With gyms and studios soon to reopen you can expect to see a rush of eager gym goers ready to drop the TheraBand’s and get straight back into the iron. Motivation will be through the roof and everyone will be ready to crush it.

Our question is…What’s the last thing you want to happen?

Injury

Can you imagine the frustration of finally being allowed back into the gym after months, only to be met with an injury 2 weeks later.  

Unfortunately this will be the case for many.

You see, there’s a process of reacclimatising to your previous resistance training after some lay off. You can’t just waltz back in and hit your prior 1RM.

Now the negative is out of the way lets touch on the positive! First of all, whilst you may feel like you’ve lost everything, if you do the right thing it will come

back and in a hurry. Second, after some time off your body will be primed to

make some good gains so it’s something we definitely want to take advantage

DETERMINE YOUR STARTING POINT

How you re-enter the gym will essentially be based off what you’ve been doing whilst gyms haven’t been available. You likely fit into one of the following categories:

Category 1 – Full equipment access and no change to training

For some, your training hasn’t changed. If you are lucky enough, you have access to basic gym equipment with sufficient loads to satisfy your needs. This can potentially see you resume training as normal in the gym.

Category 2 – Resistance/hypertrophy focused training with limited equipment.

You fit into this category if you had small pieces of equipment (therabands, light dumbbells etc) OR even no equipment but still managed to done some resistance/hypertrophy focussed training during this time. What do we mean by this? Although the load wasn’t available, you still performed many of the basic movements patterns that are common in the gym to a high relative intensity (close to failure). We know from research that low loads taken to high relative intensities can still produce hypertrophy. Meaning those with limited equipment have been able to make progress or at least maintain if they were able to follow this principle.

Category 3 – Training of another modality or goal.

In this category you’ve been training but it’s been with different modalities to your regular gym training.  It’s easy to see that a large number of people are performing workouts and exercises that don’t have much carry over into a typical resistance training session. A classic example is that people have begun to run more. HIIT training has also seen an increase. Why? They don’t require any equipment.

Category 4 – No training

For one reason or another, some people have trained very little or not at all. We are not here to shame anyone or say you’ve messed up by not training as we

understand this had the potential to be a difficult time for some. What you do

need to do though is consider this when going back to the gym and making sure you alter training accordingly. 

It’s important that your carefully consider which category you fit into when

returning to the gym as each will require a different approach.

KEY CONCEPTS OF RETURNING TO TRAINING

When returning to the gym there are two key concepts we must consider when looking at programming. These are the acute: chronic workload ratio and De Training.

The concept of acute: chronic workload ratio essentially addresses our likely hood of injury and what we can do to make sure that remains low so we can return to the gym safely.

De training looks at the adaptions the body has made (or lost) due to time away from resistance training BUT also why with a well-structured program you can quickly regain muscularity and even set yourself up for some good progression.

Let’s look at these in more detail.

Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio

The concept of an acute: chronic workload ratio simply states that the likelihood of us getting injured in training is higher in a single session if that session is significantly higher in workload compared to previous training sessions based over the rolling average of a 4 week period. Basically, if you suddenly do a session significantly harder than what your body is accustom to then you open yourself up to injury.

The best example of this is returning to training from a holiday. Think about it, have you or do you know of someone that’s gone on a holiday where they haven’t trained? You/they come back and get straight back into training only to have a new niggling or more severe injury appear. That is the acute: chronic workload ratio in action and obviously must be considered given the current circumstances.

De Training

Ever heard the phrase, use it or lose it? De training simply refers to the loss of previously made adaptions in training. At worst case, you haven’t trained at all and the de training effect will be

significant. Best case you still managed to train hard but with limited load available and therefore there will be some degree of detraining but certainly not as much as not doing anything. Finally, if you had a full gym set up then detraining probably won’t be of concern to you.  

The areas we will be most concerned with in regards to de training are muscle loss, connective tissue and neural pathways. We know that after 2-3 weeks of the removal of the stimulus (training), the detraining effects start to occur.

