Congratulations on receiving your 28 Day Workout Plan.
Our expert trainers have put together this guide to ensure you increase fitness levels, tone up and build some strength.
From seasoned gym goers, to complete novices, this guide can easily be tailored to suit your needs, get you sweating and working hard.
The plan is broken down by week, each containing 4 rest days – sounds a lot, but wait until you see the results.
Who is this 28 Day Fit Blast Plan for?
We’ve built an introductory level workout, aimed at beginners, with plenty of opportunity for people to throw in extra sets/reps or less rest when they feel the need.
If you are just starting out in the gym and want to follow this plan, there could be a few exercises in here you’ve not got a full handle on.
When there is anything you don’t understand, we fully recommend speaking to a member of staff at the gym to ensure your form is solid. Jumping straight in without a basic understanding of key movements can cause injury.
What do I need to run this 28 Day Plan?
You’ll need a gym that contains all the basic equipment to be able to perform this workout guide.
Remember you can always swap some exercises out for alternatives as long as they work the same muscle groups, but try to follow the guide as much as possible to maximize results.
Nutrition –
They say that you break down muscle in the gym, fuel it in the kitchen and recover whilst you’re asleep. And that’s absolutely true.
So it’s just as important to think about your overall lifestlye and diet as it is to smash the gym to pieces.
Calories – the key to success
If we’re looking at 28-days to tight and toned then this is without doubt the starting point.
What do you specifically want to acheive with this plan?
Some of you might want to lean out but focus on muscle gain wheras other might want to prioritise shredding as much fat as possible whilst sacrificing just a touch of muscle.
And dependant on what you’re after is the way you plan your calorie intake.
Energy balance
When you balalnce the amount of energy you eat with the amount you burn off your body falls into a maintenance phase. It’s called this becasue you’ll maintain your body mass and fat levels.
Whilst it can be complcared to work out, we’ve done the work for you by adding the calculations in our daily energy needs calculator. Insert link.
Regardless of whether you want to lose fat or bulk up, working out your maintenance calories is a necessity. So make sure you do it.
Build muscle with a positive energy balance
if you’re looking to maximize the amount of muscle you get from this 28-day plan then you’ll have to take in more calories than maintenance – around 20% more.
When you acheive a positive energy balance or calorie surplus your body has some spare energy – a bit like loose change – floating around. When overload your body with strength training you take that loose change and put it in the bank – you’ll build new muscle cells.
If you don’t eat enough you’ll not optimize progress.
Drop fat with a negative energy balance
When you don’t take in as many calories as you need to fuel your maintenance each day you acheive a negative energy balance, often called a calorie deficit.
When you hit a deficit your body makes up the difference by releasing energy from fat cells. And as a result, they get smaller. You lose fat!
A healthy deficit is usually 20% lower than maintenance – any lower and you run the risk of losing muscle
Again, you can use our online calculator to do this for you – our formula automatically adds or subtracts 20% from maintenance dependant on your goal.
How Does the Plan Work?
This 29-day program has been tried and tested by our expert team of trainers and coaches.
It has the sole intention of improving your athletic ability, muscle quality and fitness. There’s no glitter or garnish; just cold, hard gains.
Ful body workouts
Gone are the days of the bro split. There’s no need to work your chest on a Monday and legs on a Tuesday anymore – because full body workouts are the way forward.
There’s a hell of a lot of research to suggest that if you want to carve out a new physique then training a muscle 2-3 per week optimizes progress [1].
So in these workouts there’s no such workout as ‘leg day’…. because every day is leg day. And chest day. And arm day!
Reps, sets and load
For this program we’ve chosen a rep range that will help you find a balance between improving strength as well as size.
Ironically, there’s a lot of research to suggest that the weight you lift is irrelavent for building muscle as long as you reach fatigue on each set [2]. So in theory we could have given you high reps and low weight and you’ll still get jacked.
But there’s one problem with that. You still need to lift heavy to ramp up maximal strength.
So by using our pyramid spproach where you hit fatigue across a few differnet heavy rep ranges, you’ll not only build muscle, you’ll imrpove strength too.
Rest times- go low to for cardio
In order to maximize productivity in the gym we’ve tried our best to reduce the amount of time you’re hitting the cardio room.
By reducing your rest times between sets of weights, your heart rate, breathing and other autonomic responses will remain elevated – you’ll be getting a cardio effect from strength training.
Cardio – it won’t ruin your gains
One of the biggest concerns of any true bro is that endless hours of cardio will eat aay at muscle and leave you weak and thin. And that’s sort of true in a way.
And whilst we’ve made a conscious effort to integrate cardio into your strength sessions, there’s always room for just a little bit more.
But by adding in bouts of higher intensity cardio here and there you can contribute to your overall daily calorie burn, drop fat, and still keep that valuable muscle.And what; more, it’ll elevate your overall fitness too.
Download: 28 Day Fit Blast Workout Plan
-PDF 1.35MB –
References
- Schoenfeld, BJ et al. Influence of Resistance Training Frequency on Muscular Adaptations in Well-Trained Men. J Strength Cond Res. 2015; 29(7): 1821-9
- Schoenfeld, BJ. Is there a minimum intensity threshold for resistance training-induced hypertrophic adaptations? Sports Med. 2013; 43(12): 1279-88