Yes, I know that we are only in January and summer feels like a million miles away, but if you want a summer body now is the time to start training. It’s literally only 5 months away and it will be here before you know it!

In this post i’m going to give you 5 tips to help you build a summer body over the winter period…

#1 Get Strong

If you want to improve your body shape and burn a shed load of fat then get strong in the gym. For guys i’d recommend training in an 8-15 rep range and for women a 6-10 rep range. Go as heavy as you can and select compound exercises like squats, lunges, deadlifts, bench press, and pull ups. All of these exercises will recruit multiple muscle groups and help you to build an athletic looking body. Keep a gym diary and track all of the weights you lift each session, and then aim to improve each workout.

#2 Train 4-5x Per Week

It’s no use training a couple of days per week, you just wont get very good results. Instead you need to commit to at least 4 sessions per week (if you can do 5!). Workouts don’t have to be very long (30-60 minutes is a perfect time frame). I’d recommend spending 10 minutes warming up, 10 minutes doing cardio and then a 25-40 minutes lifting weights. Keep your weight training simple and perform 3-4 exercises per session and complete 3 sets per exercise with a minutes rest in between each set.

#3 Track Your Food

If you want a summer body that means being trim, in order to be trim you have to lose body fat and to lose body fat you have to follow a calorie controlled diet. Start logging all of your food using MyFitness pal. If you’re a women i’d recommend starting with 1800 calories per day, for a man 2300 calories per day. Stick within this limit and keep tracking your weight. If you fail to lose weight after a week then lower your calories by 100. Keep doing this until you find a calorie number that allows you to lose weight.

#4 Don’t try to be 100% all of the time

Unless you’re an athlete don’t deprive yourself of an occasional treat. If you are good 80% of the time you’ll be in a fantastic position by summer. Prepare your meals and eat good, healthy nutritious foods: plenty of protein and vegetables but don’t be afraid to have a cheat meal each week. As long as you don’t binge it wont do you any harm and it will help you stay satisfied and keep the cravings at bay. I’d recommend giving yourself a free 1500 calories each week to choose any food(s) of your choice.

#5 Hire A Personal Trainer 

If you invest in a personal trainer for the next 5 months the results you get compared to going it alone will be drastically different. Even if you only train 1x per week with your PT (approx 20 sessions before summer), and go to the gym 3x per week + eat well 80% of the time you’ll get some great results by summer. For 20 sessions you’ll probably be looking at spending anything from £400-£1000 depending on which trainer you choose.

Thanks for reading,

Nick 🙂