribution in the phased section later on. 


Carbs should just fill in what’s left from protein and fat.

The carbs are a key for performance because as training volume increases the carbs are going to be incredibly valuable for increasing the stored glycogen pool to use during training and recovery as well. We’ll dive into carbs a bit deeper when I show the optimization phase later on. 

On average though, Steve wasn’t far from his calculated maintenance calorie intake of 2837, however, there was A LOT of variance in his intake. And he talked about this in his questionnaire! One of the main reasons for this high variance was from what we first talked about... his job. Because he didn’t know whether or not he was staying late or had to go in early, sometimes he would skip breakfast, causing him to have a big ass meal in one sitting. And if that meal is particularly palatable (easy to consume and usually high in fat and carbs), you’ll be able to eat a shit ton.

His overall food quality was pretty solid with lots of vegetables, fruit and multiple protein sources. Even when decided to order out, he was still quite close to his ideal calorie intake at maintenance (minus the 5k day). 

In addition he wanted the ability to go for a trip and have some beer without worrying about losing his results or stalling his progress. I wanted to also add that Steve was taking caffeine pills in addition to drinking multiple cups of coffee throughout the day while only getting 5-7 hours of sleep per day. So there was a lot of stress on his body through multiple aspects. 

Before I jump into the phases of each aspect of Steve’s journey I wanted to speak about the importance of all this information he gained. Awareness is 90% of the battle. Steve and I were in constant communication going back and forth about this stuff. He didn’t know how much all these things were impacting his life till he became aware of it. And as the dots started to connect, it made sense why he was seeing results in the gym. It made sense why he wasn’t able to move the way he wanted when he wanted, all the issues he was having made sense. Now he just needed a course of action to make the changes he was looking for. So let’s get into that next!

Phase 1: Establishing New Baseline + Optimization

The first phase was all about optimizing what he was already doing in every aspect of training, nutrition & recovery for some quick and easy changes. You can’t try to do everything at once in the  beginning. It just doesn’t work! The body and mind need time to adapt to any kind of new regiment you give them. 


Phase 1a: Training [Regress to Progress]

I’ll be honest with you, Steve’s programs evolved/improved as my knowledge on training & nutrition improved. I’ve learned SO MUCH over the last year and I would change things up had I gone through this programming another time. But to be honest, that’s how it should be. 

At the time I was just really getting into program design for the online space. I didn’t have that human in front of me so it was tough for me to actually plan things out appropriately. I had just linked up with Cody Boom Boom so I modeled a lot of my training after his in the beginning.

Steve’s first training cycle was a 4 day, Upper/ Lower split and included a pretty hefty warm-up that moved him through some dynamic stretching and basic “activation” work. I put activation in quotes because your muscles are always active, it’s more of an up-regulation of that muscle and firing MORE motor units [will talk about this later] to make your brain more aware of that muscle specifically if you’re about to load it with weight training. 

The link to the full program is HERE

Like I said, it’s hefty. I wouldn’t give someone that nowadays, but it got Steve pretty warm to train well so it got the job done! He didn’t have an extensive warmup in the past so there was some benefits from that newness as well. Training pain free and increasing the strength of his hips was the first goal. Steve had previously been back squatting, deadlifting and benching but not feeling the greatest in these movements since his mobility and stability weren’t where they needed to be. So I scaled back the modalities of these exercises to decrease demand on his joints and positioning making them easier to do.


Back Squat => Goblet Squat







Goblet Squats

See Notes



Week 1:  4x10-12 

Week 2:  4x10-12 (Add 5 - 10lbs)

Week 3:  4x10-12 (Add 5 - 10lbs)

Week 4:  4x10-12 (Add 5 - 10lbs)

Make sure you lockout your glutes!

Send me a video of your goblet squats



The goblet squat is a great alternative when scaling down your training due to mobility issues or movement pattern inefficiencies. By holding the weight in front of you, you take off the external rotation of the shoulder and scapular retraction needed to execute the back squat effectively. In my opinion, most people don’t have true scapular retraction WITHOUT rib flare. Here’s what I mean:

The shoulder blades (scapula) are squeezing together as shown by the arrows, and the fists are above the elbows as shown by the lines drawn under the elbows showing external rotation of the shoulder. Both of these positions are being challenged in a pretty dramatic fashion with the back squat. And most people that I’ve worked with initially don’t have this position. 


So from a mobility standpoint, they can’t actively attain the end ranges necessary to achieve the picture above, especially with weight on their back. And from a stability standpoint, they can’t maintain a neutral lumbar spine (lower back) to achieve this position without flaring their ribs and thus extending their lumbar spine. Remember: if your ribs are flaring, you are loading your lower back and TEACHING your brain to adapt to that position. 

Bench Press => Floor Press







Floor Press




Keep the shoulders rolled back into the ground the whole time. Keep the quads engaged! 




The second big lift that we scaled back was the bench press. There are a lot of requirements to executing the bench press and I think they get overlooked pretty often. The depth of the bench is actually a big one. The shoulders get deeper into internal rotation as you pull the bar closer to your chest in the bench press. If you don’t have adequate shoulder internal rotation, your actual humerus isn’t rotating in the ball and socket joint and there are likely some connective tissues getting overly stressed BECAUSE the joint can’t rotate adequately. If you’re not sure whether or not you have adequate shoulder internal rotation look at this image and test the position:




You’d probably need right where that red line is which is ABOUT 30-35 degrees of shoulder internal rotation. You’d need to be able to access that position with control and ease. Ideally, everyone should be able to get to 90 degrees where the arm would rest flat on the table. But that takes time to develop. While you’re building the mobility/ active control in your shoulder to an adequate amount, the floor press is a great alternative to limit the amount of shoulder IR and extension (moving your shoulder behind you) needed to bench press.


 Conventional Deadlift => KB or DB deadlift











Kettlebell Deadlift

See Notes



Week 1:  3x10-12 

Week 2:  3x10-12 (Add 5 - 10lbs)

Week 3:  3x10-12 (Add 5 - 10lbs)

Week 4:  3x10-12 (Add 5 - 10lbs)

KEY: Maintain tension in your lats, hams and glutes. Since you’ve had low back pain, we want to divert the resistance to those muscles and practice that actively. 

Send me a video of your KB DL



This regression decreased the amount of hip flexion in the hip hinge necessary to setup for the deadlift. In this video I am pulling my shoulders down. If you watched my content lately, I don’t do that anymore because I was unknowingly promoting rib flare. So, going back I would have that execution to look something this => HERE. The main difference is not pulling the shoulders back and assuming a more hip dominant position. I’m also leaving the knees softer to focus more on actual hip extension and not allowing my lower back to extend at the top of the deadlift.


But in general, Steve couldn’t keep his spine stable while deadlifting so his lower back would curve in some direction (extension or flexion) and NOT stay neutral. This modality made it a bit easier for him to execute the lift a lot better!


Bent Over Row => Chest Supported Row


Chest Supported Row



Pull hard into your lats! 




The final regression we did was the trading the bent over row which required a plethora of things from torso stability, a solid hip hinge and shoulder internal rotation too! In this video as well looking back on it, there’s a bit of extension in my lower back that I didn’t realize either. Here’s a better updated execution with an emphasis on time under tension => HERE


Taking away the need to be bent over that way allows for a better mind-muscle connection initially so that we can slowly add on more difficulties in the position to get back to a bent over rowing variation. 


If you’re wondering about overhead pressing, I replaced that with a landmine alternative. I’ve spoken about this before, but I don’t think anyone (except maybe 1% of the population) should be overhead pressing because it requires thoracic extension high in the t-spine. And most people don’t have that. When they try to extend their upper back their lumbar spine usually does instead! 


Overhead Pressing Alternative 


The advantage of the landmine press is that it simulates and overhead press but takes out the need for 180 degrees of shoulder flexion (meaning arms by your ears) and thoracic flexion high in the t-spine. And it still crushes your shoulders as well while teaching your serratus how to go along for the ride (depending on execution of course). Here’s a video of the ½ kneeling landmine press with again, more emphasis on time under tension => HERE.


Some of the other lifts were focused on getting Steve more into his posterior chain, specifically for his hips. Getting him to feel his hamstrings and glutes more in his training.


So a lot of training involved hamstring & glute development through exercises like this:

Stability Ball Hamstring Curls

2x10 - 12



Ensure the glutes are engaged and hips are locked out. Keep the work in the hamstrings. It’s really important that you keep your glutes engaged. 




And this:


Weighted Posterior Focused Back Lunges




Lead these back lunges with your hip, hinging at the hip. You want to feel the stretch in the back of the legs and the glutes. Really focus on moving the hip back first and not the knee. Very key.



The whole program was a posterior chain or back of the body focused program. I

wanted to make sure that we were developing his glutes and hamstrings to help take some load off of his back. 


His upper body work included a lot of “corrective exercises” to target some of the smaller muscles he’d neglected in the past. Stuff like this:


3x15/ each



These smaller muscles we’re targeting on your back respond really well to a “pump” so really focus on feeling it in the lower middle part of your back for the Ys and in between the shoulder blades for the Ts. Ws should be back of the shoulder and rotator cuff while As are mid/lower traps and lats. 




And like this:

½ Kneeling Face Pull







Bang these out for as many reps as possible. It’s only one round here but we want clean quality reps. When you feel your form start to break down, you’re done. 






The goal was to strengthen some of the upper body muscles that again, were neglected. Helping his smaller increase in strength and size initially was important, but just making him more AWARE of these muscles was the real objective so his brain would learn to use them a bit more effectively in his bigger lifts. 


Again, I don’t program that stuff anymore, but it helped him at the time, so it got the job done. 


His cooldown for every workout was some passive stretches so he could feel good at the end of the workout.




And while I don’t give passive stretching much anymore for cooldowns, they’re a fine starting point. Nowadays I usually gives CARs (controlled articular rotations) as cooldowns which is basically just the joint through its full range of motion in a circular fashion. And at this time, the mobility work wasn’t as formal as it is now. It was more suggested. We’ll get into mobility HW later on.


Phase 1b: Nutrition [Optimization of Current Intake]


To optimize Steve’s nutrition I adjusted his macros a bit so his body would better utilize the calories he was taking in. So we didn’t actually increase or decrease any calories at first. Optimization of the composition of the calories is always the next step after growing more aware of what you’re putting into your body. So as a review here’s what Steve’s macros + calories were:




Protein: 142g

Carbs: 189g

Fat: 156g

Calories: 2726


And here’s how I shifted them for the first cycle:


Protein: 142g => 180g

Carbs: 189g => 260g

Fat: 156g => 105g


(Took off 26 calories to make it 2700 but those little bit are pretty negligible) 


So now let’s dive into how I went about changing each of these areas:


Protein => 180g


As a review, here’s how you should program protein:


Protein should be .8g - 1.2g/ lb of body weight (.8 grams - 1.2 grams of protein per pound of your body-weight)


That range would depend on many things from activity level to goals (maintenance vs. surplus vs. deficit) adherence etc. but that is typically a good range to fall in for protein. Steve was already around .8g per lb of bw (only 2g off) but would benefit from more since he was going was:


  1. Trying to build muscle
  2. Recovering from injuries
  3. Snacking and having inconsistent hunger patterns


So I put him right under 1g/lb of bw at 180g. That would only be 1 extra protein shake and one serving of protein per day. Or it could be 2 more servings of protein per day. The extra protein would improve his recovery from training + injuries and stabilize his hunger a bit better with additions from the other changes. 


To help increase his current protein intake I gave Steve one of my staples for a lot of clients trying to get more protein in:


The Morning Shake


You include some kind of fruit (berry preferred as some people don’t digest certain fruits well), green veggie, fat (coconut oil, nut butter) and then a protein powder. This formula covers a lot of great stuff in the morning besides just protein so it was a great habit for him to develop.


He would get a great balanced macronutrient profile (protein, carbs from fruit and fat from nut butter or coconut oil). His micronutrient profile would also be on point because he’d be including a serving of vegetables in his breakfast. 


The shake wouldn’t be as satiating as a non-blended meal, but it would 100% be better than 2-3 cups of coffee he was drinking in the morning => splurging later on a big high fat, high carb lower protein meal.


The key is balance throughout the day. A balanced spread of food promotes routine and regulates/ stabilizes hunger so you’re less likely to sporadically eat and snack. 


Eat Protein With Every Meal


No matter what, if he was eating, protein was involved. Every meal.


On The Go


If he was ever traveling, I encouraged him to bring protein powder with him as there’s water fountains everywhere. Shaker + Protein Shake + Water = 25-30g of protein quick.


I also encouraged him to use protein bars from CVS, Rite Aid etc if he was in too much of a rush to prepare the shake. 


These are some easy strategies you can apply in your pursuit to eat more protein! Super simple and applicable to any scenario! 


Fat => 105g


I like to program fat second because fat is usually programmed as a percentage of your total daily calorie intake.  


Fat should usually take up 20% - 50% of your total daily calorie intake.


That range would depend again on many things, but typically you look at activity levels and goals. So as discussed earlier, periods of high fat should be used during times of recovery focused training & nutrition blocks or when intense activity in the gym is at a lesser frequency and volume. Steve was training often enough to where his fat didn’t need to be as high as it was. So I lowered his fat to 105g to represent 35% of his total calories as opposed to 51% as it was earlier. 


I didn’t want to put it THAT low because we were just going after maintenance and one of the true markers of maintenance calories is overall great health. If fat gets TOO low (15-20%) like you would in a fat loss cycle, you might see recovery, joint health, hormonal health, digestive health etc suffer from such low fat intake for a long period of time. Steve was recovering from some injuries to his back as well as experiencing some gut issues (most likely from a combination of the high fat intake as well as the stress to his digestive system from the volatile eating).


So getting Steve into a nice balanced groove was priority. 



Carbs => 260g


And finally carbs are last since you just fill these in.


Carbs should just fill in the last portion of calories left over from fat and protein.


I wanted to use this space to explain an important relationship to regulate through the use of carbs: the insulin/ cortisol relationship.


Insulin is again released through the pancreas to signal that it’s time for the cells in the body to absorb glucose and convert them to glycogen to be used later (like when you lift for instace). Cortisol gets a bad rep as the “stress hormone” but it’s actually PIVOTAL for your results when managed appropriately. 


These two hormones are inversely related. Meaning, when Insulin is high, cortisol is low and vice versa. Let me explain: When you’re hungry for prolonged periods, your cortisol continues to rise to assist you in searching for food. Your sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) is further activated to increase heart rate, blood pressure and aid an overall higher drive for movement. Your body is gearing you up to go FIND food. It is your biological imperative to consume energy. You need it to survive. So the elevation of cortisol and driving of that fight or flight system helps you fulfill that imperative for survival. And as the cortisol rises, your insulin falls because there’s no energy to absorb. 


Then once you find food and consume it your body receives energy quelling the cortisol elevation and sympathetic drive from the nervous system. So insulin will rise and start the energy absorption process stimulating the parasympathetic (rest and digest system) nervous system slowing heart rate, decreasing blood pressure and slowing things down overall. 


And this relationship is fluctuated a lot unintentionally throughout the day because food accessibility is at its highest level ever. Food is right in your fridge, or a phone call away. That availability is great, but also is a curse as a lot of these food are low in fiber (which is a carbohydrate btw), protein and fat. 


That’s why carbs get a bad rep. They DO stimulate MORE hunger if consumed alone and the glycemic index IS valid when they are consumed alone thus potentially leading to overeating and weight gain. The glycemic index is a ranking system on how certain foods influence the insulin release into the bloodstream. However, this index is essentially IRRELEVANT when there’s a balanced macronutrient profile in the meal as a food like chicken breast has literally no carbohydrates so it has NO impact on insulin release from the pancreas. 


Steve and I eventually talked about all this stuff, but at first, it was a simple conversation about increasing protein and carbs to improve performance and build more muscle. Education = Compliance 100%. But at the beginning, sometimes it’s about building good habits that you can see the impact from. After that, THEN diving into the science stuff further solidifies the LIFESTYLE changes you make after building those habits. Later on, we went into meal timing once he got a bit more consistent with tracking since we started around the holidays back in November 2018.


So let’s look at his check-in sheet from Week 2 in November 2018 BEFORE starting to implement these strategies (he started the new training before he started the nutrition plan):

Now let’s look at 2 weeks later:

Date is a typo, should say 11/25, Week 3

His performance went up, strength went up, recovery, and he wasn’t experiencing any nagging pain after training. And for sure, these changes weren’t JUST from the nutrition, but having a larger energy pool for the gym as well as optimal recovery definitely was a huge part of the equation. His hunger also stabilized a bit more (10 => 7). And as his adherence to the nutrition plan grew better, he was seeing more progress in the gym and his overall day-to-day life. 


And now let’s look at 2 weeks later:


 Lifting heavier, no pain, no soreness, more confidence in his lifting and better adherence in his macros. His hunger also massively stabilized to a great level at 5. He’s not too hungry, but not too full. That goldilocks perfect level. The biofeedback was showing the progress of his metabolism and overall health through the training and nutrition we were implementing. 

So at this point Steve was a great baseline. We optimized his nutrition for the most part and got him moving way better in the gym with more confidence. 

Phase 2: Dietary/ Training Flexibility + Accounting For The Impact of Life Stress


So we made some great gains in phase 1 in the gym and in the kitchen to get Steve at a better place. In this phase, there were a lot of things OUTSIDE of the gym that tried to disrupt Steve’s progress. But I’ll show you how we worked things out and kept Steve on track. In addition we experienced different smaller injuries along the way that slowed down his movement a bit. 


The main things that kept throwing Steve off track was the frequent traveling and his job. Initially I had Steve on a 4 day upper/lower split, but we eventually changed to a 3 day full body split as he could better adhere to that. I thought maybe we’d have to reduce calories a bit to accompany the decrease in activity, but there were no real changes in body composition and biofeedback actually improved, so I kept calories the same. You’ll see in this phase that I actually ended up INCREASING his food intake because his biofeedback was right on the cusp of being at its greatest potential. His training also changed drastically as my knowledge on mobility increased. His warmups got shorter and more specific. His training was still around the same amount of time, but for the first time I gave him specific Mobility Homework that he was to complete on his rest days at first, and then eventually everyday. He was having some rotator cuff issues and we identified that his deficiency was in external rotation of the shoulder. Let’s dig in.


Phase 2a: Training [Introduction to Functional Range Conditioning + Different Splits]


In this phase I introduced Steve to FRC (Functional Range Conditioning) from the FRS curriculum because I knew it would help his shoulder a ton. At the time I wasn’t FRC certified (whoops) but I learned a ton from interviewing multiple top dogs in the FRC community, paying for an in-person assessment from my guy Ian Markow and following a ton of the smartest FRC providers on the gram. And as he was seeing results with his shoulders, I started to apply the concept of the PAILS/RAILS drills to other joints in his body. I’ll get to that in a bit. Here's the link to his program HERE

As you can see the warmup is shorter (still pretty damn long… sorry Steve haha) and has some more technical drills in it. I won’t go through each one but I’ll explain the overall concept of the PAILs/ RAILs drill from Functional Range Conditioning [don’t worry, I’m certified now ;)...].












The first part of the PAILs/RAILs drill involves a stretching phase. Stretching IS useful, because it will stimulate the nervous system to allow you to dip into some passive range of motion. And you need to hold these stretches for 2 minutes for an optimal stimulus. In the plan I said 30 seconds (details are important) and that's my mistake. But you learn! We still saw some pretty good results because of the 5 rounds he did per warmup. The difference between this method and most others is that most methods just stop working after the passive range has changed. And they leave a lot of gains on the table because of it. After passive range has been dug into, you get into the active strength training for your joints. 


Each piece of the drill involves either pushing or pulling. PAILs you’re pushing into a surface, RAILs you’re pulling away from a surface. The concept is to strengthen both sides of the joint for a perspective motion to build strength at the capsular level of the joint. With each round you gain a little bit more range of motion (to a point) and you teach the brain that you can be strong in that range of motion by loading the joint there.


Finally you end with some “lift offs” to save the work accessing that gained range with strength. Later on, I’d use a new warmup system to prepare the joints to move well in their respective ranges of motions the client would use in the strength training session. 

I did a few of these “warmups” on Instagram in a series called Mobility For Muscle. Check out the squat warmup one here: Squat Warm-Up MFM

This system has been a change for many of my clients because it helps them become more aware of what their body is doing in space. It’s really easy to go through the motions and not intentionally load certain movement patterns “correctly” which in this case is a way that will build the most muscle for you. I eventually also got Steve doing CARs or Controlled Articular Rotations daily as I learned more about the FRS system. But we’ll get to those later. 

In the actual lifts, I started to transition Steve back to the bigger lifts after 3 months of working on his mobility and control in each of these movements. 


Goblet Squat => Tempo Back Squat

Slow Pause Back Squat




4 seconds down, 2 second pause then explode up and squeeze the crap out of your glutes. These sneak up on you so start light and hone in on your execution.

Week 1: Add 5 - 10lbs

Week 2: Add 5 - 10lbs

Week 3: Add 5 - 10lbs

Week 4: Add 5 - 10lbs



The idea behind moving slowly was to teach his brain (through time under tension) that this specific motion was safe to do. It also helped him FEEL his glutes and legs do the work as opposed to his back. The idea was to start very, very light so the heavier load wouldn’t allow him to cheat. When you’re moving heavy weight, sometimes that causes “better” mobility. It’s not real though. Whatever you can do with LOW weight, is what you can ACTUALLY do safely. 

And week by week we added just a little bit of weight. We had multiple conversations about control. Once he felt he couldn’t control the weight throughout the entire motion (especially after the pause at the bottom of the squat) he’d gone up too much weight and it was time to regress. We didn’t care about getting to big weight QUICKLY, we cared about being able to lift pain and injury free.

Kettlebell Deadlift => Hex Bar Deadlift


Hex Bar Deadlift




Same as last cycle but we’re going heavier.



I reallyyyyyy like the hex bar deadlift for people trying to train the deadlift pattern while recovering from injuries. It’s basically like picking up two heavy ass suitcases. You’ll notice that I’m again pulling my shoulders back and down. And even in the explanations, I didn’t really understand at the time why my deadlifts were giving me back pain. Well….

Maybe lifting 315lbs with my lower back was why? Nahhh that’s nonsense. 



Anyway, the hex bar deadlift worked so well for Steve. It was higher off the ground thus decreasing the angle of flexion at his hips and putting his back in a safer position to stay stable.

Floor Press => Barbell Bench

Barbell Bench



1.5 - 2




After working the floor press and increasing the mobility of his shoulders, Steve felt confident to try bench pressing. In most cases I’d probably progress from floor press to a dumbbell bench press first, then to a barbell bench. But he felt confident so we went for it at a low intensity. 

Since we were still doing a full body split, he was working every part of his body each session. It was a different training style than he was used (did upper lower for a long time) but it was more efficient and better fit his schedule. During these full body sessions a huge piece of making gains was his accessory lifts. Here’s a few:


Single Leg  Bulgarian Split Lunge




Slow and controlled pace! Aim to feel this in your glutes.



Single leg training may be on THE most important things you can do to improve your bigger bi-lateral training exercises (squat, deadlift etc). Your Central Nervous System fires to each side of your body differently in the amount of motor units it stimulates to complete certain movements. Think of a motor unit as a communicator for a group of smaller muscles to the brain that when grouped together make the larger muscle you see contract like a bicep. Everytime you contract that muscle the brain makes a decision as to whether or not to recruit a certain amount of motor units to INCREASE the level of the contraction or LIMIT it. Here’s what a motor unit looks like:

So as you can see a muscle is a group of thousands upon thousands of smaller muscles that are controlled by that yellow thing called the motor neuron like I said earlier. Giving more attention to certain parts of your body that may not have as much motor unit activation can lead to more strength in that part of your body because it builds trust in the brain that YES this leg can do stuff.Thus the brain will stimulate more of these motor units, thus recruiting more muscle fibers to thus increase the amount of force that the total muscle can produce. 

If you only load both sides simultaneously, your brain will just default to the side it trusts more every time. I guarantee it. Because remember, your brain doesn’t give a shit that you wanna build big ass legs. It’s just trying to protect you. So if when you start squatting, it senses that the left leg ain’t gonna be able to equally distribute the load you’re placing upon it in relation to the right leg, you better believe that right leg is going to get loaded more. And we’re naturally asymmetric by nature. We’ll most likely never have PERFECT balance between each side, but we can do the best we can to limit that gap. 

Here’s another accessory lift I made a staple in many of Steve’s programs:


Multiplanar Lunges

3x8 per side



Use your hips! Don’t let the knees take over this movement. You want to feel the work in your hamstrings and glutes. Follow the video closely. And again keep your knee lined up with your foot. Body awareness!


This specific movement will move you into certain positions you don’t frequent
INTENTIONALLY often. Think of your body as being sliced into different glass cases:

Most of the training traditional training programs give are in the sagittal plane. Think of anything that’s goes front and back. Lunges, squats, deadlifts, etc. There’s not much work done in any of these other planes. So your muscles only receive intentional training in this plane of movement, stretching and contracting in this plane of movement specifically. 


But you need to move in these other planes because in real life, we move in ALL directions. 


Coronal Plane = Frontal Plane and that involves motions that are side to side. Think of side lunges or any kind of lateral movement (you ever do the lateral walks with bands around your knees to “activate” your glutes?) 


Transverse Plane = Anything dealing with rotation. Think swinging a baseball bat, throwing, twisting etc. We do this shit everyday, but don’t train it. 

Try out the multiplanar lunge and see how it feels! It’ll change your gains. 


For upper body we stuck to the basics: 

1 Arm DB Rows




More strength! 



Alternating DB Press




10 each arm (1 and 1 is 1) One arm at a time keeping the scaps locked in the entire time! 



Just lots of unilateral training is the key. And working joint mobility unilaterally works the same way!

Here’s the shoulder mobility exercise that changed the game for Steve’s shoulders:


Shoulder Work



Rest Period


Video Link

Shoulder ER PAILS/RAILS x2

1-2 Rounds



a.) Drive fist into ground or yoga block for your shoulder ER end range at 10%  of your maximal tension to start. Ramp up 20, 30 etc to 60% holding for 10 seconds at 60%.

 Lift fist off object squeezing rotator cuff muscles holding for 10 seconds. Repeat from 60% - 100% intensity PAIN FREE holding at 100% for 10 seconds. Lift and hold for 10 seconds. After you finish, perform 3 reps of trying to lift into that end range again.



Try it out for your shoulders and see how much work it takes! No weight required. Remember we’re fighting to increase the trust your brain has for your joints in deeper ranges of motions. So that alone will make it pretty tiring and difficult. 

Here’s a link to the program HERE.

You’ll notice it says part 3. I skipped talking about a middle program we did for when he was traveling for now as I’m going to discuss that next. You’ll also notice the shoulder mobility work is presented differently. Use the one I gave you above as an updated version. It’s a bit cleaner.

Here’s where we start to see some difficulty in adherence as Steve was traveling a lot during this time. Besides training, Steve is a pretty active dude. He likes to participate in a lot of extra-curricular activities outside the gym! And that’s so great. This high activity is one of the many reasons he got the results he did. Staying active outside the gym is freaking huge. But with these activities on the weekend comes a difficulty in sticking with the program. Between him being more involved at his job and him going snowboarding on the weekends, he was pressed for time. So we cut down to a 2 day split. 

And yes, he wanted to build muscle and get stronger, but the stress and schedule constraints of trying to adhere to 3 days a week was weighing on him. So we both decided on a 2 day split that would allow him to get in the gym and get busy, but wouldn’t be too much to handle given his busy schedule at the time. It’s okay to dial back on training a bit and just maintain muscle while stuff is going on in your life. You need SIGNIFICANTLY less volume to maintain muscle than to build it.

Here’s a link to that program HERE.

It still focuses on the main lifts with each day being a push or pull focus. So day 1 is a back squat (lower body push) with an upper body pull (pendlay rows). For day 2 it was a lower body pull (deadlift) with an upper body push (bench). You’ll get the biggest bang for your buck with lower body compound exercises since they’ll recruit the most muscle fibers and cause the biggest calorie expenditure. 

It’s a pretty effective way to stay on track around the holidays, when work is causing you to stay later at night etc.

Because the reality is that if your training schedule is causing you stress and you’re beating yourself up over trying to adhere to it, you’re doing more harm than good. In addition, if you’re not RECOVERING well, you’ll also be doing more harm than good. So this 2 day split was a perfect training program while he was busier.

Injuries Creeping In

During this phase there were a lot of seemingly random injuries that kept coming up. First it was his upper back feeling achy and tight. Then he pulled his groin a bit making squats and other lower body exercises more difficult to accomplish. He eventually felt some lower back and tailbone issues as we progressed to heavier weights which I’ll speak on in the 3rd phase.

But for his achy and tight upper back we did some thoracic spine work that became a staple in his warmup to get some more blood flow to his upper back and relieve some tension. He did these religiously. Here’s a video of that HERE.

When you’re performing this one, make sure you keep your pelvis and rib cage in line. You’ll notice in the video that mine flares in extension of the T-Spine. If that’s happening, you are no longer working through your t-spine. You are working through your lower back and lumbar spine. So just be aware of that throughout. 

While he was recovering from the groin and upper back injuries, we replaced his lower body training with some mobility work meantime. It would allow him to get to his deepest squat depth, with control, without compromising his execution and using his lower back. Check that out HERE

The whole idea behind this approach was to prep all the necessary joint motions of the squatting pattern, then load them safely at his end range of motion. While we rebuild and recover, we solidify confidence from his brain that this position is in fact safe so that we could start loading it with weight again. And he was getting a pretty good workout from it so it was a win-win. We kept the intensity relatively high by again challenging that end range of motion. It’ll make you work!


The worst thing you can do is ignore the twinges and dysfunctions you experience as they’ll probably get worse! I’ll get into the low back pain that resurfaced later on in the third phase. 


Phase 2b: Nutrition [Holding Maintenance + Dietary Flexibility While Traveling]

On the weekends, he was doing a ton during this period. He’d literally snowboard for the entire day and I think there was a bit of a debt between the lack of sleep (he was averaging around 6 per night at the time) and high energy expenditure on the weekends. So I added some more carbs.Would help with that insulin/ cortisol relationship I spoke of earlier and it would give him some more energy to use during his excursions on the weekends. Snowboarding itself is a stop and go kind of sport. He wasn’t literally snowboarding all day. It would be multiple bursts of snowboarding with breaks in between. That’s glycolytic by nature. So his nutrition needed to match that energy system need.


Protein: 180g

Carbs: 260g => 300g

Fat: 105g

Calories: 2860


This macro split and calorie intake amount was also closer to the calculated amount I derived at the beginning. So even though his training went down in the gym, the stress in his life + snowboarding on the weekend, made up for it from an overall stressor to his body standpoint. 

The biggest issue nutrition wise was Steve fitting enough food into his schedule before the gym. By the time the gym came around, he’d have so much protein left to get into his body (along with other food) that it was disrupting his sleep. He was waking up in the middle of the night. So to combat that, we spoke about how to get more food into his day. Remember, he was super busy at work and sometimes couldn’t really step away from his desk.

So in general, we added some supplementation and snacking during the work day to push some of his calories to earlier in the day so the calorie intake at the end of the day wouldn’t be so much. Here’s an example of a scheduled macro nutrient intake guide:


(Spread 3-4 hours apart)




Meal #1 (Post-Workout)


60-65g (fruit+starch)


Meal #2 


35-40g (mostly veggies)


Meal #3 


35-40g (mostly veggies)


Meal #4 (Pre-Workout)


60-65g (starchy)



Let’s go through this and talk about why this split is optimal. Keep in mind this split is ideally for someone training in the morning. If you wanted to shift this be for someone that trains at night it would look like this:


(Spread 3-4 hours apart)




Meal #1


35-40g (fruit)


Meal #2 


35-40g (mostly veggies)


Meal #3 (Pre-Workout)


60-65g (starchy)


Meal #4 (Post-Workout)


60-65g (starchy)



Let’s talk through this split. I’ll speak about it generally and pinpoint the differences between each as I explain the overall split. I’ll start with protein. Research has shown equally distributing protein across at least 4 meals is optimal for stimulating muscle protein synthesis to build more muscle. I don’t typically cite things that often, but that specific of a metric, I wanted to cite it so you could check out some of the research on meal timing/ frequency. But remember, that number is irrelevant is your calories aren’t where they need to be. So that number will always be the same across the board.

