Meet Veronica. She is a 31-year-old copywriter. He started working with us a year and a half ago, with a goal looking her best for her upcoming wedding. Once the wedding was behind her, she turned her attention to building strength.
While Veronica was a talented athlete (swimmer) in her younger years, when she moved out of her parents’ house and started planning her wedding, stress piled up. Along with the anxiety came snacking when he wasn’t hungry and alcohol every other night.
Then got engaged. This was just the kick in the butt he needed to get back into shape. And he got in shape and made it. She looked stunning on her wedding day and today, with the wedding almost a year and a half behind her, she has achieved a level of strength seen by less than 1% of women – she can do 6 chin-ups.
How did he do all this? That is exactly what we will cover in this article. If you want to see Veronica tell her own story, watch this 10-minute video:
And if you’re the envy of Veronica and have your own deadline to prepare (whether it’s a special birthday, anniversary, holiday, etc.), just fill out the form at our home page. This does not obligate you to anything. It will simply set up a short 10–15 minute chat where we discuss your current situation and figure out if we can work together. There is no obligation, competitive selling or pressure.
Veronica’s life before
As previously mentioned, throughout her teenage years, Veronica was a talented swimmer. Fast forward to the end of high school, and he quit swimming, went to university, graduated and started working.
Along the way, she lost a lot of fitness and went from being a competitive athlete to being an average Jane. She played squash twice a week, and also went to the gym by herself a few times a week, but he didn’t really have a plan when he went to the gym. Despite her decent levels of activity, she ended up gaining about 30 pounds and she lost a lot of her upper body strength.
She was doing well in her career, but unfortunately not so much in her physical condition.
After a few years, she got engaged, so now there was a firm wedding date – and therefore a strong reason (and deadline) to get in shape.
Veronica had already been my friend for about 12-13 years at that point and had been reading my newsletters for a while.
So when it was time for her to get serious about her fat loss, you know who she called: ghosts my.
I introduced her to one of my top longtime personal trainers, Davin, and they hit it off.
Why did you decide to take it seriously and actually hire a personal trainer? Some reasons:
- Having read many of our customer success stories, he could say that we really care about our customers.
- He needed her hand. Not every day is going to be a house. She needed accountability on the days she was tired, or as she put it, having a “blah” day.
- She was tired of spinning her wheels – putting forth effort and getting nowhere.
And even though he didn’t live too far from our physical location, he still preferred it online personal training. Why? The main reason is convenience. Yes, it’s only 25 minutes from our location, but a 25 minute drive each way is still an extra 50 minutes to her workout. She preferred to work out at the gym which is only 5 minutes from her house (she would take Davin to the gym with her on her phone/tablet).
The other big reason she chose online personal training is because she wanted to not give herself any reason to say no. Being able to work out from anywhere eliminated all of her excuses.
Veronica’s program
Here are the highlights of Veronica’s program:
Frequency of exercise
Veronica did strength training 4 days a week. Due to the relatively high frequency, her schedule was divided into an up and down day. He would do two of each each week.
Exercise Selection
A criterion of an effective exercise is this an exercise works many muscles at the same time (these are called “multi-joint exercises”). It saves time without losing its effectiveness and also has a greater cardiovascular effect. So for Veronica’s upper body, Davin used exercises like the assisted dip, assisted chin-up, bench press, and more.
For her lower body, Davin chose deadlifts, back squats, split squats and more.
Yes, there were some isolation movements (single-joint exercises) in her program, but it was largely built around multi-joint exercises.
Sets and reps
All the exercises were done mainly for 2 sets of 8-12 reps. Different rep ranges have different results. Lower reps (below 8) build strength fairly well, but not very much endurance. Higher reps (over 12) build endurance, but not much strength. So we compromised and got to the middle of 8-12 reps.
Effort
Veronica got the most of her sets by far close to muscle failure. Effort is the key. No challenge, no benefit. Most people in the gym are afraid to push hard enough to make progress. That’s why Veronica was working with Davin make sure she got enough pressure while still maintaining good technique and minimizing her risk of injury.