Muscle loss is exactly as it sounds. Muscle is a metabolically costly tissue. It requires energy and if the body feels like its wasting energy on excess muscle that’s not being used then it will get rid of it.

Connective tissue is our tendons and ligaments. Once again, through consistent resistance training overtime these tissues have made adaptions in order to be able to handle high loads and volumes in training. Now that’s been taken away for significant amounts of time, these tissues now have a decreased capacity to handle such load and volume.

Our neural pathways is essentially referring to our technique. Let’s take a deadlift for example. The deadlift is a complex exercise. During our training career we practice over and over to eventually develop a coordinated sequence of movements between individual parts of our body in order to perform it well. At a neural level, this meant our motor neurons (nerves which innovate muscle and cause contraction) fired in a specific sequence and at a high rate to allow us to perform deadlifts with a good technique at high loads. Again, when the ability to deadlift is taken away, these neutral pathways will decay over time meaning our technique and ability to produce force in the deadlift will be affected.

HOW TO RETURN TO TRAINING

When thinking about how to structure your training when returning to the gym, we are mainly concerned with how you manage volume, frequency and intensity of training. Get this right and you’ll set yourself up for an effective come back. For your return to the gym we can basically place the above 4 categories into two groups.

Category 1

You’re good to go! Nothing changes as you’ve followed a regular gym program. There shouldn’t have been any muscle loss occur, you could perform all your usual lifts and you had access to plenty of load which means there likely won’t experience any effects on neural pathways and connective tissue.

The only recommendation would be to incorporate some different movements to provide a novel stimulus, if your training goal allows for it. Whilst you had enough load, you may have been limited to only barbell and dumbbell movements so incorporating some gym machines into your program may stimulate some new growth.

Categories 2, 3 & 4

Categories 2,3 and 4 all will require some modifications in volume, frequency and intensity of training to varying degrees to account for de training and the

acute: chronic workload ratio.  If you can remember from above as you go from category 2-4 you get further away from what you left off with in the gym.

For your first block of training (4-6 weeks) we recommend you reduce volume, frequency and intensity. How much will be based off which category you fall into. If you fall into category 2 then you will likely be able to start with slightly higher volume and intensity than categories 3 and 4. Due to still having trained in somewhat of a submaximal capacity. Categories 3 and 4 are not at all specific to gym resistance training hence you will need to be more conservative. As some general recommendations:

Block Length:

4-6 Weeks

Volume:

Reduce volume to 4-8 working sets per muscle group per week or 50-60% of your normal volume.

Intensity:

 A relative intensity between 2-5 RIR will be appropriate for this block of training. Going to failure likely won’t be necessary or needed to stimulate growth.

Frequency:

Training each muscle group 2 times per week is probably a good sweet spot for frequency. Some smaller muscle groups like biceps, triceps shoulders may be able to go to 3 depending on your recoverability between sessions.

LOOK FORWARD TO SOME GREAT GAINS!

For some those recommendations look pretty insignificant. To give an example, it may look like 4 training sessions per week in an upper, lower split and given the volume and intensity recommendations, you may only be in the gym for 30-45 minutes each session.  If before restrictions you previous went to the gym 6 days per week for 60-90 minutes at a time then you may be lead to believe that there is not much progress that can be made when starting so conservatively. But being injured doesn’t help your progress either.

The good news is that whilst your body isn’t ready to train like is used to, it is

primed to respond to training and allow you to bring back quick gains.  This means that you really don’t need to do a whole lot to progress. There are 2 main components to this.

Muscle Memory

Muscle memory essentially means that we have all the components for muscle mass already in our system but they are simply lying dormant. When we train and build muscle tissue we add myonuclei to muscle cells. Myonuclei occupy a certain domain or space, once each myonuclei hits its domain the only way we can continue to grow is adding more myonuclei to the muscle. This is what gives the muscle cells and therefore muscles the ability to grow. When we stop  training, the muscle itself shrinks but the myonuclei remain in the muscle. Once we resume training we are more than likely to still possess the previous number of myonuclei. Now we have an increased number of myonuclei occupying a small space, they have the ability to expand their domain and grow without the need to add new myonuclei. 