In the morning (unless you train) the carbohydrates in your meal should be mostly comprised of fruit. Carbohydrates from starches (rice, potatoes etc) are stored in the muscles while carbohydrates from fruit are stored in the liver to be utilized by the brain and other parts of the body. While carbs stored in the muscle are used for training to fuel heavy lifting and high exertion activity. 

During sleep, the brain depletes the liver glycogen so it’s best to replenish that glycogen with fruit in the morning. It’s not like having starchy carbs in the morning is “bad”, it’s not. It’s just optimal to replenish that liver glycogen in the morning and save the starchy carbs for later in the day around your training. If you are training in the morning you’ll want to combine fruit + starchy carbs to replenish muscular and liver glycogen! You’d use the night before as a “pre-workout” meal where you’d load a slow digesting carb (sweet potato), lots of veggies and protein to hold you over to the morning and potentially through your workout if you decide to train fasted. Because ain’t nobody waking up at 4am to eat before training. 

Note: If you’re hungry in the morning before training, drink a protein shake real quick. Should be good to go. (BCAAs are also an option, but those are IN a protein shake already so, you don’t really need them. If someone tries to sell you both BCAAs and Protein in the same sentence, you can now giggle to yourself)

And that leads nicely into carb amounts before and after training if you’re not training at night. They should be high in starchy carbs 2-3 hours (depending on the person) before training that digest pretty fast. White rice is the perfect example of a pre-workout starchy carb. After training the carb should be slow digesting carbs since you’re about to go to bed. A sweet potato would be great here for post-training carbs when training at night. Digests much slower than white rice so the blood sugar will dip much slower along with the rest of the meal consumed. If blood sugar dips too quickly before bed, you run into the risk of waking up in the middle of the night. Which we of course don’t want for optimal recovery + sleep cycles. 

Fat should basically be high when starchy carbs aren’t. The high protein + fat will provide satiation and slow digestion so that once you get to lunch you’re not starving. And because fat slows digestion, it needs to be low around training so that blood isn’t still being funneled to your gut to aid digestion when you need it to be redirected to your muscles to help you train. If you do consume high fat before training, you probably won’t feel the greatest during your actual training as blood will be pulled from the gut while it’s still busy.   

Please keep in mind that if you don’t stick with this format you still can and WILL get gains. The reason I present you with this info is so you can put yourself in the best position to get the best training sessions and best recovery. If you’re properly fueled before your training you’ll have more energy, meaning you’ll get more out of every rep, have better execution and overtime, build more muscle whichhhhh leads to more fat loss. 

Circling back to Steve, we found that too many of his calories were getting pushed to later in the day as opposed to a more even spread out because he wasn’t each much during the day. This issue goes back to his job demanding a ton from him and it negatively impacting his health. So we got him on a better split that included some snacking (protein bars + granola bars mainly) that weren’t necessarily “ideal” based upon what I just told you, but they had him feeling fueled up and ready to crush his workouts because he was still getting the right amount of calories into his body. And that’s what counts at the end of the day. A lot of the time you’ll have to fit what you see online into YOUR lifestyle. 

The online coaches that are putting information out there are framing from their experience and education which is great! However, sometimes what coaches learn in the books and courses, don’t always apply to the clients we work with. And that’s a huge part of becoming intuitive with the people we work with. And you’ll have to apply the same kind of mentality to your nutrition as well. So always take things you read with a grain of salt and ask yourself this question: would this work for me? If that’s NOT a resounding YES or you’re unsure, you probably should do some more research on the strategy to test its applicability to your life and also the legitimacy of the information being presented. 

One major life update that changed a lot for Steve was getting a new job. After numerous talks about his previous job was giving him so much stress and trouble, we started to see how that impacted his gym performance and overall mood in general. So around April before his race (good timing) he acquired a new job, and LOVED IT! It was the perfect environment he was looking for in a job so that took a lot of pressure off of him. It was great seeing him be brighter on calls and just happier in general with the new job. Throughout this process one thing that was interesting to me was that he was SO DAMN HUNGRY. I’d already bumped his calories recently but he was just still hungry. But when I really thought about it Steve was doing a lot.

Training during the week, taking trips being active in sports all weekend and finally, he started running. He worked up to 3 times a week at a moderate pace. The running was a recent addition to his overall activity that was in preparation for his first competitive race in over 3 years. Now the race wasn’t that long (about 4 miles in a leg inside the Pittsburgh Marathon), but with everything going on in his life, he needed more food. His hunger and cravings told the story. So to help him recover a bit better during the week I gave him these macros:










Nothing changed but his carbs, I added 60g that was only lasting for 2-3 weeks. The plan was to up his calories through carbs for the race (which allowed him to push himself to a 8:00/ mile pace for the 4 miles which he was pleased with) and then cut after a few days of recovery. I’ll get to the cut in the 3rd phase but I wanted to chat a bit about sustainability when traveling. I spoke about how Steve wanted to enjoy beer while on his trips. That was important for many reasons, but the main was his mental and emotional health. It was important for him to get a break. While he loved his job, the startup/ chaotic environment was still quite demanding on him, so having that time away and not worrying about the plan THAT much, was important. And he didn’t go balls to the wall either, just enough to feel relaxed and get the break he needed. I will say during a friend’s birthday, he saw that he gained some weight after the event during his cut in the summer.


We’d spoke about planning his calories out for big trips & events, but he had yet to put it into practice. On our check-in call he told me he’d gained weight, but didn’t stress about it because he understood that the planning didn’t happen. I guaranteed him that if he planned ahead, his weight wouldn’t change. During his cut, which we’ll talk about in a bit, he did exactly that and saw no changes. Planning goes a long way! 


Phase 3: Fat Loss Phase + Tackling Root Causes Of Injuries/ Pain


And now we’re here. The phase you’ve probably been waiting for the entire blog. The fat loss phase! As you can see, there was a ton of prep to get to this point! Steve was down for the ride, and that’s why he got the results he got. Patience & Adherence. During this phase we were seeing that tailbone pain/ issues get a bit more serious. And after some time we employed some help from a local Chiropractor that specializes in a technique called Functional Release, we saw some even better results for his joints. It’s basically combining Chiropractic + FRC into a pretty cool technique for helping people better. I’ll get into that during the first training section. We discovered, as I discussed earlier, the real reason Steve was seeing issues with his training. Let’s dive in. 


Phase 3a: Training For Fat Loss + Dealing w/ Injuries


Training for fat loss is going to be basically the same as training for building muscle. You’re prioritizing your heavier lifts at the beginning of the session when the Central Nervous System is fresh and ready to get busy, then pushing into accessories and less demanding lifts as you go forward. TOO many times people do tons of cardio instead of continuing to build muscle.


Let nutrition be what SHOWS the muscle. Use the gym to BUILD the muscle you want to show through nutrition. Cardio should be thought of as the sprinkles on top of a solid fat loss cake (maybe not the best analogy, but you get it haha). Cardio comes to help fat loss that’s lagging a bit when there should be a calorie deficit or progress stalls a bit. It should NOT be an entire day.


In terms of the split itself, I like a full body training program. Full body movements and training programs are my favorite for increasing effort levels in the gym since a lot of the movements recruits more muscle fibers and have a potential to burn a bit more calories than upper lower splits. 

Here was Steve’s 3 days of training in the gym

The warm-ups were a nice prequel to joint specific mobility primers that focused specifically on the joint motions he was going to need to use during the training session. Highly encourage you to click through some of these and see how they relate to your warmups for these same lifts. 

As we were still nursing some pain in his tail bone, I modified the exercises involving his hips to be the safest versions possible, while still making the workout fun for him. You’ll notice I put 0 overhead motions in this program also. Again, not many people should be going overhead at all. If your extension point in your spine is LOW in your lower back or even in the lower part of your middle back, you’re setting yourself up for disaster. Especially if the low back gets pulled into extension and you’re just cranking reps in that extension. I did have a modified ½ kneeling landmine shoulder press that worked pretty well for simulating that overhead motion. 

As mentioned previously, his first exercise was always going to be the best bang for his buck. Steve particularly loved the Hex Bar Deadlift as it allowed him to be a bit higher and not as bent over like in a traditional deadlift saving his back some issues (or so we thought). Throughout the rest of the program we always included some kind of unilateral (single leg, single arm etc) training to make sure he was staying relatively balanced between both of his sides. We’re naturally asymmetric as I mentioned before and can’t do anything about that, but we can do the best we can to keep that gap as small as possible.

At the end of the session is a great space for cardio or some kind of high volume finisher. I employed some Dynamic Ab Circuit Training & EMOMs. If you wanted to do HIIT 1-2 times per week, at the end of the workout would be a good spot. 

True HIIT, by the way, is a SHORT burst of explosive stuff for 10-12 seconds then a 3-4 minute rest period. If you’re going for longer than 10-12 seconds, you’re out of your explosive ATP-PC energy system as talked about earlier. You’re dipping into that glycolytic system which is okay, but it’s becoming less and less HIIT and more cardio. 

HIIT examples:

Sprint 10-12 seconds ALL OUT

Assault Bike 10-12 seconds ALL OUT

Broad Jumps 10-12 seconds ALL OUT


Short bursts like this will cook you, I promise. Take 3-4 minutes between each set and see how hard it is to REALLY go all out.


Back to Steve’s plan. The Dynamic Ab Circuit Training focused on Steve learning to use his core while moving. So some hex bar carries, explosive HEAVY pallof for anti-rotation and some cable rotations to learn how to use his upper back for rotation. At the end of each round he was CRUSHED. But this was more for cardio which is why the rest periods were a bit shorter. These cardio or HIIT finishers are a great way to amp up a training session. But honestly, the finisher was the least of our worries after a bit.


Throughout his cut, Steve’s back was bouncing back and forth. Some weeks he felt great, some weeks his back felt pretty bad. So we decided it was time to outsource for some help with his back. 

We reached out to my good friend Dr. Keith Zryinyi down at the South Hills Performance Chiropractic. Certified in Functional Release for basically part of the body, Dr. Z, as we called him, took a hands on approach that combined Chiropractic and strength training. Through an in depth analysis, Dr. Z saw that Steve was basically using his lower back in all his movements and his brain had been taught to basically use his lower back to function as his hips. Years of doing this had changed his tensioning in lower back and left it up regulated. Through some tissue work and strength work after (hands on PAILS/RAILS) Dr. Z was an amazing resource to help put Steve in a position to get OUT of his lower back. 

I don’t trust many chiros because many just crack you and send you on your way. But Dr. Z understood how the nervous system worked and knew that if he just cracked you, the body would re-assemble back to the previous structure without some strength work to help hold it in place. So while Dr. Z helped with tissue work and hands on PAILS/RAILS I would give Steve some FRC based HW to continue to solidify these gains. His brain needed to be convinced OVER AND OVER AND OVER again that he didn’t need his lower back to accomplish the motions his hips needed to be doing. 

Check out the program HERE to see the HW. Just scroll down to the end of the program.

Please keep in mind that some of these positions may be difficult for you to achieve if you’ve done no work on your mobility previously. So keep that in mind as you go through this program.

Dr. Z and I made a good team because he would inform me of Steve’s progressions and where he needed specific strength work (with Steve’s permission of course). And eventually Steve was in a great spot to move forward! 

During this time we were improving Steve’s ability to use his hips to accomplish hip hinging for squatting and deadlifts, we focused on high tension LOW weight based training. We also modified the movements a bit to give him an easier time with executing them well:

Click HERE to check out his 3rd fat loss phase

Tension based training can still make some great gains as you focus more and more on loading the specific muscles you’re trying to use to move your joints and accomplish the hinges, squats, rotation etc in the gym. So this strategy worked well as a way to continue building muscle but also slowly get Steve back in shape to eventually lift heavy again. 

For the rest of the cut, we stuck to variations of this 3 day split eventually adding another day in the gym as a progression for more fat loss and it worked pretty well! As Steve got better and better, the appointments with Dr. Z grew fewer and fewer until he was only seeing Dr. Z about once a month. That’s how it SHOULD be. If you’re seeing a chiro or physical therapist, they need to be helping you build to how you were before the injury and then SURPASS it. You should end the relationship with the PT or Chiro STRONGER than before your injury, not barely functional. 


The only issues we saw in the rest of the cut from a training perspective was actually from a nutritional perspective. You’ll see in the nutrition portion of this cut that he’d be in the cut for 17 weeks. That’s a pretty long time for a cut. We dropped calories a few extra times throughout those weeks and he felt good for a while! But toward the end, his recovery started to decline a bit and he could FEEL the differences from when he first started. 


Phase 3b: Nutrition For Fat Loss + Assessing How Long To Be in a Cut


So in the previous section you learned how to train for fat loss. It’s basically the same as building for muscle. Here we’ll get into the nitty gritty for fat loss. Steve was very good at adhering to macros and meal timing & food quality, so I gave him some specific notes on both of these areas throughout the initial cut program.


Here were his first cutting macros/ calories:











Only thing we really moved was carbs. He wasn’t running as much anymore, and was only in the gym 3 days/ week to start, so it made the most sense to me to cut from carbs. Here’s how we split his meal up:



(Spread 3-4 hours apart)




Meal #1 (Shake)




Meal #2 (Lunch)




Meal #3 (Second Lunch)




Meal #4 (Pre-Workout)




Meal #5 (Post-Workout)




(and a few extra notes)

Few things: 


  • Drink half of your current body-weight in fluid ounces + 15 fl oz per hour of any physical activity throughout the day
  • Ensure you have vegetables with every single meal.
  • Ensure you have 1-2 serving of fruit per day (preferably in the morning)
  • Weigh yourself in the morning so we can see how the weight progression is as well.

Looking back on this I would have restructured this just a tad:



(Spread 3-4 hours apart)




Meal #1 (Shake)


20-30g (fruits)


Meal #2 (Lunch)


30-40g (mostly veggies)


Meal #3 (Second Lunch)


30-40g (mostly veggies)


Meal #4 (Pre-Workout)


60-70g (fast digesting carb)


Meal #5 (Post-Workout)


60-70g (slow digesting carb)



The main changes I made were just having a fast digesting carb before training to make sure you’d not be sluggish before training. White rice is a great fast digesting carb. And then after training you’d want a slow digesting carb like Sweet Potato to ensure for great sleep again like I discussed earlier. You don’t want to be waking up in the middle of the night because your blood sugar crashed. 

All of the previous info given in the earlier sections still apply! 

We held these macros for a while (6 weeks) and saw some results. He’d lost about 2-3lbs (from 185) and hovered around 181-183 for a few weeks. Before we lowered calories again we tried a few strategies:

  1. Supersets in the gym
  2. More activity (walking, stairs, etc) outside of the gym
  3. (Didn’t have much capacity for more but here are a few more) Adding a day in the gym
  4. Adding steady state cardio
  5. Change your training split


After those two strategies didn’t see any changes, we lowered his calories a bit more:











For someone else, I would have lowered their fat more, but I was nervous about getting his fat too low while he was still dealing with some injuries. During this time he was still Dr. Z regularly and getting treatment for his back. I did take a bit (105 - 98g) so his ratio wouldn’t be too high in terms of his total calories coming from fat. It was at 36% the last cycle and kept it around that amount for this new one. And I took the rest of the calories from carbs. Never touch protein when you’re dipping lower into a deficit as again, we want to spare muscle loss and keep his recovery high from his training and of course for his injuries. 

Throughout the process of the cut, Steve had a few trips that (not on purpose) which counted as short diet breaks. Mentally, he got to get away from counting and tracking stringently for the few times he went away. Physiologically, his metabolism also got a break because he was most likely at, or near maintenance calories as he just ate as he wanted. Diet breaks are important for mitigating the impact of calorie deficits on metabolism. Metabolic Adaptation, as it’s usually referred to, isn’t as dramatic as people say. Your metabolism doesn’t come to a  screeching halt.


Here’s what actually happens:


NEAT or Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis decreases

RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate or BMR) reduces SLIGHTLY (due to weight reduction) 

Thermic Effect of Food (energy used to process food eaten) goes down due to eating less food


Let’s dive into these a big deeper.



So NEAT is again anything that doesn’t involve purposeful exercise. Walking, taking the stairs, fidgeting, cleaning your house, things like that. When you go into a calorie deficit your body tries to get you to expend LESS energy to get you closer to your maintenance calorie intake. Making you move less will help with that. This adaptive response is why you sometimes feel pretty sluggish or feel a lack of energy throughout the day in a pretty aggressive cut. We actually burn a ton of calories from NEAT as you only spend 1 hour or so in the gym, but the rest of the day accounts for so much movement (or not) and can contribute hugely to your fat loss goals. 


For Steve we made sure he was still being as active as possible outside of the gym to make sure he was not seeing this decrease in NEAT. Luckily Steve loved to participate in a ton of extracurricular activities for fun like Tennis, Skiing and Softball. So every week he was always moving pretty often. 



Resting Metabolic Rate or Basal Metabolic Rate (usually Basal is reserved for a lab setting) is the ideal amount of calories the body needs to just function. It’s NOT maintenance calories. It’s the absolute minimum for basic functionality of the body. This amount adjusts to be a bit lower as you lose weight. But again, this amount is MINIMAL. Using my current specs I’ll show you how much it changes based on the calculator I shared with you earlier


26 years old



1741 RMR

Keeping everything the same, if I lose 10lbs @ 160lbs, here’s how my RMR would change:

1696 RMR

1741 - 1696 = 45 Calories

Not a huge difference. But it adds up overtime. 


TEF (Thermic Effect of Food):

Each food you consume requires a certain amount of energy to process and digest that food. 

Here’s a rough percentage for each macronutrient:

Protein: 30%

Carb: 5%

Fat: 4%

TEF overall accounts for about 10% of the total daily energy expenditure (calories burned per day).

That high protein cost is another reason why we encourage so much protein consumption. It takes the most amount of energy to process. Fat takes the least. Doesn’t mean fat is bad, it just costs very little to digest. And this individual piece of the puzzle is small, but it adds up! 

Combining all these factors together, you see adaptive thermogenesis where the amount of calories you decrease to get into a deficit originally no longer works as effectively, or stalls all together. Just KNOWING this will better prepare you in the future. The diet breaks help mitigate these effects as since you’ll be consuming more food for a few days, you’ll move more, increase TEF and be in a better place psychologically before going back into the cut. 


And at the same time, there may be a point where you need to continue to cut calories if you feel that the goal hasn’t been hit yet, or you feel that you could cut more. So we cut Steve down one more time to these macros:











At this point, taking more from carbs wasn’t possible as 200 is already quite low given how active Steve still was. The best place at this point to take from (since we left it at such a high %) was fat. And even at this lower intake Steve was still at a comfy 30% of total calories. So he was still in a safe spot. After a few weeks of this intake, we started to notice negative trends...

Because at some point, the body just can no longer handle being in a deficit for a certain period of time and will start to breakdown. Around week 16 Steve was seeing this and talked about it explicitly in his check-in sheet with me: 

...I'm beginning to think I should end this cut a little earlier than I thought, and really spend some time trying to bulletproof myself.  My back has actually started to feel like its been getting worse - Sunday it got a lot worse all of a sudden, I didn't do anything out of the ordinary but I think I might have been laying on it wrongly because when I got up, I was in pain in the lower right corner all of a sudden and that has persisted until now (but it has subsided somewhat). 

My flexibility is really hampered by this, it hurts any time I bend down (not when I'm 100% vertical though), and I'm gonna ask Dr. Z to take a look at my appt today.  Regardless of whatever this is, considering my back isn't getting better & I feel like I'm doing everything else right... I think it might be in my best interest to go into 'recovery mode', strictly focusing on mobility & increasing my calories back up to maintenance.  Definitely looking for your thoughts on this though. Stress has also subsided somewhat, last week was just a killer work-wise. Sleep has definitely gotten better though too.”

You cannot recover optimally in a deficit after a while. And everyone has different thresholds for which they can’t continue past. And I’d informed Steve that at some point we’d have to pull him out even with the breaks. And as soon as we started to see some negatives, we both agreed it was time to end the cut. Normally, you’d want to stick at the intake amount you’re capped out at for a few weeks, but given we’d gone a little too long, the reverse diet back to maintenance was what Steve’s body needed. He’d achieved being as lean as he’d wanted to be and saw the weight loss he wanted (4-5lbs) so it was time to get back to a balanced intake for maintenance calories. 

In normal cases, you’d go right before that amount where the negative stuff would start to happen. You’d find a nice threshold of a bareable deficit and hang out there for 3-4 weeks to give your body some time to adjust. Following that you’d reverse diet back to maintenance and then just hang out there for ideally the amount of time you were in a deficit. We’ll jump into the maintenance phase now and you’ll see how much better he felt afterwards! 


Phase 4: Reverse Diet + Maintenance + The Send Off!


Phase 4a: Training [Can’t Tell Ya]

Yup, I unfortunately can’t reveal this training as Steve decided to take part in my Mobile Muscle beta test group and run through the Mobile Muscle program. I’ll talk about it a bit and go through a few of the insights we discovered from him going through the program, but if you wanna know about it, you can buy it HERE :). 

One of the biggest components of my program is the fact that it forces you to be intentional about where you load tension in your body doing movements as I require you to move really slowly. The brain learns best at first going slow as it has time to communicate with the right stuff without feeling too much danger from moving too much weight too fast. Whenever your brain feels threatened, fight or flight mode will take over and you won’t have control of where you load stuff. That was one of Steve’s biggest findings with Mobile Muscle. He saw how his body wanted to default when lifting too heavy too soon. As he built better patterns through the high tension, he eventually worked up to lifting heavy having that understanding of FEELING the tension going to the right places. 


He and 15 other people had access to me as well for any questions they had along the way. I’d respond with videos, images, FB Livestreams, whatever was necessary for them to see the results they wanted or to feel what they wanted to feel in their movements. So again, if that’s something you want or are looking for, cop Mobile Muscle and get started! 


Click HERE To Purchase Mobile Muscle; Your Blueprint For Pain-Free Aesthetics


Phase 4b: The Reverse Diet + Recovery + Maintenance

We COULD have shot Steve right back up to 2800 calories, but there would be a good chance of all types of issues like bloating, digestional issues, some fat retention and an overall discomfort with eating such a large amount more of food so quickly. The body needs time to adjust to any type of dietary modifications so it’s not very optimal to just jump from phase to phase. Use the reverse diet (in either direction) to phase the body back to maintenance after an extended period in a deficit or surplus of calories. And you’ll want to SIT at maintenance for a while after. Here’s Steve’s reverse protocol:






































You can see things are a little bit different than the previous maintenance calories from earlier in the blog. The main difference is the lower fat intake. 











Relatively the same intake amount, but the main difference was giving a higher carb to fat ratio. The main reason for this was because at the end of his reverse he was going to be entering the spring with softball and tennis being more prevalent in his schedule. He was also returning to training at heavier weights and more volume since his skiing season was over. Finally, he wanted to eventually enter a lean gain phase (which requires a calorie surplus) following us finishing. 


When you’re in a surplus of calories, it’s important to keep fat relatively low. You’ll want to primarily move carbs up to improve performance as you increase your total training volume each week. The carbs will supplement the heavier weight and increased frequency in the gym. The carbs will help you recover better, lift heavier and improve your endurance in the gym as well. So you’ll FEEL how different it is to lift with a higher level of carbs!

Two weeks into the reverse diet, Steve was really FEELING the changes. Check this out:

I FEEL GOOD! I feel stronger than I have in a while, I'm doing better in the gym, I'm doing better with my back (granted, still have a little pain from time to time, but I wake up and I'm not in pain & I'm not super sore after softball/gym.  AND I'm liking what i see in the mirror - my weight this morning was 181, but I was at 176 at one point this week. But I look more ripped than i have in a while. Overall, really on board with this whole step-by-step back to maintenance so far.”


He was FEELING stronger, LOOKING leaner and RECOVERING better. All things you should EXPECT to see. You should feel better in a reverse diet, you should feel stronger, you should sleep better, everything from a biofeedback perspective should feel better. And as you continue to increase calories, MATCH that increase with more volume in the gym. So lifting heavier, more and more often.

Intensity, Volume and Frequency should all increase! That’s how we ensure the calories taken in are being utilized effectively. Steve was building muscle in the areas he wanted because he was taking his time reversing and getting stronger. The before and after in this blog was actually AFTER Steve did his reverse diet back to maintenance. I make a point to say that because he was eating a bit more calories (50-100 more) than in the before pic, but was LEANER, STRONGER and pain-free. 

After Steve reversed back to maintenance he just held there till we stopped working together. He understood the importance of a maintenance phase and just allowing the body to relax for a bit. So that brings us to where Steve is today. 

A well informed, intentional and educated mover who understands how to phase his body through any type of change he wants. That’s what you get when you spend time learning how to do those processes. A lifelong skill that you’ll be able to utilize for the rest of your life. 

So if that’s something you want, something you desire, apply for online coaching with me and let’s get you started. As I told Steve and as I tell everyone I work with, my goal is for you to eventually fire me because you’ll be so damn knowledgeable. I look forward to hearing from you :).


]]> 2019-11-14T18:28:00-05:00 2019-11-14T18:28:53-05:00 5 Ways Trunk Stability Will Help You Build More Muscle Karon Hawkins More

There's a good chance that if you're reading this email that you live in your lower back. What does that mean? It means that when you bend and extend your spine, your hinge point (or where your spine moves primarily) is from your lumbar spine. 

I am only using image as an example. Pulling your chest up and forcing this position won't help either. But look at those dashed lines. There's a good chance that when you sit, stand, walk, eat, use the bathroom, drive AND train in the gym, you LIVE in that position. THAT is the problem. Sitting isn't inherently bad just like any other motion isn't either. But sitting IN your lumbar spine... IS bad. Where that arrow is pointing are the Ishcium bones on each side of your pelvis. 

Most people aren't aware of those sit bones, can't use them and can't access them without dysfunction.When you do squats in the gym, you need to sit into those sit bones. When you do deadlifts in the gym, you need to stand from those sit bones pushing the hips FORWARD.Basically in any hinge based movement, the sit bones should be the hinge point, but there's a good chance that your hinge point is at your lower back and NOT your sit bones.

Just like that dash line in the photo on the left.

Here's is one of the most common dysfunctions I see in the squat:

And honestly you could assess this WITHOUT the arms being in the overhead position. Most people don't have the thoracic spine (upper back) mobility to go overhead and squat. And this sight during a movement is a lack of Trunk Stability or the torso has no stability at the front of it to prevent flaring of the rib cage. Why’s that an issue for building muscle? Let’s jump in.

  1. Weak Core

What does that mean?

It means that the deep inner core muscles (Transverse Abdominis, Diaphragm & Intercostals between ribs) are weak af.

This stuff:

The diaphragm is in there too. Stability by definition means enduring or basically unshaken under pressure (or in this case load from squatting). If you don't have trunk stability you lose the alignment of your rib cage and pelvis during your movements making your lumbar spine susceptible to taking more load than it needs to be taking. 

And if you lose the rib cage and pelvis, your hips can't work. That means your glutes and hamstrings are not receiving a lot of load in your deadlifts, squats and other hinge based movements. If that’s the case, they’re not being built effectively. Once you lose stability at your core, the back of the body changes its role in your movement and actually get worked differently. This change inhibits the ability to build muscle in your glutes and hamstrings. 

Why? Because your brain will look to your erectors on the back of your body for stability in a flexed or extended position instead of where it SHOULD: the front line of your body so your hips can work effectively. I’ll dig deeper into this connection between your brain and stability later on. For now I’ll talk to you about those spinal erectors.

  1. Your Spinal Erectors Shift From Stabilizers To Active Movers

A stabilizer in a movement is meant to PREVENT movement. Therefore it should NOT be moving itself (specifically flexing or extending in this case of a hip hinge). But once that stabilizer fails (in this case the anterior core and deep core muscles) other things must pick up the slack to help the movement still be completed (in this case the spinal erectors).

Here's what those erectors look like:

And look what is says those muscles do AS prime movers and NOT stabilizers.... Back Extension. Here's what back extension (specifically lumbar extension) looks like:


Look at his ribs...

Does that look familiar?

It's the SAME THING.

If your ribs are flaring, your lumbar spine is extending, WHICH MEANS.... *drum roll please*

You ain't using your hips.

You ain't stabilizing with your core.

You ARE moving through your lumbar spine and erectors.

The erectors are becoming movers in your squat. You'll see the same thing in deadlifts, lunges, bent over rows and basically anything involving a hip hinge. 

When you're scrolling Instagram and watching people lift, watch the first thing that moves in their deadlifts. If they're going heavy especially it's probably the lumbar spine. 

Check this out:


In this image look at where the bend in his spine is....


His lower back.

Bringing back that sit bones image, what looks familiar?



The rounding and sit bones being DOWN. So his hinge point is at his lower back and NOT his hips. And unfortunately this image is the cover for a "Deadlift Exercise Guide" video. And unfortunately x2 you'll see this ALL OVER INSTAGRAM. Many people live in their lumbar spine when they train. And it's no bueno. If you wanna ACTUALLY train your hips to be strong and resilient, those sit bones need to be up.If your ribs and pelvis are out of alignment, you can't use your sit bones, load your hips and save your lower back.

Building this habit of using those stabilizers as movers changes how the brain operates around these movements. You’ll hypertrophy (or increase muscle) the FUCK out of your erectors and your glutes and hamstrings will be continue to be inhibited throughout all the rest of your lifts. And eventually all the compression you’re causing at your lower back (or lumbar spine) will cause other issues down the line like nerve pain, low back pain etc. If you want to learn how to deadlift while ACTUALLY using your hips, sign up for a free 30 minute call here and we can chat about it!

Earlier I spoke about the relationship between your brain and stability which directly impacts where you load weight when you lift. And that will directly impact HOW you build muscle. 

  1. CNS Dysfunction

What the heck is a CNS? I gotchu. Your CNS is also known as your Central Nervous System. It’s a complex neural network of stuff. It’s relation to muscle contraction deals with how your brain speaks to your muscles. In order for a muscle to contract, your Central Nervous System sends an electrical signal to that muscle basically telling it to do stuff. If that signal is muddled, weak or inefficient, sometimes you can do a certain movement all you want and you won’t feel shit. Overtime dysfunctional movement changes the way the brain learns how to move. It starts to use compensatory means to complete movements. In other words, it’s inefficient. It uses too many muscles to complete a task because it’s searching for stability to keep things from breaking down in that specific movement. 

And sometimes that search comes up for a loss with the muscles you’d expect to complete a certain movement. And because your brain is constantly searching for stability, the signals start getting sent to muscles AROUND the muscle you’re trying to work should that area be unstable. 

Going back to the hinge example. If the front of your body is unstable and rib flare happens, your brain will contract the FUCK out of your erectors on your back (usually lower back) to stabilize the torso. So your hinge is no longer in your hips, it’s in your lower back. And the CNS continues this dysfunction because even though it’s not ideal, it still completes the task of the hip hinge is squats, deadlifts, etc. So you’re basically forcing your brain to use the wrong stuff to do the movements you want to do because you’re unstable and can’t utilize the muscles you WANT to build. 

And this “dysfunctional learning” is reversible with repeated efforts and time, but the longer it persists, the harder it is to reteach the brain. It’s a tough process, but if you wanna build muscle long-term, you’ll take the time to relearn like I am now

  1. Dirty Volume 

What the hell does that mean? This concept is related to the previous reason. As the dysfunctional movement impacts the brain and vice versa, the volume in the gym becomes WAY less effective because the right stuff isn’t being loaded. If you’re doing heavy lunges, but your lower back is doing all the work, it’s not only going to take A LOT more reps to start to feel your glutes and hamstrings (if at all) but your lower back is going to be taking WAY too much load. You’re basically asking it to a job it’s not qualified for AT ALL. 

