This functional resistance band circuits workout is broken up into three sections. There is minimal jumping, and if you want to keep the entire class low-impact, I’ll be showing modifications on the screen in the below video.
I have a few more Functional Circuits classes available for free on the site and channel:
Resistance band loop – I’m using a light band for the first circuit and a medium band for the second and third circuits.
In this class, we start with a guided warm up, focusing on mobility and dynamic movement/light cardio. We then move onto our functional circuit work. In each of the three circuits, you’ll preform four exercises, back to back, for 30 seconds each. You then rest 30 seconds before repeating. So that’s 2 mins of work, 30 sec rest.
In Circuits 1 & 2, we’ll do some unilateral work so we’ll complete 4 sets of the circuits, alternating right and left. In Circuit 3, we’ll complete 3 sets.
Between circuits, you get about a minute to recover, but pause the video and take more time if needed. Always listen to your body, modifying or stopping as needed.
We finish class with a guided cool down and stretch.
There is minimal jumping throughout class and low-impact modifications will be shown on the screen if you want to keep the entire workout low impact.
Workout Breakdown
01:53 Warm Up & Mobility
09:44 Functional Circuits Workout
Circuit 1, band gripped in hands
Back Lunge Torso Twist
Shoulder Press in Split Lunge
Lateral Extension with Pulse
Side Plank Row Rotation + Knee Crunch
Circuit 2, band under one foot
DL Variation
DL Pulse
Curtsy Pulse Knee Drive
Lizard Lunge to Low Squat to Squat Jump
Circuit 3, band around thighs (or shins)
Lateral Step x2 Squat with Calf Raise
Squat Jack with Pulse
Low Squat, Inchworm to Plank, Jump to Squat, 180 Squat Jump
Plank Lateral Steps / Plank Jack
39:19 Cool Down & Stretch
Hope you enjoy this Functional Resistance Band Circuits workout!
I wasn’t kidding earlier when I said meditation is practically a superpower.
Think of this superpower like the power of X-men’s Mystique, but for your mind.
Instead of the ability to alter your appearance to meet the challenges of any given situation, meditation allows you to alter your mind to conquer the day.
Why does this matter?
Because sometimes our minds can seem like they have a mind of their own:
When we are on our commute and someone is a jerk, we get angry. We don’t seem to have a choice in the matter – we just GET ANGRY.
When a friend says something stupid, we roll our eyes.
When they say something witty and intelligent, we laugh.
There is no deliberation, no Council of Elrond to decide how you should feel and respond.
That’s just how our brains work.
Daniel Kahneman, in the famed Thinking Fast and Slow, proposed we think about thinking in two ways.
System 1: Fast Thinking – automatic, frequent, emotional, subconscious.
System 2: Slow thinking – deliberative, effortful, infrequent, logical, conscious.
System 1 is responsible for most of what you do every day. This fast thinking does so much on your behalf, that you may not even realize it.
System 2 doesn’t kick in until you are tasked with something like solving a riddle, filling out a tax form, or walking at a pace that is unnaturally fast.
Another social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, describes these systems with a different metaphor: a rider on an elephant.
In The Happiness Hypothesis, he explains he selected this metaphor to demonstrate the power of the elephant (fast thinking), and the powerlessness of the rider (slow thinking). While the rider might feel in control, at the top of the elephant with reigns in hand, it is truly the elephant that is running things.
What Exactly Is Meditation?
Meditation is simply the practice of learning how to pay attention.
It’s not something magic.
It’s not a cult or a religion.
Meditation is just a mental exercise to strengthen your mind.
This mental exercise is increasingly necessary in the modern world.
It turns out, at any given time almost half of us are lost in thought unrelated to what’s in front of us. And when we are mentally wandering, we are significantly less happy.[1]
As Matthieu Ricard explains in his TED Talk – when neuroscientists looked at his brain while meditating, he scored “off the scale” in brain activity related to happiness, compassion, and altruism.
At the end of the day, isn’t happiness what we’re all chasing?
That’s why we spend so much time with “mindset” in our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program. Sure, we help people lose weight and get strong, but we also assign fun “side quests” to help with mindfulness, gratitude, and general well being.
How Do You Meditate? How Long Should Beginners Meditate?
To start, pick a time in your day you can regularly designate as your time to meditate.
It should be a time you can find a quiet place, without distraction or interruption.
As a beginner, you don’t need to meditate for long. Just five minutes a day is a great place to start.
Too much? Try TWO minutes.
The important part is building the daily habit.We can bump up the frequency down the road.
The meditation practice I’m going to describe for you below is a basic mindfulness practice. There are many different styles of meditation, but every type of meditation is about cultivating attention and awareness, or learning to be in the present moment without grasping. [2]
Be sure to set a timer before you begin.Time tends to slow down when in deep meditation, so when you’re just starting it may feel like 10 minutes…but it’s only been 5.
The timer will help here at first.
AS A BEGINNER, HERE’S HOW TO MEDITATE:
Find a place to sit that allows your back to be in an upright position. You don’t need to sit cross-legged, but you can if you wish. A chair or sitting against a wall also works well. Feel free to use a cushion under your bottom to help your posture and make yourself more comfortable. The goal is a posture that helps you stay alert, but is still comfortable. You can meditate with your eyes open or closed.
As you begin, take several deep, slow breaths to gather concentration. Inhale deeply, filling your lungs to the brim. Then slowly exhale. Follow your breath carefully with your attention through this process.
After a few breaths, or when you feel your concentration has settled, begin to breathe naturally. Notice the breath at a specific point, most commonly with the rising and falling of the chest, at your nostrils, or at your abdomen. Don’t force it. Don’t glue your attention there. Simply allow your breath to come and go naturally, following it as it naturally unfolds.
When you get lost in thought, simply return your attention back to the breath. Bringing your attention back to the breath is a central part of the process – think about it like performing an exercise repetition. Each time you do this you are rewiring your brain – no different from doing a repetition in strength training. So, don’t feel guilty or beat yourself up. You can’t control when you get distracted. But then magically, each time you realize you are distracted and you “wake up” – at this point, just return to the breath!
This is where we recommend most beginners start – a broad and basic breath concentration practice. Think about this no differently than starting with just the bar before adding weight, when learning to squat.
Three meditation apps that some at Team Nerd Fitness have had success with:
These programs can help you get going with a simple mindfulness practice.
Here’s something else to consider as you get started:
Beginners often find it difficult to stay aware when thoughts arise, and find themselves noticing they have been thinking only after being lost in thoughts for several minutes.
This is normal!
When you notice this happening, just return to focusing on your breath.
One last thing to consider would be guided meditations, where someone’s voice guides and directs you through a mindfulness practice.
Guided meditation is great to incorporate into anyone’s meditation practice (beginner, intermediate, or advanced), and certainly when the mind is especially restless.
Here are 5 resources that may help with guided meditation:
Doctor Who fans might enjoy Dalek’s Relaxation for Humans, although I can’t comment on its effectiveness:
What Are the Benefits of Meditation?
The superpower meditation builds is the ability to be at the character selection screen, for any given situation, at any given time.
You see, because of how our brains work, it can be hard to exert a level of control in our lives – from our response to a social interaction, to changing fundamental aspects of our life.
When something happens, we just react.
That’s System 1.
There’s no conscious deliberative process when a cute girl/guy walks up to you, or some car cuts you off in traffic. It’s no surprise that we often feel frustrated with our reactions after-the-fact.
Imagine the ability to replay the events, and always act with a calm and collected demeanor, delivering the best response you have to offer. That’s what meditation can help do for you.
I’m not talking managing an emotion, or suppressing a thought.
This is not “serenity now, insanity later.”
This isn’t about dealing with things AFTER you get angry or sad, but the power to actually change both how you feel and how you respond.
That is true power.
Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor uses anger as an example in her wonderful TED Talk:
In her speech, Dr. Taylor explains that the physiological response from anger can only last 90 seconds.
Yet, as humans, we can stay angry seemingly FOREVER.
Why?
We are doing it to ourselves, by rethinking the thought and redoing the physiological response over and over. If you’ve ever gotten angry and let it fester, feeling angrier and angrier after, you know what she’s talking about.
As Dr.Taylor explains, we all have a superpower within us, but most of us surrender it.
Or as she puts us, we surrender our neurocircuitry:
“We are neurocircuitry. Your neurocircuitry is YOUR neurocircuitry, and you do not have the ability to stimulate and trigger my neurocircuitry without my permission. You cannot make me angry, unless I stick my trigger out there for you to pounce on and stimulate my neurocircuitry. If I give you the power to stimulate my neurocircuitry, then I have given you my power. And I give you my power, then I become vulnerable to you…”
Through meditation, you can learn to focus your attention where you choose. As you begin the practice, you will start to notice your thoughts and feelings more consciously, and let go of the ones that aren’t useful to you. You will start to reforge the character of your choosing.
This might have real physiological benefits.
While there is obviously some hype going on with mindfulness (it’s over a billion-dollar industry in the U.S. alone), there does some to be some evidence of meditation providing “modest benefits” for certain conditions.[3]
Dan Harris does a great job summarizing some of the benefits of meditation here:
Meditation may help:
Reduce stress. Studies have shown that a meditation practice can help users lower their stress levels. Although to be fair, it doesn’t seem to impact cortisol levels, our main stress hormone.[4] Still, being able to recenter can help you look at a stressful scenario with fresh eyes.
Alleviate depression.When we’re stressed, we release inflammatory chemicals called cytokines, which can lead to depression. A meditation practice may help limit the release of cytokines, reducing the risk of depression.[5]
Manage pain.Our perceptions of pain are tied to our state of mind.[6] Given this, it makes sense that a meditation practice can help alleviate certain types of pain.[7]
Plus, Wolverine meditates, so mindfulness may help you come to terms with the fact you were designed to be a mindless, soulless killing machine.[8]
Or…help you calm down after your flight is delayed for an hour. Same difference.
How Often Should You Meditate?
Now that you know how to meditate, you need to understand one final thing.
You have to train this power like a muscle.
Even if you have a good day or a good week in the gym, you need to be at it for months and months, and then STAY at it, to live with the benefits for a lifetime.
We’re doing the same thing with our meditation practice.