This means that with some well-structured training (avoiding injury) we can rapidly return to our previous muscularity.

Re Sensitisaton

If a stimulus is consistently applied over a long period of time our body will continue to make adaptions causing this stimulus to no longer become novel. The effects it once had become less and less which means you have a large output for not much progress. But if that stimulus is removed and then re-introduced later, it can then be effective once again.

To give an example of how this is generally used when we can train as normal. If our goal is hypertrophy then we know high volume with sufficient intensity is key. We may go through 4 training blocks of high volume training but as we go from block 1-4 you may see some diminishing returns on your gains i.e you will be putting in the same/more effort but your rate of progression will slow. To counter this we implement a lower volume block of training with higher absolute intensities, essentially mimicking a strength block. We do enough volume to at the very least maintain our gained muscle but this then allows us to make more gains once we resume higher volume training.

This re-sensitisation will be in full effect when coming out of isolation. Our bodies are going to be highly responsive to the kind of training we can achieve in the gym and for that reason we should see some good progress early. That also means we don’t need to do much to progress and this should be taken advantage off. Sure, you could go balls to the wall from the get go and yes you potentially will make some quicker gains but this is great time to take advantage of your ability to make gains from less training. Doing the least amount of training you need to progress now will mean that you can keep progressing for longer with smaller volumes. Trust me, this is every advanced trainers dream so make the most of it. It’s like deciding to take a scenic walk and running as fast as you can from start to finish. Sure, you’ll get to the end but you’ve missed out on all nice scenery that people want to see. Take your time, you’ll get the same result but in a more ideal manner.

SUMMARY

If you’re reading this article this then it’s likely you’ll be one of the people breaking down the doors once gyms reopen. Whilst the enthusiasm is great there is definitely some things to consider when you get back into training. Don’t expect that you’ll be able to pick up where you left off and attempting this will leave you open to injury which is your worst case scenario. Can you imagine waiting this long only to get injured 2 weeks in. Whilst we need to go in with a more conservative approach to training, it doesn’t mean we can’t progress! If anything our bodies are primed to make some significant gains.

With the majority of us having been banished indefinitely from our sacred place of gains (cue the home gym owners evil laughs), there is a massive fear amongst gym goes of losing their hard earned muscle and strength.

Is it as simple as 6 months out of a gym and I will lose everything? Well, that depends.

If you still wish to train with the limited equipment you have (bodyweight, bands, small dumbbells), then it is very likely you can maintain your hard earned progress. However, if structured and applied appropriately a home style training plan can in fact see the gains train continue.

And if you have a home gym then screw you…

If you take the relaxed approach and sit on the couch for 6 months, then yes you are very likely to lose some of your attained muscle, after all muscle is metabolically costly to the body. If there is no purpose for it (muscle is a protective mechanism) then it will atrophy. If this does occur though, the good news is returning to resistance training will likely see your gains come back in a hurry!

More on this later.

“Can I keep building muscle?”

Yes, the same principles apply if you were in the gym. If you provide a sufficient stimulus above your current homeostatic state then it’s absolutely possible.

We now know that there is quite a broad rep range that allows us to stimulate and synthesis muscle tissue. As a generalisation, most train within a 6-15 rep range in the gym for hypertrophy purposes. It is probably correct in saying this is the most practical range to elicit growth in.

However, as mentioned that is likely the PRACTICAL range. Nothing about Covid-19 and the situation it has put us in is practical and therefore we can take advantage of what research has shown which is the rep range spectrum for muscle growth is quite wide. Somewhere from 3-30 reps seems to be the current understanding. [1]Schoenfeld et al. 2017. “Muscle hypertrophy can be achieved across a spectrum of loading ranges”.

So what does this tell us?