So your 3x12 or 4x10 or whatever you’re doing becomes like a 3x4-5 where the 4 reps are when your glutes FINALLY do stuff and feel some load. That’s not an exact measurement of course, but you get my point. Your volume is dirty and inefficient. Clean volume is basically reps that DO NOT compromise your internal structure. In other words, you’re INTENTIONALLY moving and there’s no unintentional movement. It’s efficiency. It’s loading what you WANT to load and leaving out what you don’t want to load. 

So during a set if you’re on rep 8 or 9 and start to feel things breakdown (rib flare for instance) you’d stop the set. That’s why sometimes it’s better to have a range of reps instead of a specific amount. So instead of a 3x12, make it 3x8-12 to leave room for that clean volume. And you can apply this strategy in real time. Take time through your reps and really focus. Make every rep count. Don’t go through the motions, really FEEL the work happening. On the other hand if you're doing a set of 1-4 or 5 even, it may be harder to feel things, but for higher rep sets, you’ll definitely feel stuff applying this execution note. You’ll have better sets, less compensation and more gains where you want.

  1. Less Injuries & Pain

I know this may be a given since I talk about it so often, but I HAVE to re-iterate it and end with it because it’s THAT important. As I mentioned before, when you load your lower back and OVER train your erectors, you’re putting a shit ton of compression on your lower back. There’s a shit ton of stuff you DO NOT want to be compressing down there. A ton of nerves that when pinched can cause some issues down or up the rest of the body. Because that rounding or extending of the lower back may pull in the lowwwww parts of your back (sacroiliac joint) compression occurs there too. Let me show you what those look like:

All those cords coining out of the spine are nerves. And they all connect down low in your legs. You don’t wanna be compressing that area. When you’re training, you want your lower back to be loose and chill after a session. If your lower back feels tight, something didn’t go well. And eventually that tightness will get worse. The area will get more and more compressed. You may or not experience pain, but you will experience dysfunction in your movements. This ain’t a fear monger post, it’s just reality. I’ve seen it over and over and over and over again. It’s only a matter of time. Your lower back just isn’t meant to take load that way. So when you give a part of your body a major job it’s not qualified for, eventually it’ll give out and issues will result. And you can’t build muscle if your shit hurts. 

So hopefully by this point you’ll be giving stability at your torso more attention. It’s CRUCIAL to move better, feel better and stay out of pain while you build muscle. If you need some help improving your trunk stability, contact me here for a free 30 minute call and we can chat about where you’re at! I can give you some recommendations and send you on your way! Looking forward to hearing from you!

]]> 2019-10-31T17:13:00-04:00 2019-10-31T17:13:44-04:00 5 Steps To Increase Hip Rotation To Build More Muscle Karon Hawkins So last time we talked about why hip rotation was important to build more muscle. If you didn’t get a chance to check that out, click HERE and read through it before going through this blog. I’ll now be focusing on a 5 step process to improve both hip internal AND external rotation of the hips to then build muscle for all the reasons I spoke of in the previous post! 

As a quick review, the reason hip rotation is necessary is because with more rotational capacity all the other motions of the hip have space to move and actually be done. So once rotation (starting with internal rotation) is improved, you’ll usually see the hips open up and just move better overall. With that being said, let’s get into it:



Assessment is the key because you need to know where you’re at before you decide where to go. Check out this video HERE where I take you through a basic hip internal and external rotation assessment that you can easily replicate. Once you try this assessment, record yourself doing it the way I showed you. No shoes. It’ll be important later.

Few questions to ask yourself:

Did you feel any pinching? 

Did you feel any cramping as you approached your end range of motion?

Did you feel any pain? 

Did you notice any other parts of your body moving?

Did you have difficulty rotating your hips either way? 


If you’re feeling some pinching, you need to regress your range of motion. This sensation usually means some type of tissue is being jammed in the joint somewhere. And you don’t want to work there because you won’t make gains. Your body will fight you and it’s just painful. So, NEVER push through pinching, even if you can get further into the range of motion.


If you’re feeling some cramping, that’s usually a GOOD thing. It’s saying that there is some unfamiliarity with the tissue in that range. Your brain doesn’t know how to really fire that stuff right so you’re cramping up because your brain is just contracting the shit out of it. Just a little bit of confusion that usually gets cleared with repeated effort. Of course, if it gets crazy, back off a little, then repeat the motion and see if it improves. 


If you’re feeling pain, that’s definitely something to regress out of. Similar to pinching, pain is a sensation your body will not make gains under. Your nervous system’s job is specifically to avoid pain and threatening situations because it’s trying to keep you alive. So regress a bit to where you don’t feel pain and it’s just work.

Also there is a big difference between work and pain. Work is difficult but doesn’t hurt. Effort is okay. Tension in the muscle and/or joint is okay. Physical pain is recognizable and pretty terrible. You can push effort and difficulty. Don’t push pain.

Unintentional Movement

When you recorded yourself did you notice any other parts of your body move besides that leg that was up? Maybe your neck, shoulders, arms, pelvis etc? If you did, there’s a good chance that when you do other movements, you hold tension in those same areas when you don’t need to. Why is that important? 

If every time you do a lunge, you extend your lower back (curve it) you are producing lumbar extension when you want HIP extension. I see this ALL the time. Lower spines become hips. Even if you go down into the lunge with the right execution, if you come up and load that lumbar by producing your force to stand up from there instead of your hip, you are continuously loading that lumbar spine. 

Most of the time, you don’t even notice. Shit, I don’t notice this extra movement sometimes either when it’s real heavy and I’m writing this blog. The point is that it’s very common. And sometimes you can’t FEEL it. Sometimes you can only see it. And sometimes it’s either way. The point is, you have to have some way to keep yourself accountable during these movements. If you don’t have someone to watch you (a coach or trainer), you need to analyze your own movement. If you want your lower back to stop being your hips, you NEED to watch for these extra movements or subconscious movements. 


Maybe you could access a pretty fair range of motion, but it was SUPER difficult to access that end range. Maybe after a bit, you had to REALLY try to get there. That says a lot as well! You want these motions to be as easily accessed as moving your fingers around. And why is it easy to move your fingers and not your hip? Because you don’t move your hip that was INTENTIONALLY very often. There’s a lot neurological unfamiliarity where your brain isn’t really sure how to get those muscles to fire and pull your hip into those ranges of motions that well. As you get busy with the work I’m going to give you later on, you’ll feel a lot better and it won’t be as difficult. 


2. Learn How To Build Tension

After you’ve assessed your hip and asked yourself those key questions/ made adjustments in your active range of motion, it’s time to learn how to build tension in that motion intentionally. 

Tension Hip IR: HERE (1st video)

Tension Hip ER: HERE (2nd video)

It’s important to understand how to build tension in those muscles so that when you’re working on IMPROVING the range of motion, you’re loading the right stuff. Make sure you’re driving your knee into the block while you rotate. 

When you internally rotate you want to also adduct the hip. (Drive toward midline of body)

When you externally rotate you want to also abduct the hip. (Drive toward outside of body)

It is INCREDIBLY important that you master these pairs. 

Here’s how I want you to go through this drill:

Imagine you have a range of effort from 1% - 100% where 100% is exerting as much effort as possible in that movement from the video. 

I want you to slowly “load” the hip at your end range of motion increasing your effort by 10% every couple of seconds. Once you increase 10%, check in with yourself:

Any pinching or pain?

If so, regress the percentage. Better? Good. No? Keep lowering.

You essentially want to find a safe place to load the hip at and work there. If 60% felt great, but 70% felt painful, 60% is your current max tension amount for your hip in whichever rotation you did. So when you pursue the improvement in the next section, you’ll now know your max pain free tension.

Identifying this % is pretty important because you can’t make gains (especially in mobility) while in pain. You’re dealing with the inner connective tissues of your hip. They’re strong af for sure, but you need to progress yourself accordingly. You probably haven’t loaded this tissue intentionally in a while, if ever. So take your time. There will be a time and place for going HAM!

After you identify your pain free range, I want you to practice ramping up from 0% to YOUR pain free max and back down. Control is everything with improving your mobility. You can probably go from 0 to 100 pretty easily, but what about back down to 0 slowly? You’ll need that ramping skill in the next section.

Once you identify your pain free max tension, lock in on that and remember how it feels as well as how to access it.

3. Let’s Improve

For this next section you’ll be learning how to actually INCREASE your range of motion for both internal and external rotation. Keep in mind that there are a TON of different ways to improve your hip rotation. For this blog I’ll be using the FRC principle of isometric loading of the joint called PAILS & RAILS. PAILS stands for progressive angular isometric loading and RAILS stands for regressive angular isometric loading.

Broken down a bit, these terms basically mean you are loading each side of the joint by pushing into an immovable surface. The progressive tissues in the context of improving hip INTERNAL rotation would be the hip external rotators of the muscles and connective tissue that help the hip rotate externally. Regressive would be the hip internal rotators. Vice versa for when you’re trying to improve hip external rotation. Progressive = Hip Internal Rotators & Regressive = Hip External Rotators. 

Now why does this work? Everytime you move, you’re speaking to your body. You’re telling it that you want to get from A to B a certain way. And your body, specifically your brain assists you in getting there (unless where you’re trying to go is threatening to your brain). The same thing happens when you do mobility training. You’re communicating with your brain telling it:

“Hey! It’s SAFE to be here. I AM STRONG HERE”. 

And as long as your brain feels safe and there isn’t any actual blockage in the joint, you’ll see gains. Neurological tightness is the inhibition due to your brain not trusting you. Your brain doesn’t trust that you can be safe in that range of motion because it knows you’re not strong there. So doing this work signals to your brain over and over and over again that you’re strong here.

Remember that tension identification/ control in step 2? Now you get to put it to use. 

Here’s your sequence for improving your mobility:

1.) 2 minute passive stretch with relaxed breathing

2.) PAILS (pushing down) ramping from 0% to 50%. Hold 50% for 20 seconds.

3.) RAILS (pulling away) holding for 20 seconds.

4.) 2 recovery breaths + a bit more passive stretch. 

5.) PAILS ramping from 50% to max intensity. Hold max for 20 seconds.

6.) RAILS (pulling away) holding for 20 seconds.

7.) 2 recovery breaths + a bit more passive stretch. Hold for 4-5 more breaths relaxing into the position.

8.) Perform 3 lift offs to end range and hold on 3 lift for 5 seconds keep breath relaxed.




4. Saving The Work

Saving the work comes at the lift offs portion of the previous step, but I wanted to give a section to it specifically to talk about the importance of execution here. When you’re training your joints and the surrounding muscles that responsible for those movements, it’s KEY that you execute with as much precision and intention as possible. Don’t just go through the motions, give each rep their own “set”. Think 1-1-1 as opposed to 1-2-3. When you think this way, it’s CHANGES THE GAME. It gives EQUAL effort to each rep so you get the most out of this shit. 

You’re basically reprogramming your brain to execute certain motions in a different way depending on how you’ve been doing them previously. That takes a lot of work. So you have to put that effort in EVERY SESSION. I can’t stress that enough. Treat each session and saving the work as an opportunity to improve a bit more.

5. Integrating The Mobility Into Your Training

The question I receive once I show someone how to improve their joints is: “How often should I do this?” 

My answer is the same: OFTEN AS SHIT

Think about this: if you’ve been moving a certain way for YEARS, using certain muscles to initiate a movement like a squat for YEARS, dominant with certain muscles/ joints for YEARS, it’ll take  A LOT of work to initiate that reprogramming. Your body likes to move how its been moving for YEARS. Did I mention YEARS? It doesn’t like change. But with consistent, progressive stress (training) you CAN make change. Consistency is going to be your biggest friend here. 

And when you’re including mobility training into your program, think about how these movements FEEL. When you train your hips, you should feel some similar sensations when you actually move and then load them with squats, lunges, etc. When you abduct and externally rotate your hips at the bottom of a squat, do you feel your glutes working? If you’re wondering what that motion is, refer to the image on the right below:

I included this image in my previous blog post and if you look closely it looks similar to your legs in the bottom of a squat! Your glutes and hips should be absorbing the force in your squats. And if they’re not, what do you think IS doing that work? Shit ya don’t want doin it. 

That’s the whole purpose behind #painfreeaesthetics. INTENTION. When you move with intention, you load the shit you want to load with weight and take the pain out of aesthetics. Don’t wait to care about this shit when you NEED to care. Be proactive and take control of things before they get out of control. You don’t have to keep re-injuring yourself. Give your joints love. Respect them and they will respect you. I promise things aren’t “better” just because your body stops hurting. It’ll come back. And when it does, it’ll come back with a vengeance. 

It’s like that bad guy everyone thought was gone from the first movie but they’re actually back as a surprise in the second movie and they’re stronger than ever. Don’t let that bad guy come back. Do it right the first time! 

Now that you have a way to improve those hips, GO GET BUSY! One of the biggest things you’ll see is how much better connected you’ll feel to your body. It’s YOUR body. No one is going to tell you how you feel in it. You need to master it and learn as much as you can about it. It’ll be worth it, I promise.

If you still need some more help, shoot me a DM on Instagram HERE, or shoot me an email HERE. Would love to help you out! 

]]> 2019-10-02T20:27:00-04:00 2019-10-02T20:28:17-04:00 5 Ways Improving Your Hip Rotation Will Help You Build More Muscle Karon Hawkins More

It has been a LONG time since I’ve written a blog. Truth be told, I got uninspired to write them. I got caught up in the views and shares and stopped doing it for the real reason: to create impact. These blogs are so powerful for those who read them and then put what they teach into practice. I’ve had multiple people message me saying the blogs were helpful and that’s why they’re here. Because even if it’s just one person, that’s impact. 

Okay, now that I’ve explained why I’m back let’s get started. Hip Rotation. It’s one of the most NEGLECTED aspects of movement nowadays. You want to squat, lunge, jump, deadlift, hip thrust etc, but you keep getting hit with injuries, pain and dysfunction in your lifting. Whether it’s an achey lower back, painful knees, or pinchy hips, something is hurting your progress. What if I told you hip rotation was the KEY to building more muscle? And I don’t just mean with helping mitigate risk for injury. 

I mean more STRENGTH and actual hypertrophy. There are numerous studies that show that with more range of motion, hypertrophy is increased. You are taking your muscles and joints through a greater range of motion, loading MORE muscles and thereby GROWING more muscle. 

So how does hip rotation fit into all this? 

Here’s 5 ways hip rotation will help you build MORE muscle: 

1. The Most Obvious: Great Mobility In Your Hips = Less Injuries

If you’re injured CONSTANTLY, in pain CONSTANTLY and have to take breaks from training often, you will NOT build muscle. To build muscle you need to progressively overload your muscles to continue to break them down to be re-built larger with either more intensity (heavier weights) more volume (reps + sets) or frequency (more sessions per week for specific muscle group). But if you keep hurting yourself, you’re not going to build ANYTHING as you will not be able to continue progressive overload. 

I like to use a bucket analogy when describing injuries. Think of each of your joints as a bucket with a certain amount of water it can hold. Let’s say that the water would be load or some sort of weight put on that joint. Each joint on your body will inherently have a different size bucket depending on how you’ve lived your life, previous injuries, training programs, mobility work etc. If one of these buckets takes on too much water, that is when you have an injury. Each joint has a certain capacity or max amount of water or load that it can hold. 

Mobility training (improving hip rotation specifically in this case) will INCREASE the size of your bucket. That’s why some people can do crazy things with their joints while others can’t. Their buckets are just different sizes. Genetics do play a role to a degree (think people are hypermobile), but the human body is incredibly adaptive and can be shaped based upon how you treat it most of the time.

This first reason is the most obvious one, but it still needs to be said. 

2. You’ll Actually Be Loading The Muscles You Want To

Ever have trouble FEELING your training? What I mean is, you’re doing a lunge or squat and one leg doesn’t really feel much while the other leg is firing like crazy? Then a few days later you have lower back pain on that same side that wasn’t really doing much in your training? There’s a good chance that the load of the weight you were squatting wasn’t be applied to the right stuff. When you lift pretty heavy 1-3 rep range (maybe even up to 5) you may not FEEL as much because your central nervous system will be fatigued as opposed to your actual muscles being fatigued. And because your central nervous is responsible for sending a strong ass signal to your muscles to get them to contract in a heavy ass lift, if that signal is weak, your lift won’t happen. But if you’re at a decently higher rep range (6 - 20+) you should feel some stuff. But if those previous questions applied to you, the weight may not be being moved by the right muscles/joints. 

Let me explain.

Of course, there’s weight on your back so the muscles in your leg are going to be loaded in some capacity. HOWEVER, the muscles/ joints that INITIATE your lifts may not be what you want them to be. And those muscles take on the blunt load of each lift. For instance in a squat, the biggest issue I see, usually in one hip specifically, is that in an attempt to produce hip extension, (or using your glutes to come out of a squat) lumbar extension (or your lower back curving) usually happens instead. And as I said, it's usually one side that does this compensation. 

And what happens when your lower back goes into extension instead of your hips? Other muscles/ joints are being loaded to finish your lift instead of the muscles/ joints you ACTUALLY want. What does this lead to? 

Adaptation. Your body is going to get from point A to point B however it needs to. That path may not always be the most efficient. But your body will get you there. Overtime as you continue to ask really small muscles to accomplish pretty large tasks (your small quadratus lumborum muscle to get you out of the bottom of your squat instead of your big glute muscle) these muscles get overworked and overloaded. And again, your body is smart and adaptive. It’ll get you to where you’re trying to get it, but it may not feel the greatest over time. Through time and repeated squats and movements out of deep hip flexion (or where your knees are close to your chest closing the angle between your torso and your legs) with this compensation a ton of other dysfunctional movement follows. 

Your brain essentially RE-LEARNS how to accomplish “hip extension”. It changes where it sends signals to so that other muscles fibers and tissue can accomplish that task. Your brain calls all the stuff around the glute to do what the glute SHOULD be able to do on it’s own. So you won’t actually grow your glutes at all. Your supporting muscles become the main movers in your exercises and those get strong as fuck, but they also get TIGHT as fuck because they’re not meant to do what you’re asking them to do  and cause a ton of other low back issues and potentially pain.

And if you’re not sure what happens next, refer to reason #1!

3. You’ll Increase Your Range Of Motion In Every Lift You Do

What is the hip joint? What does it actually mean to be a joint? The hip joint is a ball and socket joint, meaning the top of a bone (in this case your femur) sits in the socket (in this case your pelvis) to create the hip joint. So a joint is the intersection of two bones that then creates a specific type of movement. These bones are held together by ligaments which is a thick connective tissue that (like muscles) can actually be made stronger. I’ll get to connective tissues a bit later, but just wanted to introduce what a joint is and how it’s formed real quick.

So when you squat, lunge or do any movement that requires hip flexion, a linear motion of the hip, did you know your hip actually also rotates? Check this out:


Does that position on the right look familiar? 

How bout now? Yeah. It’s the bottom of a squat. You’ve probably heard the queue “knees out” before right? When you’re coming up from your squat and everyone is yelling that at you. But no matter how hard you push out, you can’t go any farther. And you don’t really feel your glutes that much. By the way, that's my guy Dr. Aaron Horschig also known as @SquatUniversity on Instagram. He also just hit 1 million followers on the gram so congrats to you if you're reading this Dr. Horschig! I had him on my podcast a while back and we talked a lot about mobility and improving your squat. Check that out HERE.

But anyway, what you’re really being asked when people say "knees out" is to externally rotate and abduct (move your legs away from the center of your body) instead of knees out. But if you can’t perform these two motions in the squat specifically, your range of motion will be limited and your ability to remain stable as you come out of the bottom will also be limited. And I talked about how range of motion leads to more hypertrophy, so if you’re not taking the joint through its full range, you’re missing out. 

I highly recommend trying both movements on your back and seeing how they feel. Usually I recommend keeping the knee in line with the hip as well. If those positions feel weird, sketchy and painful, whenever you do leg day, you’re loading that sketchy shit with heavy weight. 

So learning how to and then IMPROVING your hip’s ability to rotate will literally help you build more muscle because you’ll squat deeper, be more stable so you’ll be able to output more force through your hips and you’ll actually be able to keep your “knees out”. And you won’t load sketchy shit anymore also!

Hip Internal Rotation on the other hand is JUST as important. There are studies that identify limited hip internal rotation as a HUGE risk factor for injury, knee pain and low back pain. While most of these studies use athletes as their subjects, the findings are still very relevant. Here’s one on the connection between limited hip internal/external rotation and ACL tears. I know this section is about range of motion, but I wanted to plug a significant systematic review that analyzed 11 studies for a total 959 test subjects. The larger the population and studies observed, the more significant the conclusions/ findings usually are. 

Anyways, when hip internal rotation is limited, the capsular space or the amount of room the head of your femur (leg bone) has to rotate is limited. So if the capsule space is limited, not only is your internal rotation limited, but EVERY other motion you’re trying to do is also limited. That means less range of motion in your squats, lunges etc. So if you want to build more muscle in your legs by sinking deeper in your movements, hip internal rotation needs to also be a focus. And what you’ll find is that your linear movements like hip flexion and extension, tend to improve because you improve the rotation. More capsule space means more movement in every direction!

4. You Increase The Strength and Resilience Of Your Tendons, Ligaments & Cartilage

You are only as strong as your weakest links. What are the most common injuries? Some kind of issue with your tendons, cartilage and ligaments. Torn ACL, Worn Down Cartilage, Overused Tendons etc. But when you train rotation of your hips specifically you not only strengthen the muscles associated with the motions, you also strengthen the connective tissues as well. Especially when you train at your end range of motions for rotation, you are loading these tissues in ways you probably haven’t before. 

These tissues are not as fragile as you think they are. They do a lot of work to help your body move and build muscle. But if they are not targeted specifically, they’ll be left behind until something goes wrong in a lift and they get wrecked. They have the capacity to adapt just like your muscles do. Here’s a really cool article about the adaptive capability of your connective tissues with specific training: HERE.

5. You Can Move Without Fear

Often times so many people are afraid to try certain movements because they’re afraid that their joints are going to collapse on the spot. When you take the time to build strong, resilient joints, you build CONFIDENCE in your movement and remove the fear. There’s a real science to how you perceive your training and the impact it has on your execution of it. If you have a history of hip, knee, low back or any kind of pain from a specific movement, the way you execute that movement is completely changed. By working on your mobility, specifically rotation, you restore your confidence in your ability to move without pain. I like to tell this story when writing or talking about this topic specifically. 

A friend of mine that goes by D.J. or @strongcamps on Instagram told me this story on the podcast I did with him and I’ll never forget it. A new client came in to work with him. One of the first things she said was that she couldn’t deadlift. She’d hurt herself numerous times deadlifting and just didn’t want to do it at all. D.J. acknowledged the previous issues and said they’d modify everything to make sure her back was okay throughout the session. The first exercise he said to do was “pick up that sandbag and press it over your head”. The client walked over, picked it up and pressed it over her head a few times. After a set or two that, he said to her, “Okay, go deadlift that sandbag”. She got super nervous and then started doing all these preparatory movements, making sure her back was flat, core tight, knees out, chin tucked, then tried to lift and said “AH, yeah I can’t do that, it hurts my back.” 

You see what I mean? A deadlift is basically just picking some shit off the ground and putting it down in its most basic form. The client had to “deadlift” the sandbag to then press it over her head. But when she wasn’t thinking deadlift, she just picked it up no problem. Her previous injuries and issues with a specific exercise COMPLETELY changed the way she performed said exercise.

When you restore confidence that your joints will do what they’re designed to do, you’ll be comfortable lifting heavy and thus progressively overloading your muscles to get big and strong. Your headspace around your training matters so damn much. I could make a whole list on the mental portion of training by itself to be honest. But I’ll save that for another day. 

So hopefully by now you see the importance of hip rotation for building muscle. Mobility training is strength training. Build strong ass joints to build strong ass muscles. If you need some help structuring your mobility training, shoot me a message on Instagram @coachkronic or email me: . Looking forward to hearing from you! 

In the next blog post, I'll show you HOW to improve hip rotation!

]]> 2019-03-30T12:52:00-04:00 2019-03-30T12:54:05-04:00 Preparing Your Body For Fat Loss This Summer Karon Hawkins More

So all week I’ve been stressing the importance of not just cutting calories because it’s almost summer time and you wanna look good. It’s important to know if your body is PREPARED to cut. If it’s not you’ll leave yourself in an awful state afterwards and you’ll end up in this exact same position you’re in right now: tired, lethargic, low energy and craving all the foods. What it there was a way out of this eternal cycle of chronic fatigue? What if there was a way you’d never have to panic and abruptly cut for summer because you’d know exactly what to do, when to do it and for how long?

I’m here to tell you that there is a way. I’m here to show you that way. You don’t need to panic anymore. This method takes time and it might not make sense at first, but if you’re reading this article, you probably have tried everything else! So with that being said, let’s jump in.

When you’re looking to cut calories there are a few variables that NEED to be in check non-negotiable before you are okay to do so:

  1. Training & Gym Performance
  2. Sleep Quality
  3. Hunger
  4. Recovery
  5. Motivation
  6. Stress
  7. Mood
  8. Sex Drive

Training & Gym Performance

How are you performing in the gym? Are you progressing in strength? Are you pulling, pushing, squatting and carrying more weight? Are you burning out before your workout is over? Do you feel tired throughout your workout?

If you are not performing well in the gym, plateauing on your lifts or just feel like shit in general at the gym, you’re probably not eating enough. Chances are you need more food. You need to FUEL your body with the stuff it needs to use during your workouts. If you can’t crush your workouts and progress in strength, you WILL NOT build muscle. If you can’t build muscle, you can’t burn fat as effectively. Hello plateaus.

Sleep Quality

Is your sleep hot garbage? Can you not stay asleep for more than 5 hours? Are you tossing and turning in your sleep often? Do you go to sleep tired and wake up even MORE tired? You may not be eating enough. Sleep is the #1 recovery modality. It is THE most important form of recovery your body needs in order for fat loss to happen. If you don’t sleep well, your fat loss journey WILL hit a brick wall. And a pretty big one at that. When you chronically neglect your sleep your cortisol levels will rise which can lead to more fat gain, a decrease in performance (30-40% in fact), inflammation and a shitty lethargic state 24/7. If you can’t perform in the gym and you feel tired all the time, you’re not going to want to go to the gym, let alone lift heavy. Don’t neglect your sleep, it may be the missing piece to seeing that scale go down.


What’s your hunger like? Are you always craving foods like sweets, pizza, etc? Do you have no appetite at all? Monitor what your hunger levels are like, if they’re super low and you feel no desire to eat at all, that may be a sign of metabolic adaptation where your prolonged under eating has decreased your resting metabolism and your body doesn’t need as much energy to function! If this situation is you, you gotta feed your body.


Do you feel sore as shit, achey or otherwise in pain all the time? Do you feel super stiff and immobile? Joint pain? Your under eating is COMPLETELY contributing to these issues. When you under eat, especially on protein, your muscles and BONES cannot rebuild and recover. Chronic under eating leads to poor recovery and thus your muscles DO NOT grow. If you can’t grow those muscles, hello plateaus and no fat loss.


Do you feel excited to get busy in the gym? Do you feel inspired by your journey? Motivation is DEFINITELY going to fluctuate a lot and I actually don’t like to rely on motivation too much. However, if you always feel unmotivated 24/7, under eating can contribute to this state of being.


Are you stressed out all the time? “Tired and wired”? Under eating, specifically carbs, can contribute to high stress levels. If you’re consistently stressed out, it feeds into impacting all the biofeedback markers heavily which as I said before, can contribute to fat gain. Your under fed body is trying to do all it can to function optimally. If that’s the case you’ll hold onto as much fat as you can to “survive”. I put that in quotes because you’re not going to die obviously. Your body is a very smart, adaptable machine, but it can function SO much better when stress isn’t consistent.


Did you know under eating impacts your mood? Your gut has a large impact on your mood and how you feel. Think about the gut as a second brain in your body and for that to function optimally, you need to feed it adequate amounts of high quality food often. So by under eating or eating sub par food consistently, you can impact your mood. It can actually make your mood quite sporadic. So if you’re constantly moody and feeling differently often, you’re probably under eating. And let’s be real, who wants to walk around in a shitty mood all the time?

Sex Drive

For those of you with partners, impotence and sexual dysfunction can be prevalent if you’re under eating. Your sexual drive will decrease should you not feed your body adequately. Well fed peeps perform well in MULTIPLE ways ;). So EAT!

So you have all these different indicators to use to see how your nutrition is fairing for your body. If these are doing well you’re probably eating enough. I like to use a 1-10 scale to rate these areas.

1 would mean shit is just awful. If that’s the case something needs to change.

10 would be this area is EXCELLENT. Everything is going right with this one.

The best way to build these variables up is to track your average daily calorie and macronutrient intake over 3-5 days. Eat as you would normally. Don’t try to eat “healthily” and bias the results. It’s important for your next steps that you understand what your current intake habits are.

So after you track those 3-5 days answer these questions:

How many calories do you eat on average?

How many grams of protein do you eat on average?

How many grams of carbs do you eat on average?

How many grams of fat do you eat on average?

Once you calculate those things you need to see how those numbers stack up to what you need. Here’s how to do that:

Calories Needed:

If you want to go into a cut without feeling like shit after and ending up in a worse state than before, you need to cut from your calculated maintenance calories. An easy way to calculate your maintenance is to first multiple your bodyweight by 10 as a good starting point. This amount of calories will be your RMR or Resting Metabolic Rate which is the amount of calories your body needs to function optimally. From that point you use an activity multiplier to get to your maintenance calories. Here’s an example:

Say someone weighs 160lbs.

RMR = 160 x 10 = 1600 Calories

Activity Multipliers:

Sedentary (little to no exercise) = 1.3

Lightly Active (1-3 times a week of light exercise) = 1.375

Moderately Active (3-5 times a week of moderate exercise) = 1.55

Very Active (6-7 times a week of intense exercise) = 1.725

Extremely Active (6-7 times a week of intense exercise & physically active occupation) = 1.9

Sedentary = 1600 x 1.3 = 2080

Lightly Active = 1600 x 1.375 = 2200

Moderately Active = 1600 x 1.55 = 2480

Very Active = 1600 x 1.725 = 2760

Extremely Active = 1600 x 1.9 = 3040

Again, these are just rough estimates, but they’re great starting points. So if your average calories work out to be your rough estimated maintenance then you can skip reverse dieting up to maintenance because you’re already there!

However, if you are under eating, you need to slowly increase your calories until you hit that maintenance level and then SIT THERE for a few weeks. At least 2. I recommend a month, but with summer around the corner, that’d be hard to do. An easy way to reverse diet is to add 50 -100 calories to your daily intake every week until you hit maintenance. You MAY gain some weight along the way but it will be necessary. Don’t freak out. And honestly I wouldn’t even look at the scale during this process. Unless you have a history of serious metabolic adaptation and you see extreme weight gains (10lbs up or more) you gotta just let the process take hold an dbe in it for the long run. Or you could reach out to me and I can help you :).

Macros Needed:

Now that you know how many calories you need to eat, how much of each macronutrient do you need to eat?


A great starting point for protein consumption is .8g/lb of bodyweight.

Let’s use our 160lb friend from earlier:

160 x .8 = 128g of protein

Another easy way if you know your body fat % is to subtract that amount of body fat from your BW and use that as your protein intake.

Let’s say our 160lb friend is 20% body fat. That means 80% of the rest of the weight is Lean Body Mass.

160 - 32 (20% of 160) = 128g of protein

Sometimes you’ll get lucky and they both end up being the same. But that doesn’t always happen. In general they’re both pretty viable!


Easy. 25 - 35% of the total calories consumed needs to come from fat. So let’s say our 160lb friend is lightly active and they need 2200 calories for maintenance.

So they would need between 550 - 770 calories to be from fat. That translates to 61 - 86g of fat.


Easy as well: just fill in what’s left.