No different from squatting incrementally more weight, you are training your brain to get stronger.
Just like squatting, you won’t see profound benefits after a single session. Instead, you will level up after weeks and months of consistency.
The same way squatting regularly builds muscle, meditation literally builds gray matter in your brain.[9] Soon enough, that “automatic mode” or elephant we talked about will begin to change too (literally rewiring your brain).[10]
Much like groceries will slowly begin to feel lighter after strength training, so to will you gradually notice the benefits of meditation.
So how often should a beginner meditate?
Daily if possible.
It might feel intimidating now to think about, but just like with diet and exercise, once the habit is established, you won’t even notice:
Once you become someone who meditates for five minutes a day, that’s just what you do.
Getting Started With a Meditation Practice (Next Steps)
We all know the story of Luke Skywalker, not because he had this power within him and chose to walk away from it, but because he seized the opportunity to understand the Force.
Don’t be the Jedi who is walking away from your potential.
As a kid, I always thought that comic books had it backwards – the superpower found the superhero (I’m looking at you Spiderman), rather than the other way around.
What if we all had the potential to develop our power, and only the true superheroes do? Now that would be awesome.
That’s what meditation allows us to do.
Not only does meditation boost your health in a range of tangible ways, but more importantly, it helps us to enjoy the here and now. You might call this loving the game, or enjoying the process.
That’s why today we’re issuing a meditation challenge:
Commit to meditating every day, for two weeks straight (using an app, website, or guided meditation if you wish).
It can just be for five minutes. Or two minutes.
The important part is establishing a new habit.
Then maybe we can all start bending spoons together:
I think that just about does it for this article.
Before I let you go, if you want to continue your journey with Nerd Fitness as you level up your life, I’ve got three great options for you to do so.
HERE ARE NEXT STEPS IF YOU WANT TO GO FARTHER!
#1) Our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program: a coaching program for busy people to help them lose weight, get strong, and level up their lives!
We believe that mindfulness is so important, we assign fun meditation “side quests” to our clients, to help build the practice.
#2) Exercising at home and need a plan to follow? Check out Nerd Fitness Journey!
Our fun habit-building app helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally).
Try your free trial right here:
#3) Join our amazing free community, the Nerd Fitness Rebellion! Not only is it free to join, but we’ll provide you with loads of free goodies when you sign-up:
Get your Nerd Fitness Starter Kit
The 15 mistakes you don’t want to make.
Full guide to the most effective diet and why it works.
Complete and track your first workout today, no gym required.
I’m so excited for you all to try this Pilates Slide class!!! It’s a combination of my years of experience teaching group megaformer classes and my Pilates mat training. I’ve wanted to put together classes like this for a while, and have been (im)patiently waiting to complete my Mat course before doing so.
If you enjoyed the Sculpt & Slide class I shared in the spring, you’ll love this. It’s similar but without the light weights, and a little more of a Pilates feel. Also I will have Pilates Slide classes that incorporate light hand weights, resistance bands, and other props in the future. I wanted to start with a towel/slider-only class though so that everyone can try it, regardless of access to equipment.
Pilates Slide Class – Towel/Slider Only
EQUIPMENT NEEDED
Towel/slider – paper plates work on carpet, but I would still have a dish towel on hand for knee padding
Pilates Slide classes mix Mat Pilates work with sliding sequences inspired by the megaformer. Class is a continuous flow, but we’ll generally focus on one muscle group as a time as we move from sequence to sequence.
Roadmap of class:
Warm Up
Core mat work
Sliding plank/upper body work
Standing sliding lunge work
Side body (outer hips/obliques) mat work
Repeat on other side
Prone work
Cool down
If you love class, you can get access to more Pilates Slide workouts by becoming a Patreon member!
I’m so excited for you all to try this Pilates Slide class!!! It’s a combination of my years of experience teaching group megaformer classes and my Pilates mat training. I’ve wanted to put together classes like this for a while, and have been (im)patiently waiting to complete my Mat course before doing so.
If you enjoyed the Sculpt & Slide class I shared in the spring, you’ll love this. It’s similar but without the light weights, and a little more of a Pilates feel. Also I will have Pilates Slide classes that incorporate light hand weights, resistance bands, and other props in the future. I wanted to start with a towel/slider-only class though so that everyone can try it, regardless of access to equipment.
Pilates Slide Class – Towel/Slider Only
EQUIPMENT NEEDED
Towel/slider – paper plates work on carpet, but I would still have a dish towel on hand for knee padding
Pilates Slide classes mix Mat Pilates work with sliding sequences inspired by the megaformer. Class is a continuous flow, but we’ll generally focus on one muscle group as a time as we move from sequence to sequence.
Roadmap of class:
Warm Up
Core mat work
Sliding plank/upper body work
Standing sliding lunge work
Side body (outer hips/obliques) mat work
Repeat on other side
Prone work
Cool down
If you love class, you can get access to more Pilates Slide workouts by becoming a Patreon member!
Like the White Walkers of the old stories our Gran used to tell us, winter is descending upon us mere mortals, and we must prepare! This endless onslaught of vicious attacks on our brains and our bellies will leave us ripe for slaughter if we’re not careful:
Cold weather that encourages us to sleep in, avoid the elements, and say “maybe tomorrow.”
A sun that rises too late and sets too soon means we often go days without seeing the damn thing!
Cookies and candies bombarded us from everywhere we look.
Oh, and a f’ing global pandemic that has left us isolated and alone.
These and more challenges are just begging us to go off the rails. And a built-in excuse called January 1st where we promise to “start over” helps us rationalize us “pausing” until then. Black Friday has come and gone. Cyber Monday is now in the rearview. Thanksgiving is now a distant memory.
And yet…the challenges are still just getting started.
Luckily, we have 7 “hacks” to survive these trying times. If you want, you can try them too!
Here’s what we’ll cover with our guide on surviving winter:
We all see January 1st as the “reset,” and there’s nothing wrong with a reset to start out the year. The problem is when you compound your issues by digging yourself deeper into a hole that you have to eventually climb out of!
Eat very poorly for long enough, and the hole will start to resemble Bruce Wayne’s prison in The Dark Knight Rises:
Think of it like you’re on the starting line of a race for a healthy life that starts Jan 1st. You have two options:
A) Hang around the starting line: Hang out and wait for the gun to fire. Then start running.
B) Run in the opposite direction. Run farther away from the starting line, so when the gun goes off you have even FARTHER to run in the race.
So, Step 1 is not running in the opposite direction. This means you can’t skip all your workouts and eat like crap and give up til January. This is you going the wrong way, and will make the task of “starting over” on January 1st that much more brutal.
Instead, do what you can to “tread water” and hang out around the starting line. If you CAN, stay on target. One bad meal doesn’t ruin things. One missed workout isn’t the end of the world. If you have an awful day, respawn and get back in the fight. Immediately.
A four-week freefall is a hole you’d rather not be in. You also don’t want to be in THIS hole:
But that’s beside the point…
So forget B. Let’s aim for A.
Winter Hack #1: Never Two in a Row
I first talked about “Never Two in a Row” back in like 2012, and it’s a mantra I’ve been living by ever since.
You’re human. And life happens.
What SHOULD NOT HAPPEN is missing two days in a row. Or eating TWO bad meals in a row. Or having TWO bad days in a row.
Why? One bad day can feel like a speed bump if you’re trying to get healthy. Get back on track right away and there’s no problem.
However, missing two days in a row is like turning that tiny speed bump into the Misty Mountains. If you miss one day in a row, no problem! Just act like it didn’t happen and get back on track.
But once you miss two days in a row, you are now 67.42% more likely to fall into a multiple week hole. Okay, I made up that statistic, but two days very easily becomes three, which very easily becomes a week, which easily becomes “I’ll wait til January.”
That’s running in the wrong direction.
So AIM TO NEVER EVER EVER miss two workouts in a row. If you miss a workout on Monday, go on Tuesday and get right back on track. If you eat pie for lunch, because it ain’t gonna eat itself, make your dinner healthy AF. Do that, and you’ll be fine.
So whenever you have a bad day or do something against your plan, I need you to respawn right away (“start over” in video game lingo) and make the next day the best day you possibly can.
Winter Hack #3: Consider Skipping a Meal
Spoiler alert: you’re going to eat lots of decadent food this upcoming month. (Unlike Noel’s delicious Thai Zoodle recipe above)
I know it. You know it. So we can do one of two things.
We can pretend like it’s not going to happen, and then be surprised and beat ourselves up when we put ourselves in a carb coma and go on a calorie-induced bender.
Or we can be smart about it and negate the impact these days have on our waistlines. Better yet, we can make these additional calories work FOR us.
For starters, our metabolisms aren’t that smart. Your weight will fluctuate based on total calories consumed over many many days, not after ONE power-bomb of a meal.
So, if you know you are going to eat a monster lunch and dinner (I see you, Christmas), eat a stupidly light breakfast, and a light breakfast tomorrow – the calories will average out in the long run.
Or, if you’re willing to dig in and do the research, SKIP breakfast (and maybe lunch) before your monster meal. It’s called “intermittent fasting,” and it’s what I do to stay on track during weeks when I know I’m going to eat poorly.
First, I skip breakfast every day (I haven’t eaten breakfast for years now).
Second, I might choose to skip lunch as well the day after a monster meal. Again, dig in and do the research (or just read this), and you’ll find that missing a meal isn’t the end of the world. In fact, it can lead to a healthier lifestyle for the right person.
If you’re interested in skipping a meal here or there, our snazzy new app has an intermittent fasting adventure in it that you can try RIGHT NOW.
Sign-up for a free trial right here:
Winter Hack #4: Strength Train Before Big Meals
Whether or not you take advantage of intermittent fasting, you can time your workouts to coincide with your unhealthy meals.
As I mentioned in our article on The 5 Rules of Weight Loss, think of all the calories you eat as first-year wizards at Hogwarts.
They need to be sorted into one of three houses (“Burn as Energy,” Store as Fat,” or “Rebuild Muscle.”)
The extra calories you eat over the holidays always go towards “store as fat” unless you give them a really good reason to head to the “build muscle” common room. Politely asking them won’t help.
You need to give them a reason. And that wonderful reason is STRENGTH TRAINING.
