The Quicker, Leaner, Fitter Program

These days, working out isn’t just about getting those six pack abs or that impeccable body anymore. In fact, most of the clients who reach out to me want to build muscle, lose fat, get stronger or be faster. Oh, and there’s having more endurance.

This is proof that people who get into fitness programs want more value for their hard work. It could be an athlete wanting to improve his performance, someone who just realized the value of fitness in improving overall health or a marathon enthusiast who wants to run that annual 5K marathon without embarrassing himself.

This is why I designed a comprehensive program that targets all these goals: strength, speed, endurance, lean muscle mass and power, one I aptly called “Quicker, Leaner, Fitter.”

Quicker, Leaner, Fitter Program Overview

The Quicker, Leaner, Fitter program helps you improve muscle power with exercises like push-ups and jump squats, work every major muscle group to increase your strength and increase your running speed with heavy squats and jump squats along with a weekly 40-yard dash and 30-second sprint intervals.

Of course, there are the major exercises like the squat, bench press, shoulder press and barbell curls.

This program combines both old and new methods that allow you to achieve your fitness goals in the most efficient ways possible. If you’ve been frustrated about your push-ups, my Density Training Push-Up Program will help you do 60 non-stop push-ups within 12 weeks, that’s if you commit yourself to it.

These exercises will cover all the bases when it comes to endurance, athleticism, strength and size. If you think that’s too much to achieve in a single training program, it’s actually possible with the right program, one that includes periodization or the method of altering training variables at specific times to ensure peak performance.

Those who train under me know that I’m a big fan of periodization because it’s backed by science and decades of anecdotal reports. My Micro Muscle Program is one of the best examples of effective periodization.

Quicker, Leaner, Fitter Program Breakdown

Weight training

This 12-week lifting program will give you four weekly weight workouts with a two-day split that divides the body into two separate workouts: the chest, back, shoulders and abs in one, and the legs and arms in the other. This means that you’ll be training each muscle group twice a week.

Lifting sessions are labelled Workout 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the workout charts and you can choose the days that fit your schedule best. Just make sure that Workouts 1 and 3 are separated by two full days as well as Workouts 2 and 4.

Workouts 1 and 2 will work on your strength, power and speed while Workouts 3 and 4 will focus on endurance, fat burning and muscle growth.

During this 12-week program, you’ll be able to utilize two forms periodization. The linear periodization scheme will make your weights heavier as your rep counts decrease and this will be used for power and strength workouts, as proven by different scientific studies.

The only exception during this workout is when you do power push-ups and squat jumps where you’ll use your own body weight. So instead of increasing the weights, you’ll just need to increase the reps during each phase.

The reverse-linear periodization scheme where your weight gets lighter as your reps increase will be used for muscle endurance and growth workouts. You’ll also utilize both supersets (for major muscle groups) and tri-sets (for abs) as your intensity boosting techniques.

During Months 1 and 3, you’ll perform supersets for the same muscle group while you’re going to do supersets for opposing muscle groups for Month 2.

Cardio

This program will feature two types of cardio workouts: high-intensity interval training (HIIT) for improving running speed and slow, steady runs to boost your endurance. I’m not a big fan of long cardio except for fat loss.

Here, you’ll be doing alternate styles of cardio, doing each exercise twice a week for four cardio sessions. You have the option to do these cardio workouts with your lifting exercises or separately.

If you ask me, I would recommend doing weights and cardio in different sessions, even if you’re working out on the same day. But there’s always the choice to do it your way if that routine is not feasible for you. If you choose to do these two exercises together, make sure to prioritize based on your strengths and weaknesses. If lifting is easy for you, for instance, do your cardio first since this is your weakness and follow your lifting after.

Density training push-up program

To complete this fitness program, I’ve incorporated the Density Training Push-up Program into Day 3 of the weight training workout throughout the 12 weeks that you’ll be training. This is designed to help you achieve that goal of completing 60 push-up reps non-stop after week 12.

Like any type of workout, you’ll need to start with Level 1 and once you complete all reps, that’s when you move to Level 2 and so on. You don’t need to worry if you’re taking longer to progress to the next level because your body needs to get used to this type of stress.

In most instances, you’ll be able to move up to the next level after a week. But as you move along, you could expect to get stuck at a level for a couple of weeks or even longer.

The goal here is to do one set every minute where you start at the top of the minute and complete the reps for that level. You can take a rest until the top of the next minute before you start with the second set. You need to continue doing these reps until all sets are completed for that level.

That’s the time you can move on to the next level. A lot of people have already accomplished this, so if you commit yourself to it, you can definitely complete all these 60 push-up reps before you know it.