I also started eating better. Not just more healthily – I made a total dietary departure from my previous habits of either skipping meals or ordering takeaways, to carefully considering every morsel that entered my mouth. And I made a very conscious effort to improve my chances of falling, and then staying, asleep.
Suddenly I was ticking boxes left, right and centre. And guess what happened? My body started changing shape. And fast. Fat melted away from my mid-section and my muscles started to grow.
My point is that if you want to make a radical change to how you look in your underwear then stop thinking you can out-train a bad diet, stop believing that you will get lean by eliminating all dietary fat and stop trying to burn the candle at both ends.
Because the key to a successful transformation is creating a lifestyle that is more than the sum of its parts. The positive effects of doing many little things right don’t just add up, they multiply – and the result is even greater gains. Better energy levels, better hormone function, better digestion. Increased fat loss, increased muscle mass, increased positivity. Less stress, fewer cravings, less doubt.
© Courtesy of the author
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED?
I don’t know yet whether the transformation has been the success Nick and HarperCollins hoped for. I am over the moon with the progress made in such a relatively brief period of time and have never looked or felt fitter, healthier and happier. But whether we’ve done enough to make this book happen remains to be seen.
I am writing this last paragraph on the flight back to London with the final photoshoot just days away. I guess if you are reading this, then I did it. I transformed my body into one good enough to grace the cover of a book. Now it’s your turn.
01 GET YOUR HEAD STRAIGHT
Does it strike you as odd that I’ve chosen to start a book on what many would consider to be an ‘exercise and diet guide’ with a chapter on mental performance?
If it does seem strange then either you need an attitude adjustment or your brain is already clicked into a higher gear and you can skip this chapter. A rare few will fall into that latter category: congratulations, you’re probably successful at most things that you do because you understand the power of focus.
DON’T BLAME IT ON YOUR PARENTS
You may think that you are stuck with the body your parents gave you. Your genetics are unchangeable after all. But there is a smart way to create a whole new look to your body. This is what this book is all about.
All forms of exercise are great, but the reason why the programmes in this book are so resistance-training focused is because a correctly executed weight-training regime is far and away the most effective way for you to shape, sculpt and change your body.
YOU MAY LOOK IN THE MIRROR AND SEE A SHAPELESS LUMP, BUT I SEE A PIECE OF CLAY READY TO BE TRANSFORMED INTO SOMETHING RADICALLY DIFFERENT
You may look in the mirror and see a shapeless lump, but I see a piece of clay ready to be transformed into something radically different. That is one of the key premises in Your Ultimate Body Transformation Plan, because it allows you to take charge of the areas of your body that you want to improve.
First of all, however, I need to give you a little disclaimer. Slavishly following the guidelines in this book will not give a narrow-shouldered man wider clavicles (collar-bones).
If you have uneven abdominal muscles then they will stay uneven forever. Stumpy, fat legs are always going to be short and, to be frank, a little bit stumpy. Simply put, you cannot change your genetics and beat nature. But what you can do is create an illusion.
Many people think that I have wide shoulders. That isn’t true at all, and I’m a bit of a long and lanky beanpole with narrow clavicles. But what I have done is built up my medial (side) deltoid muscles to present an impression of width.
Taking things one step further, by thickening my back muscles and getting a better V-taper I will look broader still. And then tightening the waist and getting leaner is going to further enhance that illusion.
So what you need to do is to take a highly critical look at your own body to see what areas you want to focus on to create the desired ‘illusion’. Don’t just take photographs; have someone video you from all angles. The reality will be very sobering. But now you have your clay and the sculpture is in your hands.
THE UNIQUE NATURE OF THE WORKOUT PROGRAMMES
There is a trade-off between writing a training programme for the reader of a book, versus writing a programme for someone whom I can see, talk to and assess on a regular basis.
The trade-off is that via the book I get to spread the message of how to really train for results as wide and as cost-effective for you as possible, but at the expense of individualisation. It is a trade-off that I believe is worth it, but it is also an issue that I am acutely aware has never been properly addressed in mainstream fitness publishing.
Until now.
If you want a highly effective broad-based workout that has helped hundreds of thousands of people then all you need to do is go to www.UltimateTransformation.Guide and download for free all of the 12-week workouts from my bestselling first book, 12 Week Body Plan. The workouts are tough, but highly effective, and will help anyone to improve their body. But I always felt that this programme was simply telling the story of what I did to get this book’s cover model, Joe Warner, on the cover of Men’s Fitness magazine and it left too much out.
What we did to help Joe sculpt his body is unique to Joe and not the exact methodologies that I would have used with anybody else.
This book, which in many ways has taken the premise of 12 Week Body Plan and improved it in both depth and range, is all about empowering every reader to work on his own unique aesthetic, and to do that I have written what can be best described as a series of exercise routines for you to plug and play at your discretion.
Rather than you following a 12-week programme that is set in stone and requires no planning, you are now going to have to think for yourself a little bit more.
The blueprint is a 12-week base workout where you add specific weekly body-part specialisation routines on top. There are rules that you must adhere to so I implore you to read the workout sections of the book very carefully. For example, 12 weeks of non-stop arms specialisation would actually be detrimental to you building impressive arms and would see you regress.