When you strength train before a big meal, the muscles you trained are broken down and need to be rebuilt. So, over the next 48+ hours many of those extra calories will be diverted to rebuilding (stronger) muscles instead of becoming fat.
Try a heavy strength training workout just a few hours before a holiday mean, then proceed to eat with everybody else. While they all lament “I’m so full, I ate too much, wahhhh,” you’ll know your calories are being used to rebuild muscle. So internally, you can start doing an evil villain laugh… Muahahahah, you know the one.
Work smarter (like a nerd).
Winter Hack #5: Don’t rely on motivation
Here’s another spoiler for you: you are NOT going to want to work out this month. It’s going to be dark and cold, and your nose is going to run (better catch it!), work is going to suck, you’re going to be hungover, and so on.
The amount of motivation you’ll need to get over these obstacles is gargantuan. So don’t force yourself to try and “dig deep” and just “work harder” and feel guilty when you’re “not motivated.”
Instead, do whatever you can to never, ever ever rely on motivation. Your body won’t say, “oh that’s okay, I’ll stay in shape because I feel bad for you.” There are 31 days in December just like there are 31 days in August.
Which means you need to stay on track even though it’s much easier to do in the summer. So instead of motivation, build fail-safes to make sure you are staying healthy. Schedule your workouts in your calendar and set up alerts so you are reminded. Recruit a buddy so you can check-in on each other.
Or go with one of these more diabolical examples:
Take a really really embarrassing photo of yourself, or type up a tweet with an embarrassing secret. Schedule it to post at 6:15 (or whatever time is early for you) every morning before you go to bed. Put your phone in the other room. If you don’t wake up on time, and run in the other room and cancel that tweet, it goes out! Better just get out of bed and train before work.
Give your co-worker $250. Tell him/her that you will work out 3 days per week, and text him a photo of your workout. If he/she does not receive that photo, they’ll donate $50 of your money to a political cause you can’t stand.
Set your credit card alerts to email you and your wife/husband every time it’s used. Agree ahead of time you’ll never use that card to buy fast food or else you’ll have to be on diaper duty for the next 3 months straight (or something that fits your situation).
In each of the instances above, you’re going to do exactly two things:
Get really mad at yourself. Probably curse a lot. Swear vengeance on your past self.
Do the damn thing you know you need to do while also being mad at yourself.
Never ever ever rely on motivation. Now, motivation doesn’t hurt. It’s just not reliable. So if you are in need of some motivation to get started, try this watching this video to remind you that training in the winter makes you a badass:
Just don’t rely on it, or feel guilty when you don’t have it! Whenever you DO feel a burst of motivation, use that extra energy to build systems. Here’s how to use motivation properly.
Winter Hack #6: Have a Plan B
“Too cold today! Can’t go to the gym and do my workout, DAMN! Looks like I’ll just have to sit here and eat ice cream.”
“Ran out of groceries, and it’s snowing. I guess I’ll just have to order pizza.”
The problem with winter is that it makes the unhealthy option always the easiest. We’re lazy, and I have to imagine we’re a bit like bears in that we want to hibernate and store fat when it gets cold out.
We have this tiny voice in our head subtly nudging us to pick the path of least resistance: aka pizza and skipped workouts.
And we can’t let that voice win. Then, the White Walkers win. And we’re all screwed. So, instead, we’re going to MacGuyver the sh** outta our winter by having a Plan B prepared.
For example:
A Workout PLAN B: Have a place in your house or apartment that you can go to and do the Beginner Bodyweight Workout, a workout from Nerd Fitness Prime, or some yoga. It might not be as great as the gym (which may or may not be open), but it’s still a workout. It might mean investing in a door frame pull-up bar or a yoga mat, but a small investment for maintaining momentum through the winter is worth any amount of money. Here’s How to Build a Home Gym if you’re interested.
A Nutritional PLAN B: Have a healthy meal in your freezer that has already been prepared and ready to be heated up. We make horrible decisions when the fridge is empty and we’re hungry. The Sirens of Dominos and Pizza Hut beckon us to call them for a 30-minute delivery.
So use your own laziness to help!
Here are some things to consider:
Have a meal in your freezer that’s all ready to go.
Store SteamFresh veggies for emergencies.
If you use delivery apps for crap food, delete them from your phone.
Do what you need to do to make it more difficult to make the wrong choice.
Winter Hack #7: It All Counts
So you can only train for 15 minutes today instead of 20.
So you have time to do a few yoga poses instead of working out for an hour.
So your ONLY option at the holiday party (if it’s even going on) is pizza and you didn’t have a great breakfast.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOUR WINTER IS RUINED. 80% IS STILL 80% BETTER THAN ZERO PERCENT.
Every little bit counts. It REALLY, REALLY does. Every small change, or even living off pie HALF of the time is FAR better than living off pie all the time. Swap ONE beer for ONE glass of water, and it’s a victory that will translate to your waistline. Do 5 push-ups as soon as you get out of bed, and it’s a victory.
Winter is a problem not because people make one bad mistake, but because one bad mistake quickly sets off a chain reaction of disasters justified by the fact that folks can’t do something 100%. So they opt for 0%.
If you don’t have time for a full workout, do half a workout! If you have to eat from a drive-through, no problem. Drinking water or a Diet Coke and grab some fruit as your side.
Here’s something else to try:
Every morning when you wake up, do 20 bodyweight squats, 10 push-ups, and if you have access to a pull-up bar (or gymnastic rings), hang from them for 30 seconds. No bar? No problem, here are 5 pull-up alternatives.
Make this the FIRST thing you do every day (using systems built back in point #6). That way, at least every day during the winter you’ve done something.
Together we can Brave the Winter
There you have it.
While you don’t have to follow all 7 hacks this winter, even just adopting one or two might help you build some momentum between now and the new year.
And as always, if you need any additional help, we’re here for you.
What kind of help?
Well, you could consider:
#1) Our Online Coaching Program: a coaching program for busy people to help them make better food choices, stay accountable, and get healthier, permanently.
You can schedule a free call with our team so we can get to know you and see if our coaching program is right for you. Just click on the button below for more details:
#2) Exercising at home and need a plan to follow? Check out Nerd Fitness Journey!
Our fun habit-building app helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally).
Try your free trial right here:
#3) Join the Rebellion! We need good people like you in our community, the Nerd Fitness Rebellion.
Sign up in the box below to enlist and get our Rebel Starter Kit, which includes all of our “work out at home” guides, the Nerd Fitness Diet Cheat Sheet, and much more!
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Alright, that about does it.
But real quick, before somebody yells at me in the comments, yes I know a lot of Aussies and Kiwis are NF Rebels, and I know it’s nearly summer down there. You can laugh at us all you want, your winter will come soon enough. Oh, it will.
Now, let’s hear from you:
What do you do when the going gets tough, when the temperature drops, and life gets busy as hell?
How do you fight back?
What are your favorite specific tricks or systems you use to stay on track?
Leave your comment below and share with your fellow Rebels.
Before I make you fall in line, if you’re interested in changing the way you eat to get in shape, you may like our fun new habit-building app!
NF Journey helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally).
Try your free trial right here:
What is the Military Diet? How does the Military Diet work?
If the Military Diet could be described in two quick words, those words would be “short term calorie restriction.”
Crap, that’s four words.
Ahem.
The diet focuses on ruthlessly cutting out calories in order to spur weight loss.
There are some claims out there that you can lose up to ten pound in one week on the Military Diet. Which would be impressive – and should also be setting off your skeptical spidey-senses.
So I can understand your curiosity, recruit.
Now you’re thinking: “What exactly does ‘extreme calorie restriction’ look like Steve?”
How about one meal consisting of just a single piece of bread, a half cup of tuna, and some black coffee?
That’s it.
If you ask for more food you’ll be forced to climb a rope.
The Military Diet is broken into two stages, one for three days and the other for four.
3-day plan on the Military Diet. For three days, breakfast, lunch, and dinner is picked out for you. You get this meal only soldier, nothing more! Forget about snacking. For three days, every single crumb is accounted for. I’m only slightly exaggerating. And these three meals only add up to 1,000 calories per day. Ouch. That’s not much chow.
Four days of leave. The Military Diet does go easy on you after the three days, with four days of slightly more food. And by that I mean 1,500 daily calories. How generous. You’re on your own on what to eat for these four days, with the only guidance being to “eat healthy” and keep it at “1,500 calories.”
Three days on, four days off. You repeat this three day and four day rotation until you reach your ideal weight.
That’s the Military Diet in a nutshell.
Okay, you probably want to know, to the crumb, what you get to eat on the Military Diet? Sure.
But it ain’t pretty.
What does the Military Diet plan look like?
As I mentioned, the Military Diet provides strict orders on what to eat for three days. Your mission looks like this:
DAY 1
Breakfast:
Half a grapefruit
One slice of toast
Two tablespoons of peanut butter
One cup of coffee or tea
Lunch:
Half a cup of tuna
One slice of toast
One cup of coffee or tea
Dinner
3 ounces of any type of meat
1 cup of green beans
Half a banana
One small apple
One cup of vanilla ice cream
DAY 2
Breakfast
One egg
One slice of toast
Half a banana
Lunch
One cup of cottage cheese
One hard boiled egg
Five saltine crackers
Dinner
Two hot dogs (no bun)
One cup of broccoli
Half a cup of carrots
One banana
Half a cup of vanilla ice cream
DAY 3
Breakfast
Five saltine crackers
One slice of cheddar cheese
One small apple
Lunch
One egg (cooked however)
One slice of toast
Dinner
One cup of tuna
Hald a banana
One cup of vanilla ice cream
If you find yourself thinking, “That’s not much for rations, Steve.” You’d be right.
Not only that, but I bet your normal serving of peanut butter is significantly larger than 2 tablespoons. Yikes.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here.
I’ll keep filling you on the details and then share my real opinion at the end here.
Substitutions?
Some websites will guide you through substitutions to stick with in case you’re vegetarian or lactose intolerant, etc.
Think tofu dogs for hot dogs.
But you are told to match calories exactly for replacement, since the name of the game here is restriction.
For the most part however, substitutions are discouraged on the Military Diet.
What about after these three days?