Building muscle can be done with high loads and low loads. At the moment most of us only have access to low loads from our home equipment. Morphological adaptions seem to be most efficient with magnitudes of 60-85% max load on the bar, for sufficient durations.

However when using lighter loads there seems to be a minimum magnitude threshold of 30% which will also elicit morphological adaptions provided we take sets to a very close proximity to failure, 0-3 RIR.

So assuming you are training with lower absolute loads and performing an appropriate amount of volume, then you can provide the signals you need to stimulate and synthesis new muscle tissue if you take sets to a high relative intensity. If you are willing to go the extra mile and perform a few more reps per set, get uncomfortable with the “burn” and hit sets close to failure the gains will continue.

A useful guide to follow detailed by James Krieger is, [2] 10-20+ sets per muscle group per week, spread out by 2-3 stimulative sessions per muscle group per week, with roughly 4-8 sets per session.

In short, gaining muscle is very achievable if we have to use light loads and high reps. To achieve this we must ensure that sets are taken to a close proximity to failure and we meet our own individual intra session and weekly volume demands.

“Will I lose all my muscle?”

It depends. It takes very little to maintain your current muscularity. Your maintenance volume is far less than what it takes to build new tissue. Once you pass the newbie gains phase, synthesising tissue becomes a lot harder. We have probably all experienced these plateaus.

Mike Israetel from RP is known for the volume landmarks concept. That is

MV or maintenance volume amount of volume required to maintain your current muscle.

MEV or minimum effective volume is the minimum amount of volume per muscle group to see progress.

MAV = max adaptive volume is the volume range where you are making the ‘best’ gains for you.

MRV = max recoverable volume is the max amount of volume your body can recovery from. Short term is ok, but too long spent here is disregarding the principle of fatigue management.

Mike states in his article, [3] “you can typically keep almost all of your muscle with as little as 6 working sets per muscle group per week.”

This means that we don’t need to stress about doing heaps of training, rather just enough if that’s you’re only option.

Secondly, many of us have been chipping away at building new tissue, spending many mesocycles focusing on overloading and performing moderate to high volumes in the gym, prior to the shutdown of gyms.

In doing so, over time we begin to de sensitise ourselves to this volume. The high volume that once gave you great gains, seems to be slowing down and progression is becoming harder to buy. In fact, this break from the gym albeit probably longer than we all would like, is potentially going to help you elicit some great growth when we return. We are now going to be more sensitive to the higher loads and moderate reps after only being able to perform reps in the high teens and 20s for the past few weeks (probably months), with limited equipment availability.

Just think of this break from the gym as an extended re-sensitisation phase. Do your best to maintain and possibly even grow your muscle with high reps close to failure and then reap the rewards when our place of worship opens again.

“Will I lose my strength?”

Short answer is yes, but it also depends. The intensity you train at will drive the end effect (the effect being strength or hypertrophy), with volume being the amount of it we perform. If we are training for strength it is more likely we will be using high absolute loads with an appropriate volume dosage, typically that is low. If we are training for hypertrophy, it is more likely we will be using increased volume supported with higher relative intensities.

Given the current situation most of us can’t train with high absolute loads, so progressions in strength probably won’t happen. Strength is skill specific, so if we can’t practice lifting heavy our body is not conditioned to do so.

Let’s use the example of a 2RM. Returning after 4 months off heavy lifting, whilst our movement patterns might still be ok if we practised an exercise that has some transference eg goblet squat to high bar back squat, the ability of our neural drive to recruit required muscle force probably won’t be the same. We might move correctly, but the amount of force we can produce won’t be the same as 4 months ago. After all a light goblet squat requires a lot less effort than squatting a 2RM.

What we do know though is that bigger muscles have the ability to express more force. If we retain our hard earned muscle or even build more, we give ourselves the best chance to hold onto as much strength as we can. Once we are back and we pick up the specific movement pattern again, strength will climb back.