So let’s use our 160lb friend again with them being lightly active. Here would be the maintenance macros:

Protein: 128g

Fat: 74g (middle point of range)

Carbs: 255g

You’re probably saying “HOLY SHIT 255G OF CARBS ARE YOU NUTS?


That’s really what ya need! You can offset some of those carbs by putting more grams into protein. It’s completely okay to eat more protein. But carbs will be the main fluctuator when you’re cutting after sitting at maintenance for a few weeks.

If you follow this, you WILL see changes. Especially if you pair that with an awesome training program, you will see some pretty phenomenal changes in your body. Going back to your biofeedback variables (sleep, performance, recovery, etc) ALL OF THOSE will improve during this process. And it’s important to monitor them throughout.

I like to track these markers weekly with my clients so we can compare two weeks on our bi-weekly calls. You can then correlate decrease in any of these markers with what went on that week. Because you better believe that life events definitely impact these areas of your life. If you lose your job that’s going to impact your stress, mood and maybe even your sleep because you’re worried about finding another job to pay your bills, support your family etc. Learning how to mitigate that stress, especially in periods like that, is incredibly important for preparing yourself for fat loss and managing these markers.

Tracking these things are WAY more important than the scale right now. Build your biofeedback up and THEN the scale will follow when it’s time to cut. You’ll be lifting more weight in the gym, you’ll have more energy, less cravings, better sleep and less stress. You’ll feel amazing at this maintenance intake!

Once you sit at the point for a few weeks, it’ll be time to cut. But that’ll be for the next blog :).

If you’re still looking for more help after this blog, please reach out to me and set up a free 30 minute call and we can strategize how you can implement this guideline! Looking forward to hearing from you!

]]> 2019-03-21T14:50:00-04:00 2019-03-21T14:51:13-04:00 3 Tips For Recovering From an Injury Karon Hawkins More

Injuries suck. They leave you in pain, limited in motion (depending on the injury) and things don’t work quite right afterwards. The usual response to an injury is to ice it, wrap it, pop a pill or two and keep it moving.

But does that really address the issue? Does that really build a defense against further injury? Answer: It doesn’t. It sets you up for a re-injury later down the line. The truth is: every time you get injured that tissue surrounding that joint doesn’t quite work the same. It doesn’t quite function the same. And when I say tissue, I don’t just mean muscles. I mean the tendons, ligaments and cartilage as well! Like muscles, these tissues can be loaded and be made stronger. They can be stressed and create adaptation to help defend you against this chaotic world we live in.

Second truth: you CANNOT prevent injury. You simply can’t. Shit happens and when it does you can’t predict it. The best thing you can do is increase your defenses and create resilient joints and tissue so that when injuries do happen, you can bounce back as quickly as you fell down. Injury MITIGATION is where it’s at. Preparing your body as best as you can is the only way you help yourself bounce back from injuries when they eventually do happen.

So let’s dive into these 3 tips.

The first is THE most important. You can’t make changes and build defenses if you don’t where the holes in your back line are.


The assessment is THE first step to injury mitigation because it gives you an overview of what’s going on with your body. You can’t change your position if you don’t first know where you’re at. So with that being said, your first tip is to get assessed by a professional who specializes in making people move nice. A physical therapist, a trainer (mobility focused) or someone else that is specifically catered to helping people improve their movement. When you decide to go to that person to get assessed make sure you tell them what’s going on with you. Tell them about your injuries, limitations and pains you have. They should ask you all of these things, but I just wanna make sure you get your money’s worth. The professional needs to know what prior issues you have to adjust the assessment appropriately.

Throughout the process they should always be checking in with you to see how things feel. They should not just rely on what they see. Make sure you’re very open about how the positions they put you in and motions they ask you to do FEEL. Sometimes your “form” can be perfect but that doesn’t mean you won’t experience pain or discomfort. I see that all the time. A client with have a picture perfect squat, but feel a pinch or tightness in one specific hip. Because they think it’s normal to feel that they won’t say anything. But I’ll inquire and ask if they feel any pinching, pulling, pain or discomfort and they’ll usually go “oh, yeah in my…[insert joint and sensation]”. It’s not your job to know why things are the way they are [yet], but don’t ignore any kind of pains and discomfort you feel.

Be aware of what’s going on. That will be the key for the professional to give you an accurate diagnosis or movement plan following the assessment to get you feeling amazing! Ask a lot of questions. Be inquisitive about your body. The better you understand your body, the better off you’ll be in the future. Awareness is 90% of the battle.

If you don’t feel like doing the leg work, schedule a call with me here and I can assess you digitally. My assessments are very thorough and I explain the relevance of each finding in relation to whatever your goals are. Following the assessment I can also develop a mobility plan for you to start seeing those movement gains you’re looking for to recover from those injuries!

Whatever you choose to do, you’ll have the knowledge to go into your life doing the best movements and developing the best habits for your results. So now that you know what’s up with your body, now what do you do?


After you know what’s going on and you have a plan to get busy, you HAVE to make the time to get busy. These adaptations take time. I’m talking weeks and even months. You may be on a plan for 8 weeks and in weeks 7-8 you don’t really see any changes. It could be in that 8th week where you really see shit change and function better. But if you don’t keep up the work until then, you’ll see limited and minimal gains. When you get injured you have to first recover to the baseline BEFORE the injury and THEN you can improve after that. So you have some leg work ahead of you.

But the only way to truly recover from that injury is to simply put the work in. Even on a shitty plan you’ll still see results. Why? Because the stress you’re applying to the tissues will still (in the beginning) force adaptation and thus an increase in resilience/ strength. But you’ll never build that resilience if you don’t put in the work. Patience is definitely a virtue. But trust me, it IS rewarded. It just takes time. 

Getting more mobile after an injury is like ANYTHING that takes time and consistent to accomplish: it’s simple, but NOT easy. Simple meaning you know exactly what to do, how long to do it for, and when to do it. But not easy because it’s hard to stay on track. But here’s the key for remembering why you’re doing: pain fucking sucks. Pain doesn’t have to be a part of your life, but it takes time to get out of pain depending on what’s going on with your body. I know it seems “fine” now, but when the things you take for granted aren’t available to you, you’ll understand how severe injuries can get. Things like reaching for a cabinet, opening a door, putting on a backpack or taking off a shirt get difficult and painful. You’ll get that painful realization of “oh shit, that really hurts” and then you’ll be gung ho on mobility and taking those actions. But you can potentially prevent that moment from happening if you put the work in!

And I’m not trying to scare you into action. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to help you treat your body right and give it the love it needs. For years I neglected mobility and let my injuries “heal” with rest and ice. Then I would try to get back to lifting and my joints would disagree with me. In fact, they would fight against me and give me pain. So don’t make my mistakes, take action and get busy on your results as soon as you can. When you’re feeling freaking amazing and your joints are buttery, you’ll thank me later!

So now that you know what’s up and what to do with it, what’s next? The final step is adjustment.


The final step to recovering from an injury and mitigating the risk for further risk is to use all the information you gained in the assessment to adjust program. Take a hard look at your program and see what movements don’t quite match up with your current mobility based on the injury you’re recovering from and what other limitations you may have. This analysis is SO key to continuing to progress in your program without guaranteeing more issues down the line. Because be very clear: I think lifting weights is a GREAT thing. Helps you build strong muscles and bones. BUT, if you don’t have the necessary mobility to accomplish these movements, you’re only setting yourself up for further injury down the line.

Remember: there is no ONE exercise or movement that can’t be modified to your mobility to accomplish the SAME goal you had with the previous modality.

You have time on your side. As you rebuild your joints and recover from your injury, you can still lift! Longevity is the key. No need to rush your gains or do a certain lift. So if you can’t do conventional deadlifts because your hamstrings are too tight at the moment, change the modality to a hex bar deadlift that doesn’t need as much mobility there and will protect your back while you build your mobility. This will still allow you to perform the SAME movement without putting your body at risk for FURTHER injury.

The big three lifts (deadlift, squat, bench) have so many different variations that you never HAVE to do any of them. That attachment to a certain movement if you don’t have the prerequisites for them, will again lead to injury or building compromised strength on top of compensations. This type of strength isn’t REAL strength, it’s temporary until shit breaks down and you can’t lift at all. Don’t let it get there.

So I want to take you through assessing a certain motion and looking at all the prerequisites a movement needs to be performed. It’s going to be detailed and it’s going to seem excessive, but it’s 100% necessary if you wanna lift for longer than a few months without having to stop for an injury.

Let’s look at the back squat:

1.) Hip Flexion, Hip Internal Rotation

When you lower into a squat the angle between your legs and torso gets smaller. This is called hip flexion. In order to accomplish this position with control, you need strong hip flexors. If you can’t pull your knees past hip level into deep hip flexion with strength, there’s NO way you’ll be able to do that in the loaded deep squat. Weakness and lack of mobility in this area tends to result in a pinchy sensation in the front of the hip.

You also need internal rotation of the hip as you descend into the squat. Lack of internal rotation usually results in a huge turnout of the feet to help the hips open up because they get inhibited by a lack of space to rotate. Turning out the feet helps most people get over this. But if you had more hip IR you would get more power through your hips and wouldn’t need to turn out as much.

2.) Ankle Dorsiflexion

The whole knee over toe is bad for you is incorrect. You NEED your knees to travel over your toes in the squat. Ankle Dorsiflexion is what’s going on here. But tight and weak ankles usually lead to the knees stopping short of adequate dorsiflexion to sink deeper into the squat. This lack of mobility in the ankle usually leads to a wider stance and turned out feet to compensate.

3.) Knee Flexion

Just like your hip angle, your knee angle gets smaller. This motion is called knee flexion. If you don’t have strength in this position, you won’t have stability and control as you descend. It’s important to train this position and improve hamstring functionality in this position to ensure that you can complete a squat without popping, pulling or pain in the knees.

4.) Thoracic Extension

Your T-Spine is such a crucial part of the squat. Being able to extend your Thoracic Spine during the descent of the squat helps keep a more upright position protecting your lower back from damage long term. If you can’t do this position, you’ll usually have a rounded back, a bent over chest position, or a flared rib cage during the squat. All of those positions are no bueno long term for heavy squats.

5.) Shoulder External Rotation + Shoulder Extension

Creating that shelf on the back for the barbell to rest on as you descend into the squat is from being able to engage all the muscles on your upper back. If you can’t achieve adequate external rotation of the shoulder + extension you’ll most likely end up bending your wrists, feeling tension and pain on the top of the shoulders where the bar is resting, or have some pain in the arms. Your body will perform the motions you tell it to. It’s just that these positions may not always be achieved in the most efficient manner.

So looking at all these positions, can your body do each of these positions individually, with strength and control? If the answer is no, you NEED to modify your program. Am I telling you can’t squat all together? Of course, not. You just need to modify it so that you don’t need to have ALL of these prerequisites.

A lot of the time, people struggle to get the shoulders in the right position and the thoracic spine is tight from a lot of sitting. Okay! While we work on that stuff, let’s do some Goblet Squats:

This modality is WAY easier on the upper spine and shoulders but still allows you to squat heavy with a big ass dumbbell while you work on that mobility. So there’s always a way to accomplish the goal of a stronger squat, bigger legs, or whatever you’re looking to do with the squat without HAVING to back squat specifically.

So by now you can see how important mobility is for mitigating your risk of injury. While you recover from your current injury (if you have one) look at your current mobility routine. Is it just stretching? Is it really making changes that last for more than a day? Then look at your training program. Do you have all the prerequisites to perform a back squat? Do you have all the prerequisites to accomplish those movements?  If the answer to any of those questions I just asked is a no, something needs to change. You’ll continue to be trapped in this injured, somewhat recovered back to injured state forever. You’ll never truly be 100%.

If you need some help structuring your program based on your mobility, recovering from an injury past “healed”, sign up for a consultation call here and we can talk about how to get you to 100%!

Looking forward to hearing from you! 

]]> 2019-03-14T15:09:00-04:00 2019-03-14T15:10:04-04:00 Awareness For Fat Loss In 3 Steps Karon Hawkins More

With any change you’re trying to make awareness is always the first step. Becoming aware of what you’re currently doing will help you transition into what you want to be doing for the goals you have. This method applies with any change you’re looking to make. Whether it be fat loss, building muscle or just general health, awareness will always be your first step. It’s easy to get used to living a certain lifestyle and unless you tune into your daily choices and habits, you’ll never make change. For this article specifically, I’ll be talking about fat loss and how to get into that caloric deficit to lose fat.

At the end of the day calories will always be king when it comes to fat loss. Doesn’t matter how much you workout. If you’re still consuming more calories than you’re burning you will ALWAYS gain weight. That’s science and math applied. We can’t change that. HOWEVER, we can make small changes to our daily choices to bring us closer to that deficit. So how do we build awareness around what we eat? Two words: TRACK IT! Tracking your food is the most accurate way to build awareness around what you’re putting into your body. You’ll learn how many calories you’re putting into your body as well as the macros associated with those calories. Long term you’ll want to not just optimize the amount of calories you put into your body, but also the macronutrient composition of those calories. In short, you’ll want to know how many grams of protein, carbs, and fat you put into your body daily.

(But more on macros that later)

For now let’s look at how you can start tracking and building that awareness for the fat loss you want!

Step 1: Install MyFitnessPal & Don’t Change A Thing

MyFitnessPal will be the main tool you’ll be using to track your food along this journey. You’ll only be tracking for 5 days. That’s it. Five days gives a decent idea of what you typically eat within a week. We rarely deviate THAT much week to week unless there are holidays, vacations etc during the week. If you have Facebook, you can make an account in a few seconds and get to tracking! If you can think it, you can probably track it.

With each meal make sure you enter the food in whatever way you prepared it. So for instance, if you were inputting chicken that you grilled, don’t put in Chicken Breast for 4oz. That would enter RAW chicken into the app. Make sure you put “Grilled Chicken” into the app for tracking. The same would go for rice, broccoli, etc. Make sure you put “cooked white rice” or “baked broccoli”. When you prepare your food, the caloric amount increases per serving so it’s really important to enter it this way.

While you’re tracking, it’s important to NOT to change how you eat AT ALL.


Because you don’t want to bias the tracking based upon a drastic lifestyle you’re adapting for this week. You want to track exactly how you would eat on a normal day.

Remember: your first goal is building awareness on your current habits.

Once you analyze your current habits, you can build a plan to make those changes (don’t worry I gotchu).  It’s also important not to feel bad if you notice things like “wow, I didn’t realize I was eating that much ice cream” or “wow, I didn’t realize that had that much sugar in it”.

It’s okay.

The whole reason you’re embarking on this journey is to MAKE those discoveries.

You WANT those moments to happen. Those moments are GOLDEN. Those moments will help clue you into what habits you need to alleviate and eventually break to get results. Doesn’t mean you have to stop eating ice cream all together. It just means you will be changing HOW you eat it. It’s important not to act on guilt and fear. When you’re fearful and guilty you make rash decisions that are based upon the belief that that what you fear will happen. By acting on that fear you will almost guarantee it to come true.

Let’s talk about why that is.


Let’s say your fear is: “Eating ice cream will make me fat”


When you stop eating ice cream or something else you really enjoy all together and go cold turkey, you think about it WAY more. You used to eat this thing everyday or every other day or whatever your frequency was. It was a part of your life. Because it’s now gone completely it will be on your mind. Eventually you’ll cave and BINGE like crazy on ice cream and eat way more than you normally would. When you do that, you’re increasing the amount of calories you’re intaking in comparison to your normal consumption amount. Your portion doubles or triples in size. Do that twice in a week  and yes, it will make you fat, eventually. You’ll most certainly tip that caloric balance in favor of weight gain. So by acting out of fear and 100% cutting out what you love, you guaranteed yourself a binge later and what you feared came true (ish). One onset of weight gain won’t make you fat, but continuing in that binge and restrict pattern certainly will.

So you NEED to just track and eat how you normally would. You’ll be able to combat some of the habits later on when you’ve accepted them. Accept what you eat and how you eat. That’ll be the only way to move forward.

Five days passes and you’ve tracked your food. Now what? Let’s move into step 2: analysis

Step 2: Analysis

First off, pat yourself on the back. You’ve tracked your food for 5 days in a row. That’s great! Most people don’t make it to 2 days. But you’re committed. You’re serious. You’re ready to make changes. Now it’s time to take a look at your findings.

Find the average calories consumed over the five days.

Now head to this Maintenance Calorie Calculator and calculate your estimated Maintenance Calories. It’s not 100% perfect but it’s a good starting place.

You may be saying, woah, I’m eating way under that. And that means you are in fact under eating. How can you be under eating but not be losing weight?


Enter Metabolic Adaptation.

If you under eat for a substantial amount of time your metabolism slows down to compensate for your current caloric intake. Your resting metabolic rate is what I’m referring to. That’s the amount of calories your body needs to consume to just operate and be a human. That doesn’t mean it’s enough to exercise and lift and such, just to wake up and live.

And sure you can continue to cut down deep into a deficit, but your body WILL fight against you. Operating on such few calories is a recipe for disaster. Not only does eating this little make it very difficult to lose weight long term, but your hormones get WRECKED. Your sleep, recovery, performance in the gym, stress and cravings all suffer when you under eat that much. A rough estimate for your resting metabolic rate is your bodyweight x 10. If you find that you’re under eating at this amount, you NEED to make changes. The best approach would be a reverse diet. That essentially means you’re slowly (week by week) increasing your calories little by little until you get to your maintenance calories. You can up your caloric intake by at little as 50 calories per week. Doesn’t have to be anything crazy.

Once you get to your maintenance level calories, then you can safely cut your calories without ruining your metabolism and your hormones.

If you are in fact over eating, then go the other way. In which you slowly take out little bits and pieces here and there week by week to get into a slight deficit. Start with the easy, low hanging fruit: sugary, calorically loaded sauces/ dressings, coffees with all the extra stuff and the extra morning pastries at work. Those are the easier ones to take care of. Instead of using the regular sauces, look for a lighter option with less sugar. Instead of a vanilla frappe coffee with mocha whip cream and chocolate sprinkles, a black coffee is the easiest calorie cutting option. That’s honestly probably 2-300 calories right there. But if you’re not into black coffee then slowly reduce the toppings and portion sizes of your morning coffee to reduce the calories consumed. Not only are these coffee drinks loaded with extra empty calories, they also spike your blood sugar and usually make you pretty hungry soon after. So you’ll end up eating ever more at work. These options typically aren’t the best unfortunately and are usually sugar loaded (that danish you were eyeing last week).

Queue more hunger spikes throughout the day!

Once you get a nice system for how you’re going to reduce or increase your calories you can take step 3: ACTION.

Step 3: ACTION!

You know what’s going on now. You see what your current habits are. So now it’s time to take ACTION. Don’t just read this and continue doing the same stuff (over OR under eating). Take those small steps toward your goals like I said in the last step!

So I’m going to give you a good starting action step using macros! (told you I gotchu)

I’ll give you the optimal amount for each macro regardless of what your current situation is (over OR undereating)



Two ways

  1. (Your bodyweight) X (.8) = Grams of Protein
  2. 1g per lb of Lean Body Mass = Grams of Protein

For number 2 if you know your body fat % you would feed the other percentage that’s not fat. So if you weigh 170lbs and are 20% body fat, you would find your protein amount doing this equation:

(Method 2) 170 - 34 (20% that’s not LBM) = 136g protein (544 calories)

(Method 1) 170 X .8 = 136g protein (544 calories)

1g Protein = 4kcal

136 x 4 = 544 calories

In this scenario they’re equivalent. Won’t always be that way, but the .8 method is a  pretty good starting point if you don’t know your bf%.


The amount of fat you should eat should range between 20% and 35%. In my experience with my online clients, 30 - 35% is usually much more realistic. It’s pretty tough to find low fat protein options unless you eat chicken breast and ground turkey all day. Oof.

So let’s say you need 2000 calories a day.

I’ll use 30% here.

(2000 X .3) = 600 calories from fat

Now we divide that by 9 (since there’s 9kcal per gram of fat)


600/9 ~ 67g

After calories are taken care of, adequate fat amounts will help regulate your hormones and micronutrient (Vitamins ADEK) absorption.


Simple: they just fill in the rest!

So let’s say you needed 2000 calories.

Protein would be (using the 170lb 20% fat example from before): 136g (544 calories)

Fat: 67g (600 calories)

544 + 600 = 1144

2000 - 1144 = 856

856/4 = 214g

So the final macros optimal macronutrient count would be:

Protein: 136g

Fat: 67g

Carbs: 214g

That would equal 2000 calories.

So you know how to get to your desired caloric intake amount. Let’s review:

  1. You know how to build awareness around what you eat.
  2. You know how to take steps toward eating the right amount of calories for you specifically.
  3. You know the macronutrient breakdown you need specifically.

The only step left is to implement. You have the tools! Go get busy!

After reading this, you can see how powerful awareness can be when you’re looking to make change. It all starts there and just snowballs! It’s not easy. It take adherence, it takes willpower and a shit ton of work. If you still feel like you need more help going forward in your fat loss journey, sign up for a free 30 minute call here! I’d love to help you develop more strategies to get toward your goals.

Before I let you go, you may be saying, “Coach, why do you want to help me so bad?”.

It’s simple: I was there.

I was right where you were, unsure of what I was eating, how to make changes and lose more fat. Fast forward to today and I’ve done all the leg work to learn the science behind fat loss and strength training SO that I could do exactly this and help people like you. I know what it feels like to be confused and have this crap thrown at you.

“But why are you giving away calls for free?”

If you hit that here blue text and click through to talk to me I know ONE thing about you before we even say a word to one another: YOU’RE SERIOUS.

You’re ready to make change and you’re ready to turn that awareness into action steps. I love go-getters and action takers. So those 30 minutes could be the catalyst for the next year of your life. And to me that’s worth it.

Talk soon.


]]> 2019-02-01T07:58:00-05:00 2019-02-01T07:58:55-05:00 The Perfect Program Pt. 1: Goals & Exercise Selection Karon Hawkins More

So if you read my first blog on using Intensity, Volume and Frequency, I mentioned that I want to offer you MORE value from my next blog.

Here we are!

Let’s dig into creating the perfect training program for your goals and your body. In this first part you are going to take a look at look at your movement and see what weaknesses we can attack in the beginning to do our best to prepare your body for intense training. This first step is important because preparation is the hugest key for mitigating injury as best as possible (preventing injury is just not possible). Your goal is Less Pain, More Gains, so to accomplish that we NEED to know a baseline before we can even BEGIN to create goals.


If you haven’t already grabbed Kronic Strength, my ultimate guide on Strength Training, I highly recommend you download it (it’s free) and go through it. There is an assessment inside of it that you can complete. It will assess your whole body and give you a good idea of what you need work on to improve going forward. It will also give you a great idea of what (at this moment) you can and cannot do. So go ahead and download Kronic Strength HERE and go through the assessment. Inside of that E-Book is also A TON of information that will help you on your journey toward building strength and of course, building muscle.

Post Assessment

Do you have a better idea about what’s going on with your body? You may find that one hip is a bit tighter than the other in certain movements. You may find that your shoulders are tight when you reach behind your back or try to go overhead. You may find that your back may be tight when you try to squat, or that your feet turn out a lot.

Hey, it’s okay! These aren’t bad things. It makes you human. Let me tell you a secret: we ALL have things to work on with mobility and movement, myself included. I’m tight as fuck in certain areas haha. But mobility is a life long venture that takes real effort and time to work through. Doesn’t mean you won’t be able to train, we just gotta take charge and work on these issues to make those movements better. No one wants to be in pain, no one wants to get injured, but the fact of the matter is: the longer you wait to make your joints to do joint things, the more likely you are to get hurt.

So with that being said, we’ll be using your results from the assessment to determine which movements we should use to strengthen your core 6 movements:

  1. Squat
  2. Hinge
  3. Push
  4. Pull
  5. Rotate
  6. Carry

All of those movements are key to seeing Less Pain and More Gains. Included in Kronic Strength are 4 progressions for each of the core 6 movements that you can choose from. I’ll be talking about some modifications if you discover you can’t do some of the basic movements. As a note: DO NOT progress if you don’t feel stable in the basic movements. So if you can’t sit into a deep squat with just your body weight, why are you putting a barbell on your back and trying to squat that? You’re setting yourself up to get hurt eventually.


Goal Creation

One second though, what do you want to change? Before we get into selecting exercises, let’s decide what your goals are! This step may seem meaningless because you wanna burn fat because that’s why you’re here. However:

WHY do you want to burn fat?

WHY do you want to lose your stomach?

WHY do you want to build muscle?

WHY do you care about that stuff?

Think critically about these things. They’re super important. Understanding what really motivates you is important because when things get tough and you wanna quit, aesthetics won’t keep you in the game. Goals like:

“I want to feel good”

“I want to be confident in myself”

“I want to be out of pain”

“I want to feel STRONG

THOSE types of goals are long term ventures. They will keep you in the game for the long even AFTER you achieve the flat stomach, big legs or whatever look you want. Determine THESE goals first.

Grab a piece of paper and a pen. Write down 2 goals that have NOTHING to do with the way you look. Make them extremely personal. So if your goals were in a big pot of goals and were plucked from that pot they would be unique to you and YOU only, that they would stand out!

Got em? Perfect. Let’s select your movements.


Exercise Selection

When selecting exercises it’s again important to look at your assessment and see how things went. Assessments are ALWAYS the first step to developing a program for my online clients because we need a point A before we get a point B,C,D etc. If a coach tries to offer you a solution, program or something like that without knowing ANYTHING about you, run quick. Trust.

Let’s do this!


The squat is a LIFE exercise. It wasn’t born in the gym. We need to squat because it applies to the things we do DAILY. So think about the squat from this perspective and you can see why being able to get into a deep squat with strength and stability is important.

Here is a simple progression. Your program can start with just body weight squats while you have some mobility work in there to continue to improve your depth and control at the bottom of your squat. Once you feel comfortable at the bottom of your squat you can progress to another modality with a dumbbell or barbell. Having trouble getting deeper into your squat without pain, popping or other issues? Shoot me a message and let’s talk about how to improve that squat!








If you can’t handle a bodyweight squat without any weight on your body from a mobility perspective, why are you putting 200 pounds on your back? Your body isn’t prepared to handle that load. Your JOINTS aren’t prepared to handle that load. It’s NOT worth it. I promise.


Hinging is also a life movement that is necessary for so many things we do. Don’t think deadlift, or RDL, think picking up a bag from the ground. Think how does this stuff apply to things you do in life. That’s a big reason these movements are foundational and are less likely to get your hurt. They apply to things you do everyday and by increasing your efficiency in those daily activities, you’re increasing your capacity to handle daily life with a lower risk for injury. Once you get these fundamentals down pat, then you can apply these movements in more difficult contexts. A classic hinging pattern is the Romanian Deadlift (RDL) which is a hip dominant motion.


This term is fancy for you bend more at your hips more than a knee dominant movement which has more bend in the knees. The RDL is a great movement for mastering the hip hinge and increasing hamstring mobility/ strength. It can be progressed and regressed in MANY different ways allowing for many different age groups, training experience levels and all in between to get busy with the hinge pattern.


If you follow me on Instagram you know how much I promote pulling stuff, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t push. Pushing is DEFINITELY important. And actually, while you’re pushing, you SHOULD be pulling as well. Think of something like a bench press. When you’re setting up, you should be PULLING your shoulders down into the bench and activating your back while you push. Your lats are 100% involved in the bench. A lot of movements intertwine with one another. It’s not like while you’re pushing, you’re never pulling and vice versa.

A good place to start with the pushing movement is NOT a push-up in my opinion. In fact, I think the floor press is the best option for most people in the beginning.


It’s safer for the shoulders due to the decreased range of motion and helps establish the lat engagement I spoke of earlier with proper coaching. When you understand how to engage your abs, lats and shoulders correctly to execute the pushing motion effectively, you set yourself up to crush pushups later on. Once you can crush pushups with no issues, move onto heavy pushing with a barbell and heavy dumbbells. Don’t think you can’t push standing up though! If you’re moving a ton of weight sure, hit a barbell bench press. But, if you’re working on using your whole body and working on things like running or gait, a standing single arm press may be a good option for you! This variation will also allow you to build both sides of your body equally!



Based on the typical habits I see, pulling should be happening more in your program than pushing. Why? All day we spend our time hunched over a computer, our phones or watching TV/Netflix. There’s nothing inherently wrong with those positions as I’ve said previously, however, when you spend too much time in those positions, your body adapts to them. It becomes SUPER easy to access any position that requires you round or push because you’re always doing that. However, going in the opposite direction, pulling, your body WILL struggle. Your body is not used to doing this opposing motion so it will struggle to even ACCESS that position let alone build strength there.

One of the best ways to combat this prolonged posture, is to give the body the opposite posture and give it often. When pulling things, you need to retract your shoulders and erect the spine, two positions that are opposite to the protracting and rounding of the spine you’re used to doing. One of the easiest movements to pull stuff is the chest supported row.


This motion gives your body the opposite of what it’s used to. This position may be difficult to access. Focus on FEELING your back work. You may feel a bit of upper back at first, but that’s okay. Work to pull those shoulders down and get your lats to feel the work. Once these muscles on the back of your shoulders and on your back get strong, they will eventually be able to hold your body in different positions a lot easier. This will also slowly combat some of the rounding you may be experiencing from a life of rounding. A great variation of this movement is the 1 Arm Row which will get more activation of the lats because you’ll be able to rotate your upper spine a bit more and get some more engagement of the lats through the extension of the shoulder.


So use this motion in your program for pulling as well because you’ll be able to equally build both sides of your back. One side will usually be stronger or you’ll be able to connect your brain to better from a mind-muscle connection perspective. So adding this accessory to your program can keep you more balanced.



Rotation is SO important for being an optimal human. Why? Go walk to the store. Go run to ANYWHERE. Grab your phone to the right of you. Doing all of those motions require some level of rotation. If you can’t rotate, you’re missing out of so much of your strength and power. Generating force through rotation is a very important skill YOU need as human. If you can’t rotate through your thoracic spine (the part of your spine that holds your rib cage) you will most likely use something else to accomplish this task. That something is usually your lower back. For those of you who like to run and want to continue to do it for the rest of your life, get better at rotating. Here is a great exercise for thoracic rotation and learning how to separate lumbar (lower spine) from thoracic (upper spine) rotation:


The key with this is to do your best to not involve your hips at all. You can see that my hips stay in front of me from the first to second picture. This is true thoracic rotation. If you can perform this motion with resistance applied, you’ll EASILY apply it to things like walking, running etc. Make the pieces work well apart then start to piece them together. Trust me, working on gait is hard. It’s literally reprogramming how to you take steps and use your body to move. Take your time and really focus on the FEELING. Here is another rotation movement that DOES utilize the hips and glutes because yes, that’s important too!


As I transition from the first position to the second, pay attention to my feet. You can see in picture one my left foot is down and my right heel is up. But in the second they are reversed. I’m using my feet to drive my hip rotation that'a necessary for this movement. This rotation, in comparison with the previous rotation based movement involves your whole body. In this case we want the whole body to move as one as opposed to the previous one where just the upper spine was doing work. Try both movements and see if you can execute them both effectively!


Ever carry groceries to your house or to your car? Cool, me too. Carrying is SUPER simple. Walk around with heavy ass shit and do your best to maintain stability in your your whole body. You can play around with the variations carrying one dumbbell that’s heavier than the other, carrying them above your head, carrying plates, the list goes on. Here’s a simple variation to start with: The Farmer’s Carry

Pick a weight in each hand that’s going to challenge you. Don’t walk around with super light stuff you can do the macarena with. When you’re carrying your groceries for long distances, that shit is HARD. It gets tiring. When you practice this motion, you can teach yourself how to carry stuff better! This will in turn help you use your muscles more and less joints. You’ll learn how to fire your glutes when you carry heavy stuff to save your knees. You’ll learn how to fire your lats to save your shoulders. Getting better at carrying stuff is a basic human function. Learn how to human better!