If you haven’t gone AWOL, you get a pass for four days. Some websites suggest you can enjoy a meal of shrimp fried rice or a black bean burger on your leave.
To stick with the strict Military Diet strategy, you would keep it to 1,500 calories for each 24 hour period.
Eating only 1,000 calories a day is really difficult.
1,500 isn’t exactly easy peezy either.
Is this actually worth it?
Will the three day Military Diet help me lose weight?
In the short term, the Military Diet will most likely cause you to lose weight.
Why, you ask?
Because science.
It’s the reason “all diets work in the short term.”
If you eat more calories than you burn in a day, you will gain weight over time. If you do the reverse, and burn more than you consume, you will lose weight[1].
Granted, there’s some finer details in that equation. Muscle, fat, body fat, etc.
But for simplicity sake, it works.
The Military Diet works by practically guaranteeing you will burn more calories than you consume.
If an overweight person who usually eats 2,500-3,000+ calories in a day, suddenly switches to ONLY eat 1,000 calories for multiple days in a row, their body will operate at a caloric deficit while it seeks the energy required for drills, push-ups, and cleaning the mess hall.
When this is repeated for a few days, the number on the scale will get smaller!
So will YOU (specifically you, in the green hat) lose weight?
Depending on where you are now and your current intake, that deficit (and thus the accompanying weight loss) could be DRAMATIC.
But will you lose 10 pounds in one week like some sites claim? I highly doubt it. Unless you have 100+ pounds to lose and usually eat 5,000+ calories per day, you can only lose so much water weight in a short time period.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. People don’t get overweight in a day. And people won’t lose all the fat they want to lose in a day either.
Here’s another truth bomb that needs to be said: Even if the number on the scale drops significantly in a week, most of it is water weight.
Your body contains a lot of water, especially if you normally eat very salty, carby foods. So when you remove those foods from your system, the amount of water your body holds can decrease significantly too.
So if somebody strictly followed the Military Diet down to the calorie for a week they could lose maybe one to two pounds of actual fat.
They could lose multiple pounds of water weight too, but that won’t continue from week to week.
ATTENTION!
It’s time to hit you with more knowledge: Any weight you lose while on the Military Diet will only remain lost if you stay on the Military Diet.
Temporary changes create temporary results.
This is super important and will be stressed again later.
Are there any benefits to the Military Diet?
Any kind of calorie restricted eating program, if adhered to consistently, will likely result in weight loss.
Remember that guy who lost weight eating Twinkies[2]?
It worked because he made a strict protocol of his calorie requirements. Then, he followed it.
Yeah, he filled a lot of his diet with junk food.
But the point is he managed his food intake according to a plan to lose weight, and then stuck to it.
One of the FEW things I like about the Military Diet is that it provides a strict protocol to follow. You don’t have to worry about what to eat. It’s breakfast time on Day 2.
That means you eat one egg, one slice of toast, and half a banana.
I won’t lie to you and claim that a guide on what to eat has no benefits. Lying will get you court-martialed.
Hell, we even have our own free 10-level diet blueprint that tells you exactly what to eat to help cut out the guesswork (you can get yours when you sign up in the box below):
Download our free weight loss guide
THE NERD FITNESS DIET: 10 Levels to Change Your Life
Follow our 10-level nutrition system at your own pace
What you need to know about weight loss and healthy eating
3 Simple rules we follow every day to stay on target
But as your friend, I can’t give you only one side of the story.
Are There Any Drawbacks to the Military Diet?
DON’T DO THE MILITARY DIET!
Sorry, I’ve been holding that in this whole post. Literally. I typed this whole post up to this point while holding my breath so that I could then blurt this out.
I won’t deny that you could lose weight following the Military Diet. But can any diet telling you to eat bread, crackers, and ice cream actually be good for you?
I know you know better.
You’re an adult with a good head on your shoulders, and you’re probably considering the Military Diet because you want a quick weight loss win without having to make any permanent changes.
Unfortunately, things like “science,” “thermodynamics,” and “reality” will keep getting in the way.
The Military Diet is what we in the fitness world call a “crash diet.” Crash diets are designed for quick weight loss in a short amount of time.
These diets – and I can included “cleanses” here – prey on people’s desperation to “get fit quick.”
They know that if you follow a short term diet, lose a bunch of water weight, and see a lower number on the scale – you’re convinced it worked and then you can go back to how you were eating before.
Then when you quickly put all of that weight back on…you’ll come running back to the diet that got you short term results.
This is how they make their money, get your attention, and ultimately leave you sad and right back where you started.
Other examples of terrible crash diets include the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Baby Food Diet and just about any juice cleanse on the market.
I won’t even link to them, that’s how annoyed I am about their existence.
The reason these diets are short term is because they are not sustainable. Can you eat nothing but cabbage soup for a week? Sure. For an entire year? No way.
Crash diets are temporary diets. Which means their results will be just that, temporary.
The Military Diet is extreme and short term. Why do people in the military do this to themselves?
Spoiler alert: they don’t.
Where did the Military Diet come from?
Here’s another crappy bit of info: The Military Diet has absolutely nothing to do with any branch of the Armed Forces.
As quoted in CNN, Patricia Deuster explained, “In my 30 years working with the military, I’ve never heard of it.”
And she would know, because Deuster helped write the nutritional guide for the U.S. Special Operations Forces[3].
So if it doesn’t come from the actual military, where does the Military Diet come from?
This three days crash diet has gone by different names before, the Cleveland Clinic Diet 3-Day Diet, the Kaiser Diet, the American Heart Association Diet, and the Birmingham Hospital Diet[4].
Despite the different names, the three day meal plan is exactly the same.
And guess what?
None of the organizations claim to have created or support their namesake diet.
So where did it come from? Honestly, I don’t care.
It’s silly and I don’t need to meet the person who created a three day crash diet, that co-opts the military name to make itself sound reputable and legitimate.
Is the Military Diet safe?
There’s nothing inherently dangerous about the Military Diet. It’s just eating moderately healthy/unhealthy food in small quantities.
Which, depending on your current diet – could be a big improvement from eating unhealthy food in large quantities.
I don’t know you or your situation, but if you want to practice Karate kicks in the garage and become best friends, I’m down to clown.
Now, based on my 10 years of running Nerd Fitness, helping hundreds of thousands of people lose weight safely and in a sustainable way, I’m gonna tell you that this is probably not the diet you’re looking for.
Why?
Because this diet will make you miserable, and sticking to the portion sizes will make you unhappy and hangry.
As soon as your 7 days are up, you’re gonna gorge yourself and probably end up even worse off than where you started!
This probably isn’t your first rodeo, nor is it the first quick fix you’ve sought out for weight loss. How have the previous attempts worked out for you in the long run?
I’m not saying this to be a jerk, but rather to make a point:
I like you, your friends like you, and the world needs you to be the healthiest superhero version of yourself you can be.
And that will never happen if you keep chasing extreme short term diets.
I’d rather see you make changes you can stick with. Even if it’s one small change. Gradually reduce the calories you eat, by switching to REAL food.
Things like veggies, fruits, and good quality meat. Build a plate that looks like this:
If you make one change, like eggs and avocados for breakfast, you’ll be making a great step in the right direction.
Small changes are something you can live with.
Studies have shown that decreasing your caloric consumption by 25% can be fine for your mood[5]. Perhaps even beneficial. But dropping down to 1,000 calories? There’s no way that can, or should, be maintained.
I wouldn’t recommend you reduce calories by reducing the quantity of food, like ordering you to eat a meal of five saltine crackers, a slice of cheddar cheese, and one tiny apple.
Instead, I want you to make small changes to REAL food. That’s the ticket to long term weight loss. We’ve seen it over and over again here at Nerd Fitness.
Want help making the switch to REAL food?
Not sure how to make all of that work in your busy lifestyle?
I hear ya. It’s brutally difficult to stick with any diet, and that doesn’t even factor in when your kids get sick or work sucks or there’s two feet of snow on the ground.
It’s why we launched our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program: to help create specific solutions and accountability for people that want guidance on how to eat, how to train, and the confidence to know they’re doing it correctly!
Frequently asked questionS on the Military Diet
1) Do foods in the Military Diet help boost your metabolism?
There’s some debate on this. For example, can coffee help you lose weight by raising your metabolism?
I’ll go with: HIGHLY unlikely.
Any effect of caffeine to your metabolic rate isn’t enough to make a substantial impact[6]. If anything, it might act as an appetite suppressor[7].
Which isn’t nothing. But don’t count on it to raise your resting caloric expenditure like magic.
However, here are two things outside of diet that will help keep your metabolism high:
Strength training. The more muscle you have on your frame, the more energy you will use at rest[8]. It’s one of the reasons we recommend it so much. I have no problem playing drill instructor and demanding push-ups.
Stand up and move more. Any movement helps and even just standing up, outside of any walking, can help raise your metabolism[9]. A standing desk, for those long hours in the office, might be a good move.
Do either of these strategies, or better yet both. It’s better than relying on grapefruit powers to burn calories.
2) Will I enter starvation mode on the Military Diet?
Most likely not.
Sure, if you go without food for a lonnnng period of time, your metabolism might slow down slightly, though this requires EXTREME nutritional restriction over a long period of time[10].
This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. If there’s nothing to eat in sight, it might be that way for a while.
Depending on how often you repeat it, the Military Diet might reduce calories to a point where this slow down of metabolism kicks in.
However, it’s more likely that as you lose weight, your body doesn’t need to burn as many calories because there’s less of you to manage every day!
Now, some would say the climb up to 1,500 calories might help prevent this, but each person is different.
My take: The fear of “starvation mode” is overblown, and it should be the least of your concerns while eating bread and ice cream and calling it a “diet”
The MIlitary Diet focuses on restricting calories at a specific meal, by counting the amount of hotdogs you can have, for example.
Intermittent fasting centers on making a strategic decision to skip certain meals on purpose.
With intermittent fasting, you narrow the size of your eating window, or you occasionally do fasts of 24 hours.
For instance, you can start eating at noon and finish up by 8pm, essentially skipping breakfast.
I wrote all about it in our “Beginner’s Guide to Intermittent Fasting,” where I outlined the benefits of teaching your body to consume food more efficiently, and also reduces the total number of calories you are probably eating.