If you have any doubts then remember that you can ask me any questions at all pertaining to this plan on Twitter (@HeyNickMitchell) as long as you make this book cover your (temporary) profile picture.
© Courtesy of the author
THE SECRET TO MY SUCCESS AS A TRAINER AND THE LESSONS YOU CAN LEARN FROM IT
Do you know why I consistently achieve better results for my clients than any other personal trainer I know?
Why do you think my team at Ultimate Performance (UP) consistently and significantly outperforms the rest of the fitness industry?
The answers to both of these questions may sorely disappoint you. We don’t have a secret training programme passed down from Cold War super-scientists. There are no magic legal supplements that will transform you. And even if there were, such things would be available to anybody who could pay for it. The magic illegal supplements (that do work) are off limits and unethical to use unless prescribed as TRT (testosterone replacement therapy) by a medical doctor.
The harsh fact of the matter is that we usually only get our hands on clients for two to three times a week on average. Globe-trotting executives who can afford our fees tend not to stick around in one place and they have highly pressured, stressful careers.
And here’s something else that no one in the industry will dare tell you: 80 per cent of people, 80 per cent of the time, pretty much only need the same basic diet (greens, good fats, animal protein, hydration, portion control) to achieve some rather special results.
There is no secret. Except perhaps one.
What has made my professional name is my ability to get inside people’s heads. W
hat has made the UP name is our culture that makes the client accountable and gives him nowhere to hide either on the gym floor or when he’s home in the kitchen.
I have a unique insight into what works to get results as I oversee the work of over 100 results-obsessed personal trainers. Let me tell you that the smartest and most knowledgeable trainer is by no means the most successful results-producing trainer. In fact very often the more a trainer is obsessed with trying to sound intelligent (a word of advice here: trainers are not scientists, and when they try to sound like one run a mile) the less he focuses on the fundamental basics of ensuring that his client is mentally prepared to do what it takes to achieve his goals.
The single most powerful resource you have to make something happen is your brain. If you can harness your drive, focus and determination then you can achieve so much more than the simple act of transforming your body.
But if you cannot harness your mind’s potential then you are doomed to the endless cycle of failure that feeds so much of the fitness and diet industry. I do not want that for you.
THE MYTH OF DISCIPLINE
The best summation that I’ve ever read on the subject of self-discipline was by the man who taught me more about strength training than anyone else, the world-renowned strength coach Charles Poliquin.
He referred to ‘the myth of discipline’ and how in the end it all boils down to how badly you want something. Do you really want to have a defined six-pack or do you want those doughnuts? Which one gets you the most excited? It really is as simple and as straightforward as that.
There are various tricks that I am going to teach you in later chapters about how not to succumb to the lure of a doughnut, but we need to go into this process with our eyes wide open. Life is going to get in the way, you are going to stray from the path, but how you react to that and how you reinforce the message needed to achieve your goals is always in your hands.
YOU NEED TO FOLLOW THE RULES OF CHANGE
I TRULY BELIEVE THAT EVERY PERSON WHO IS READING THIS PAGE HOLDS THE KEY TO HIS OWN RADICAL PHYSIQUE TRANSFORMATION.
DEFINE YOUR GOAL/S Decide what you really want to achieve. Write it down. It doesn’t matter what this goal is – it could be two inches off your waist or the physique of Schwarzenegger in his prime.
SET A TIMEFRAME ON YOUR GOAL
There is a world of difference between thinking ‘one day I would like to be ripped’ and ‘I will be ripped in 12 weeks.’ I love the pressure of time-driven goals and embrace them in all aspects of my life, and so should you.
BREAK THAT GOAL DOWN INTO SMALLER TIMEFRAMES
If you have a 12-week goal, break it down into bite-sized weekly chunks.
Hitting small milestones on your way to big ones will raise your dopamine levels and keep you focused on the long-term goal. Merely having one longer-term aim can be demoralising when you feel as though your daily efforts haven’t made a dent in getting there.
BE REALISTIC I am all for shooting for the stars and am a fully paid-up subscriber to the school of thought that no man, especially myself, should ever hold me back. However, we all need to be realistic. If you only have two hours a week for the gym then cut your goals accordingly.
If you currently carry 35 per cent body fat and would be a welcome new entrant to The Biggest Loser, then 12 weeks to cover model is not going to happen.
Dreaming big is part of what makes life fun, but turning dreams into reality is the best thing of all. Make sure that your dreams make physiological and practical sense.
EXERT PRESSURE ON YOURSELF BY ALL MEANS NECESSARY I am a huge fan of using every mental trick in the book to help me achieve my goals. My own personal favourite is to imagine that I am doing a specific task (that is getting hard and I feel like capitulating on) for my children. I visualise their faces in front of me and if I compromise on my efforts in the slightest I will be letting them down.
The nasty cousin of that positive reinforcement is to imagine someone whom you perceive as being an enemy or hater doing better than you. Tell yourself, ‘If I don’t do this then person X will be more successful than me,’ or ‘Person Y will be right about me all along.’