So you now have a whole list of exercises you can use with dope goals to match them. In the next blog we’ll talk about selecting your schedule and the best routine split to match your goals!

If you’re still having trouble creating goals that matter to you and picking exercises that match those goals, sign up for a free 30 minute coaching talk with me HERE. I can get you started on tackling the perfect program for your goals!


]]> 2019-01-18T08:00:00-05:00 2019-01-18T17:50:49-05:00 3 Things To Help You Build MORE Muscle Karon Hawkins More

We’ve talked about a few great strategies for increasing muscle mass in terms of how the movements are performed. However, looking at how much weight you’re lifting (intensity), how many times you’re lifting it (volume) and how often you’re lifting it (frequency) could be the difference for you in making more gains. When you first start a program you probably are pretty sore in the beginning. After a certain point your body will adapt and you’ll need to progress. Using intensity, volume and frequency we can increase the work needed from your body which will restart the adaptation process. Restarting this adaptation process will lead to the breakdown of more muscle and then, with proper nutrition and sleep, your muscle will rebuild larger and stronger.

When used appropriately, you can progress for quite some time just using these three variables. I’ll show you how to avoid plateaus and keep the gains coming! Before we dive into these top three methods, I’d like to explain in a bit more detail what these three variables mean in context to training.



Intensity relates to how heavy you are lifting. You usually represent this figure as a percentage of the maximum amount of weight you can do for that specific lift for only one repetition. For instance, in a back squat if you were going to lift 85% of the maximum amount of weight you could do in a set, you would say 85% 1RM. Or, 85% of the 1 Repetition Maximum for that exercise. For that amount of intensity (depending on how experienced you are) you would most likely be able do 4-5 reps at that intensity. You would NOT do that high of an objective intensity for 12 reps. Not only would not ideally do that much weight, you physically COULD NOT. Because if you could do that many reps, that amount does not represent your true intensity of 85% 1RM. There is a sliding scale between how MUCH you can lift and how many TIMES you can do it. The more you lift in a given set, the less reps you perform. It works vice-versa for the more reps you do. This balance is incredibly important for building muscle because you need to know when it’s appropriate to do more reps and less weight, or more weight and less reps.

If the percentage amount isn’t quite possible for you because you either don’t know your 1RM and don’t know how to find it out, you can use RPE or Rate of Perceived Exertion as your scale to determine how hard an exercise is and thus how many reps you should be performing. RPE works like this:

1 - 10 Where

1 = Netflix & Chill

10 = Maximal Effort

If you try an exercise and do it 5 times and it’s an 8 or 9, you’re probably right around that 85% 1RM intensity. I use this scale with my online clients all the time in the beginning because it allows them to pick their own weights and try things out. You can also get creative with RPE because you can make an exercise with 20 reps be an 8 in RPE/ difficulty meaning over those 20 reps you’re giving an 8/10 by the end of it. So you can really make any exercise harder or easier depending on the RPE. It’s incredibly useful! So now that you have 2 ways to determine your intensity, let’s look at volume.


Volume represents the amount of sets and reps you are doing for a given exercise. If we’re looking at Total Volume in lbs for a given day, week, month or even year, we use this equation:

Sets X Reps X Weight = Total lbs of Volume

For instance, let’s use a 5x5 back squat at 165 lbs. That would translate to 5 sets/rounds of 5 reps of 165 lbs. If we did the math applying the equation:

5 X 5 X 165 = 4,125 lbs of Total Volume for that given movement.

As mentioned earlier, volume and intensity go hand in hand with one another when creating an effective training program. We want to maximize the amount of volume we can perform in a week without gassing the body out too much so that we’re unable to do that movement/ exercise again before the next week. I’m talking about the typical bro split that tells you to do 1 muscle group per day. What happens is that you hammer one muscle group SO HARD to where your volume in that one day is so insane. It’s so crazy in fact, that you’re unable to hit that muscle group again until next week because it’s always so sore. And be very clear, you WILL see results on a bro split, but only to a certain point. It’s to a point because there will be a time where your volume is way too high in a single training session and you’ll start seeing tendon issues, movement/mobility issues and a huge plateaus because you’re not providing the right level of stimulus. You’re overloading your muscles with volume.

Doing this volume overload leaves you super sore and never really allows for optimal recovery. You do NOT want to be sore after EVERY SINGLE SESSION. That’s not how we progress, that’s not how we grow more muscle, that’s not how we burn more fat. In the beginning of a program, of course, you’ll be sore because it’s a brand new stimulus to your body that you’re not used to. But if you’re sore a few months into your program and walking like you trucked by a linebacker, something ain’t right. The best way to balance the volume in your program is to progressively add volume over time.

But more on that later. Let’s talk about frequency.



Frequency represents the amount of times you are doing a certain movement or exercise per some factor of time. That can be weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly. You should of course look at the micro details of frequency per session as mentioned when talking about volume, but looking at the big picture, planning frequency on a macro level will get you the muscle growth you’re looking for. As your body adapts you’ll be able to adjust the frequency of your training to continue to see progress and avoid plateaus.

I plan to dive deeper into these concepts once I create my programming guide blog! For now, I wanted to just define these three variables so that for the rest of the blog, I can use them without explanation.

So, how do we grow using these variables?
As mentioned before, progression is the key. So let’s talk about these three progression methods:


Increasing Intensity Week by Week

In a typical program the easiest way to continue to see progress in the beginning is to just add a little bit of weight each week you do your routine. Depending on the lift 5-10 lbs is a good range to start with progressing your intensity. You’re consistently and slowly adding more weight to each exercise, so you’re forcing your body to continue adapting. At the same time, you’re not increasing by TOO much where your reps would decrease thus decreasing your total volume.

Remember: Total Volume = Sets X Reps X Weight

Let’s say I’m doing a typical 3x12 and using 20 lbs to being with. I would be lifting a total volume of 720 lbs for that exercise. However if I tried to double that to 40 because I thought 20 was too easy and not only does my execution go down, but my reps do as well, now I’m only doing 5 reps per set so my total volume would only be 600 lbs. So if you try to go up TOO fast, you’ll see your total volume go down because your body simply isn’t ready to perform the same repetition count at that intensity quite yet. Slow and steady is the key.

Stress is a good thing, but like all things, it needs to be an appropriate amount. The only to way TO grow is to stress the body in some way. At some point though, this form of progressive stress won’t work forever. You’ll find a place where you can’t increase the weight anymore and you’ve reached your max for the set volume you want for that exercise. Here’s the thing: we have 2 more ways to talk about! So don’t worry, we got this.


Increasing Volume

Increasing volume is an easy way to increase the amount of weight you’re lifting in total volume without struggling at a weight you can’t handle. Add another rep or two, then add another set, then another exercise (to a point). The key to this is taking it slow. In the beginning, depending on your program, you probably won’t need to add THAT much volume initially. You’ll still be growing accustomed to the program itself and will probably take some time to adapt. If you see yourself growing used to the movements and unable to progress from the first method by adding a bit more weight each time you perform the exercise, then it may be time to use volume as your next progression point.

Honestly, here is where RPE comes into play heavily. Let me paint the picture for you:

You’re on your last set and your RPE for that exercise is a 9 but you’re feeling like the exercise is around 8. You try to up to your weight 5lb and the RPE jumps to a 10. On some exercises 5lbs can do that. So you can’t progress with weight, but you’re not quite at a 9 yet. What should you do?

Bang out a few more reps. Add 1-3 reps which should get you to that 9 RPE point your exercise calls for and keep doing that. In a week or two, try to hit that new weight progression you’ve been stuck at. If you recover properly through adequate nutrition and sleep, you should be able to crush that intensity progression. If you find this progression to be possible, guess what?

You’re stronger.

You’re growing.

You’re progressing.

This strategy is pretty effective because it can scale to reps, sets and then exercises as I mentioned before. However, be very careful to avoid adding too much of this progression either. As you can see everything must be taken with a grain of salt. The human body is a highly adaptive machine, however we’re not in fact, robots. We eventually reach a point where there’s too much input and we can’t output the expected result. If you go through a period of high volume, you NEED to taper or deload.

A taper or deload is a point where you purposefully lessen the intensity of your workouts to allow your body to recover. When you go hard for 4-8 weeks, you need to give your body a break. Being proactive about this period is important. Don’t wait until you feel like shit to deload. Deload early to avoid feeling like shit. Deloading is not key to just building muscle, but CONTINUING to build muscle and avoiding burning out.

When deloading, drop your intensity 30-40% and avoid any HIIT, burnouts or things that will leave you super gassed. You definitely still want to train, but just not train as hard. I’ve had clients deload for a week, even two weeks and come back to their programs STRONGER. They come refueled and well rested. Recovery is everything with high volume periods. You can’t just bang your body to the ground with volume without a break and expect to grow!

When increasing volume, a third way to do it without adding more to your current session, is to do ANOTHER session later on in the week. When you do that you are increasing the next progression technique, frequency.

Increasing Frequency

You can see the trend here. Now we’re going to increase the amount of times you frequent the gym and train a certain movement, muscle group or exercise. When you increase your frequency you increase your total volume per week. You can be clever here with balancing your total volume per session and your recovery. One of my favorite programs the Upper/Lower split balances frequency and recovery for those who aren’t as experienced or are just starting in the gym. It’s also a very effective program for people who are busy! Here is a typical Upper/Lower split schedule:


It gives you at least 2 days to recover from your previous which is usually good enough to feel ready to train again, even if you go hard. You don’t have to start with upper on that Monday, you can start with lower. It really depends on preference and other activities you do outside the gym. For instance, if you know you go hiking up some pretty steep hills every Sunday, you wouldn’t do lower on Monday because your legs aren’t going to be fully recharged come the next day. By the same token, you probably wouldn’t do an upper day Monday if you went rock climbing the day before. So balancing your regular activities with what you do in the gym is key to continue to build muscle, recover and not burnout.

When planning your days in the gym, regardless of what split you decide to do, make sure you can recover from it and be sure you ACTUALLY do it. If you’re reading this and haven’t been consistent in the gym lifting heavy for some time, I would not recommend a very frequent and intense program. I’m referring to this monster of a program:

It’s a shit ton of volume and frequency so you may see some great gains. However, it’s tough to recover from if you’re newer to the or haven’t been getting busy for sometime. I would recommend this split way later down the line when you’re more experienced and can handle this level of volume in your training program. Because remember: if you can’t recover, you can’t build muscle. If you can’t build muscle, you can’t burn fat. At the end of the day you just have to try stuff out for a few months at a time and see what works for you the best!

Wrapping Up

Using Intensity, Volume and Frequency, you can make so many gains without really changing your exercises too heavily. It’s all about doing a little bit more every time to continue to progressively challenge the body and continue growth. Proactively deload every 4-8 weeks and decrease your intensity for a week or two so you come back stronger!

If you’d like personal help building your training program look out for my next blog post on doing just that, or sign up for a free 30 minute strategy call with me HERE and we can go through what you need to build muscle and burn more fat!

]]> 2019-01-09T10:22:00-05:00 2019-01-09T10:27:45-05:00 Muscle Growth Series #4: 3 Reasons Modality Changes Grow MORE Muscle Karon Hawkins More

Often times I talk to people who get stuck or plateau at a certain weight in their lifts, muscle growth or fat loss. When this period happens it could be because of a large variety of things. However, in the specific case of training, it is most likely time for that person to progress in their movements. Too often people stick to the SAME program doing the SAME movements for MONTHS. In the beginning you’ll see some gains because this program is a NEW stimulus to your body. Assuming you did these movements, sets, weights and rest periods with the previous training program you had, your body wasn’t used to it at that point. After a while though, this stimulus back then, and with ANY new program eventually won’t be new anymore. Your body will ADAPT and get used to whatever training program you’re doing.

This adaptation is what makes human beings so powerful. We can adapt to so many things and depending on your fitness level and years of training, pretty quickly. If you’re fairly new to lifting weights, especially heavy weights, you can see some serious changes in your first month or two of training. You’ll feel pretty sore for the first few weeks, depending on the programming, and with ample recovery/nutrition your body will adapt in time and see gains. If you continue the exact same training program past those few months though, your gains will most likely diminish and you’ll stop seeing progress.


Your body has adapted to the training stimulus you’re giving it. The squats, lunges, rows, dips or whatever you’ve been doing will most likely get WAY easier than when you first started. When your lifts get easy, that’s a huge sign that it’s time to progress.

If you’re sleeping well, feeding your body well, stress levels are on point and you’re crushing every session, these are all MORE signs it’s time to progress.

So with that in mind, I’m going to give you a really simple way to progress in your training that will DRASTICALLY change your results: Modality Change.

What does this mean?

Modality change basically means changing the METHOD of a certain movement. We’re changing HOW that movement is being performed. Here’s an example: a squat. There’s SO many ways to squat, but each modality can increase the difficulty of the squat pattern as you get stronger and prepare yourself for gradual progression. Take a look at the graphic below:



All of these exercises are utilizing the squat movement pattern, but whether it be weighted or not, positioning of the weight, or how upright the spine is, each of these modalities are a bit different. And because of this difference each of these movements impact the body in a different way.

So now that we know what modalities are, how do they help us build more muscle? Let’s dive into 3 reasons:

Mechanical Loading

One of the most effective methods of hypertrophy is mechanical loading or challenging the body with a compound movement that requires a TON of muscle recruitment besides our target muscles. Even progressing from a bodyweight squat to a goblet squat utilizes this principle. When adding an external load, like a weight, band, or a machine, your upper body is forced to stabilize through the upper spine and core along with your hips and legs. You have to activate these areas intentionally and use them intentionally to move that weight efficiently and safely. This movement and activation is mechanical loading. All of those muscles are working during a goblet squat. As you progress into heavier weights and barbell modalities like the front and back squats, mechanical loading becomes even MORE effective for building muscle. This principle is the main reason why switching modalities in your training program will help you build more muscle. If you can load more weight into an exercise you're increasing the total volume those muscles are receiving weekly. If you can progressively increase your total volume, you'll grow more muscle.

In addition to muscular hypertrophy, mechanical loading helps you build stronger bones as well. Mechanical loading is completely relative in application making it viable to your young athlete trying to get huge and your elderly population who just want to move and stay active as long as possible. When you’re young utilizing this principle can help build up your bone density to its greatest potential so that when you’re older, you’re stronger and can move for longer with a lower risk of injury since your bones are thicker and stronger. If your bones are thicker and stronger, they’re less likely to break if and when you fall or have some type of accident. If you train into your older ages (lowering the intensity at some point of course) you can actually slow down bone degradation. Keeping it real, after a certain point, your bone density will decrease, it’s just what aging does. But if we can slow this process down and increase our likelihood of not needing a walker, wheelchair or a personal aid well into our 80s and 90s, WHY NOT?

As you continue to progress in each modality by adding more weight, reps or less rest breaks in between for instance, you’ll see more gains with each modality. So, if you were to spend a cycle doing each modality for 3-4 weeks you’d have more than 4 months of squat pattern training just off of changing/ progressing the modality through more intense mechanical loading.

Stimulus Change



This next reason impacts people who have been training for sometime or are used to doing a certain squat pattern. If you’ve been training back squats and only back squats, a front squat may be a good option for you receive a different stimulus due to the weight being positioned in the front of your body instead of the back causing you to be in a more upright posture. With a back squat you’re in a forward posture due to the modality being very hip dominant. Let me explain:

There are many difference between these two movements as you can see. The spine is more upright which creates a larger demand at the upper spine. Because the spine is more upright on the right in the front squat, it’s very knee dominant. This does NOT mean that the front squat is bad for your knees by the way. Think about this: if you were to squat a box to the ground, would you squat with the box on your back, or in front of your body. If front squats were bad for your knees, good luck moving to a new house! POORLY EXECUTED front squats, or any squat pattern for that matter, are bad for you knees.

In addition, the front squat requires more thoracic spine mobility. The thoracic spine is contained between the 13 vertebrae that house the rib cage.

All the muscles that are engaged during a front squat in the upper spine will be a VERY different stimulus than the back squat. It will require more stability and strength in that section of your body that you may not be used to if you ONLY back squat.

Because you’ll be working harder to move (usually) less weight in a front squat than a back squat, you’re going to force your body to work harder and create a greater stimulus for muscle growth.

Keeps You Adherent



This isn’t necessarily scientific or anything, but it’s simple: YOU DON’T GET BORED!

For those of you who are experienced lifters, and even some of the beginners out there, you’ve been there…

You’re on your 4th exercise of a program you’ve been doing for 6 months and you’re bored as hell just going through the motions. You’re not giving that intensity and intentional effort in each set. You just don’t feel as fulfilled anymore in your current program so you start to go to the gym less often. You dread your leg day because you hate back squats so you stop squatting. Then you stop lunging. Then you just stop all together because you’re so done with this style of training.

Modality change can be the spark to relight your passion for movement if you feel stuck or bored on your current program. This shift can be HUGE for adherence because if you train long-term, we all know that with the right program, you WILL see results. But adherence is THE #1 variable for gaining muscle. It doesn’t matter what program you’re doing, if you’re actually doing nothing. So if changing HOW you lift will make you lift MORE and for LONGER, that’s a win.

On top of that if you think back to the previous scenario where you’re super bored, you’re not trying as hard. You’re not putting the same intention behind each rep like you used to when you first started your new program. That matters A LOT. Ten people can do the same exercise and each person can look and feel different. HOW you execute a movement matters so much and if you’re really not into it, that can take away from your gains long-term.

Wrapping Up

So by now you can see the benefit in simply switching how you perform a movement pattern to gain more muscle. If you’ve been doing a certain modality for a long time and aren’t seeing any changes, it’s time to switch things up! If you need some help figuring out which modality changes work best for you and your body, sign up for a free 30 minute coaching call with me HERE and we can talk about finding the best modalities for you!]]> 2018-11-30T17:25:00-05:00 2018-11-30T17:25:46-05:00 Less Time, More Gains: How to Super Set Karon Hawkins Today we're doing something a little different! My good friend and fellow coach Paul from LB3Fitness wrote an awesome blog on Super Sets that is going to be so helpful for all of you who don't have that much time to get busy! 

You can connect with Paul here:



Captains log: October, 2018. Hello world. As I sit here and write this, we live in tumultuous times. I don’t know what the future holds for our society. I recently listened to a podcast where Elon Musk said that Teslas are going to be our machine overlords any day now.

I hope that this letter finds you all well. If the machines have taken over by now, then I don’t know who will be reading this. If that is the case, then may god (or the machines I supposed at this point) have mercy on our souls



If however, the terminator sci-fi apocalypse has not happened yet, then we are all in luck! That means you’re reading this, and the internet still exists! Woohoo, go internet!

This is indeed great news, since having access to the internet means that you literally have access to all of the information in the known world. Right at your finger tips, the answer to any question is just a short keystroke away. 

At any second, you are a short Google search away from knowing “what is the difference between who, whom, and whomst?”. or a simple “Hey Siri” away from answers to burning questions like “is whomst actually a word?” (I checked. It is not).



Why is it then, that in this day and age, when all the info is out there and so easily accessible, that people are not exercising? 

The jury is clearly in. Exercise is good. It is something everyone should be doing, young or old, male, female, or other. It’s not a debate anymore, it’s a fact. It’s a fact that we literally all know. 

No one comes in to my gym to train with me, or gets on a coaching consultation call and says “hey you know, I heard about this cool new fad called ‘ex-hur-size’? I don’t know exactly how to pronounce it, but I got an insider tip that it will be all the rage in a few years. Wanted to get on it now.”

The conversation usually goes more along the lines of “Yeah, I know I need to get in shape,” “I know I need to exercise more,” “my doctor told me I need to get moving,” or tons of other things. The overarching theme hear tends to be, KNOW and NEED. 

You KNOW it’s good for you. You know you NEED it. If not right this minute, years down the road. The facts are out there, and this day and age with Facebook, Instagram, hell, even regular TV media taking note, it’s literally in our faces every single day. Health and fitness are important, and should be a top priority for anyone and everyone.

Yet, there are so many of us who still can’t get with the program. Why?



That’s a loaded question, and the answer for everyone will be different. However, I’d venture to say that if you asked a lot of people (and I have), the most common answer would be lack of time. Busy work life, busy family life, busy life in general, and many people feel they just don’t have the time in their schedule.

First off, I’ll just come out and say, I hate this excuse. It’s bull-shit. Everyone has time for the things they want to have time for. Be it waiting on line for your Starbucks every morning, scrolling Instagram for a few minutes here and there, or catching up on your favorite Netflix show now and again. 

Whatever it is, these things take time, and that time adds up. If you really really wanted to, you could prioritize health and fitness, and fit it into your schedule like you do those things. It’s just that simple.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This is also not to say that people are not busy. I get that we live in the real world in the 21st century, where we all have a hundred responsibilities and a thousand obligations pulling us in infinite directions every day. You might not have all the time in the world to dedicate to working out, but you should have SOME time. Which is fine, because coincidentally, some time is all you need.



A lot of people have a common misconception about working out which is it has to be extremely time consuming. “I can’t work out, I don’t have two hours a day  to dedicate to the gym five days per week.” That’s fine, because you know who has time to do that? Literally no one. 

No, quite the opposite in fact. The best way to be successful with your fitness goals in the real world, is to make fitness work with your life, and your schedule, not the other way around.




You don’t need to be in the gym for multiple hours at a time. You also should not think that there is a minimum threshold you need to hit for exercise, and that if you can’t get that number, then there is no point. I hear all the time “I can only make it to the gym for 45 minutes to an hour once or twice a week, is there even a point?” The answer is most certainly yes. There is always a point.

When it comes to fitness, something is always better than nothing, and every little drop counts. Every positive step you take towards bettering yourself adds up, it is all cumulative. It might happen for you at a faster rate if you had the ability to dedicate more time to it, but if you don’t, you don’t. What’s the point of thinking about what isn’t currently possible? 

Rather than saying “I don’t have the time,” or “I can only dedicate two hours per week, what’s the point?”, let’s try something different. Instead, try asking yourself “if in only have ‘X' amount of time, what is the best and most efficient way for me to make the most out of it?”. A small change in the way you frame these things mentally can be a huge step in the right direction.


One of the best ways to make your workouts more time efficient so that you can get in and get out of the gym faster, is by incorporating super-sets. Super-sets are literally just two different exercises, performed back to back, with no rest in between. They have been a staple in the routines of bodybuilders for years, and for good reason. Incorporating super-sets in the correct way can help you build more muscle, burn more fat, and get more done, all in a shorter period of time. Who wouldn’t want that?

While super-sets can definitely be great, that doesn’t mean they all are inherently. Just like all exercises are not equal, all super-sets are not created equal either. Every exercise in your routine should have a point. The reps, sets, and weights should all be for your specific goal, and the order matters as well. This is even more so the case with super-sets. 

Sure you could just throw two random exercises together back to back and call it a super set, but you should be doing more. Choosing and pairing the right exercises for your super sets can not only speed up your workout, but also increase your gains and amplify your results. 

There are many different ways to super set, so I’m going to break down a few of my favorite variations, and give you some examples of things you can use today to start increasing the efficiency of your workout. 

Superset 1: Opposing muscle groups

This is a classic example of super sets. The idea being, you work one muscle, then as soon as you’re done you go straight to a different muscle group, that way the work you did in the first set isn’t hindering your work for the second set. This is great if you work full body, or even upper/lower splits. These types of super sets will save you time by allowing you to rest less in between sets, but still working each muscle as if it were fresh.

Some of my favorite opposing muscle group super-sets would be:

- Push to pull for the upper body, push-up to inverted row, or pull-up to dips

Superset 2: compound to isolation

This is another classic example that you’ve probably seen around the gym or even tried yourself. It consists of doing one technically difficult, multi muscle/joint compound movement, directly followed by an easier, single muscle/joint isolation movement. Usually, the second movement is one of the muscles that was worked during the first movement. This style is great if there is a muscle or area you’d like to zero in on further and really work, or burn out a muscle completely towards the end of your workout. 

Some of my favorite compound to isolation super-sets would be:

- squat to leg extension- Lat pulldown to bicep curl

Superset 3: Mechanical drop set

A traditional drop set is a set in which you perform an exercise at a certain weight, and when you are done immediately drop the weight so you can continue doing the same exercise. A mechanical drop set is a type of set in which you do an exercise until failure or near failure, but then instead of dropping the weight, you alter the movement slightly to make the movement slightly easier and give your body a bit of mechanical advantage so you can keep going. These are often small variations in grip or body position, but done correctly, can make a big difference in keeping you moving past where would normally be your end point. 

Some of my favorite mechanical drop sets would be:

- hammer curl to traditional dumbbell curl

- reverse grip tricep pushdown to traditional tricep pushdown

- kickstand RDL to RDL

  • Or try a Giant set (back to back to back sets) of reverse curls, to hammer curls, to traditional curls

Superset 4: Isolation to compound 

This type of super-set is less seen in the general gym population, which is a shame. It is technically another type of mechanical drop set, which is also amazing for pushing past your limits and breaking plateaus. By using a single joint isolation movement first, you can work until failure or near failure, then, rather than stopping when you’d normally by finished, you can keep pushing by changing the movement and bringing in other muscle groups to help out.

Some of my favorite isolation to compound super-sets would be:

- tricep skull crusher to close grip tricep bench press

- standing bicep curl to standing bent over row

These are just some of the many types and examples of super-sets out there. Mix it up, get creative, and use them as a tool to increase your workouts effectiveness,  while reducing time spent in the gym. 

Looking to save even more time? Click here, and message me EBOOK, and I'll send you a new copy of my FAST FITNESS e-book, completely FREE! Made to save you time, so you can get into the gym, get to work, and get on with your life! And, it's completely FREE, what more could you ask for!? 

Like what you see? Hate it? Love it? Drop a comment below and let me know! Then, share this article with your friends and family and see if they agree! 

]]> 2018-11-28T07:17:00-05:00 2018-11-28T07:17:29-05:00 Muscle Growth Series #3: 3 Reasons TUT Training is KEY For Muscle Growth Karon Hawkins More

So in the last blog post I spoke about the importance of range of motion when it comes to building more muscle. We talked about increasing your efficiency with a movement, recruiting MORE muscle fibers and the doors that increasing your range of motion opens up. The next note of execution a certain exercise comes with increasing the amount of time in which you are loading the muscle.

Before we get into why it helps you build muscle, I want to define this style of training and give some examples. Time Under Tension (TUT) training involves increasing the “negative” of an exercise or when the muscle is being stretched but can also include increasing the opposite motion as well. The time range should fall between 40 and 50 seconds usually for the most optimal range. In a typical exercise/movement there are two motions people think about when doing an exercise: the eccentric and concentric contractions. The eccentric contraction is the lengthening of the muscle, while the concentric is the shortening of the muscle.

An example of these two contractions is best seen in a squat. The eccentric in a squat is when you are descending toward the ground while the concentric is when you’re coming back up. Another example is in a bicep curl where the eccentric is the bicep literally getting longer as the weight goes farther away from your body, while the concentric is pulling the bicep back toward your body.

So to do TUT training, simply take more time during each of these motions and you’ll see more muscle gains.

But why does this work? Why EXACTLY does this help us gain more muscle?

There are 3 main reasons I want to cover:

TUT Training Increases The Stimulus For Growth

When we elongate the amount of time the muscles are under tension between these two contractions, we are giving a greater stimulus for growth. We’re encouraging more small tears in the muscle fibers so that with proper nutrition and recovery, they’d grow back bigger and stronger. Often, with TUT training you’re going to be pretty sore in the beginning, especially if you’ve never done this style of training before. You are placing the external load (the weight) on the muscle in a unique way so to adapt to this stress, the muscle grows to accommodate this load. This phenomenon is why you’ll feel pretty sore at first, then the next week not as sore and so forth. If your muscle is NOT adapting you will experience lots of soreness often that doesn’t seem to improve. In that case, it may be time to dial back a bit, look at your stress levels, nutrition, sleep and the intensity/volume of your program to figure out why you aren’t recovering sufficiently.

If we especially elongate the eccentric “negative” portion of the exercise, we will REALLY influence the muscle to grow because we are forcing the muscle to handle loads at longer lengths than it’s used to doing. Growing muscle is all about applying the right amount stress to the muscles, recovering from it and proceeding to adapt for the next time around. Rinse and repeat. And with TUT training you can apply this cycle with submaximal or not as heavy weights. It’s all about the amount of time that muscle is loaded for the entirety of the set and increasing that time period, even with lighter weights. As long as we can perform the exercise for a total time of 40 - 50 seconds, we’re golden.

TUT Training BULLETPROOFS Your Execution

I mentioned earlier that I TUT training myself and for my clients who are trying to grow muscle. In the big lifts (Squat, Bench, Deadlift) I believe the execution is JUST as important to the overall strength of the individual. You can be strong as hell, but if your execution is trash, you’ll just get hurt eventually. TUT training helps you learn how to perform the exercise well and with as little fault as possible. You are teaching yourself how to do the exercise because you are learning how to control every part of your body during. You are teaching your body to move as one unit.

When you take the time to OWN your execution, you are HIGHLY increasing the chances that you will build muscle long-term.


Because when shit gets rough with heavy weights, your proprioceptive (6th sense of what your body is doing without you being able to see it) capabilities will be on point.

Why does this matter?

Usually when I train someone and correct a fault in their execution they usually go “Wait, what? I was doing that? I didn’t even notice…”

An example of a slight fault is:

Sure, this is a SLIGHT technique fault. The knee is going in and the hip is popping out a bit.

Big deal.

The big deal comes 100,000 lunges later when the sheer force on the inner parts of your knee have had enough, your IT Band is pissed and it hurts to lunge. If we can fix this issue early on, we can grow MORE muscle later on.

Chances are there things YOU are doing in your lifts that you don’t even realize. Why don’t you realize it? Well because you got 300 pounds on your back and you’re just trying to move it up and down. But if you take the time to bulletproof that execution and lower weights with TUT training, you can grow muscle and hone in on your execution at the same damn time. It’s really a win-win! You’re setting yourself up for long-term gains.

TUT Training is Doable For EVERYONE, Especially Post-Injury!

Since TUT Training uses submaximal weights just about ANYONE can do it. I believe TUT Training is one of the best ways to build muscle for those who are just starting because you can see SERIOUS gains early on by taking advantage of newbie gains. When you’re just starting strength training your body is unfamiliar with it and you can see some huge gains in the very beginning because of this. Throwing some TUT training on TOP of that newness will SERIOUSLY propel your gains.

I also TUT training with people who are getting over injuries to grow muscle because it helps them identify (quite literally) their pain points and limits for certain movements. They reconnect with those injured areas and ACTUALLY FEEL the muscles working. An excellent example are a group of muscles that are usually VERY weak in the general population: the rotator cuff muscles.

You see, hypertrophy of your bigger muscles is important for sure, but when we neglect these smaller muscles, they ATROPHY and get weak. This WILL eventually cause pain or leaks in your bigger lifts. Your shoulder is LITERALLY held together by these muscles (in addition to the subscapularis which is on the front side of your shoulder in the armpit area). Building strong rotator cuff muscles secures your shoulder and will GUARANTEE better lifts and movement. These smaller muscles love high volume, low intensity training. That means TUT is PERFECT for growing these muscles.

You ever do this exercise:

Or some version of it with both hands and felt the burn on the FRONT of your shoulder?

Not feel anything at all?

Yeah, that’s common. Just about ALL my clients had (keyword, had) very little control of those muscles. Sometimes when we lose mind-muscle connection with certain muscles in our body, it takes a lot of work just to FEEL them work. This is the price of negligence. TUT Training helps your mind and body re-connect. It helps you UNDERSTAND exactly HOW to feel muscles work. So applying this modality to training those smaller muscles in your body is the BEST way to train them in the beginning.

Of course we want to eventually progress to more dynamic and difficult movements but foundation is everything. Use TUT Training to build that muscle, then progress from there. Anyone and everyone can do this style!

So by now you see the importance of TUT Training for building more muscle. You build a better connection with your body, you bulletproof your technique and you give your muscles a strong stimulus for growth. In this context, slow and steady really does win the race to gains.