Conversely, the Military Diet teaches your body to run on hot dogs.
I’ve personally been utilizing intermittent fasting for three years. But I have never, nor will I ever, follow the Military Diet.
Shots fired.
If you’re interested, Nerd Fitness Journey has an intermittent fasting adventure that you can start today!
You can give it a whirl for free right here:
Why you should not do the Military Diet, and What to do Instead.
We all want instant gratification. Unfortunately when it comes to fitness and diet, instant gratification will always fail you.
Short term changes only lead to short term results and heartbreak.
IF YOU ARE GOING TO DO THE MILITARY DIET: Godspeed, soldier.
Good luck with your 7 days, and let me know how it goes in the comments below.
My only request: use those 7 days to learn about yourself and nutrition (maybe by reading this post?), and do what you can implement permanent adjustments to how you choose to eat after.
I’d imagine most people who do this diet are hoping for a permanent fix with minimal work in just a few days time, and I’m here to caution you against that line of thinking.
Cut out liquid calories like soda and juice (essentially sugar water). Drink water, black coffee, tea, or diet soda.
If you can eat real food, minimize liquid calories, and eat veggies, and do so consistently for months and months – you’re going to have permanent success.
Making these changes too tough to do permanently? Change fewer things!
Start thinking in terms of “days and years,” not “weeks and months:”
Try one meal, based on REAL food. Forget the crackers and ice cream.
If you want a strict diet to follow with rules, create your own.
But don’t waste your time with the Military Diet or any other crash diet. Instead make lasting changes like I lay out in that video above.
If you read all of this and you’re overwhelmed, and you’re just looking for guidance on how to eat for your situation, you’re not alone!
We had so many people ask us for specific advice that we built anOnline Coaching Programto help them get results.
Our professional coaches are regular people like you, with families, hobbies, and struggles – but they spend all day helping busy people like you live better, lose weight, and feel better about themselves.
If you’re like “hey I want somebody to tell me what to do,” schedule a free call with our team to learn more by clicking in the big box below:
Back to the post: You don’t need to do the Military Diet.
The people in the military certainly don’t.
INSTEAD, YOUR MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT:
Cut back on your liquid calories. If it’s not water, tea, or coffee (black), try cutting back in a deliberate fashion. Switch to diet sodas. Switch to coffee instead of lattes. Realize that juice is just sugar water.
Prepare one healthy meal. Consider my healthy go-to option. Just make sure it has a vegetable, okay? Don’t overthink this.
If you can do those two things this week, and then repeat that week after week, you’ll be 10X better off a year from now than if you had followed the Military Diet for 7 days.
And lastly, remember, THE MILITARY DIET HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MILITARY!!!
Ahem.
Any questions?
-Steve
PS: Check out the actual guide for Special Operations Forces – Special Ops Forces Nutrition Guide. But those folks work out A LOT. Adjust your caloric intake accordingly.
PPS: And if you already did the Military Diet, please drop and give me 20 push-ups 🙂
Not sure how to do them correctly?
Our new app will teach them to you!
ALL Photos Sources can be found in this footnote here[11].
Footnotes ( returns to text)
Check out the study on a caloric deficit leading to body fat loss here
Before I make you fall in line, if you’re interested in changing the way you eat to get in shape, you may like our fun new habit-building app!
NF Journey helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally).
Try your free trial right here:
What is the Military Diet? How does the Military Diet work?
If the Military Diet could be described in two quick words, those words would be “short term calorie restriction.”
Crap, that’s four words.
Ahem.
The diet focuses on ruthlessly cutting out calories in order to spur weight loss.
There are some claims out there that you can lose up to ten pound in one week on the Military Diet. Which would be impressive – and should also be setting off your skeptical spidey-senses.
So I can understand your curiosity, recruit.
Now you’re thinking: “What exactly does ‘extreme calorie restriction’ look like Steve?”
How about one meal consisting of just a single piece of bread, a half cup of tuna, and some black coffee?
That’s it.
If you ask for more food you’ll be forced to climb a rope.
The Military Diet is broken into two stages, one for three days and the other for four.
3-day plan on the Military Diet. For three days, breakfast, lunch, and dinner is picked out for you. You get this meal only soldier, nothing more! Forget about snacking. For three days, every single crumb is accounted for. I’m only slightly exaggerating. And these three meals only add up to 1,000 calories per day. Ouch. That’s not much chow.
Four days of leave. The Military Diet does go easy on you after the three days, with four days of slightly more food. And by that I mean 1,500 daily calories. How generous. You’re on your own on what to eat for these four days, with the only guidance being to “eat healthy” and keep it at “1,500 calories.”
Three days on, four days off. You repeat this three day and four day rotation until you reach your ideal weight.
That’s the Military Diet in a nutshell.
Okay, you probably want to know, to the crumb, what you get to eat on the Military Diet? Sure.
But it ain’t pretty.
What does the Military Diet plan look like?
As I mentioned, the Military Diet provides strict orders on what to eat for three days. Your mission looks like this:
DAY 1
Breakfast:
Half a grapefruit
One slice of toast
Two tablespoons of peanut butter
One cup of coffee or tea
Lunch:
Half a cup of tuna
One slice of toast
One cup of coffee or tea
Dinner
3 ounces of any type of meat
1 cup of green beans
Half a banana
One small apple
One cup of vanilla ice cream
DAY 2
Breakfast
One egg
One slice of toast
Half a banana
Lunch
One cup of cottage cheese
One hard boiled egg
Five saltine crackers
Dinner
Two hot dogs (no bun)
One cup of broccoli
Half a cup of carrots
One banana
Half a cup of vanilla ice cream
DAY 3
Breakfast
Five saltine crackers
One slice of cheddar cheese
One small apple
Lunch
One egg (cooked however)
One slice of toast
Dinner
One cup of tuna
Hald a banana
One cup of vanilla ice cream
If you find yourself thinking, “That’s not much for rations, Steve.” You’d be right.
Not only that, but I bet your normal serving of peanut butter is significantly larger than 2 tablespoons. Yikes.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here.
I’ll keep filling you on the details and then share my real opinion at the end here.
Substitutions?
Some websites will guide you through substitutions to stick with in case you’re vegetarian or lactose intolerant, etc.
Think tofu dogs for hot dogs.
But you are told to match calories exactly for replacement, since the name of the game here is restriction.
For the most part however, substitutions are discouraged on the Military Diet.
What about after these three days?
If you haven’t gone AWOL, you get a pass for four days. Some websites suggest you can enjoy a meal of shrimp fried rice or a black bean burger on your leave.
To stick with the strict Military Diet strategy, you would keep it to 1,500 calories for each 24 hour period.
Eating only 1,000 calories a day is really difficult.
1,500 isn’t exactly easy peezy either.
Is this actually worth it?
Will the three day Military Diet help me lose weight?
In the short term, the Military Diet will most likely cause you to lose weight.
Why, you ask?
Because science.
It’s the reason “all diets work in the short term.”
If you eat more calories than you burn in a day, you will gain weight over time. If you do the reverse, and burn more than you consume, you will lose weight[1].
Granted, there’s some finer details in that equation. Muscle, fat, body fat, etc.
But for simplicity sake, it works.
The Military Diet works by practically guaranteeing you will burn more calories than you consume.
If an overweight person who usually eats 2,500-3,000+ calories in a day, suddenly switches to ONLY eat 1,000 calories for multiple days in a row, their body will operate at a caloric deficit while it seeks the energy required for drills, push-ups, and cleaning the mess hall.
When this is repeated for a few days, the number on the scale will get smaller!
So will YOU (specifically you, in the green hat) lose weight?
Depending on where you are now and your current intake, that deficit (and thus the accompanying weight loss) could be DRAMATIC.
But will you lose 10 pounds in one week like some sites claim? I highly doubt it. Unless you have 100+ pounds to lose and usually eat 5,000+ calories per day, you can only lose so much water weight in a short time period.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. People don’t get overweight in a day. And people won’t lose all the fat they want to lose in a day either.
Here’s another truth bomb that needs to be said: Even if the number on the scale drops significantly in a week, most of it is water weight.
Your body contains a lot of water, especially if you normally eat very salty, carby foods. So when you remove those foods from your system, the amount of water your body holds can decrease significantly too.
So if somebody strictly followed the Military Diet down to the calorie for a week they could lose maybe one to two pounds of actual fat.
They could lose multiple pounds of water weight too, but that won’t continue from week to week.
ATTENTION!
It’s time to hit you with more knowledge: Any weight you lose while on the Military Diet will only remain lost if you stay on the Military Diet.
Temporary changes create temporary results.
This is super important and will be stressed again later.
Are there any benefits to the Military Diet?
Any kind of calorie restricted eating program, if adhered to consistently, will likely result in weight loss.
Remember that guy who lost weight eating Twinkies[2]?
It worked because he made a strict protocol of his calorie requirements. Then, he followed it.
Yeah, he filled a lot of his diet with junk food.
But the point is he managed his food intake according to a plan to lose weight, and then stuck to it.
One of the FEW things I like about the Military Diet is that it provides a strict protocol to follow. You don’t have to worry about what to eat. It’s breakfast time on Day 2.
That means you eat one egg, one slice of toast, and half a banana.
I won’t lie to you and claim that a guide on what to eat has no benefits. Lying will get you court-martialed.
Hell, we even have our own free 10-level diet blueprint that tells you exactly what to eat to help cut out the guesswork (you can get yours when you sign up in the box below):
Download our free weight loss guide
THE NERD FITNESS DIET: 10 Levels to Change Your Life
Follow our 10-level nutrition system at your own pace
What you need to know about weight loss and healthy eating
3 Simple rules we follow every day to stay on target
But as your friend, I can’t give you only one side of the story.
Are There Any Drawbacks to the Military Diet?
DON’T DO THE MILITARY DIET!
Sorry, I’ve been holding that in this whole post. Literally. I typed this whole post up to this point while holding my breath so that I could then blurt this out.
I won’t deny that you could lose weight following the Military Diet. But can any diet telling you to eat bread, crackers, and ice cream actually be good for you?
I know you know better.
You’re an adult with a good head on your shoulders, and you’re probably considering the Military Diet because you want a quick weight loss win without having to make any permanent changes.