“Muscle Memory”

I mentioned there is good news! If we do have an extended break from resistance training, once you return you will likely see your gains come back in a hurry. Below is a picture I took from an article by Greg knuckles titled, Grow like a new lifter again.

In short muscle cells contain myonuclei that occupy a certain space. Adding more myonuclei to the muscle cells allow the muscle fibre to get bigger (hypertrophy). The new added myonuclei come from the surrounding satellite cells. When we detrain and atrophy, we lose muscle but we don’t seem to lose the myonuclei in the muscle, or we just haven’t yet found out how long of detraining it takes to lose them.

If you refer to the above picture. You can see the process where we go from untrained, to training and adding some nuclei. We have enough myonuclei to now grow bigger muscle. If we detrain, the myonuclei remain inside the smaller muscle. Once we pick up a resistance training again we can quickly return to our previous muscular form.

Pretty cool hey.

From an anecdotal point of view, back in 2018 I broke my right foot. I was in a moon boot and had to have my foot elevated for 10 days of bed rest (that sucked), I wasn’t allowed to walk on it for another 14, then I could walk but with the moonboot on for another month.

After just shy of 2 months when I could finally walk bare foot, my right leg was notably smaller. 2 months later and I was probably a week away from playing our last home and away football match of the 2018 season. So, for me it was cool to see muscle and strength levels return so quickly.

Key Takeaways

• You can retain your muscle on as little as 6 sets per week per muscle group.

• Building new muscle is indeed possible with home training. Ensure you take your sets to a close proximity to concentric muscular failure (0-3 RIR and have sufficient weekly volume per muscle for your individual needs with a frequency of at least 2x per week.

• If you don’t train, it is not the end of the world. Find a new hobby to keep you active for the meantime i.e go for a run or ride a bike. Your muscle will come back when you begin training again.

Flexible Dieting & IIFYM broooo (If It Fits Your Macros). IIFYM is a concept you’ve likely heard floating around the health and fitness industry on the last decade. Essentially you can eat whatever you want within a calorie allowance and still achieve your body composition goals. Yes you can eat burgers, donuts, maccas…. all the good stuff and still lose weight.

But how?

“Just follow a calorie and macro target bro.”

Yes it’s true you can eat all this delicious food, stay within your calorie target and still lose weight. A calorie deficit is the be all end all for fat loss, we know this. Short term, eating any food you want can work, but long term focusing on a number rather than food quality will get you in trouble.

It is very easy for someone to say just hit this calorie number, hit these macros and you will be fine. Any average Joe can concoct a selection of macros and add up a number to give you a calorie total. That’s pretty much how the insta fitness coaches work. Eat these calories made up from whatever foods you like… sounds pretty attractive hey. People will then go a pay $$$ for 4 numbers and to be told they can eat the same things they currently are.

Most general population clients can’t follow this long term with little knowledge of nutrition or control over food quality. Prescribing the above is akin to a band aid over a fatal wound.

Food quality and selection is very important for your diet. I don’t say that lightly either.

If all you are doing is trying to fit the tastiest food into your calorie allowance then apart from feeling like rubbish all the time, you might want to take note on the below points.

Micronutrients

A chemical element or substance required in trace amounts for the normal growth and development of living organisms. These are typically your vitamins and minerals from foods. Highly processed foods generally have poor micronutrient profiles. Allowing this to make up a large portion of your nutrition long term is doing your body a serious disservice. The potential to develop deficiencies is likely higher than a diet with plenty of nutrient dense foods. If the majority of your foods are nutrient dense and wholesome, let’s say 70-90%, with the other 10-30% coming from those tastier foods, the likelihood of a micronutrient deficiency is going to be lower than fitting whatever into your calorie allowance.

Satiety

The feeling or state of being sated (full)

If you have ever dieted you will probably know that being full is hard to come by. With less calories coming in than your body would like, dieting causes a cascade of physiological and psychological changes. Your body being the survival driven machine it is, doesn’t know any better. If you take away food, it will fight back to restore its ‘norm’ or homeostasis. Notable changes being the increase in Ghrelin (physiological) and increased drive to eat (psychological).

