Trainer Notes: Week Three

Well, week 3 was all about blood, sweat, and tears. Alright, maybe just the sweat, but the rest sure makes it sound "tougher."

It was a week focused more on intensity, however. As mentioned previously, the first week or two are much more focused on adaptation and increasing the volume of the workouts. This was the first week where we were able to increase the intensity more during each workout. Exercise technique was fine tuned and tweaked even more and resistances increased on almost every exercise again. While Michael definitely felt the cumulative fatigue setting in from the week by Friday, he also showed the amazing resilience and adaptive ability that our bodies have. He's already doing things now that would not have been possible for him even a couple weeks ago. As crazy it will seem to him, though, next week will be the last week on his current workout program. Adaptations start to occur a little quicker now, and to avoid any plateaus along the way, we need to stay ahead of the curve. This will mean progressing and changing key workout variable like reps, sets, resistance levels and types, tempos, rest periods, and many more to ensure that the body is always trying to meet the challenge of a new stimulus. It will also help Michael from getting bored and worn out from the same exercises and routine over and over again.

We also had our first 2 week "weigh-in" at the beginning of the week, and after 2 weeks, Michael had lost 9 lbs.!! Great job, Michael! As we've already discussed with Michael, the scale weight actually isn't his or our ultimate barometer for his success in this program. Yes, it is important for him to get his weight into a healthy range, but it will come along with our focus on some other very important factors. Our main focus right now is to actually decrease his body fat percentage, which tells us the balance of lean weight and fat weight he has. The other is to decrease his overall inches, but this will also come along with decreasing his body fat percentage, as well helping him maintain good strength and muscular tone as the fat burns off. Right now, we want Michael to maintain or build upon his lean mass for its contributions to calorie expenditure and increased metabolism, and then focus solely on decreasing the fat weight. This will be a lot healthier for him in the end and also make it easier for him to maintain the weight loss long term. So, while the 9 lbs. he has lost already is great, it may be even more in fat weight if he has gained some lean weight. In a couple more weeks we'll do another weigh-in, but will also re-measure his body fat percentage, which will be even more exciting to see how much true fat weight he has lost.