Unfortunately, things like “science,” “thermodynamics,” and “reality” will keep getting in the way.
The Military Diet is what we in the fitness world call a “crash diet.” Crash diets are designed for quick weight loss in a short amount of time.
These diets – and I can included “cleanses” here – prey on people’s desperation to “get fit quick.”
They know that if you follow a short term diet, lose a bunch of water weight, and see a lower number on the scale – you’re convinced it worked and then you can go back to how you were eating before.
Then when you quickly put all of that weight back on…you’ll come running back to the diet that got you short term results.
This is how they make their money, get your attention, and ultimately leave you sad and right back where you started.
Other examples of terrible crash diets include the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Baby Food Diet and just about any juice cleanse on the market.
I won’t even link to them, that’s how annoyed I am about their existence.
The reason these diets are short term is because they are not sustainable. Can you eat nothing but cabbage soup for a week? Sure. For an entire year? No way.
Crash diets are temporary diets. Which means their results will be just that, temporary.
The Military Diet is extreme and short term. Why do people in the military do this to themselves?
Spoiler alert: they don’t.
Where did the Military Diet come from?
Here’s another crappy bit of info: The Military Diet has absolutely nothing to do with any branch of the Armed Forces.
As quoted in CNN, Patricia Deuster explained, “In my 30 years working with the military, I’ve never heard of it.”
And she would know, because Deuster helped write the nutritional guide for the U.S. Special Operations Forces[3].
So if it doesn’t come from the actual military, where does the Military Diet come from?
This three days crash diet has gone by different names before, the Cleveland Clinic Diet 3-Day Diet, the Kaiser Diet, the American Heart Association Diet, and the Birmingham Hospital Diet[4].
Despite the different names, the three day meal plan is exactly the same.
And guess what?
None of the organizations claim to have created or support their namesake diet.
So where did it come from? Honestly, I don’t care.
It’s silly and I don’t need to meet the person who created a three day crash diet, that co-opts the military name to make itself sound reputable and legitimate.
Is the Military Diet safe?
There’s nothing inherently dangerous about the Military Diet. It’s just eating moderately healthy/unhealthy food in small quantities.
Which, depending on your current diet – could be a big improvement from eating unhealthy food in large quantities.
I don’t know you or your situation, but if you want to practice Karate kicks in the garage and become best friends, I’m down to clown.
Now, based on my 10 years of running Nerd Fitness, helping hundreds of thousands of people lose weight safely and in a sustainable way, I’m gonna tell you that this is probably not the diet you’re looking for.
Why?
Because this diet will make you miserable, and sticking to the portion sizes will make you unhappy and hangry.
As soon as your 7 days are up, you’re gonna gorge yourself and probably end up even worse off than where you started!
This probably isn’t your first rodeo, nor is it the first quick fix you’ve sought out for weight loss. How have the previous attempts worked out for you in the long run?
I’m not saying this to be a jerk, but rather to make a point:
I like you, your friends like you, and the world needs you to be the healthiest superhero version of yourself you can be.
And that will never happen if you keep chasing extreme short term diets.
I’d rather see you make changes you can stick with. Even if it’s one small change. Gradually reduce the calories you eat, by switching to REAL food.
Things like veggies, fruits, and good quality meat. Build a plate that looks like this:
If you make one change, like eggs and avocados for breakfast, you’ll be making a great step in the right direction.
Small changes are something you can live with.
Studies have shown that decreasing your caloric consumption by 25% can be fine for your mood[5]. Perhaps even beneficial. But dropping down to 1,000 calories? There’s no way that can, or should, be maintained.
I wouldn’t recommend you reduce calories by reducing the quantity of food, like ordering you to eat a meal of five saltine crackers, a slice of cheddar cheese, and one tiny apple.
Instead, I want you to make small changes to REAL food. That’s the ticket to long term weight loss. We’ve seen it over and over again here at Nerd Fitness.
Want help making the switch to REAL food?
Not sure how to make all of that work in your busy lifestyle?
I hear ya. It’s brutally difficult to stick with any diet, and that doesn’t even factor in when your kids get sick or work sucks or there’s two feet of snow on the ground.
It’s why we launched our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program: to help create specific solutions and accountability for people that want guidance on how to eat, how to train, and the confidence to know they’re doing it correctly!
Frequently asked questionS on the Military Diet
1) Do foods in the Military Diet help boost your metabolism?
There’s some debate on this. For example, can coffee help you lose weight by raising your metabolism?
I’ll go with: HIGHLY unlikely.
Any effect of caffeine to your metabolic rate isn’t enough to make a substantial impact[6]. If anything, it might act as an appetite suppressor[7].
Which isn’t nothing. But don’t count on it to raise your resting caloric expenditure like magic.
However, here are two things outside of diet that will help keep your metabolism high:
Strength training. The more muscle you have on your frame, the more energy you will use at rest[8]. It’s one of the reasons we recommend it so much. I have no problem playing drill instructor and demanding push-ups.
Stand up and move more. Any movement helps and even just standing up, outside of any walking, can help raise your metabolism[9]. A standing desk, for those long hours in the office, might be a good move.
Do either of these strategies, or better yet both. It’s better than relying on grapefruit powers to burn calories.
2) Will I enter starvation mode on the Military Diet?
Most likely not.
Sure, if you go without food for a lonnnng period of time, your metabolism might slow down slightly, though this requires EXTREME nutritional restriction over a long period of time[10].
This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. If there’s nothing to eat in sight, it might be that way for a while.
Depending on how often you repeat it, the Military Diet might reduce calories to a point where this slow down of metabolism kicks in.
However, it’s more likely that as you lose weight, your body doesn’t need to burn as many calories because there’s less of you to manage every day!
Now, some would say the climb up to 1,500 calories might help prevent this, but each person is different.
My take: The fear of “starvation mode” is overblown, and it should be the least of your concerns while eating bread and ice cream and calling it a “diet”
The MIlitary Diet focuses on restricting calories at a specific meal, by counting the amount of hotdogs you can have, for example.
Intermittent fasting centers on making a strategic decision to skip certain meals on purpose.
With intermittent fasting, you narrow the size of your eating window, or you occasionally do fasts of 24 hours.
For instance, you can start eating at noon and finish up by 8pm, essentially skipping breakfast.
I wrote all about it in our “Beginner’s Guide to Intermittent Fasting,” where I outlined the benefits of teaching your body to consume food more efficiently, and also reduces the total number of calories you are probably eating.
Conversely, the Military Diet teaches your body to run on hot dogs.
I’ve personally been utilizing intermittent fasting for three years. But I have never, nor will I ever, follow the Military Diet.
Shots fired.
If you’re interested, Nerd Fitness Journey has an intermittent fasting adventure that you can start today!
You can give it a whirl for free right here:
Why you should not do the Military Diet, and What to do Instead.
We all want instant gratification. Unfortunately when it comes to fitness and diet, instant gratification will always fail you.
Short term changes only lead to short term results and heartbreak.
IF YOU ARE GOING TO DO THE MILITARY DIET: Godspeed, soldier.
Good luck with your 7 days, and let me know how it goes in the comments below.
My only request: use those 7 days to learn about yourself and nutrition (maybe by reading this post?), and do what you can implement permanent adjustments to how you choose to eat after.
I’d imagine most people who do this diet are hoping for a permanent fix with minimal work in just a few days time, and I’m here to caution you against that line of thinking.
Cut out liquid calories like soda and juice (essentially sugar water). Drink water, black coffee, tea, or diet soda.
If you can eat real food, minimize liquid calories, and eat veggies, and do so consistently for months and months – you’re going to have permanent success.
Making these changes too tough to do permanently? Change fewer things!
Start thinking in terms of “days and years,” not “weeks and months:”
Try one meal, based on REAL food. Forget the crackers and ice cream.
If you want a strict diet to follow with rules, create your own.
But don’t waste your time with the Military Diet or any other crash diet. Instead make lasting changes like I lay out in that video above.
If you read all of this and you’re overwhelmed, and you’re just looking for guidance on how to eat for your situation, you’re not alone!
We had so many people ask us for specific advice that we built anOnline Coaching Programto help them get results.
Our professional coaches are regular people like you, with families, hobbies, and struggles – but they spend all day helping busy people like you live better, lose weight, and feel better about themselves.
If you’re like “hey I want somebody to tell me what to do,” schedule a free call with our team to learn more by clicking in the big box below:
Back to the post: You don’t need to do the Military Diet.
The people in the military certainly don’t.
INSTEAD, YOUR MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT:
Cut back on your liquid calories. If it’s not water, tea, or coffee (black), try cutting back in a deliberate fashion. Switch to diet sodas. Switch to coffee instead of lattes. Realize that juice is just sugar water.
Prepare one healthy meal. Consider my healthy go-to option. Just make sure it has a vegetable, okay? Don’t overthink this.
If you can do those two things this week, and then repeat that week after week, you’ll be 10X better off a year from now than if you had followed the Military Diet for 7 days.
And lastly, remember, THE MILITARY DIET HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MILITARY!!!
Ahem.
Any questions?
-Steve
PS: Check out the actual guide for Special Operations Forces – Special Ops Forces Nutrition Guide. But those folks work out A LOT. Adjust your caloric intake accordingly.
PPS: And if you already did the Military Diet, please drop and give me 20 push-ups 🙂
Not sure how to do them correctly?
Our new app will teach them to you!
ALL Photos Sources can be found in this footnote here[11].
Footnotes ( returns to text)
Check out the study on a caloric deficit leading to body fat loss here
The Inverted Bodyweight Row is one of the BEST, simple, most effective exercises you can do for your “pull” muscles.
If you’re trying to get to your first pull-up, or even if you are already doing pull-ups, adding bodyweight rows to your workout routine is a great idea!
Before we jump in, if you’re looking for ways to do inverted rows in your very own home, we have an adventure in Nerd Fitness Journey that will help you do just that!
Our fun habit-building app helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally). You can test-drive it for free right here:
What is an Inverted Bodyweight Row?
You’ve probably heard of the regular barbell row. You pick up a barbell, bend over at the waist (keeping your back straight), and pull the weight up towards your chest.