Is fitting in all the tastiest, calorie foods during a diet a smart idea? Probably not. Of course if you want to be hungry, never full and miserable the whole time then yes go for it! Use your calories on low volume, calorie dense foods for that fleeting moment of satisfaction. I won’t stop you, but I hope this document makes you sit and think twice!

If you can survive dieting this way and come out the other side 6 months later and on top of that, held your weight…. I will personally bow down to you. You have the will power of 50 men.

Let’s think about this. When you charge your phone overnight, do you want it to be fully charged of ¼ charged when you wake up.

Fully charged obviously.

Similar to a diet, do you want to be as full as you can from the foods you eat or do you want to feel half full all the time. I know for sure which one I am about. I saw a quote the other day when I was halfway through this document. It is from Jackson Peos – “more variety = less satiety”. More ingredients in your foods generally leads to less satiety.

Trigger foods

Food that sets of a ‘switch’ where the control of over eating is lost.

Trigger foods are a thing and terms of dieting they can be a real problem. It’s not uncommon to undo weeks and weeks worth of dieting when trigger foods are encountered.

“So coach, I want to lose fat”

“1500 calories, 100P, 150C, 55F. Hit these and eat whatever you want because I’m not about any restriction”

A few weeks in of feeling hungry and tired that person spots a tub of ice cream on special! A few hours later the whole weeks deficit is ruined.

Some of you are probably barking up the “but you’ve just got to restrain during a diet” tree

Yes I agree, but simply saying fit any foods into your macros is a task not many can successfully complete. Have you heard the saying “Give them and inch and they’ll take a mile”.

But what about the insta influencers you ask… “I see them all the time eating out all the time and they still have abs”.

It’s a lie. Firstly, this is only a snap shot of their day! Anyone that looks like they do, don’t eat like that all the time. Second, they are likely getting paid for the image. I’ve encountered people who will pose for a photo and not eat anything in that’s in front of them.

Now I’m not saying completely avoid a certain type of food. No food in isolation will harm you (unless allergic, then it may f&%k you up). It just might be the more conducive decision to put that certain food aside for a dieting period and then reintroduce it at a later time.

Longevity

Alright so this is purely a subjective point. There’s probably nothing really set in stone in terms of evidence to this point but hear me out.

Cumulative effect is defined as ‘the state in which a series of repeated actions have an effect greater than the sum of individual effects’

Let’s say year after year you have adopted the approach of eating whatever fits your macros and you’ve been making this up of highly palatable and poor nutrient profile foods. Let’s also say for arguments sake, this decreased your performance by 0.5% per year.

That’s a tiny number for a year you may not even notice it short term. But if the approach was adopted for 15 years not knowing any better that can add up to a 7.5% performance decrease.

Again, please bear in mind that this point is highly subjective and these numbers are probably not as severe as I might hypothesise but I still think a difference will be made long term.

Unpredictability

Being able to assess data and trends during your weight loss is vital. Knowing when to change certain variables when things seem to progress to fast or not fast enough, stall and even go backwards is important. What we know about weight loss is that the majority of the time it isn’t linear. One day you might be down, the next day you might be up. However, if we took a step back and looked at the whole diet, we would want to see the resemblance of a linear trend downwards on the scale.

We know the scale can be heavily influenced. Introducing different foods constantly can influence things like body water retention and gut residue. Both have major impacts on your scale weight. For example, we eat a new yummy meal that fits our macros but unknowingly contains lots of sodium and we wake up the next day 900g heavier. Panic stations hit and calories are dropped further and cardio upped. Yes, the further drop will probably cause more weight loss but we may not have needed to do this just yet. We may have been able to eek out some more weight loss on the higher calories with food that allows us to see more predictable scale movement. Introducing all these different foods will set you up for high variance in scale weight.