My point here is that you should use every driver and motivator possible. Nothing is off limits or should be beyond your imagination!
ASK YOURSELF, ‘HOW HARD AM I PREPARED TO GO? WHAT AM I PREPARED TO SACRIFICE?’
Answer this question before you start the programme in this book. Write down your answer. Every time you feel like wavering, return to your original promises to yourself.
HARNESS YOUR FEAR The best motivator of all is fear. When your back is to the wall you do great things. Do something that scares you – lose a bet, put your photos up on Facebook, or book a photoshoot that you cannot get out of. It doesn’t really matter what. All that matters is that you use the fear of failure to sharpen your mind and your actions.
If you embark on this programme with zero accountability for failure then I promise you that you have drastically limited your chances of success even before you have picked up a dumbbell.
WHEN YOU FAIL The only way to see setbacks is to remind yourself that everyone has them and how you respond right here, right now is what will set you apart from the also-rans and never-made-its.
Embrace temporary failure as the chance to bounce back stronger and harder than ever. Don't allow it to consume you and wallow in it, or you’ll kiss goodbye to achieving your goals.
SELF-BELIEF If there is one thing that I’d love this book to teach you it is the amazing things that you can do once you believe in yourself.
I’ve lost count of the times that people have told me that until they stepped into one of my gyms they never believed that they could transform their bodies in the way that they have done. That they thought our before and after results were fake or at best done by people who had nothing in their lives but the gym and consuming broccoli and chicken breasts. Once we gave them belief the journey wasn’t easy, but it was possible, it all fell into place for them.
02 LEARNING TO WALK BEFORE YOU CAN RUN
If you find that carrying the groceries from the car to the kitchen is a bit of a workout then it’s safe to say that you are a white belt in the world of gym training.
We need you to set off with stabilisers before hitting the mountainous peaks of a real workout.
My advice, if you have been training for less than two years, is to start with the programme in this chapter and follow it for as long as you enjoy it and are making regular strength gains. Typically this will be for anything from three to eight weeks. As a rule of thumb, the more advanced you are as a trainee the more often you need to change your workout.
A quick word on diet. All the training in the world won’t change the shape of your body unless you take control of what you eat. While there are such things as advanced peaking strategies that would be inappropriate for someone who is just starting out, the fact of the matter is that you can jump right into your nutritional regime without the need to add a beginner’s level ‘bridging’ period. You can find all the information that you need on how to eat to transform your body in Chapter 6.
MUSCLE-BUILDING AND STRENGTH WORKOUTS
Workouts A and B are to be done on non-consecutive days three times a week.
This means that in any given week you will either do Workout A twice and Workout B once or Workout A once and Workout B twice.
Some of the moves are numbered 1A and 1B, or 2A and 2B. This means that those two exercises form a superset and so are performed in the following way: do all the reps of the first set of the A move, rest for the stated period, then do all the reps of the first set of the B move. You then rest again, if a rest period is stated, then return to the A move and repeat this until all the sets are done, at which point you move on to the next exercise. In Workout A below, 4A and 4B require a different number of sets, so follow 4A and 4B as normal for the first 2 supersets and then, once the second set of 4B is complete, do just the remaining set
of 4A.
It’s really important that you stick exactly to the exercises, sets, reps, tempo (see explanation) and rest periods listed.
Workout A Exercise Sets Reps Tempo Rest
1A Front squat 3 4–6 5010 120 sec
1B Lying hamstring curl 3 4–6 5010 90 sec
2A Dumbbell bench press 3 6–8 4010 90 sec
2B Shoulder-width chin-up 3 6–8 4010 90 sec
3A Standing barbell shoulder press 3 6–8 4010 90 sec
3B 60˚ hammer curl 3 6–8 4010 90 sec
4A Single-leg calf raise 3 8–10 2110 70 sec
4B Hanging leg raise 2 10–12 2010 60 sec
Workout B Exercise Sets Reps Tempo Rest
1 Deadlift 4 8, 6, 4, 4* 3210 180 sec
2 Rack half-deadlift with shrug 3 6–8 2110 180 sec
3A Decline bench press 3 6–8 3110 90 sec
3B Lean-away pull-up 3 6–8 4010 90 sec
4A EZ-bar reverse curl 2 6–8 2210 0 sec
4B Weighted triceps dip 2 6–8 4010 0 sec
4C Barbell wrist curl 2 10–12 2010 60 sec
*The 8,6,4,4 reps refer to the first set being an 8-rep set, the second set you will increase the weight slightly and aim for 6 reps, and for the final two sets the weight will go even heavier and the rep goal drop down to just 4.
EXTRA WORKOUTS
The weight-training workouts in this chapter are all that you need at the beginner level to stimulate both hypertrophy (muscle growth) and strength gains.
If you are a super-skinny type with the overriding goal of beefing up your frame then these workouts should be all the vigorous exercise that you do until you progress to a more advanced stage. For you, the rule of thumb should be to focus on recovery and relaxation when not in the gym.
Most of you reading this will not fall into that camp and you will have some timber to shift from your middle. Sadly for you, taking it easy isn’t an option!
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