If you’re struggling to apply this kind of training in your program, or are unsure if it’s right for you, sign up for a 30 minute FREE strategy call HERE with me and let’s chat about it! I’ll teach you how to use it for your own program and how to progress with it as well. When used correctly, this style of training can be a GAME CHANGER.

]]> 2018-11-16T08:59:00-05:00 2018-11-16T09:00:35-05:00 Muscle Growth Series #2: The Importance of Nutrition Karon Hawkins More

This blog post is going to going to show you how to utilize what you eat to make gains. I will even give a sample macro count for those who are looking to be specific with counting macros. Because at the end of the day nutrition is SUCH a game changer when it comes to growing muscle.


Because it doesn’t matter what you do in the gym if your nutrition is not on point. Nutrition is easily 80% of the battle when it comes to growing muscle. You have to feed your body potentially MORE when you’re trying to grow so if you’re not paying attention to what, and more importantly HOW you’re eating, you’ll never seen that growth long-term.

When you’re  entering a growth cycle, there needs to be some changes with HOW you eat to see that growth. We may actually eat the EXACT same thing between a maintenance and growth cycle, however, the breakdown per meal, day, or week, may differ. The main difference is that you’ll be in a slight caloric surplus or that you’ll be eating a bit more calories than needed to maintain your current weight.

But before we get to that, we need to make sure that we’re eating the right amount of protein from the get go before we get into a surplus. For most people the best starting point for protein consumption for growth is between .8g/lb of bodyweight and 1g/lb of bodyweight. So for someone that weighs 160lbs they’d need between 128g of protein and 140g of protein daily. But here’s the thing: your starting point depends.


If that person averages 60g of protein a day (it happens more often than you think) there’s NO WAY they’re going to be able to jump to 128g all of the sudden. That’s more than doubling their intake amount. Instead they’ll need to progress their nutrition just like we would progress training. Depending on the person, maybe we bump them up to 100g per day to begin and see how that goes. If they crush that for 3-4 weeks straight, then we bump it up again to 130g and see how that goes. If they continually crush the amounts given, we can stay there or progress long-term as goals change.

For the other two macros, carbs and fat, we have to consider their total calories consumed. Let’s say this 160lbs person is a male, 25 years old, 5’8”, exercises 3-5 times a week and is eating 1700 calories per day on average. Their RMR (resting metabolic rate) or the amount of calories they need to just function as a human being is 1685 calories so they’re barely above that amount. But if their protein is only at 60g per day that means they were probably eating A LOT of carbs and fat. For this example, let’s say they were eating 225g of carbs a day (again, more common than you think) and 62 grams of fat per day.

In the beginning we don’t want to make that person eat too much MORE if we know we can just optimize their current macros to better fuel their body, workouts and recovery. This means that we just need to switch around their macros a bit to still add up to 1700 but just be different per macronutrient.

For that first cycle I mentioned here’s how I would break down their macros:









That way we’re slowing incorporating more protein into their diet while not changing the fat intake AT ALL and only bumping down carbs a little bit. The reason I wouldn’t change fat is because we want fat intake to range from 20 - 35% of the total calories consumed. At 62g or 560kcals, their diet is about 32% fat calorically which is just fine for now. In the beginning we want to introduce as little change as possible for maximal results.

We’re human. We take time to change and you can’t expect someone to COMPLETELY flip their lifestyle on its head and change how they eat in a snap. As we get them eating a bit differently per cycle, progress in training and other movement modalities, they’ll be able to eat a bit more of HOW we want them to. That being said here’s how I would breakdown each cycle for the next couple of rounds starting from their initial intake daily average:









Optimization Phase









Keep in mind that 1700 is only BARELY above their resting metabolic rate, but we needed some time to optimize their current macros before we got them up to their maintenance calories of about 2600 calories.


There’s a big gap.

However following the same strategy that I laid out before, you can achieve the desired caloric intake. It takes patience, hard workk and consistency above all. If you trust the process and continue to increase your caloric intake, you’ll do just fine and see that muscle growth!

Once you get to that maintenance caloric intake and can sustain it, you’ll want to go into a slight caloric surplus of between 200 and 400 calories depending upon on the person. You don’t need to go into a huge surplus. A slight surplus overtime will show the slow and sustainable growth we want. It will allow you stick to the new caloric level more likely than not because you’re not DRASTICALLY changing your intake like before when we were optimizing the macros.

Now let’s talk about what we should be putting in our body. Of course from a mathematical standpoint, a calorie is just a calorie. However, in terms of how that calorie impacts the body, there’s a whole different level of understanding that’s worth exploring. Food quality is important for gut health which impacts performance, recovery, mental clarity and even mood and mindset. If your performance isn’t up to par as you try to push yourself to grow while your recovery is garbage and you’re lead by a distracted, cloudy mind and shitty mood you better believe your muscle growth will be impacted.

There’s no comparison between a diet comprised of low nutrient, high calorie foods and one of the opposite. You’ll fill your body with the garbage instead of performance and recovery enhancing foods.

Let me explain.

Because something like McDonald’s is full of a ton of calories and a small nutrient density, you’ll be able to shovel it. You’ll consume 1500 calories and feel like you ate 600 without much of the fiber, vitamins and other nutrients that comes from a wholesome, low-processed meal.

But something like 2 Sweet Potatoes, a quarter of a plate of broccoli and some chicken breast will probably be somewhere around 600 calories and you’ll FEEL full. All the fiber and nutrients packed into this meal will leave you stuffed for less than half the calories.

The gut WANTS food like in the second example and will probably let you know. Consistent eating like the first example leaves your gut PISSED OFF. You’ll see all those variables I talked about impacted. Your body needs fiber, micronutrients and good quality macronutrient sources. It wants to be fueled properly. It wants the good stuff. It ain’t all about calories long-term. Sure, you’ll see some gains for a bit, but long-term, your body can’t maintain that lifestyle and WILL eventually quit on you.

While I am emphasizing food quality, I’m NOT saying cut out the stuff you like COMPLETELY.

That’s madness.

We’re human and like what we like so we can fit it in there while staying on track with our goals.

Aim for the 80/20 lifestyle where 80% of what you put in your body is wholesome and nutritious and 20% is for fun. This will allow you to still enjoy what you like while adhering to your program long-term. How you choose to apply this lifestyle is really up to you.

You can split your individual meals into this 80/20, your day of meals into 80/20 or your week into 80/20. Play around with it and see what works best for you and your lifestyle. You know yourself better that anyone. Be honest with yourself and apply that honesty into your life for the best results.

I hope this article gave you some insight into how to prioritize your nutrition to make more gains! It’s not just about calories, food quality matters so much. The effects of what we eat are not always immediately seen and that allows people to BELIEVE they can eat whatever and see gains, but that is not the case long-term.

If you need more personalized nutrition coaching apply for coaching with me HERE and we can talk through what’s hold you back and make a plan of action steps to get you to where you want to be!

]]> 2018-11-07T10:27:00-05:00 2018-11-07T10:29:30-05:00 Muscle Growth Series #1: 3 Reasons Why Range Of Motion is KEY for Muscle Growth Karon Hawkins More

I was inspired to create this 10 part series for muscle growth because as I've trained more clients and worked with more people through online coaching, I've noticed small but VERY effective concepts that helped my clients build more muscle. The hope is that you take this information and actively apply it to skip all the upsets and brick walls in your journey toward fat loss and more muscle! 

Today we start with Range of Motion and its importance in building muscle and mobility!

There are multiple studies out that actually prove you can see similar results with partial range of motion instead of full range of motion on certain exercises. These studies though focused on very isolated movements like a bicep curl which you definitely could use partial ROM with and see gains. In this context, I definitely agree that partial ROM is viable for muscle growth. However, I’m going to disagree with these studies because there’s a huge limitation they’re leaving out: execution. If a mover, especially an inexperienced one, trains with partial ROM often, they’re mechanics will most likely be shot, they won’t know how to move effectively and they won’t grow because they’ll trade weight on the bar for quality of movement. In a movement like a squat I see it all the time: the quarter squat kings and queens. 

Now don’t get me wrong, quarter squats have their place in a program. If they are done INTENTIONALLY and with proper mechanics, they can be very effective. However, I’m willing to bet most of those people are ego-lifting with too much weight on the bar and can’t break depth because they’re actually moving too much weight. If that person continues down that path, not only will they not build muscle long-term, but they will also hurt themselves.

Moving with full ROM teaches you how to have stability in your end range of motion. It increases the integrity of your joints because you gain more control between A and B of a movement. It also recruits MORE muscle fibers that won’t even be touched should you partial ROM everything so you’re LITERALLY building more muscles the deeper your ROM is. If you never reach those depths, you won’t achieve control, hypertrophy or strength in those areas.

So I’m here to say that full Range of Motion should be HIGH on your priority list when trying to grow muscle. You’ll better prepare your joints for heavier weights, recruit more muscle fibers, challenge your body to a greater extent and elicit a great stimulus for adaptation and growth.

Especially in mobility training range of motion is ESSENTIAL. Learning how to move through YOUR full range of motion is the key to gaining control over that range. I say YOUR range in all caps because everyone has a different end range where they start to lose control. You have to identify this range, move through it, gain strength and stability there and THEN you can load it with weight.

You’re probably like, what does mobility have to do with muscle growth? Let’s dive into these 3 reasons:

Mobility IS Building Muscle
You ARE growing muscle when you do mobility training. Not only are you growing muscle, but you are setting yourself up to grow even MORE muscle down the line because you’re connecting with your body on a whole new level. When you increase that mind-muscle connection through training your full range, you are increasing the likelihood that you’ll fire the muscles you want to during your movements. Once you increase the dominance of a certain exercise to where you want, you can sufficiently perform that exercise and get them gains! Take a 1 Arm Row for instance. It’s very easy to allow the bicep and shoulder to take over this movement and leave the lat (the target of this exercise in this context) almost completely out of it. If you don’t have ample external rotation in your shoulder, you may not be able to hit that lat as well because you can’t setup your shoulder to properly activate your lat. So by increasing the mobility of your shoulder, you are thereby increasing the ability to work your back.
Mobility Training Frees Your Movement
Mobility Training opens up your capability for new movements that challenge your body in a new way. One of the methods of hypertrophy is Mechanical Loading or lifting heavy with compound movements forcing multiple muscle fibers to engage simultaneously. This technique has been proven time and time again for muscle growth. But here’s the thing: without mobility training you CANNOT do these movements and see more muscle growth.
Because without independence you cannot have interdependence as my boy Ian Markow over at MarkowTrainingSystems says. If you have leaks in your system and something ain’t moving nice, there WILL be a collapse, a failure, or some type of hole in your movement that will grow in severity should you lift heavier and heavier. These types of issues don’t like to poke their ugly heads out until shit gets bad. So you see by increasing the mobility of ALL your joints, you are strengthening ALL the muscles required to use Mechanical Loading to your advantage while still staying safe.
Mobility Alleviates Pain
In my experience as a coach and trainer, pain usually comes from something being weak or tight or both. I am not throwing a blanket over everyone because every case is different and some people may have other issues that do not belong to those two categories however, it’s true for most people I’ve worked with. When you dedicate time to mobility training, you are strengthening those small muscles that have wanted love for YEARS but have been neglected. You are increasing the strength and stability of the bigger muscles as well. And when you try these movements in different contexts (standing, sitting, kneeling, all fours etc) you FURTHER increase the readiness of your joints and decrease the chance for pain. You can’t grow muscle long term if you’re in pain. Just sayin’.

By now you can see the importance of mobility and range of motion for hypertrophy. We have to learn HOW to move and HOW to activate certain muscles in our body to achieve hypertrophy in the areas we want. When other muscles take over an exercise they receive the work, not the muscles we’re targeting. The source of this dominance is usually a lack of stability, control or strength aka Mobility. If you’re ready to own your range of motion and makes gains pain free, click HERE to apply for Online Coaching with me.

]]> 2018-09-26T09:00:00-04:00 2018-09-26T09:00:00-04:00 The #1 Movement for Mobility as a Human Karon Hawkins We already know how important Mobility is for fat loss. Injury mitigation, more calories burned and building MORE muscle are the top 3 reasons we covered. You’ll be able to move more efficiently, sink deeper into your squats and lunges and you’ll bulletproof your joints. Seems like a good deal to me.

So since we know mobility is so important, where the hell do we start?

It can seem like a daunting task because there’s potentially SO much to work on. However, I have the solution: The #1 Movement for Mobility as a Human --- The Bodyweight Squat.

The body weight squat is the FOUNDATION of just about EVERYTHING we do. I don’t care if you’re passionate about building a stronger upper body, lower body, core, shoulders or literally ANYTHING else. The body weight squat works just about every muscle in your body. It has a shit ton of requirements, so learning how to squat better, deeper and for longer periods of time will build muscle and build mobility at the same time.

Okay Coach, I get it. Now where do I start?

It’s pretty simple.

To get better at squatting, you have to… squat. Yes, to get better at squatting you have to SQUAT, A LOT. And I don’t mean with a barbell on your back. I mean just sit in a deep squat with just your body. If you stood up right now, could you just sit in a deep squat without any shoes? Could you hold that position for a minute? 2 minutes? 4 minutes? If the squat is not a resting position for you, you got some work to do!

Right here, right now, I’m recommending that you enroll in my FREE 7 Day Online Mobility Course: Kronic Mobility. It teaches you how to build your way into a deep squat, at YOUR pace. It doesn’t matter if you’re 23 or 63, you NEED to be squatting. My program helps you work your way into a more mobile and stable bodyweight squat. Check out this testimony from someone who finished the course and continued do the mobility exercises for a few weeks after:

“My feedback is great! I have been doing your mobility exercises for a couple weeks now, and I have seen good results. I am a new big fan of the deep squat, and I do that as often as I can throughout the day. It has really helped with my posture and my lower back pains from sitting at a desk every day.”

He saw REAL results in the way he FELT. He saw his pain go down, he saw his posture improve. Once he saw those results, he was sold. If you’re in pain, having trouble getting deeper in your squats, having trouble with thoracic mobility, ankle and/or hip mobility, go sign up for Kronic Mobility. It’ll seriously help you.

Squats are NOT bad for you knees.

Shitty squats are bad for your knees.

Squats are AMAZING for your knees. Why? Because they help STRENGTHEN all the muscles around the knees and hips to help PROTECT the knees.

Squatting with your knees past your toes is NOT bad for your knees.

Squatting with your knees past your toes with your weight IN your knees, is bad for your knees if your knees are not PREPARED to handle that level of resistance.

It’s all about context.

If you can’t squat ass to grass without any shoes, bands or other supporting mechanisms, why are you putting 300 pounds on your back?

I stopped squatting for a bit to work on my mobility. My squat wasn’t the best. I would barely make it to parallel and would fall over. I couldn’t get ass to grass without my back rounding so much that my lower back basically hit the ground before my ass did. It was bad.

After spending 8 months working my ass off (there are NO quick fixes), my squat drastically improved.

My torso is WAY more upright, my hips are WAY deeper in the squat and my thoracic spine is activated and extending. It’s completely possible and doable. It takes time, though. If you’ve been squatting (or not) for a certain way for a very long time, it’ll take consistent daily effort to improve it. Remember: Kronic Behavior, Kronic Results.

If you’re ready to get busy on your squat and kickstart your mobility journey for FREE, CLICK HERE and enroll in my online course.

Improve your squat, get more mobile, burn more fat, move MORE weight, BETTER.

If you feel like you need more personal, individualized attention, schedule a Free 30 Minute Strategy Call with me HERE and we can develop some strategies for you to get your started on your fitness journey, no matter what your goal is.

]]> 2018-09-19T08:46:00-04:00 2018-09-19T08:47:04-04:00 Top 3 Forms of NEAT for Fat Loss Karon Hawkins I was talking to my mom the other day and she sent me some pictures of her vacation in Vegas and I was like “Mom, YOU LOOK GREAT!” Her jaw looked super chiseled and she looked noticeably slimmer.

She proceeded to tell me that she lost 12lbs since we last saw each other a few months ago!

We saw each other in  early July so in a span of about 2 ½ months she’d lost that weight averaging to a little over 4lbs per month.

That’s a healthy way to lose weight --- slowly. You can't rush your body with fat loss, it will literally fight against if you go too fast. Especially if you've been a certain body composition for a long time, your body will not take kindly to that rapid change.

So I asked my mom what she did to lose the weight.

She said two things: "your stretching exercises and walking". I literally started clapping.

With some easy walking and mobility training my mom lost all that weight.

Fat loss doesn’t have to be complicated. There’s a ton of other smaller activities that you could be doing to burn more fat. In this article I’m going to go over the top 3 modalities of movement that you could be doing for more fat loss. These modalities are often called NEAT or Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. This term is science for movements that are not intentionally exercise. All of these activities I’m going to cover do not tax your CNS (Central Nervous System) at all. Because of this fact, they are great additions or starting points for your fat loss journey.

We have to realize that stress is universal. Stress from family, stress from work, stress from relationships and stress from exercise are the same. They equate to more cortisol circulating in your bloodstream if they are not managed well. They stimulate the Sympathetic Nervous System “fight or flight” response which is what they should do. Stress is an important prerequisite for growth but too much will LIMIT that growth and leave you burned out. NEAT is a great way for active recovery to stimulate the Parasympathetic Nervous System which helps lower blood pressure, heart rate and circulating cortisol in the bloodstream. So not only will you burn more fat with these modalities, but you’ll aid your recovery as well! It’s a win-win.

Without further adieu, let’s dive in.


Walking is the classic form of NEAT that EVERYONE can do and do more of. We do it everyday, sometimes all day, and it is such an underutilized form of movement that leads to more fat loss.


When you walk, it may not feel like it because you’re not going balls-to-the-wall, but you're burning calories when you do it. It’s safe for your joints because it’s a low resistance, relaxed modality of movement. This strategy is usually reserved for the elderly and obese populations, but I’m here to say that ANYONE and EVERYONE can, and should be walking more.

About 2,000 steps is 100 calories. Of course that’s very relative based upon the age, weight and height of the individual, but it’s a good ballpark number to stick with. So, if you own a pedometer (fitbit, apple watch, etc) track your steps and aim for some multiple of 2,000 steps. Or basically, if you go outside and just walk for an extra 10-15 minutes daily, you’ll see some serious results long-term like my mom did! It’s even been proven to be therapeutic in some cases. Walk up hills, take the long route, take the stairs, get moving!

Walking can be your missing tool for fat loss that you don’t even realize you could be doing more of. All those steps DO add up!

Fun Activities with Friends

Next time you hang out with your friends, go do something active! Doesn’t have to be anything crazy. Something simple like mini-golf, going to a museum, going for a bike ride, hiking or playing frisbee for instance, are fun and easy activities that burn lots of calories! You don’t even have to think about it, you’re just having fun with your friends. These activities are 100% NEAT because you’re not hanging out to exercise, you’re not training together and you’re not taking a group class together. You’re just hanging out with your friends.

Will you burn more calories? Yes.

Will you recover better? Yes.

Will you build better relationships? Definitely.

There’s so many benefits to this modality of NEAT because it’s unintentionally helping burn more fat and allows you to have a good time while doing it. Don’t worry about calculating EXACTLY how many calories you’re burning, just enjoy yourself. Add some fun into your week, once a week to start!

Do Your Chores

Washing dishes, taking out the trash, cleaning your room, dusting, doing laundry and other chore related activities also are great examples of NEAT. I’ve gotten into modes where I suddenly want to clean a lot of stuff and just go off. I work up a little sweat and feel great after. My house is cleaner, and I got some movement in at the same time.

Throw some music on, throw some gloves on and get moving! Nothing else to say here.

Wrapping Up

At the end of the day, NEAT is all about incorporating more movement into your life daily. You shouldn’t rely on the gym to get all of your movement in. There’s tons of other ways to help you burn more fat with little effort or strain on your body. And like I mentioned earlier, most of these modalities won’t require much effort on your part! That’s the point of NEAT! It’s supposed to be simple and very relaxing for the body.

LISSC (Low Intensity Steady State Cardio) falls into this category if you’ve heard the term used before. A lot of people usually spend an hour on the stairmaster hating every moment of it. You can do the same thing spread throughout the week with one of these examples I presented to you today. You don’t need to spend hours on the stairmaster to get some LISSC in. Fat loss can be fun! 

(Doubt you thought you’d ever hear that)

If you’re still struggling to burn fat and reach your goal, apply for a 30 minute call with me HERE and let’s talk about it. I can give you real strategies that will aid you in your fat loss journey. And as always, these won’t be generic BS. These strategies will be completely specialized to YOUR situation and YOUR journey.

Let’s work!

]]> 2018-09-13T11:00:00-04:00 2018-09-13T11:00:17-04:00 How To Eat Pizza and Still Lose Fat Karon Hawkins More

Yes, you can still eat pizza and lose fat.

You’re probably like “no way, pizza is bad”.

There are no good or bad foods.

Everything has context.

I’m gonna say something and this may also trigger you a bit: You can get STILL get fat eating “clean”. Yup, I can be eating super clean and STILL see weight gain and even fat gain. The food itself isn’t necessarily the first aspect of your journey toward fat loss you need to consider. Of course, it’s important, but here’s the first thing you need to worry about: Energy Balance.

The first tier of weight and fat loss is going to be determining where you stand on the energy balance seesaw. Are you consuming more calories than you’re burning, or the other way around? Are you UNDER eating? Yes, under eating can also be the culprit. You can eat clean food all day and still bash your head against the wall a month later when that scale hasn’t moved, and you’re not seeing fat loss. I know this can be frustrating because at that point you’re like “fuck it, I ain't losing fat eating clean, might as well just have all the pizza I want anyway”. And you go right back into that disastrous cycle I talked about in my last article.

Trust me, I feel you. I was there. I used to give up when I first tried to lose fat. Before today, the only time I felt comfortable eating pizza, was when I was doing Insanity everyday burning who knows how many calories and going balls to wall daily. But you don’t have to do that either. I’m going to show you 3 REAL ways to still enjoy pizza (or really any food you love) and still see fat loss.

Strat #1: Track Yo Calories

As I mentioned earlier, the most accurate way to eat pizza and still lose fat is controlling your energy balance.

Do you know how many calories you’re eating per day?

Do you know how many calories you need to eat to maintain your weight?

Lose weight?


Knowing these caloric amounts is going to be key for you to develop the most efficient strategy for losing fat with or without pizza. So I recommend you slowly build up into your maintenance calories which can be determined HERE. This won’t be EXACTLY perfect. However, it will certainly be a good ballpark number. Once you find out your maintenance calories, you may be surprised. If you’re pretty active, you’re going to need a good amount of calories. You may even find that you’re barely hitting your RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate) calories, or the calories needed for basic bodily functions. You NEED to be above this intake otherwise your body will NOT want to lose fat.


Because if you’re barely hitting your RMR your body is not going to want to let go of fat at all since you’re barely giving it enough to even function. Once you get to that maintenance level and your body is used to this much intake, then we can start a slight caloric deficit (3-500 calories) to start leaning you toward fat and/or weight loss.

Now download MyFitnessPal and start tracking your calories stat. Track for 5 days and review the following:

Average Protein/Day

Average Calories/Day

Start with these two factors. We need to BUILD MUSCLE to burn fat, but if we’re not hitting our caloric intake requirement and protein requirements especially, we’ll never see that muscle gain or fat burn. Carbs and fat are definitely very important, but I don’t want to overwhelm you at first. One step at a time. And getting muscle doesn’t mean getting all bulky and huge. You can have moderate aesthetic changes and still build lots of muscle. If you’re having trouble tracking and/or knowing how MFP works, hit me up and I’ll help you through it!

Once you’ve determined the proper caloric intake and protein intake you need to get to your maintenance calories, progress into these numbers. Building a balanced lifestyle around nutrition takes time, just like training does. I wouldn’t expect you to hit a pistol squat (single leg squat) on your second day in the gym if you can barely squat with both legs to depth due to mobility issues. That goal has to chipped away at through time, diligence and having the right plan to get there. Nutrition is no different. If you’ve been consuming 50g of protein per day (it’s more common than you think) and you need 120g per day based on your body weight (.8g/lb of bodyweight is standard) there’s NO way I’m gonna tell you to hit that amount right away TOMORROW. That’s more than doubling your habitual intake. From an adherence standpoint, that would be VERY hard to stick with.

Instead, add another typical serving of protein per meal: 25-30g. Adding just one more serving suddenly seems more doable. So, every month add one more serving and slowly progress your way to your daily goal.

(What about pizza bruh?? We’re getting there.)

There’s two ways to track food that people usually go with: on the go, and pre-planning. Both ways work, but the latter option usually works a bit better because if you lay out your macros for the day, you know what you’re going to eat and there’s a way smaller chance that you’ll veer from that path. You can also use it to PLAN that pizza (there it is).

I had one client who was a vegetarian and pizza was one of his favorite foods to eat throughout the day. He usually followed it with a coke and a snack later in the day. His protein intake was very low. It was around 40g per day on average after we started tracking his macros. He needed 120g to hit that .8g/lb of BW figure I mentioned earlier. He was in shock. Because before we started tracking he would NEVER have been aware of this. Awareness is such a powerful tool for fat loss. Now that he was aware of what macros he needed to hit, we were able to have a better discussion and create a road map of how he was going to get there.

We are all creatures of habit so to tell him to STOP eating pizza 100% would be so hard for him because not only does he love it, but he’s been eating that way for so long. You can’t really take away things cold turkey initially, just doesn’t work long-term. A more progressive approach like modifying what his current habits are to make them a little bit better is going to be much more effective. So we did that exactly. We added vegetables to his pizza as a first tactic which would increase the amount of fiber and micronutrients in his diet. Then, he would be a bit more fuller and would be way less likely to have a bunch of slices with just cheese. We ADDED more sustainable protein sources for him to consume at home. We ADDED a super shake in the morning which would be full of the good stuff: fruits, a green vegetable, a nut butter (small dab), protein and water. So now his caloric percentage was no longer primarily processed foods like pizza. He was slowly incorporating an 80/20 lifestyle (a strategy we will discuss next).

He was on his way to a better life and moving closer to his fat loss goals. Because he was UNDER eating (sometimes 8-900 calories daily and that’s VERY low) we had to get him consistent in the gym and refueling his body efficiently with the good stuff so we could slowly get him toward his maintenance calories for fat loss later on.

All these changes started with tracking his calories. It started with becoming AWARE of what he needed before he was willing to make some changes. Notice I didn’t take away his pizza. He likes pizza. He’s been eating pizza daily for a long time. We just made his pizza a little better and added some other great habits, together! So he was still eating pizza and moving toward his goals. For a more detailed guide check out my nutrition E-Book on macros HERE. In “How To Macro” I give you all the tools you need to track your macros for bulking, cutting and maintaining your weight. Check it out!

Strat #2: 80/20

I’ve thrown this strategy around pretty often in conversation with people, on social media and in other articles. I always get this question: “Coach, what should I eat?” And I always respond: “It’s not what, it’s HOW”. HOW should you eat is a better question to ask when you’re trying to lose fat. Because the way you eat food, the way you APPROACH eating food and how you THINK about food is going to ultimately determine how successful you are.

With that in mind, here’s HOW you should eat for fat loss: 80% of your diet is wholesome, nutritious and non-processed while 20% are foods are that you really enjoy (like pizza). This strategy can be applied in many different ways but usually there’s two main ways: the sprinkle approach or the TREAT (not cheat) approach. The sprinkle approach means throughout the week you’re having small portions of your diet (20%) consist of things you enjoy. So, you can find spots throughout the week to eat pizza (moderately) or you can have a larger portion at the end of the week. Regardless moderation is the key. What we want to avoid is bingeing after a prolonged cold turkey session from things we enjoy.

To reference that client from earlier, let’s say we applied a cold turkey strategy and he cut pizza from his diet ALL TOGETHER. Let’s say he did it and saw some great results (arguably probably a lot faster). He would be happy with the results but would most likely CRAVE the hell out of pizza. After eating it for so long, then applying an all or nothing 100/0 strategy he’s most likely going to give in at some point and go nuts. Then he would binge on a ton of pizza and see all those results get cut in half or even disappear in a matter of weeks. The all-or-nothing approach just doesn’t work long-term as we are bound to eventually slip up. Life isn’t a perfect cut out picture where everything always fall in place perfectly. I highly recommend Courtney Sturgeon’s article from the BoomBoomPerformance team on this approach and why it doesn’t work in depth. Check that out HERE. But this approach almost inevitably ends up failing because we feel like we need to be 100% on point 100% of the time. Just doesn’t work like that.

You want some pizza, eat some damn pizza. It’ll be okay I promise.

Sticking to a plan long-term, adjusting as you go, applying this 80/20 strategy as opposed to a 100/0 strategy will be WAY better off for your life and your sanity. This adherence is the KEY component to success in any journey. Don’t give up and quit because you slipped. Don’t fall into this trap:

Stick to a sustainable plan that allows you to still enjoy food like pizza on your way to losing fat! The more greens you can get into that 80% the better. Greens and veggies have tons of fiber and vitamins in them that fill you up a hell of a lot faster than most other food would (as mentioned earlier). So putting more of the good stuff into your diet (the 80%) fuels your body to perform in movement, build muscle/recover and ultimately lose fat while still enjoying the fun stuff (the 20%) here and there.

So the point of this strategy is this: LIFESTYLE.

Once you adapt pizza around your lifestyle and not the other way around things become that much easier. We stress too much around this food and that food and this food.

Relax. We can figure this out! I promise.

If you’re still struggling to apply this 80/20 strategy after reading this, reach out to me! We can chat for 30 minutes and help you develop and adapt this lifestyle to see the fat loss you want while still enjoying the foods you love!

Strat #3: Moderate Your Alcohol Intake


If you don’t drink, feel free to skip this section. Thanks for reading! I appreciate your support!

If you do drink, and know where I’m going with this, keep reading.

Let’s face it, alcohol is a huge part of our culture as I mentioned in my previous article on Alcohol and Fat Loss.

We drink it during during lunch, dinner, during the weekends, and sometimes even for breakfast (boozy brunch anyone?) Mimosas are the shit, by the way.

Anyway, alcohol is a huge part of our lives but when we drink it in copious amounts, particularly on the weekends, we usually do this activity after we drink: eat shit tons of pizza. I did this in college just about EVERY weekend. Everyone did it. You would see the pizza line at the local shop that was open till 3am out the door and around the block. Shit, outside of college that stuff still happens. Go to ANY city and look around at 2am, where are people at?

The Pizza Shop.

If you were fortunate enough to be around a $1 pizza shop, you could eat 3 cheese slices for 3 bucks. That’s a freaking steal. And when you’re drunk, food tastes way better than usual. After drinking a lot, we get really hungry and proceed to eat whole pizza pies and wake up usually feeling like shit. So at this point, not only are our bodies trying to flood the alcohol out of our bloodstream, but after that, we handle those 1000 calories of cheese pizza we ate last night. And be very clear, alcohol ain’t light. One shot of whiskey is usually around 100 calories. Yup, all those calories are packed in that tiny little thing. And those calories are empty because they basically have nothing that benefit the body. Combine that with all those pizza calories and the majority of our calories for that day aren’t the best.

But wait, this isn’t a war on alcohol. I’m not going to tell you to NEVER drink (remember all-or-nothing doesn’t work). Just fit alcohol into your lifestyle in a sustainable way. Light beers, hold the mix on the drinks, and drink slowly. The college lifestyle was having competitions on how many shots you could fit into a night. The young corporate worker during the weekend lifestyle was basically the same, because we’re all still fresh out of college trying to relive those days. It’s hard to escape that lifestyle during the weekend. In fact a study found that non-student emerging adults  (18-25) consumed almost 3 times the amount of alcohol on the weekend vs. the weekday. So the data says it too, we drink a lot on the weekends. But we can fight this trend.

It’s starts with just saying no.

Hey, you want a shot?

No thanks, I’ll stick with this beer.

C’mon, you want this shot.

No, thanks, I’m just gonna drink this beer instead.