Summary

If you are looking to implement flexible dieting, be wary of just eating whatever you want to fit a number. Whilst it sounds very attractive and many coaches and so called professionals take advantage of this, if it was that easy then everyone would be doing.

Long story short, there is nothing inherently wrong with flexible dieting…. It’s the misapplication of it’s principles where people slip up. Flexible dieting done correctly is not a free for all. Rather, you still make good food choices a majority of the time but you also have a tool that allows for some variation when desired.

Of recent times rigid meal plans seem to be getting a bad wrap in the health and fitness community with flexible dieting and tracking calories being heavily favoured. Whilst flexible dieting certainly has many benefits associated I believe strict and rigid diet plans are also very valuable tools within the health and fitness world. The poor reputation for rigid meal plans revolves mainly around their misapplication rather than them being an overall poor nutrition modality. As you will find out below, applied in the right context and with the appropriate structure (calories, macros etc), rigid meal plans can be used highly effectively.

What do I mean by rigid meal plans? I’m talking about bare basic, consistent meals repeated over weeks and months. For example, you go see a coach or nutrition expert, have an assessment and they give you a weeks worth of structured meals that you follow for a period of time. Here are some characteristics of what you may see within the plan:

• Minimal food variety with the same/similar meals day to day.

• Often consists of minimal to zero of what would be considered ‘junk food’.

• Potentially bland meals with minimal extras i.e sauces.

We’ve all heard the arguments against this.

“It’s not sustainable”

“You won’t enjoy yourself”

And so on.

Now these are probably true BUT no one said you had to follow a rigid meal plan forever! Rigid dieting is a TOOL and has it’s PLACE, just like flexible dieting. Within one’s journey towards any health and fitness goal there may be times where having very tight restrictions around their nutrition is necessary and the best option. The same applies to flexible dieting, intuitive eating etc.

The following are some reasons as to why I believe rigid meal plans have their place.

IT’S YOUR FIRST ATTEMPT AT DIETING: RESULTS + EDUCATION

If it’s you’re very first attempt at dieting and you’re not familiar with the health and fitness world then it’s likely you’re not educated on what you need to do with your nutrition to attain your goal. If you don’t have a basic understanding of calories, macros, how to manipulate these and what foods will help you achieve this then dieting is hard. All of this can take a bit of time to learn so starting a diet and trying to learn this on the go can lead to a lot of confusion and mistakes which will delay progress.

Potentially a better way to approach this and one I’ve had success with as a coach is to start the process with a rigid meal plan. Basically, it will increase the likelihood of results as long as it’s adhered to and along the way a point can be made of educating the individual to give them a basic understanding of nutrition and its application. For example;

• The individual will be able to get a gauge of what X amount of calories looks like in a day of eating.

• The individual will be able gain an understanding of good food sources for each macronutrient.

• It will allow them to develop good eating patterns and portion control.

• Tie all of the above into an understanding of energy balance and how it works depending on their goals and rigid meal plans become very effective.

These are all hard to navigate for a beginner. If you simply throw a calorie and macro number at them and say eat whatever you like as long as you hit these, you’ve essentially thrown them straight in the deep end before they’ve learnt to swim. A rigid meal plan with education on the basics of nutrition will allow for results but also put them in a position to attain more autonomy over future nutrition decisions.

MOTIVATION

The reason many will attempt and fail a diet is due to lack of results in the early stages of dieting. Once again, if a rigid meal plan is set up and adhered too, results will likely come. This can be so important for someone who is new to trying to change their body composition as it allows them to build trust and excitement in the process. This will help keep them motivated to continue doing the right thing in the present and future.

YOU HAVE LESS DECISIONS TO MAKE

A rigid meal plan will essentially take the guess work out of your dieting for the period of time you use it. The less decisions an individual has to make, especially if you’re new to dieting, the less likely you are to make a mistake.

As stated in the first point, individuals brand new to dieting likely don’t have the background knowledge around nutrition so when presented with many different options there is a good chance that they won’t select the one that will be most in line with their desired result. This is why taking the decision making process out for the time being can be very valuable.