Outside the gym
Outside the gym, Veronica’s goal was to reach 10,000 steps a day7 days a week. If this was done in one take, that’s about an hour and 20 minute ride. The point of this wasn’t for cardiovascular endurance (taking 10,000 steps a day doesn’t build much endurance unless those steps are consecutive, and either very fast, or at a fairly steep incline), but to burn a few extra calories. If these 10,000 steps are taken in one period, they will burn about 250-280 calories for Veronica (how many calories you burn depends on the duration of the exercise, a person’s body weight, as well as the heart rate during the exercise). If these steps are spread out throughout the day, they will burn fewer calories.
She ended up starting every day with a 15 minute walk (and eventually progressed to 60), even if she was very busy, the weather was bad, etc. This seems like a good way to start her day for 2 reasons:
- He is less likely to postpone it altogether.
- It feels like she’s starting her day off on the right foot (pun somewhat intended). She starts her day with a small achievement. This turns into bigger achievements later that day.
Nutrition
Of course, exercising alone for fat loss is often a futile approach. Diet plays an important role in fat loss. So what Davin recommended to Veronica was:
- Increase her protein intake
- Reduce portion sizes
- Either avoid snacks, or eat snacks with fewer calories, such as fruit. Another strategy was to plan in snacks so that they are part of the plan, and also so that she has something to look forward to.
Nothing particularly fancy, but the power isn’t complicated. Rather, the power of this lies in its simplicity – and the results showed it.
These are just the highlights of Veronica’s program. There were more elements to it and it evolved over time (it didn’t stay on that schedule forever).
Plus, if you just read about the exercises, you’ll miss the “secret sauce» of the exercise program – the progress modeland the workout-to-workout adjustments made based on Veronika’s progress from the previous training session, energy/fatigue levels and more. Despite all this, no exercise program should be a static programwhere you do the same exercises for the same weights, sets and reps every time. An exercise program must be dynamic, intelligent, purposeful, and systematically change exercise variables to move the client forward… as opposed to randomly changing the schedule whenever you want, without rhyme or reason… like many personal trainers do.
Veronica’s results
The methods are good, but we also need to see the results. So what were Veronica’s results?
- She lost 18 kg.
- She went from a size 14, back to her original size before the weight gain: a size 6. Despite being 12kg heavier than before the weight gain, her dress size was back to the same.
- She added 40 pounds to her squat – so her legs and buttocks are much stronger
- He went from doing chinups and dips with about 70 pounds of assistance – to now doing 4-6 reps without assistance. To impress the importance of this on you, for a woman to be able to do even one chinup is impressive. It puts her in an elite category. Less than 4% of women can do 1 chinup. Can do 4-6.
- She can do 20 standard pushups (on her feet, not her knees). Again, a rare feat for most women.
Basically, he didn’t just regain the upper-body strength he had during his competitive swimming days—he outgrew it.
Obstacles on the way
Success is rarely a linear upward curve. On the road to success, there are often setbacks. This is real life. And certainly, Veronica has had her share of setbacks, including:
- Her honeymoon. What you eat on your honeymoon stays on your honeymoon. Wait – it doesn’t work like that. The extra calories still go through customs. So he regained some of the weight he lost. But as soon as she returned to her old routine, the fat came off again.
- Other holidays – the same happened with the honeymoon.
- Lower back pain/tightness. But Davin modified Veronica’s schedule to accommodate this, and today she is pain free.
How Veronica’s life is different now
In addition to being much leaner and stronger these days, many other benefits have come, including:
- Her mindset completely changed. Before, she believed that if she is tired, she should not exercise. Now, he has the opposite mindset: If she is tired, she will exercise, with the expectation that she will feel more energetic after her workout. And it comes true almost every time. Even if he doesn’t have the best workout, he feels good after completing it.
- She is much more disciplined. I often say that Motivation is overrated and discipline is underrated. Motivation means waiting for an external source of inspiration to get you to exercise. You rely on external factors. If they don’t happen, your training isn’t done. Discipline, on the other hand, is doing something when you don’t feel like doing it. You don’t rely on an outside source to get you moving. You’re just dedicated. You are responsible to yourself.
- It has a lot lower stress levels. In her video, she says that starting her day with exercise or even just moving sets her up for a much better day.
Overall, we are very proud of Veronica and what she has achieved. If you have your own deadline to prepare (be it a special birthday, anniversary, holiday, etc.), just fill out the application form on our page homepage. This does not obligate you to anything. It will simply set up a short 10–15 minute chat where we discuss your current situation and figure out if we can work together. There is no obligation, competitive selling or pressure.