Stick to your guns. You want to drink but you’re not trying to go HAM anymore. You’re just trying to have a good time for the night, wake-up hangover and guilt free from not binging on pizza the next morning. You can still drink y’all, just don’t fall into binge drinking contest trap. It’s not just awful in copious amounts for fat loss, it’s awful for your liver. Moderate drinking is just fine for both of those things.

So you go through the night drinking 2-4 light beers over 6 hours or so and you feel good! You’re not sloshed and sure you want pizza, but you feel good after a slice or two instead of 8. You don’t feel the desire to drown your body in pizza because you’re not super drunk tonight. You wake up the next morning feeling pretty good and proceed about your day!

So if you find yourself being this person who drinks a lot on the weekends and eats a lot of pizza after start slow. Slowly decrease the amount of drinks you intake, slowly decrease the amount of pizza you eat (or throw some veggies on it) and space out your drinks hourly. Add habits, don’t take things away. That’s the key.

If you find yourself still falling into this boozy pizza binged lifestyle on the weekend submit a request to chat with me for 30 minutes HERE. We can work on this, and figure it out! You can still drink and eat pizza while losing fat. It’s completely possible. Let’s work through it, together.

Wrapping Up

There’s a residing theme here that I want you to remember: lifestyle. Adapting pizza into your lifestyle is 100% doable and 100% okay to do when trying to lose fat. Really ponder on these strategies I’ve presented to you. Really think about how they apply to your life and how they fit. Fat loss doesn’t have to be complicated.

It’s simple, but not easy.

It’s simple to lose weight and/ or fat.

As a good friend of mine over at EveryDamnDayFitness says: “It’s just math and willpower”.

But it’s not easy to do.

It’s take hard work.

Life throws you so many curve balls and shit just happens. But if we learn how to bounce back from any shit that life gives us, when unexpected turns and shorts come our way, we can stick with this process long-term and still see those great results we want.

I’m here to help you.

I specialize in helping people build a lifestyle around movement, nutrition and adherence.

If you’re ready to stop bouncing around from program to program, from diet to diet, from trend to trend and if you’re ready to make build a lifestyle for yourself, let’s talk.

Apply for a free 30 minute chat with me HERE and we can discuss how you can get started on your journey toward those fat loss goals. Let’s work!

]]> 2018-09-06T11:24:00-04:00 2018-09-06T11:24:56-04:00 Top 3 Tips for Fat Loss During Holidays Karon Hawkins More

A lot of people struggle with their relationship with food and the holidays are a big reason why. We use holidays as a reason to eat a lot of foods we normally don’t eat. Labor Day just passed and I'm sure you enjoyed yourself, went to a BBQ and had some great food.


I do the same thing. You're going to eat more than normal on the holidays. You're probably gonna drink more than normal too. That's a big part of our culture. We get together, enjoy each other's company and celebrate with food and drink. There's no reason to take this away.

But here's the thing: when you do this celebration, are you panicking after because you gained weight or feel/look bloated? Do you feel guilty because you had a few too many slices of pie or too many rum and cokes?

If you feel that guilt there's one thing we need to improve: mindset.

Your mindset is HUGE with this journey. If your mindset is focused on the short-term changes, you'll always be caught in this guilt and panic mode cycle where you get stuck in this infinite loop.

You feel that guilt, do a bunch of cardio or go super hard in the gym for a few weeks, get back to your pre-holiday body and then relax.

Then guess what: another holiday or long weekend comes up and you restart that cycle, yet again.

I'm here to tell you that you don't need to live this way. There's another way, a more sustainable way that I and many of my clients have adapted. Here are the top 3 ways to stay on track for fat loss during the holidays.


If you're serious about losing fat and staying on track for your goals, you'll put the work in. One of the ways to put that work in is making a plan.

"Fail to plan, plan to fail".

This plan doesn't have to have to be super elaborate, but just taking that step to make one will go a long way.

Planning Method #1

Track what you eat the week prior. If you find that you are eating 2000 calories per day, put 2-500 calories in the calorie bank daily for the holiday weekend coming up. If you start Monday and put 400 calories each day in the bank for 5 days you have an extra 2000 calories (a whole day of eating) to work with! You now can TREAT YO SELF! Have those drinks, have that pie, have that burger and not have that guilt. You won't need to go into panic mode and go crazy in the gym for a few weeks to get back to what you were.

You'll go to the gym because you love to move and feel good. That guilt won't be your motivation to get moving. Movement should be something you begin because you've found a medium of movement that you TRULY enjoy. It makes you happy and you love doing it. So if you follow this plan method, you'll be able to maintain that mindset and escape the guilt and panic cycle.

Planning Method #2

Let's say tracking ain't your thing. No problem. Follow this method: 80/20. This method means that 80% of the food you eat is going to be whole, nutritious foods. Then 20% is going to be things you enjoy. Especially if you don't follow this right now, this method is going to be SUPER effective.


That 80% is going to have a ton of fiber, vitamins and nutritious components that will keep you fuller for longer for WAY less calories. So most likely, you won't even NEED to track stuff because you'll be eating less anyway.

This reason is why you can eat 1000 calories of french fries, but only 100 calories of broccoli (barely). A cup of chopped broccoli is about 30 calories. Could you imagine eating 3 cups of broccoli? Nope.

Instead, combine that broccoli with a lean protein and some fibrous carbs and you'll end up eating around 4-600 calories per meal (maybe) instead of over 1000 with some fast food or something from a restaurant. You do this, then when that long weekend or holiday comes around, you'll do just fine.

Planning Method #3

Let's say you grabbed or thought of this post too late and you're going to a bunch of BBQs or parties etc TODAY.

I gotchu.

Okay, first thing: you're going to drink a ton of water before hand. Water is going to make you feel fuller. It's going to take up space and limit what you'll be able to eat.

Next thing: eat lots of the green stuff. Find all the green stuff you can at whatever event you’re at and fill half of your plate with it. As we talked about earlier, green stuff is a lot more filling than most of the food you’ll find at most holiday related BBQs, parties etc.

Next thing: chew your food! Chewing creates physiological responses in your second brain (your gut) that bring on the feeling of satiety (fullness). When we eat food we really enjoy we sometimes… inhale it. We’ve all been there. We start eating super fast, look up and we’ve had a burger, 3 handfuls of chips, and 3 pieces of pie. Times goes by quick when you’re having fun! I’ve definitely fallen prey to this inhale method. If you’re curious about how chewing impacts your hunger and how powerful of a tool it is for fat loss, check out this article HERE.

Finally: be smart with your booze. If you plan on drinking, stick with light beers and limit the mixed drinks if possible. Alcohol has some profound effects on your hunger and will usually lead to overconsumption of carbs later on. We usually go crazy with consumption after a heavy night of drinking. On top of that, alcohol is a very dense substance clocking in at about 100 calories per 4 oz shot! That’s a crap ton considering you can kick back a shot in less than 2 seconds. So not only does alcohol contain a lot of calories, but your body will stop doing everything else it’s doing to process that booze. This can interrupt muscle growth AND fat loss! We definitely want to make sure we moderate alcohol intake.  


When I say move more, I don’t mean inside the gym. The biggest mistake we can make as human beings is to believe that the only form of movement we should be doing is in the gym. The type of movement I’m referring are things like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, taking the hill instead of walking around it, walking to the grocery story and carrying your groceries home. Finding ways to move outside of the gym are key ways to up our energy expenditure that ANYONE can do.

I’m not in the gym all day everyday going balls to the wall. Most of my energy expenditure comes from one thing: walking. I walk, A LOT. This form of cardio called LISS (Low Intensity Steady State) Cardio is an easy and effective way to burn more fat and keep you moving. The more we move, the more calories we burn, the more fat we’re going to burn. If you find ways to incorporate more movement into your lifestyle you’ll bounce back from any vacation quicker than most. Walking can also be a very therapeutic form of movement. Throw on your headphones when you’re stressed out and just go walk for 20 minutes. Let go of your troubles for a little bit and just walk. You’d be surprised how much better you feel after some good music and a couple trips around your block.

Other activities like cleaning your house, cutting your grass, raking leaves, taking out the trash and other household chores/activities are great ways to work up a light sweat and get some more energy expenditure in your day. Fat loss doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as simple as you make it.


We cannot associate eating a certain food with “eating like shit” or “cheating”. When we attach those stigmas to certain foods, they mentally make us feel WAY worse than they actually are. Do you really think one burger is going to DESTROY your fat loss journey? Do you think one slice of pizza is going to KILL your gains in the gym?

I know what you’re thinking: “Coach, I eat like 5 slices and then get a milkshake”.

To that I ask you this: what did you eat yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that? Chances are it wasn’t 5 slices of pizza and a milkshake. It was probably something a lot more moderate. In some cases it might even have been super clean. But that’s the problem: we’re behaving in a restrictive non-flexible manner.

If you are in fact eating that way on a daily basis though, give me a call because we need to change that.

If you moderately consumed pizza and burgers for that 20% of your diet like I spoke of earlier, we wouldn’t splurge like that. The splurging usually happens after we restrict for so long. Then we fall back into that cycle and call ourselves a failure. On top of that, even if we’ve been CRUSHING our nutrition goals, we have one slip up and quit. We’re like “Yea, I knew I was gonna fail anyway”. Our mindset is short-term oriented. Fat loss is a long-term process that requires a long-term mindset to match it. We have to be in for the long run to see results.

Remember: adherence is the number one variable.

Stick to the plan, trust the process and everything will work out. It will NOT be easy, but it’s completely doable. Hiring a coach may just be the next step you need to fill in those accountability gaps. Having someone to report to weekly, especially when things get crazy, can really make the difference.

If you’re ready to really commit to your body and stop falling into this cycle during the holidays and just during life in general, sign up for a free 30 minute strategy call with me. Let’s talk about how we can apply these tactics TODAY. I won’t be giving you a simple eat, less move more answer. I’ll work with you to develop some great tactics that will change how you go about your fat loss journey.

]]> 2018-08-08T17:12:00-04:00 2018-08-08T17:13:53-04:00 Top 3 Reasons Your Prolonged Posture is KILLING Your Fat Loss Karon Hawkins More

So at first glance these two topics may not seem that related to one another. You’re probably thinking: what the hell does sitting up straight have to do with losing fat?

To be honest, you should probably first check out my post on mobility & fat loss I wrote for Cody “Boom Boom” McBroom here. It dives VERY deeply into why mobility and fat loss (another unconventional pairing) are actually heavily related. I will be touching on a few of those points from that article here but at a different angle. Posture and Mobility are also, you guessed it, related!

So first, let’s talk about posture and what it’s not. “Good” posture is NOT neutral spine 24/7. I saw a great post on Instagram by Dr. Andreo Spina about posture that said something like: The only bad posture is the one you’re in too often.” That quote really resonated with me because it made so much sense. Nothing in fitness is absolute because there’s a certain level of relativity to it all. Posture is dynamic. There are times where you’ll need to have a rounded spine, an extended spine and a neutral spine. They’re ALL important. So we can’t demonize any one type of posture. It’s all about context.

With that in mind, let’s talk about why posture and fat loss are related. To exercise efficiently, or getting the most bang for your buck, your body needs to be in certain alignments to execute certain movements. Postural alignment, or how your joints and limbs stack up as we move, is essential when trying to complete a movement safely, burn the most calories and build the most muscle. These are all 3 factors we’ve covered in earlier articles extensively because they’re all related to fat loss. So I’m here telling you again that this topic we’re covering is heavily related with those 3 essentials MUST HAVES for fat loss. If our postural alignment isn’t where it should be, we’re going to compromise one of these 3 factors for fat loss. Let’s talk about how postural alignment relates to fat loss specifically in relation to these 3 factors.


You Are Putting Your Joints At Risk

The above photo from Squat University shows an athlete executing a squat with poor postural alignment. You can see the knees are caving and in this case they're doing so because the weight is most likely WAY too much for the athlete here. When the joints aren’t stacked efficiently, the knees, the hips and even the back are in danger of injury. It starts from the ground up. Here’s another example below of a slight compensation in my own back squat.


The red line shows where my resistance line is. The green line shows where it SHOULD be. The reason we want the bar to be mid foot is because that takes away a lot of external load on the lower back and puts the resistance into where it belongs, your hips. Because my chest is so far forward my lower back is taking more load than it needs to. And it’s so slight that I didn’t even feel it. But over time, I would eventually. I highly encourage you to film yourself doing your compound lifts and analyze them for compensations. You can’t burn fat if you’re hurt! And should you decide to continue to compensate, whether you realize you’re doing it or not, you WILL get hurt. Only takes a matter of time.

You Are Limiting Your Energy Expenditure

If you are compensating heavily like in the previous squat picture you are KILLING your potential for higher energy expenditure. Why? It’s simple: bigger range of motion = more calories burned. If you are achieving more ROM in your squats, lunges, push and pulling exercises, you’re GOING to burn more calories. It requires WAY more effort to come up from a deep squat that a quarter squat.

Don’t believe me? Try it. Quarter squat with just your bodyweight, hold it for 10 seconds then come up. It will probably be a little challenging but you should be ok. Now sink into a deep squat where your butt is closer to the ground and hold for 10 seconds. You can even use a pole to support yourself should your mobility not be all the way there. That deep squat hold was probably NOT easy. It was probably pretty tough depending on how trained/mobile you are. The difference is you’re recruiting more muscle fibers to sink into and come out of the squat. Because you’re recruiting more muscle fibers, it requires more work from your body, thus requiring more energy, thus resulting in more calories burned.

If you didn’t have proper postural alignment I doubt you’d be able to get into a deep squat to get those gains. But to come full circle, knee valgus actually isn’t a bad thing IF IT IS INTENTIONAL. Yes, you can squat with your knees collapsed and it can be okay. We can move anywhere we want if it’s intentional and we are training that way purposefully. But the reason I’m addressing posture in exercise and fat loss, is because for most of us, knee valgus ain’t on purpose. For most of us these taboo positions are unintentional and occur due to a weakness, tightness or desynchronization between what we want to do and the actual execution. And because of this disconnect I HAVE to address it.

Learn how to first move conventionally with great alignment and efficient stacking of your joints to burn those most fat!

You Are KILLING Your Hypertrophy Gains

We’ve covered previously that building muscle is one of the best ways to burn fat because it forces your body to work harder, even at rest, thus raising your potential daily energy expenditure. If you’re not using full range of motion, especially if you’re a beginner, you’re KILLING your potential get the most from a movement possible. Now hold on, before you say: "what about box squats, rack pulls or other exercises that limit the ROM in a traditional movement?"

What’s different between those movements and a quarter squat and a partial ROM deadlift?

This word is coming back: INTENTION.

Those exercises have a purposeful limitation in ROM. They are designed to do so for specific reasons like training goals, mobility restrictions, injuries, or other limitations. However, if you are squatting WAY too much weight and quarter squatting because you can’t handle full rom, you’re your knees will hate you later in life, and you will NOT build NEARLY as much muscle as you would if you squatted lighter and deeper. EVERY movement has its place in our library of exercises. But here, if it ain’t on purpose you’re putting yourself at risk for injury and you’re killing your potential gains. I cover this topic of range of motion and mobility for fat loss extensively in my article I did for Cody BoomBoom so I’ll point you there again for more info on these variables in the fat loss equation.

Not only is range of motion important, but where the external load is distributed counts too. If you’re squatting and your heels come up, the resistance is now going to move more-so to your knees tipping the balance of where the external loads lies toward your joints. Of course your quads, glutes and hamstrings are still going to work, but this compensation is going to put more load into your knees. When you have a break in your alignment of joints, wherever that break exists, more external load will be placed. Overtime that excess load builds a mental pattern in your movement. You’ll automatically compensate without even meaning it after a while.

So you’ll essentially build this habitual movement pattern that will continually limit your potential to grow. And because you’d be accustomed to that manner of movement for so long, it would make it THAT much harder to break out of. Form isn’t just something us coaches and trainers try to nail into your head because we’re picky, it actually makes you a better and stronger mover.

So by now you can see that posture isn’t just limited to standing up straight. It’s interwoven in all movement and is very dynamic. Understanding context and when your posture should be a certain way for a certain goal will make you a smarter mover overall. Oh yea, and it’ll help you burn more fat long-term!

I’m offering you a free 30 minute form consultation to check things out and see how everything is stacking up with your exercises! You can check that out here!]]> 2018-08-01T10:19:00-04:00 2018-08-01T10:19:43-04:00 Top 3 Reasons Sleep Deprivation is KILLING Your Fat Loss Karon Hawkins I think we all know that sleep is important from a high level, right? We’ve all experienced the day or two after a crappy night of rest and how awful that feels. The grogginess, the lack of mental clarity and function combined with an overall feeling of lethargy. We can all agree that feeling sucks, right? So from the get go we can agree that sleep is important for life in general to avoid that awful post-crappy-night-of-sleep feeling.

Now how does sleep relate to fat loss? What I’m about to say might blow your mind:



Yes, sleep.

Not supersets and hours of cardio, or the perfect diet and becoming a macro boss.


Sleep might be the most underutilized and forgotten about tool we have to burn fat. Sleep may be the missing key for you if you’re struggling with fat loss. Are consistently fatigued? Craving sweets and salty high calorie low nutrient foods? Stressed the hell out? More sleep may be what you need. Consistent adequate sleep can fix SO many issues. It’s so important because recover when we sleep. If we don’t sleep, we don’t recover -- simple as that.

These top 3 reasons are going to breakdown EXACTLY why sleep is so freaking important in your journey with fat loss.

We Recover When We Sleep

This reason right here is the very first because, in my opinion, it’s the most important reason. There are physiological changes that occur when we sleep. When we’re trying to build muscle (which is the best way to burn fat again) our hormones play a HUGE role in helping you to do this. When we sleep Growth Hormone (GH) is released which aids in rebuilding muscle, bone, other tissues, results in improved kidney function and aids in the function of your immune system.

The greatest release of GH happens at night so if you’re not sleeping often for long enough, you’re not receiving that spike in GH! GH directly impacts protein synthesis as well as fat mobilization in the body. When you sleep and secrete GH your body is rebuilding your muscle and using fat as energy to do so. So not only is it helping you grow more muscle, but it’s also helping you burn more fat. So literally more sleep = more fat loss. Finally GH is highest the younger we are. As we start to age it declines in secretion so make sure you get your sleep in now!

It Dramatically Impacts Performance

We’ve already talked about how a poor performance in the gym KILLS your fat loss with my last article on the impact alcohol has on fat loss. If you can’t perform to your greatest potential, you’re not going to burn as many calories and thus not going to burn as much fat.

A lack of sleep has HUGE repercussions on your performance. It decreases your ability to multitask from a cognitive standpoint as well as your ability to react effectively. When we’re trying to lose fat, we need to hit compound movements that utilize multiple muscle groups. If we can’t multitask well, imagine trying to breathe, engage all the appropriate muscles, maintain stability and lift heavy at the same time sleep deprived. It just doesn’t work as well if you’re not well rested.

You simply will not perform as well physically without adequate sleep. In the recent olympics the swim team for the United States prioritized one thing over everything else: SLEEP! Yes, not nutrition, not exercises, not protein timing, SLEEP! While studying for my M.S. in Health and Physical Activity from the University of Pittsburgh, I had the fortune of hearing one of swimming coaches for Team USA speak about training Michael Phelps along with other athletes! Their entire day is planned out. Every single detail. Everything from what their training is going to be for the day, to EXACTLY what they are going to wear for the day. They need to have everything laid out so that the only thing they need to think about is swimming.

His biggest advice for adequate performance was sleep. Sometimes the athletes wanted to take ice baths or do other forms of recovery post practice which is great! However, if that recovery interfered with their strict sleep schedule, they couldn’t do it. ANYTHING that disturbed their sleep was completely avoided. Team USA absolutely DOMINATED the competition. Winning 16 gold medals, 8 silver and 9 bronze medals literally swimming past the competition, Team USA killed it. If gold winning olympic swimmers prioritize sleep for performance and do have THAT kind of result, we know sleep is the real deal for performance.

Illness & Injury Mitigation

As mentioned earlier, your immune system functionality is improved from GH which is secreted in high doses during sleep late into the night. Sleep deprivation leaves the body more susceptible to illness because the immune system is compromised. If we get sick, everything suffers. We feel like crap, can’t perform as well and may not even make it to the gym if we’re feeling bad enough.

If we’re not recovering properly through adequate sleep, our muscle isn’t growing back as strong, our bones don’t repair as much as they could be and injury is more likely. Cell repair is the essential component of recovery. When we workout (especially from lifting weights) our muscle and bones are broken down. Once we sleep and intake proper nutrition, those muscles and bones repair themselves stronger! Without proper sleep, this repairing process doesn’t happen. So think: chronic breakdown of muscles and bones + crappy sleep = injuries eventually. Injuries can have HUGE impact on our ability to get busy in the gym and even do basic tasks. Sometimes we’ll need rehab, casts and extensive recovery to get back to 100%. If we can mitigate that risk with just a few more hours of zzz’s, why not?

So by now you can see how important prioritizing sleep for more fat loss is! It’ll keep you in the gym working harder, recovering better and lower your risk for sickness or injury. Sleep may be the missing weapon in your fat loss arsenal. Well that, and a hiring a coach, but that’s a different story! Don’t neglect your sleep anymore if you want to lose fat. Get those hours in!

]]> 2018-07-25T09:00:00-04:00 2018-07-25T09:00:00-04:00 Top 3 Reasons Alcohol is KILLING Your Fat Loss Karon Hawkins More

Before we dive into this, I want to put out a big disclaimer: Alcohol is not bad. A LOT of Alcohol is bad. Like EVERYTHING I talked about that may inhibit your fat loss, moderation is key. I’m not a fan of the all-or-nothing approach that favors completely cutting something from your life cold turkey.

Let’s be real, does that ever work long-term? Sure, you may completely cut booze from your life for a month or two and that’s great. However, if drinking is a part of your life, you’re going to miss it and want it even more. Mentally, we want things we know we can’t have. That’s just how we work. Being honest with y’all I used to drink heavily. In college I binged a ton and just got used to the impact it had on my body. I worked my ass off, then drank my ass off, just about every weekend. It gives me perspective now to what my body is capable of aesthetically and performance wise since I've moved on from that lifestyle. Don't get me wrong, I still get bubbly sometimes. But am I drinking like I did in college?

No way. 

The more we restrict, the more we want. Instead, adapt a more flexible approach.

(We’ll get into some alcohol consumption recommendations later on. For now back to our top 3)

Alcohol is a huge part of our culture, especially in rustlin’ and bustlin’ cities like New York, LA and Miami. It’s hard to completely cut, unless you’re seriously dedicated. 

So while reading these 3 reasons, keep in mind: moderation.

Alright let’s dive in.


Heavy Drinking Usually Leads to Heavy Consumption
During the week we typically don’t drink that much, but during the weekend it can get a bit wild.
On average, young adults consume over 60% of their alcohol on weekends. A study showed that non-student emerging adults  (18-25) consumed almost 3 times the amount of alcohol on the weekend vs. the weekday. And what usually happens after a night out drinking? Pizza. Lots of pizza. This is going to usually tip your caloric intake heavily on the side of caloric surplus disrupting any kind of fat or weight loss journey. 
We use the weekend to relax and get a break from the week which was probably a bit stressful. A few drinks turns into a handful, which turns into a bunch. Because alcohol stimulates your hunger by messing with your blood sugar, you want lots of carbs. So this high consumption leads to a ton of carb intake. And because alcohol itself has a high energy density (7kcal per gram) your body is consuming a ton of empty calories, AND it has to burn through and metabolize those empty calories.
So not only are you burning the booze off, but now you’re trying to burn off those high calorie low nutrient foods. It’s a combination for disaster. It’s pretty common that people see weight gain after a weekend of heavy drinking and overeating.
But again we’re not about cold turkey. Moderation is the key. So in this case, instead of having 5-8 drinks, let’s do 3-5. Keep count of your drinks and actively stop yourself. Avoid the mixed drinks because they’re just loaded with sugar and will only stack up the calorie count even more. Don’t let other people pressure you either, it’s your body. You have goals, you’re trying to improve yourself. If they value you as a friend and overall person, they’ll respect that. And at the end of the night, instead of eating a whole pizza pie, have a slice or two.

Another strategy you can do is putting some calories in the bank, so to speak, throughout the week. So if you KNOW you’re going to go hard this weekend (birthday, holiday, event etc) track your calories for a week after you develop your macros and basically take off 100 calories each day and put em in your calorie bank. If Saturday is your day where you can’t prevent the splurge, now you have 600 extra calories to work with.
So at the end of the day, we want to either limit our consumption the day of, or at least prepare your calorie bank if you know you’re gonna splurge. These strategies will help you keep yourself on track with your fat loss journey while still being able to enjoy your weekends.

Decreases Performance

After a night of heavy drinking, try and go to the gym and be as strong, as explosive and as powerful as you normally are. I highly doubt you’ll be able to. You’ll probably feel sluggish, tire out faster and you’ll probably have some hangover symptoms as well. Carrying all that extra baggage is going to decrease your performance in the gym. That means you’re not going to work as hard, which means you’re not going to burn as many calories, which means you’re hurting your fat burn potential.
We want to crush every session in the gym when we show up. If we drink copious amounts of alcohol, the body is busy trying to metabolize it the next day, so you’re energy systems are all out of whack. One drink takes about an hour to breakdown. If you're drinking well into the early morning, you're going to take a ton time to sober up and burn that alcohol out of your system. Plus, you just aren’t as efficient after a night of drinking. The research does show however that while power output in rodents post alcohol consumption decreases, there is no clear evidence that it decreases in humans. But, c’mon, let’s be real: drinking and lifting don’t mix well however you flip it.
Alcohol also dehydrates you like no other. It makes you use the bathroom often throughout the night and without proper rehydration, you’re bound to wake up incredibly dehydrated. Dehydration decreases performance by decreasing the lubrication of your joints, increasing fatigue and failing to regulate your body temperature during exercise. There’s so many other reasons dehydration ruins your gym session, but in general you don’t just move as well.
All these effects combined decrease your performance and thus decrease potential fat burn. Moderate your alcohol intake to limit this decrease in performance! The more alcohol you drink, the worse your performance gets and the less fat burn potential you have.
Kills Your Recovery
Alcohol inhibits muscle protein synthesis (MPS) when consumed after a workout. Even if you have protein with that meal, the research still shows that MPS is decreased. So if you can’t rebuild your muscle back after a great session in the gym, you’re not getting the most out of your sessions. If you can’t recover properly, you’ll eventually burn out and your body will start retaining fat as opposed to burning it. If you’ve checked out any of my other articles, you know the importance of recovery and how if you’re not recovering appropriately, there’s no way you’re going to burn more fat.
Remember more muscle = more fat burn due to the fact that muscle contributes more to your resting metabolic rate or the amount of calories your body burns doing nothing. Plus, if you’re burned out from not recovering, you can’t even GO to the gym. You’ll feel like trash and will barely want to get out of bed, especially if this lack of recovery is from alcohol. On top of that, your hormones will eventually get out of whack from being in an overworked, fight or flight, drive all the time.
Now before you go dropping alcohol altogether, be very clear: moderation is everything. If you’re moderately consuming alcohol or not getting plastered every week/weekend, you’re fine. Now if you are in that category of getting very drunk throughout the week or weekend and are serious about losing fat, it may be time to make a few changes. However, take some slow changes and progress into a more moderate intake of alcohol for better fat loss!
]]> 2018-07-18T09:00:00-04:00 2018-07-18T09:35:44-04:00 Top 3 Reason Adherence Leads to More Fat Loss Karon Hawkins More

Before we dive into this I have one question: with all the free content online for weight loss, fat loss, getting ripped and getting strong, why are there SO many people that STILL struggle to accomplish their goals?

I won't give you the answer quite yet, but just think about that.

What usually happens with clients I’ve worked with, people I talk to and DM’s I get on instagram is: “I was doing this program but I couldn’t stick to it”, or “I got bored with it”, or “it was too hard”.

In general they couldn’t stick to what they were doing for whatever reason.

With that in mind, the #1 variable I want you to consider is not your exercises, your macros, what you eat or anything like that.


Like my boy Cody “Boom Boom” McBroom says, adherence is always #1.

I could give you the greatest, most functional, fat burning, muscle building godlike program right now. BUT, if you didn’t enjoy it? Wouldn't stick with it?




Do it.

Point blank.

At the end of the day, we will not do what we can’t stick with. This fact is why you can do a crappy program and see gains. Just simply remaining adherent to a program will guarantee some kind of change.

But there’s way more to the benefits of adherence than just sticking to a workout program. Let’s dive in.


Building a Better Lifestyle

Let’s face it, we’ve all done something that’s good for us for maybe a month and then said, “ahh yea that’s enough for now, I’m good”, and stopped. We grow complacent with a routine, a plan or look for a temporary solution and eventually start back to where we began. For instance, take a look at this flow chart for typical weight loss:

Now this flow chart doesn’t apply to just weight loss. You can basically apply to it any type of goal that can see short terms results from, especially if you’re just starting out. Everyone can get results short term. But they’re just that, short term. In order to build a true lifestyle, you must adapt yourself step-by-step for long-term gains. Remaining adherent to your plan,
as long as it is progressed correctly, WILL allow you to keep seeing those results you want.

Get out of this cycle, and start seeing some long-term results. Start making little changes to build good habits into your lifestyle. These little changes will add up to get what you’re here for: FAT LOSS!

Building a Better Mindset

The problem with the previous cycle was partly because the person who’s typically caught in this circle is looking for that next best thing to solve their fat loss problem. They’ve tried everything! Every diet, every plan, every this and that looking for results. Usually, as mentioned before, they’ll see results for a month and their mindset of quick gratification and quick fixes engages for a month or so and then they fall off. They see the change and are like: “dope I got it, I’m good”.

Adherence and the mindset behind it is sticking with the plan even AFTER you see results. It’s about
continuing to see resultsIt only takes adapting a lifestyle mindset of health and wellness ONCE, and I mean REALLY embracing as a part of your life, and you remain adherent forever. Now of course that’s not easy. It takes hard work, a lot of trial and error and some failure. But look, that’s anything in life. But if you never try a new strategy and just keep bouncing from program to program, you’ll never break this cycle. If you don’t adapt a different mindset geared toward embracing the journey and living the journey, you’ll ride the fat loss rollercoaster forever.

One of my clients just recently had an amazing mindset switch. For the first time ever, she’s looking forward to the gym. That’s HUGE. Going into the gym WANTING to be there, WANTING to crush it and WANTING to grind for those results makes all the difference. She’s going to give it her all with every session when she steps in there. Compare that with someone who’s kinda just going to go. They’re just not going to give the same effort long-term. Trust the process.
With the right plan and mindset, you can see that fat loss!

Oh, yea, every diet works. Yes, every diet works. You just need to find one you enjoy and can remain
adherent to.

Building An Avenue For Progression

Progression is
SO KEY for any type of fitness related goal you have. If we don’t progress, we’ll just plateau and stop seeing change. But here’s the thing: if we never remain adherent, we’ll never give ourselves an opportunity for progression and see fat loss. Depending on the person and training experience, after about 3-4 weeks it’s time progress and advance on your journey. But by that time, people are COMPLETELY dropping their program and changing to another one. Combining embracing lifestyle + a journey-oriented mindset you can give yourself an avenue to progress and get the highest potential fat loss outcome.

Progression is how we see results and continue to see results. By challenging the body a little bit more, every cycle, we are encouraging fat loss. The body never
FULLY adapts to what we’re throwing at it. We’re giving a little extra stimulus for fat loss each cycle which will almost guarantee continued fat loss. But again if we can’t adhere to the program, it won’t matter. Again, I can build you the best progressive, non-adaptive, fat burning program on the market, but if you don’t adhere, we get nowhere.