Another common scenario is when an individual has a very hectic day to day schedule. It’s very common for someone to be working a high stress corporate job with long hours as well as up hold family duties involving kids. Having to then make more decisions about nutrition only adds to the high stress and hence they will fall back to old habits. There is also the fact that the decisions will be made to satisfy their short term needs, disregarding their desired long term outcome i.e use food junk to as a means to release stress.

IT LIMITS TEMPTATIONS

A rigid meal plan helps create an environment that steers individuals clear of temptations. If that person is more often than not, only surrounded by the foods they are prescribed then it’s highly likely that’s what they will eat. When given the option many will fall into old habits and temptations as that’s what’s comfortable and easy. Rather than giving them that choice and asking them to resist, often its better in the short term to simply remove those options completely. Even the most seasoned dieters have their moments where food will get the better of them. Often this tactic of rigid dieting and removing temptations is used by experienced comp prep athletes, as they know it will help reduce the chances of a ‘slip up’.

IT TAKES OUT THE GUESS WORK

A rigid meal plan allows for near certainty of what we are consuming which can lead to predictability. The near certainty of what is consumed is simply that the individual consumes only what’s prescribed. The predictability of results is based on the premise that the meal plan has the appropriate amount of calories needed for that individual to achieve their goal and that they stick to it. This ties in really well with the first point as individuals with low knowledge on nutrition and how it effects the body are very unlikely to be able to make decisions that will be conducive of their goals if they are simply just given calorie and macro targets.

WHEN RIGID MEAL PLANS GO WRONG

Whilst the above points have explained why rigid meal plans can beneficial in certain contexts, there are reasons as to why rigid meal plan have the poor reputation they do. Like many things in the health and fitness circle, it comes down to it’s misapplication. In terms of rigid meals plans and how it’s reputation has been tarnished, misapplications include:

• Coaches prescribing very long term use (years) of meals plans with very low calories and low food variation. This is extremely common and probably the biggest factor in the bad reputation rigid meal plans have. In most cases (not all) I believe it is from coaches that are poorly educated on the fundamentals of nutrition and the effects it has physiologically or psychologically OR they are simply lazy. They see individuals as numbers not humans and have that mentality of ‘eat clean’ and ‘less of it’ and you’ll eventually lose weight.

• When there is little to no education that will give the individual the ability to move away from the rigidity of that meal plan and make decisions for themselves that are conducive of their current and future goals. If a coach simply gives someone a meal plan and instructs them to follow it, sure results will come but what happens when they decide they want some more control and flexibility over their nutrition. The reality is they still don’t have a basic background knowledge as all they have done is followed instruction but without any thought. Now left on their own, old habits will begin to creep back in as that’s what they know.

• When the concept of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ food is re enforced via a meal plan. This is a prime example of how one will develop a poor relationship with food. A food that’s not included in a meal plan shouldn’t be pushed as ‘bad’ but rather for the time being it’s not conducive of the individual’s current goals. Simply placing someone on a meal plan and ingraining in their mind that this group of foods is how you lose weight and any deviation from this will result in weight gain is a recipe for disaster.

This is another reason education is key. Basic knowledge of nutrition can allow individuals to have and understanding that it’s energy balance NOT particular foods that are getting them results. This allows them to have more autonomy and the confidence to manipulate their own food choices post the meal plan without compromising all their hard work.

SUMMARY

A rigid meal plan used in the right context and structured correctly to suit the individual’s goals can be a very effective tool for nutrition interventions. Whilst other nutrition modalities will be more sustainable long term (i.e calorie tracking), rigid meal plans used for short periods of time can prove to be a valuable tool via taking the immediate responsibility off the client to simply ‘grab hold’ of everything required to have autonomy around their nutrition. With a rigid meal plan in place we can have a period of time where the likelihood of results is increased if adhered to, motivation will be high and during this time an important educational process can be implement to ensure the client begins to build autonomy around their nutrition which will hold them in good stead for the future.