It looks something like this:
This can be a great exercise, but improper form could cause complications or you might not have access to a barbell and plates.
Luckily, the bodyweight row (or inverted row) takes care of all of that.
By the way, I’ll be using “bodyweight row” and “inverted row” interchangeably in this article.[1]
When doing this movement, you only need a bar to lean back from and your body weight. There’s also no extra stress on your back, like with a traditional barbell row.
As an added bonus, you get a decent core workout too.
And there was much rejoicing.
Think of it like this: “bench press” is to “pushing” as “inverted row” is to “pulling.”
Balance FTW!
Why the inverted bodyweight row is so great:
I’m a huge fan of compound exercises (like the squat and deadlift, pull-ups and push-ups), and I’m also a huge fan of exercises that don’t require expensive machines or lots of extra bells and whistles.
Set the bar (or your rings) around waist height. The lower the bar, the more difficult the movement becomes.
Position yourself under the bar lying face up. Lie on the floor underneath the bar (which should be set just above where you can reach from the ground).
Grab the bar with an overhand grip, slightly wider than shoulder-width (palms facing AWAY from you).
Contract your abs and butt, and keep your body a completely straight line. Your ears, shoulders, hips legs, and feet should all be in a straight line (like you’re doing a plank).
Pull yourself up to the bar until your chest touches the bar.
Lower yourself back down with proper form.
If this movement is TOO difficult, no big deal, we just need to back up a few steps.
Set the bar higher so that when you lean back, your body isn’t down on the ground; maybe it’s only at a 45-degree angle.
We’ll walk you through a row progression right here.
Here’s Staci again demonstrating it at a higher angle:
By setting the bar higher, it takes more of your body’s weight out of the equation.
As you get stronger (and/or lose weight), you’ll be able to drop the bar until you’re parallel when pulling yourself up.
I grabbed a video of Senior Coach Staci from Team NF demonstrating a bodyweight row with gymnastic rings, but the instruction you’ll get in the video will really be helpful too.
How to do a bodyweight row with explanation:
Here are some tips and tricks for doing a proper inverted bodyweight row:
Don’t let your butt sag (squeeze your buttcheeks, flex your stomach, and keep your body rigid from head to toe).
Don’t flail your elbows. Grab the bar with your hands a little closer than you would if you were doing a bench press, and keep your elbows at that angle from your body.
Pull the bar towards the middle of your chest. Don’t pull the bar up towards your throat, or down towards your belly button. Right in the middle!
Keep your abs tight. Keep your abs tight throughout the whole routine. Your body should be a straight line the whole time, and the only thing moving is your arms.
Pull your shoulder blades down and back towards each other through the movement. Don’t shrug your shoulders. Imagine you’re trying to pinch a pencil between your shoulder blades to keep it from falling!
GO all the way. Don’t half-ass it. Lower yourself until your arms are completely extended, and raise yourself until your chest touches the bar.
How to Progress with Inverted Bodyweight Rows
Let’s provide a blueprint on how you can level up your inverted bodyweight rows.
#1) Doorway Rows
At first, just start doing some rows in your doorway:
This will help you start training your “pull” muscles.
#2) Towel Rows
Still utilizing your doorway, you can use a towel to lean back even further to increase the challenge here:
Coach Jim walks you through setting up your towel row in this video, “No chin-up bar?? No problem! Five alternatives!!”
#3) Inverted Row (High)
Next, try doing an inverted row, but set the bar high so it’s easier to perform:
#4) Inverted Row (Low)
Once your inverted rows become easy, lower the bar to increase the challenge:
#5) Elevated Inverted Row
If you place your feet in the air, you’ll make this exercise even tougher:
#6) Inverted Row (Weighted)
If you really want to up the difficulty of your inverted rows, try doing it with a little bit of weight attached to you:
When Should I Do Inverted Bodyweight Rows?
If you are building your own workout plan, you can mix Inverted Bodyweight Rows in wherever you normally do your pull exercises (pull-ups, pull-downs, rows, etc.).
Both days work my full body, I can do a full routine in less than 40 minutes, and I’m building strength.
If you can’t do dips on Day 1, you can do push-ups.
If you can’t do pull-ups on day 2, you can substitute assisted pull-ups.
On the rows, aim for 3 sets of 10. We cover this in our “sets and reps” article, but you can never go wrong with 3 sets of 10!
If you can’t do that, do 3 sets to however many reps you can do, and build your way up to 3 sets of 10.
Once you can do that, put your feet up on a chair, throw some weights in a backpack, put it on reverse (so the bag is hanging in front of you), and then do the rows.
Are you doing your moves correctly? Should you be lifting more weight or less? What do you eat to reach your goals?
We created the Nerd Fitness Coaching program to tackle these questions directly. Your own coach will get to know you, build a program based on your experience and goals, and check your form on each movement (via video):
HOw to Do Inverted Bodyweight Rows at Home
Just because you don’t have access to a gym doesn’t mean you can’t work out your back, you just need to get VERY creative.
Here’s how you can do Inverted Bodyweight Rows at Home:
PATH ONE: Use your kitchen table. Or your desk. Be very careful with this one.
Lie underneath your table so your head and shoulder are sticking out above it.
Grab the table edge with an overhand grip, and pull yourself up (just like it’s explained above).
Warning, don’t pull the table over with you, and make sure you don’t break the thing!
PATH TWO: Get a really thick wooden dowel or pipe, something strong enough to support your weight. Lie it across two of your kitchen chairs, and then lie down underneath it.
Make sure it’s sturdy, and the bar isn’t going to break/move on ya, and pull yourself up.
Don’t forget, you want to stay in balance.
If you don’t have a pull-up bar and gymnastic rings, find a way to do some bodyweight rows whether it’s between two chairs or under a table.
Any more questions about the inverted bodyweight row?
Leave em below!
-Steve
PS: Our new app Nerd Fitness Journey will walk you through doing simple rows, all the way up to a full pull-up! Instead of worrying about what to do next, simply follow the workouts built into the app!
PPS: Be sure to check out the rest of the Strength Training 101 series:
If you’re interested in training with gymnastic rings (which you are, ’cause you’re here), you may want to try our new app! It contains workouts that will have you level up to working out with rings. No guesswork needed, just log into the app and follow the next steps.
You can sign-up for a free trial right here:
What Are the Benefits of a Gymnastic Ring Workout?
Show me somebody, male or female, who trains with rings and I’ll show you one healthy, bad-ass individual!
I used to think rings were only for gymnasts. But much like other bodyweight exercises, rings are great tools for beginners, too.
Young or old, male or female, big or small, you can start simply by spending a few bucks on a set of gymnastic rings and working on some very basic movements.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a complete beginner or a super-advanced fancy person (and it certainly doesn’t matter if you’re “skinny” or “stocky”, male or female, Gungan or Wookie): Anyone at any experience-level can train successfully — and safely — with rings.
How do I know so much about rings? Because I never leave home without them!
My love affair with gymnastic rings began as a simple crush many many years ago. I watched Olympic Gymnasts doing crazy stuff on the rings and said, “I also want to do crazy stuff on the rings some day, but I don’t know how.”
It was around this time that I had just moved to Washington, DC, and discovered that one of my fitness heroes, Jim Bathurst of BeastSkills fame, ALSO lived in Washington, DC. Eventually, I sheepishly asked him if he could show me around the rings, and he taught me how to get started with them.
In fact, he helped me get my first muscle up (flash back to Skinny Steve in 2011):
After that, I’ve been in love with ring training and they never leave my side. For the past four years, I’ve been using my rings and training under the guidance of an online coach (my friend Anthony Mychal) – the results have absolutely blown me away.
Which is why anytime I travel, I throw a set of rings and some chalk in my suitcase and I know I have a portable gym anywhere I can find a tree branch or swing set to hang them from!
I firmly believe that my quest to become Captain America has been aided by my ring training – it’s helped me build functional strength, bigger arms, broader chest, wider shoulders, and more. Plus I can now do cool things like this:
Now, you might have watched all those videos and then looked down at your stomach and said, “Uh, yeah. There’s no WAY I could ever do that stuff!”
WRONG!
Like any video game, there’s a leveling system you can follow. You start with basic movements like hanging from the rings:
Or holding yourself up in the push-up support position:
You can then progress to slightly more difficult things like a chin-up:
Or full push-up:
And eventually end up doing all sorts of crazy stuff like muscle-ups:
And iron crosses:
If I haven’t scared you off yet, let’s get you started down your path to ring domination. You know my friend/hero Jim that I mentioned earlier? He’s now on Team Nerd Fitness (and our Head Coach!), and he helped us put together a pretty killer resource to help you become…
THE LORD OF THE FLIES RINGS
[cue the Rivendell music]
What Are the Best Gymnastic Rings to Buy? (4 Things to Consider)
You might be lucky enough to train in a Crossfit Gym or a commercial gym that happens to have gymnastic rings available.
However, if you’re like me, you might train at home or in a gym that doesn’t have rings, which means you’ll need to buy your own.
That’s okay!
Rings are cheap (especially when you’re just starting and don’t need anything fancy). I’ve probably gone through 6-10 different pairs of rings to test them all out, and I’ll share my thoughts with you below.
For starters, you can either go with plastic/composite rings, or wooden rings. Jim, Staci, and I agree that wooden rings provide a better experience than plastic ones, but if plastic is your only option, make do with what you have!
Here are 4 things to consider when buying gymnastic rings:
#1) CHEAP AND EASY: If you’re not sure if rings are for you, but you’re ring-curious, I would consider starting with a set of wooden rings like these Peak Fitness Wooden Rings for less than $30. I guarantee the last thing you spent $30 won’t change your life the way these rings will.
#2) HIGHER QUALITY: My friend Peter runs FringeSport.com, and I can testify that his wooden rings are the highest quality rings I’ve ever used. If you KNOW you’re going to love rings and want to have a great pair that will last forever, go with these.
#3) FAST SET UP AND TAKE DOWN: These days, I use Rogue Competition Rings for one reason above all others. I have to set up and take down my rings each time I train, and the carabiners and segmented straps make for a quick set up and take down.
#4) SMALLER HANDS?: Look for rings that are in “FIG” size. These International Gymnastics Federation rings are a bit smaller and thinner, which allows for better control for smaller hands.