So you can see now why I call adherence the #1 variable for fat loss. It doesn’t matter what you do short-term, it matters what you do long-term. Fat loss is a long process that WILL have ups and downs. But if you embrace the lifestyle, mindset and create that avenue for progression, you WILL see results. Sometimes it just takes the right coach and plan to help you remain adherent and get that fat loss you desire! ]]> 2018-07-11T10:04:00-04:00 2018-07-11T10:04:23-04:00 Top 3 Reasons You NEED To Meditate for Fat Loss Karon Hawkins More

You probably read that title and said "how the hell does crossing my legs and saying OHM all day make me lose fat?" 

Well, maybe not that exact quote but you get the gist. It's a bit odd.

But wait, there's a point to this post and you'll learn EXACTLY why meditation is SO key for fat loss. 

Before we dive into our top 3 reasons, let's define meditation. Merriam-Webster defines meditation as: "[engaging] in mental exercise (such as concentration on one's breathing or repetition of a mantra for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness."

When you meditate, you're trying to create space and give your brain a break. Your brain needs recovery just as much, if not MORE at times, than your muscles. We constantly are processing so much information daily and this constant intake of data to your brain can be quite stressful. Stress is of course inevitable because life throws us curve balls all the time, but we can work to combat it. Let's take a look at some common stressors:

  1. Family/Relationship Issues
  2. Trauma/Loss
  3. Exercise & Weight Lifting
  4. Financial Issues
  5. Work Related Issues
  6. Injury/ Chronic Illness
  7. Emotional Issues (anxiety, depression, perception of self issues)

So as you can see, there's a TON of ways that life can stress us out. If we're constantly stressed out due to inadequate physical or mental recovery, it makes it very difficult for our bodies to burn fat. As I said in my previous post on Stress Management and Fat Loss, your body will most likely gain fat to compensate. 

So jeeze, all this stress, how do I deal? MEDITATE.

Let's dive into these 3 reasons:

Improves Your Recovery Potential 

Image result for Recovery

We talked about how important recovery is for not just our bodies, but our brains as well. When we meditate we're aiding our bodies in getting out of this "fight or flight" mode where we're constantly on edge. This mode is the Sympathetic Nervous System hard at work to keep the body alive. I say alive because WAY back in the day we weren't worried about running for a train to get to work. Instead our worry was running AWAY from things that were trying to kill us. Unfortunately, our body takes this mode a little too far when we don't need it to. It pumps cortisol throughout the body to aid in this survival. Our heart rate goes through the roof, we tense up and sweat. The body can't recover if it is in this state around the clock. Chronically elevated cortisol, heart rate and heightened sense of awareness will literally stress the body into weight/ fat gain.

When we meditate, we're allowing the body to switch on the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS), lowering the circulating cortisol levels, lowering heart rate and allowing muscle to relax. Meditation through slow, controlled breathing allows us to just calm the hell down! With so much going on around us and in our lives, it's really important to take time to just chill out and breathe. With the PNS being activated more often, the physical and mental potential for recovery increases! If we can recover, we burn more fat, simple as that.

Reduction of Cortisol

Image result for Cortisol

Again, elevated cortisol levels increases the chance that we'll gain visceral fat (fat around the stomach) and make it harder to lose fat in general. With elevated cortisol levels in the body, we're in survival mode and the body doesn't want to let go of fat because fat is essential for survival. The body will literally fight against us.

If we can lower cortisol, we have a WAY higher chance of losing fat because we also SLEEP BETTER. Sleep will be the #1 variable for fat loss that most of us overlook or neglect. When we sleep, we recover. If we can't sleep, we can't recover, simple as that. Chronically elevated cortisol = shitty sleep. Another issue with poor sleep is that the body can't perform in the gym as well. A sleep deficit DRAMATICALLY decreases performance in the gym. Ever sleep poorly then try to hit the gym?

It sucks.

A lot. 

Poor recovery is seriously a viscous cycle. 

Elevated cortisol levels => don't sleep well => don't recover => gym performance goes down => decrease fat loss potential and it just repeats. 

If we can prevent this cycle with some breathing and relaxation for 10-15 minutes a day, why not give it a shot? 

Why not increase our recovery potential?

Why not reduce cortisol and get out of that on edge "fight or fight" mode?

Even if you don't know how to meditate, just sitting there and slowing your breathing down, and relaxing helps. 

Emotional and Mental Health Improvements

Image result for Recovery

Besides the physical side of recovery, meditation has also shown to improve emotional and mental health. Fat loss is a long and hard journey that can certainly take its toll on people. Especially for people that are very overweight and maybe even obese, weight/fat loss is tough. The emotional rollercoaster is real and has serious implications. Meditation has been shown to decrease anxiety, depression and actually improve mood. 

Mindset is a huge factor to fat loss because if you're down on yourself and negative, you're more likely to quit and give up on yourself when things aren't working out. If we can shape that mindset to live in the moment, being present for the change we want to see and be resilient, it makes all the difference.

Also, guess what a negative mindset and perception adds to?

Yup, MORE stress.

More stress = more cortisol. We already know why that's not a good thing by now, right?

Emotions aren't just things our body feels, our brain is heavily impacted by them as well from a physiological perspective. Mood and emotional state makes all the difference in long-term fat loss folks. 


Image result for Meditation

Meditation is a KEY tool we can use to reduce stress, increase recovery and improve our daily mood. We can literally breathe and think ourself to more fat loss. 

You meditating yet? 

I'll be honest though, the first time I meditated it looked a lot like this . I researched a lot of different methods to begin meditating and tried a lot of different things. If you're trying to get meditating today and want to skip all the leg work I did, let's talk. I can help you figure an appropriate method, amount of time and breathing technique that works for you!

Start slow. Just sit there - relax, breathe, and say something you are or want to be over and over and over again.

"I am in control of my life"

"I am centered"

"I am strong"

Whatever your mantra is, say it in your head and REALLY believe it. 

Good luck!


]]> 2018-06-20T09:00:00-04:00 2018-06-20T09:00:00-04:00 Stress Management is KEY For Fat Loss Karon Hawkins More

Welcome to the first episode in my 10 part fat loss series! Today we're talking about how stress can be a huge inhibitor on fat loss. It's honestly shocking, how impactful stress is on our lives as a whole, but for the purpose of this article, I'll be talking specifically about how chronic stress deters fat loss.

So what is stress exactly? A stressor is something that makes you feel uneasy, nervous, anxious and activates your fight or flight response. This reaction is key because it causes your body to release hormones into your bloodstream to react to these stressors. 

Specifically, cortisol is one of the main hormones released to help aid the body to deal with the stressors that life throws it's way. There's nothing wrong with having cortisol being released. It's a normal, healthy reaction that is later mitigated once the stressor subsides. However should the stressor become CHRONIC and reoccurring, that's when we have repeated cortisol release and the issues start to arise. Let's take a look at common stressors:

  1. Financial Issues
  2. Family/Relationship Conflict
  3. Pain
  4. Lifting Weights/ Intense Exericse
  5. Issues at Your Job

These are going to happen at some point, right? NO ONE lives a stress-free life. It's just a part of how things go. In fact, especially for fat loss, exercise induced stress is actually important. The body needs to go under some stress to grow, build strong muscles and bones, burn fat and increase the efficiency of how your heart and lungs work together to pump your blood. However, should you not find a way to manage all these stressors that life throws at you, that's when we get to why you're here: it messes with fat loss. 

CHRONICALLY elevated levels of cortisol in your body is associated with HIGHER visceral fat or fat around your stomach (so cya abs for the summer) in addition to a  craving for sweet and fried foods that are usually high in calories, particularly fat. And we don't usually have a little, WE BINGE. If you're trying to lose fat, especially for aesthetics, these binge episodes KILL YOUR PROGRESS

We're constantly in this nervous, anxious and unsteady state of being. Our mood is all over the place and we can snap at any point going off on someone or even something. And when you're seriously stressed the hell out, it can mess with your sleep, your stomach, give you headaches and make you exhausted. 

Stress needs to be balanced with recovery. When we experience stress we need a way to let the body settle down and lower the cortisol levels to get back to a normal state. When we stay in the fight or flight zone for too long, everything is so out of whack. 

In the context of exercise specifically, especially if we're really puttin' in work in the gym, being in this fight or flight state for too long doesn't allow our body and brain to recover effectively. We're more likely to overtrain and more likely to get hurt. If we get hurt, depending on the injury, fat loss may take a back seat to just recovering from your injury! 

If this sounds scary, it doesn't have to be. With the proper know-how, help and execution, you can recover from stress and get back to your fat loss journey. 

Here's my top 3 ways to help you manage your stress right now as you're reading this article:

1. Diaphragmatic Breathing

Just breathing is one of the most effective ways to combat stress. Take a second and slow down your breathing. Take a big inhale all the way into your diaphragm, hold for a few seconds, then exhale very slowly. This style of breathing will release serotonin, a neurotransmitter responsible for regulating your mood, anxiety among other things, and will help relax you. Most of us just kind of breath subconsciously. But if you're feeling really anxious, worked up, or stressed out, just take some time to really focus on breathing and relaxing. You can give yourself 5 minutes to breath.

2. Meditation

I'm having a whole article on meditation and it's benefits for fat loss because there's PLENTY, but for stress management, meditation is HUGE. Meditation allows your brain to get some mental space and also a break from all the crap you got going on. Like a muscle your brain needs rest when it's been worked out hard. I know, it's hard to do. Start out with 2-3 minutes of not even trying to clear your mind, but just feeling. Feeling your breath go in and out of your body. Feeling the ground or chair beneath you. Hearing the sounds around you. And it's totally okay if your first time meditating looks like this. With practice like any skill, you'll have meditation under your belt. But you have to do it everyday!

3. Go Do Something Fun

Take a break and go enjoy yourself for a little bit. It doesn't have to be anything crazy! It can be listening to a song you really like and dancing like no one is watching, or checking out your favorite Netflix show or playing with your dog. Anything that will allow you to de-stress and feel good again is what we want here. Go do something you enjoy. 

Life is going to stress us out in someway. We just can't let it get the best of us and keep us from striving for what we want!

If trying to manage your stress for more fat loss, is stressing your out more, let's talk. I specialize in helping people mitigate the crap life throws at us and still stay on track for their goals. It can be difficult at first for sure. But in time, with the right tools and knowledge, you can really lower your stress, live a better life and lose some fat along the way!

]]> 2018-06-16T09:00:00-04:00 2018-06-16T09:00:00-04:00 Leave Your Upper Traps Alone Karon Hawkins More

It's pretty common that people work on muscles that are seen the most. We call those the "beachbody" muscles. You know, the chest, the arms, the abs and then those upper traps. From my experience, it tends to be the men at the gym that I see crankin' away at those upper traps shruggin' away. Now don't get me wrong, I don't think that shrugs in of themselves are innately bad. There are very few exercises out there that I think are "bad". It's all about context and balance.

The biggest thing we want to avoid when training is developing muscle imbalances. Now why is that important? When you overwork one type of movement, muscle or muscle group over the opposing muscle group, you develop an imbalance that will most likely have negative side effects. For instance, I myself had a huge muscle imbalance that I'm still working on: my chest and my back. 

I loved to bench, I loved pushups, I love dumbbell incline, decline, flat, whatever kind of pushing motion I could do, I'd do it. But when it came to pulling, I was weak and didn't train it as much as I should have. Because of this I developed a very rounded posture where my shoulders rolled forward and my pecs were so freakin' tight, it caused me pain. Yes, painBecause I neglected my back for so long I developed pain in my shoulders in a pinching sensation, and my posture was horrendous. 

I was stuck in the "beachbody" muscle mentality neglecting so much of what I needed to be a functional human being and avoid pain. I neglected to train my posterior chain, or the back of my body. I'm here to tell you to Leave Your Upper Traps Alone. We sit all day, with our posture rolled forward, and our shoulders hunched up by our ears. Being in this position often, your body gets used to it, and those muscles surrounding your neck and upper traps get super tight. If you follow that tightness to the gym by shrugging heavy weight, you're only adding to the problem. You NEED to train your lower traps. 


1. For Good Posture

I can tell you to fix your posture 20 million times but if the muscles on your back (like the lower traps, rhomboids etc) are too weak, you'll end up right back to round-back. Your body is going to stay where it's used to, where you've lived your life at. And if that life has been lived rounded, you will stay rounded. You can change this with the right help! Work on those weaker muscles to actually help un round your posture and keep it there without much effort by you. If those muscles are strong, they can keep you there, you just have to train them to do so. 

2. Overhead Stability 

If you put anything up over your head whether it's a barbell, dumbbell, or kettlebell, you need strong lower traps. They help pull your scapula (the angel wing bones on your back) down to stabilize your shoulders in that position. If your lower traps are weak however, pulling those scaps down is going to be that much more difficult. Scapular depression (or again pulling your scaps down) is such a key movement for overhead stability that not a lot of people are doing. With the assistance of the lower traps (and serratus anterior) you can effectively put your shoulders in better position to mitigate injury risk, so you can train harder for longer, and on top of that you'll have better shoulder mobility because you'll actually be able to maintain control of your shoulders overhead under resistance. With the right program, you can build your shoulder mobility up to actually be able to press heavy weight safely.

3. Avoiding Pain

I don't care if you're putting up 20lbs or 200lbs, everyone  hates pain. Like I said with my example, muscle imbalances lead to pain eventually. They lead to compensations, they lead to some part of your body being excessively tight and shortened, while the other part and weak and elongated AND tight. Yes, muscles can be long, weak and tight all at the same time. Crazy, I know. Some people not experience the pain right away, but somewhere down the line, it'll creep it's ugly head out. When you're in pain, everyday life becomes hard, let alone going to the gym. If we can avoid this, why not do it? If we can avoid pain, why not spend 5 minutes training a lagging muscle group? It's a pretty easy exercise to do, and I can show you how to do it.

Just to restate this, I don't think shrugs are bad, I don't think training your upper traps is bad, I am saying that we need balance. Balance is the key to all things. SUPER cliche, I know, but it's true. If we can keep ourself in balance and avoid pain, avoid being super tight and immobile, we'll be able to keep hitting the gym, keep burning fat and keep looking and feeling good. You won't care about your big traps when you're 70 and in pain, I promise you. 


]]> 2018-06-14T10:00:03-04:00 2018-06-14T10:00:03-04:00 Q&A Session #1 Karon Hawkins More

I had my first Q&A Session and a ton of people asked some really great questions! Thank you to everyone that submitted questions! If you’re reading this and have any questions of your own, or have followed up questions, feel free to leave a comment down below or DM me on Instagram @CoachKronic and I’ll take a look! For now let’s get into these responses!


Ima smaller guy and want to pack on pounds should my strategy be get as much food in me as possible whether it be healthy or not? Or try eat more clean but in large amounts?

In general, your first step should be to develop a maintenance level of calories you need to consume to maintain your current weight. Then you can build a strategy to get into a slight caloric surplus and slowly gain weight. The “dirty bulk” technique may help you see results short term but your hormones, energy levels, gut health and digestion will be ALL out of whack eventually. Have your diet be 80% wholesome, nutritious food from the earth and the other 20% be your fun. Eat greens, eat grains, eat lean meats (or beans, legumes, seeds, edamame etc if you’re vegetarian) as often as possible, then leave the pizza, fries, and burgers for the other times. Check out my E-Book on building macronutrients for cutting, bulking and maintenance macros HERE. It gives a ton of different strategies and shows you how to build those macros (proteins, carbs and fats) step by step!

I’ve been trying to do some more mobility workouts...but my Is this a bad thing?

As I said in my reply on Instagram, definitely go see a Physical Therapist and get evaluated. I had a similar issue (sometimes still do) with clicking in my right knee and ankles. I played A LOT of basketball twisting, spraining and destroying my ankles. During my recovery all I did was… nothing (big mistake). After my 3rd or 4th sprain, tons of clicking and pain. My knee was clicky as well, but I didn’t see pain. When I spoke to a PT about it, he explained to me that the clicking isn't necessarily bad as long as no pain followed it. He explained that we’re naturally loud and things will click. However, if you have pain WITH the clicking that’s a huge red flag. That being said, go get evaluated and see what they say.

    What are the best home exercises to increase my vertical?

    If you’re trying to increase your vertical you need to do movements that are going to increase the explosive capability of your muscles. You need them to be able to stretch and contract QUICKLY. You need to be POWERFUL. There are a few great exercises that a great physical therapist and trainer named Jeff Cavaliere over at Athlean X showed on his youtube channel for increasing vertical and the concept of training for power. I thought about making some videos, but he’s doing everything I’d do and more. So check those out and see how they help! If you need more help with this after you’ve checked out those videos, shoot me a DM on instagram @CoachKronic and we’ll get a bit more in depth.

    How do you keep yourself consistent with mobility training?

    This is a tough one. Mobility training isn’t fun all the time. In fact it’s hard, frustrating and takes times to see serious results. The best way I’ve remained consistent has been putting them in my morning routine at a lower intensity. I move all my joints individually every morning. All of them. They’re called CARs (Controlled Articular Rotations). I do that every morning so I never have to think about when I’m going to do it and I just naturally build the habit. The next time I do mobility work is when I train. I literally train at the gym sometimes doing JUST mobility. It can be THAT challenging at high intensities. So find a good time to get mobile done everyday and stick to it!


      How do I plan a diet that is good for me and not boring for my palate?

      I would honestly Google basically what you're asking. Google is going to give you just about everything you need to not get bored when you’re building a diet. I eat ALL kinds of food and don’t limit myself to chicken and rice (or subway, I love subway) and I still eat well. If a recipe calls for a certain ingredient you don’t like or that sucks, X it and find something else that’s a bit better for you. I also highly recommend checking out my E-Book. I have a ton of strategies for building a sustainable diet in it. You can see it HERE.

        I find myself stopping and starting programs and just “exercise” in general. Advice for motivation?

        Motivation only lasts so long. It’s a fast burning fuel that can leave you gassed out QUICK. The reason I say this is because that initial “I’m fired” up stage only lasts so long. It’s why so many people quit. Here’s a few ways to stay in the game long-term:

            1. Find a program you REALLY enjoy. Make sure it’s actually something you look forward to doing. If you don’t like it, you WON’T do it, point blank.
            2. Find someone (like me :) ) to keep you accountable on your journey. Or find a buddy to exercise with. You’re SO much more likely to stay on it if you have someone to report your progress to or go with to the gym.
            3. Think CRITICALLY about why you want to exercise. Think about what your true motivations are. Why do you want to exercise? What do you want to change or improve about yourself? Get past the aesthetics, dig deep within yourself to find your real reason. THAT reason is going to help you stick with it long term.

            I know stretching is just as important as everything else. How can I find/create a routine that works my entire body that I can do 2xs a day?

            This depends on your schedule, your previous training experience, your movement capability and so much more. Also, I would start with 3-4 times a week at first, then MAYBE move to 2x a day if you’re recovering properly and not feeling gassed out. That’s a strong maybe by the way. I’m laying this out because you need to be able to identify all those things before you make a plan. If you can’t (not saying you can’t) do a body-weight squat efficiently, you’re not gonna go making a program with pistol squats. If you can’t bring your shoulders by your ears without your lower back curving and your ribs flaring out, you’re not gonna make a program with a heavy overhead press. My best recommendation would be to checkout Athlean X and look through their YouTube library. They have a ton of assessments, exercises and even full body workouts you can do that are safe and will help! If you still find yourself struggling to make a program, I can certainly help!
     2018-05-30T18:15:00-04:00 2018-05-30T18:22:59-04:00 What's Missing in Your Fitness Journey Karon Hawkins Training and nutrition can only take you so far without this missing piece. After a while in fact, this missing piece can really deter your discipline and consistency. I wanted to talk about this piece because it isn’t talked about enough. People focus so much on getting in the gym and eating right that they completely leave this piece out of the equation.
















              Actually ENJOY your program.



              Follow the 80/20 rule



              Don’t punish youself should you slip up along the way



              Do some kind of activity that makes you happy weekly



                Meditate everyday







       2018-05-24T09:00:00-04:00 2018-05-25T12:56:20-04:00 Why Meal Prep Isn't The Only Way Karon Hawkins More

                Before we dive into this, I wanted to ask: what’s your relationship with food? You may say to yourself, "relationship with food, what does that mean?"

                Do you label certain foods as good or bad? Do you feel guilty after eating certain foods while feeling healthy after eating others? Do you often go "All or Nothing" and completely cut out certain foods just to binge on them later? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, it may be time to evaluate your relationship with food.

                This may shock you but I'm going to tell you a secret that I want you to eternalize in your brain:


                Now you may be like woah woah Coach, hold the phone...What about Pizza? French Fries? Burgers? Ice Cream? Nope --- nothing wrong with those things. Nothing at all. How could I be an online fitness coach and tell my KronicFit Fam that those foods ain't bad?

                Because they're not.

                But I’m going to have a whole separate blog post on developing a better relationship with food. This post may actually help you get there if you’re struggling with that relationship currently.

                Okay, let’s dive in. We’re going to analyze some different ways to get to our goals beside meal prepping everything. Because like I said in my post on IG (@coachkronic), meal prep isn’t the end all be all. It’s definitely a viable strategy that can be incorporated into a balanced and sustainable nutritional strategy, however it can’t be ALL you do. Let’s talk about some other ways to get what we want from our food.


                The Small Meals Myth

                So if you were like me back when I started meal prepping I thought I had to eat a bunch of little meals to help boost my metabolism and get shredded. So far from the truth. Meal frequency is completely dependent upon the person and how they can adhere to a certain amount of meals per day.

                If we can lock in a certain amount of servings, macros, calories etc per day in 3 meals, dope.

                In 4 meals, dope.

                In 5 or 6, DOPE.

                The point is, it will vary between each person on a case by case basis. Some people can intake high amount of carbs, proteins or fats in one sitting and be PERFECTLY FINE. Others have trouble and need to break things up. The point is you can do a bunch of little meals, or a few big meals, doesn’t matter!  


                Intermittent Fasting

                There’s been a huge trending craze around this strategy for fat loss making things so complicated. IF is fancy for skip a meal, that’s it. If I want to get technical there’s a few ways to do it. It usually involves restricting the times you eat. These windows typically range from 12 to 20 hours and usually involve skipping breakfast. Some use coffee in the morning as it is a hunger suppressant due to the caffeine.  

                There is some research that shows IF can have an improvement in insulin sensitivity (a biomarker for diabetes risk), a reduction in the risk of heart disease and obesity among other benefits but it’s still unclear of the long-term impact from a physical and mental perspective. There’s just a ton of mixed results with this strategy so try it out and see how it makes you feel. Remember, adherence is the #1 thing we care about.

                ANYTHING can work if you stick to it and enjoy the lifestyle change. NOTHING will work if you don’t stick to it.

                Meal Replacements

                Meal replacements represent a huge industry of products designed to increase the convenience of the consumption of nutrients while also aiding in weight loss due to their low caloric content. These are definitely viable options that include bars, powders and pre-made shakes. Protein shakes aren’t necessarily included in this industry, however from a caloric restriction perspective, they count.

                Replacing one meal a day with a high quality meal replacement product has been shown to be an effective strategy to lose weight and improve some biomarkers like inflammation and oxidative stress (an overproduction of free radical molecules in your body that  cause disruption of signaling activity in your cells that can lead to cellular damage) during weight maintenance.

                There are a ton of meal replacement products out there that work quite well! Some are just more expensive that others so be careful where you buy from if you decide to choose this strategy.

                Meal Prep, But A More Realistic Version

                Like I said in the beginning, I think meal prep is a great strategy for any goal you have, but we need to keep it real. Living out of a tupperware container 24/7 is not realistic. However, prepping one meal, that’s a bit more do-able. Applying a more realistic version to meal prepping is definitely dependent on your environment as well as your own adherence.

                If you know where you work has NO wholesome, nutritious food around you, prepping your lunch may be a good idea. It’ll save you money, decrease your ingredients list (HUGE REASON) and allow you to again, accurately plan your serving sizes. The reason I identified your ingredients list as being something that should be factored in, is because the QUALITY of your food matters so freaking much.

                You’re not gonna sit there and tell me that a pre-packaged teriyaki stir-fry meal from the frozen isle (in most cases) is going to be higher quality than putting fresh vegetables, some kind of protein and carb together yourself? With your own control over what’s in that sauce?

                Take a look at the back of some of those meals. If the ingredients list is longer than your face, we got problems and you’re probably better off avoiding that.

                On The Go

                Okay, so you don’t have the option to cook stuff because you’re traveling for the weekend, week, day, whatever the case may be. That’s totally fine.

                WE CAN STILL ADHERE!

                Your goal is to be balanced. You have that choice to stay on track. You have the choice to pick things you know will keep you on your path.

                With that in mind, here’s what we want to do: combine protein, carbs and fat in some way. I’ll elaborate. Let’s say all you have time for is a run in a convenience store or a gas station. Here’s what I recommend:

                A Protein Bar

                There’s a TON of different options, flavors etc when it comes to protein bars so you have a bit of wiggle room here. Yes, it’s going to be pretty processed, but this will be way better than grabbing a bag of chips or some kind of packaged sweet which will have a crap ton of calories, sugar, and 0 nutrients to fuel you.

                Nuts & Fats

                Peanuts, Walnuts, Cashews and just about any nut will be a great source for fats. Fats are so important for helping your immune system function correctly and keeping your hormones in check. If you’re allergic to nuts, you can grab some sunflower seeds instead!

                Fruit & Carbs

                Fruits are amazing for you. They are also a great source for carbohydrates. Bananas, apples, pears, grapes etc are usually available at most convenience stores but are often skipped over! If you should hate fruits, opt for some kind of popcorn option. Do your best to find one that doesn’t have any cheeses or excessive flavoring on it.

                In general that’s what we want for our meals: a protein, a carb source and a fat source.


                What About Pizza? 

                Again nothing wrong with pizza, burgers or any of those foods we view as fattening etc. If you are going to eat those things, you can always modify/add things to it to make it a better option. For instance, throw some veggies on your pizza. Boom, some extra fiber and micronutrients to improve the quality of that meal.

                I’ve seen this on social media a lot and I really enjoy it:

                “One salad won't make you lose weight just like one donut won’t make you gain weight.”

                It’s all about moderation and balance. If you know you’re going to a work event where there’s going to be alcohol, pizza, fries or anything like that, limit your intake before hand. AHA! Perfect opportunity to maybe try fasting that morning or using a meal replacement.

                I like to call it putting calories in the bank. Let’s say Saturday you KNOW you’re going to go out and eat something you really love and drink. Instead of panicking…

                PLAN FOR IT.

                Deposit 100 - 200 calories in your bank (you can track calories for a few days, it’s not going to kill you) everyday until Saturday. Just like that you have an extra 600 - 1200 calories to work with. When Saturday comes --- booya, CASH OUT!

                See, you can always plan, you can always find a workaround, you can always find a way to make things work. It takes time, it takes patience, it takes know-how and experimentation. It’s definitely not easy and can’t be simplified. I present you with these strategies because if you’re reading this (thank you for reading this), you’re probably meal prepping, considering it, or you’ve done it and quit. I was there, RIGHT THERE. I considered, I did it, for a year, and then I was done forever. I’m still in the best shape of my life, performing and getting strong in the gym without it.

                You don’t NEED to implement any ONE strategy. If you hate it, scrap it. It’s not worth it. As a friend and mentor always says “Flexibility Leads to Sustainability”.

                If you’re still struggling with this like I was for so long and need some guidance, let me help. I’ll help you skip all the hurdles I went through, all the trials and fasts and replacements and money lost.

                Click HERE to schedule a free 30 minute strategy call with me and let’s talk about how we can figure out a nutritional strategy that works best for YOU.


                1. Davis, L. M., Coleman, C., Kiel, J., Rampolla, J., Hutchisen, T., Ford, L., . . . Hanlon-Mitola, A. (2010). Efficacy of a meal replacement diet plan compared to a food-based diet plan after a period of weight loss and weight maintenance: A randomized controlled trial. Nutrition Journal,9(1). doi:10.1186/1475-2891-9-11
                2. Patterson, R. E., Laughlin, G. A., Sears, D. D., LaCroix, A. Z., Marinac, C., Gallo, L. C., . . . Villaseñor, A. (2015, August). INTERMITTENT FASTING AND HUMAN METABOLIC HEALTH. Retrieved from

         2018-05-06T21:05:00-04:00 2018-05-06T21:08:23-04:00 Top 5 Weight Loss Myths Karon Hawkins More


                  There's a lot of lies out there. Whether it be what we see on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, it really doesn't matter. We've all seen those weight loss ads, commercials and stories that look too good to be true. Chances are, they are. Let's get into these myths!

                  1. You Can Target Fat Loss On Your Body (“Spot Reduction”)

                  You cannot control where your body loses fat from. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a picture of a fitness model with six pack abs next to a workout promising fat loss. Unfortunately, that’s not how the body works. Doing 100 crunches a day will NOT get you a six pack. The same thing applies for “waist trainers”, “sweat wraps” or any other product promising you a six pack for minimal work. Sorry, folks. Maintain that caloric deficit and in time through patience and consistent effort you will see fat loss in the areas you desire.

                  2. More Sweat = More Weight Loss

                  Sweat is a natural response your body triggers to maintain something called homeostasis. Think of homeostasis as your body trying to maintain balance internally and externally. When you exercise or do anything physically demanding, your body temperature increases. To compensate for this change in equilibrium, your body sweats to try and cool itself down. Temporary weight loss from sweat is regained when you rehydrate through the intake of water and food.

                  3. Carbohydrates Make You Fat

                  This is one of my favorite myths. Carbs get such a bad rep nowadays! Carbs are your body’s primary source of fuel. Your brain relies on carbs to function effectively in fact. When we exercise, our bodies utilize carbs to move and, without them, we just don’t move as efficiently. Carbs don’t make you fat, a caloric surplus, or consuming more calories than you burn, makes you fat. What is true about carbs and weight gain is that a lot of excess calories typically come from processed carbs that have very little fiber but high amounts of calories leading to over-consumption. Therefore, it’s not the macro-nutrient itself that leads to weight gain, but the over-consumption of it that leads to weight gain.

                  4. There Is One BEST Way To Exercise or Eat For Weight Loss

                  Whether it’s a new diet or new exercise for fat loss, there’s always some new modality between these two topics promising you results. However, there is NO end-all-be-all way to lose weight. What is the best way? The best way is the way that works for you, consistently. It’s the form of exercise and “diet” that you can do for the long-term. If you don’t see yourself moving this way, eating this way for a year down the line, three years down the line, it’s not worth it! Weight management is just as important as weight loss. Sure, those crash diets that drastically decrease your carbohydrate intake will help you lose weight in the short term (remember carbs are your primary source of fuel), but if you can’t maintain that lifestyle, you’ll most likely gain that weight back and maybe be worse off than when you started.

                  5. You Can Out-Train a Bad Diet

                  As I mentioned in the beginning, how you eat will ultimately reflect how you look, feel and perform. This means no matter how hard you grind in the gym, you cannot overpower the impact of what you eat daily. We tend to overestimate the amount of calories we burn, and underestimate the amount of calories we consume. As an experiment, track your macro-nutrients using myfitnesspal or loseit apps on your phone for two or three days. You will be shocked at the amount of excess calories you did not know you were consuming, especially if you dine out often.


                  1. Crandall, C. G. (2010). Mechanisms and controllers of eccrine sweating in humans. Frontiers in Bioscience, S2(2), 685-696. doi:10.2741/s94

                  2. Golay, A., Allaz, A. F., Morel, Y., Tonnac, N. D., Tankova, S., & Reaven, G. (1996). Similar weight loss with low- or high-carbohydrate diets. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,63(2), 174-178. doi:10.1093/ajcn/63.2.174

                  3. Marchesini, G., Montesi, L., Ghoch, M. E., Brodosi, L., Calugi, S., & Grave, R. D. (2016). Long-Term Weight Loss Maintenance for Obesity: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy, 37. doi:10.2147/dmso.s89836

                  4. Vispute, S. S., Smith, J. D., Lecheminant, J. D., & Hurley, K. S. (2011). The Effect of Abdominal Exercise on Abdominal Fat. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 25(9), 2559-2564. doi:10.1519/jsc.0b013e3181fb4a46