How to Set up Gymnastic Rings (How to Hang Your Rings)
Now, if you’re responsible for hanging your own rings, either at home or in the gym, there are a few key things you need to be aware of.
For starters, where will you be hanging them from?
Depending on your clearance or where you choose to train, ANY of the following could be anchor points for you to hang them:
A tree branch in your local park (Be safe. If there’s any doubt of stability, move on!)
The top bar of a swingset in the playground down the street
The highest pull up bar at your gym
The bar on the top of your squat rack in the gym
Two eye-bolts in your garage ceiling or use rafters/ i-beams in your basement or garage.
Hanging from your door frame pull-up bar
THE FIRST THING you need to do, if you have rings with proper clips, is learning how to hang them properly! I’ve seen MANY people hang rings improperly and can be very dangerous.
Here’s a video on how to hang your gymnastic rings, step-by-step:
If you are hanging them over something square or rough, it’s recommended to lay down some old towels first to minimize wear to the straps.
What’s that? You don’t have a place to hang your rings at home? Do you have a door frame? If so, you can MacGuyver a set up like Jim has done here in his home with a door frame pull-up bar! (His pull-up bar is this one.)
Depending on how much clearance you have, you might need to adjust the ring height a few times so that you can do work above or below the rings. (Exercises like dips, supports, and l-sits require different heights than rows and front lever holds).
WHAT ABOUT GLOVES? Working with rings (and barbells) will inevitably build up some callouses on your hands. While we here at Nerd Fitness will simply pumice or shave off the extra skin, that might not appeal or be an option for you.
You can certainly wear gloves during your ring work, but we recommend against it.
A better alternative?
Take care of your hands and use some chalk to hold on tight!
Gymnastics chalk can be applied lightly to the points of contact (fingers, palm, and wrist) in order to absorb sweat and oil and give a better grip. There is even a “liquid chalk” product if your gym doesn’t allow regular chalk!
Chalk bag (this is what I use on my hands when I train)
Liquid chalk (what Jim uses in Gyms that don’t allow traditional chalk)
The 7 Best Gymnastic Ring Exercises for Beginners
The exercises below can help anyone get started TODAY with rings; you don’t need a childhood full of gymnastics practice.
Here are the 7 best gymnastic ring exercises for beginners:
#1) Hang From the Rings
One of the simplest exercises to do? Hang from the rings! This exercise is accessible to beginners, but is no joke.
It will help build up the grip strength necessary for future skills, and you may not be able to go long at the beginning.
If hanging from your ring is too difficult for you:
Simply adjust the rings so that you can hang from your arms and have part of your feet on the ground.
Don’t worry if you feel like 99% of your weight is still in your feet, there is still that 1% in your hands and arms, and that will definitely improve over time!
For those hanging from the rings with no problem, you can practice hanging scapular retractions. This is a fancy way of saying that we’re going to pull our shoulders and shoulder blades (scapulae) down away from our ears.
Do this with elbows totally straight, so all movement is going through the shoulders. Retract, relax, repeat. Tough stuff!
Here’s a video of Jim and myself going over the movement:
#2) Support Position
If you have never used rings before, even just holding yourself up with straight arms will be challenging! The rings will want to move all different directions.
Just like the hang from the rings, you can also set the rings up to a height where you can assist with your feet on the ground.
And again, even if you feel like 99% of your weight is in your feet, we can still work and improve the 1% that you are putting into your arms!
#3) Ring Rows
Ring rows are a classic exercise to build yourself up to a pull-up. You can set the rings up somewhere around hip to knee height. Then grab the rings and lean back to start the exercise.
By moving your feet forward or away from the anchor point, you can position your body in an infinite number of angles (which will adjust the difficulty).
Make it easy by leaning back just slightly,
Make it hard by putting your feet up on a bench and starting horizontal.
With an infinite number of angles you can position your body (to adjust difficulty), they are for absolutely everyone.
Make sure whatever your rings are attached to is solid before leaning back with straight arms and body. Then puff your chest up and pull it to the rings!
#4) Ring Chin-ups
Chin-ups on rings work the same as they do on the bar. You can also move your hands around easily to different positions (palms forward, inward, and backward).
Not quite at a chin-up pro yet?
Adjust the height of the rings to be able to assist with your feet! Or use a box like so:
#5) Ring push-ups
Push-ups on the rings will be much more challenging than ones on the ground, because you have to stabilize the “ground” before you even move!
Just like rows, you can adjust your body at an infinite number of angles to the ground to make the exercise easier or harder.
#6) Ring Dips:
Ring Dips are one of my favorite exercises for the awesome challenge they provide. Lower yourself down until your chest touches the rings (yes, that low!) and then push up until you are in a straight arm support position.
As with many of the other ring exercises, you can easily adjust the height of the rings so that your feet can assist a little or a lot.
#7) False Grip Practice
The false grip is a way to hold onto the rings so that the wrist is in contact with the inside edge of the rings. This will allow us to build up to more advanced skills like the muscle-up! (Aka a ring chin-up that transitions into a dip!):
Think of the false grip like a hook on the rings: between your forearm and hand.
To perform a false grip:
Place your wrist, pinky side and just below the crease of the wrist, on the inside edge of the ring.
Flex the forearm hard.
The support point is on the wrist, with the hands grabbing firmly to the ring.
Any of the pulling and hanging exercises we went over can be done with a false grip, just be warned that they’ll be a lot harder!
Want help pulling this all together for a full-body workout? Our new app will do all that for you, so you can start using your rings to their full potential:
4 Tips and Tricks for Using Gymnastic Rings
Keep the following four points in mind as you begin your gymnastic ring training:
#1) Your relationship with rings isn’t going to be a “do this for a month and be done”. This is a lifelong relationship – if you like it then you should put a ring on it. Get it? Because Beyonce and also Gymnastics.
Get used to playing with rings as often as you can… wake up your inner kid again and just enjoy moving around on the rings.
You didn’t think about a structured workout when you were a young kid on a playground; you just moved around and had fun. And while you’re discovering that fun again, your grip, muscles, and joints will be getting stronger.
#2) “What if I don’t have rings?” Well, if you want to learn to swim, you’ll have to eventually get into a pool, right!?
But if you’re at home, waiting for your rings to arrive, you can still perform a number of these exercises! Pushing and support exercises can be done on two sturdy chairs or the ground. Pulling and hangs can be done at a jungle gym (even the false grip can be practiced on a bar!). Be safe, but get creative!
#3) GO SLOW AND BE PATIENT! I know people who started doing violent kipping muscle-ups before their body, joints, muscles, ligaments, and tendons were ready… and they injured themselves pretty seriously.
I even struggled with elbow tendonitis for a bit thanks to pushing myself too hard too soon on the rings. So slow down, build up your strength in each exercise slowwwwwly, and…
#4) Have fun with them. Remember, our goal is to find a workout that is not only something we don’t dread, but something we can look forward to! Working out without realizing it is a sure way to commit for the long term.
I’ll mention that helping people find workouts they enjoy is one of the benefits of our coaching program. If you dread heading to the gym to jump on a treadmill, maybe we can help!
How to Get Started Training with Gymnastic Rings
You now know everything you need to get going with gymnastic rings: what rings to buy, how to set them up, and how to train with them!
It’s time to shine my young Padawan!
Want help progressing with your gymnastic ring training from here?I’ve got 3 great options for you!
#1) Exercising at home and need a plan to follow? Check out Nerd Fitness Journey!
Our fun habit-building app helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally).
Try your free trial right here:
#2) If you want step-by-step guidance on how to build a gymnastic ring workout, get stronger, and even eat better, check out our killer 1-on-1 coaching program:
#3) Join The Rebellion! We have a free email newsletter that we send out twice per week, full of tips and tricks to help you get strong, get healthy, and have fun doing so.
I’ll also send you tons of free guides like our Strength Training 101 ebook when you sign up:
Download our comprehensive guideSTRENGTH TRAINING 101!
Everything you need to know about getting strong.
Workout routines for bodyweight AND weight training.
How to find the right gym and train properly in one.
Okay, your turn!
I’d love to hear from you:
What sort of questions do you have about getting started with rings?
What is the biggest thing holding you back from giving them a chance?
Let’s get you comfortable using the bench press, starting today!
We specialize in helping people pick up barbells for the first time. Our new app centers on helping people train, with any and all equipment available!
You can give it a test-drive if you want right here:
Here’s what we’ll cover so you can start using the bench press:
This guide is part of our Strength Training 101 series. I would encourage you to check out the rest of the articles if you’re just starting your weight training.
If you’re in a rush, you can download the entire guide for free when you enlist in the Rebellion (that’s us!), by joining our free bi-weekly newsletter:
Download our comprehensive guideSTRENGTH TRAINING 101!
Everything you need to know about getting strong.
Workout routines for bodyweight AND weight training.
How to find the right gym and train properly in one.
How Important is the Bench Press?
For the last 30-40 years, the bench press has become the universal lift for bros everywhere to determine how strong someone truly is.
The questions are things like:
How much do you bench?
Do you even lift?
As popular as it is, the bench press in its current form is really less than 100 years old.
Until the 1930’s, people did a movement called the “floor press”, which was similar to a bench press only done from the floor.
In fact, at first many people did a movement called a “belly toss” – where the bar would come down and bounce off the belly to help the lifter get it back up.
The three movements – bench press, belly toss, and floor press were all popular until the 40’s and 50’s, when the bench press started to become more and more popular, as bodybuilders liked how the bench worked their pecs (better than the other two movements).
As the bench press became more and more popular, powerlifting emerged in the 1970’s and separated itself from weightlifting as a sport of its own.
What Muscles Does the Bench Press Utilize?
The bench press is a great movement to have as a part of your strength program, and one move we consider to be a part of the “big 4” basic lifts.
Some of the issues coaches have with the bench press (such as a tight chest creating bad posture) don’t come from benching itself, but come from bench being one of the ONLY movements in your program, and can disappear when incorporated as a part of a well-rounded strength program.
In other words, don’t JUST train using the bench press.
The bench press is widely known as a “chest” exercise, however, that’s definitely not all it is. The bench strengthens your:
Shoulders
Triceps
Forearms
Lats
Pecs
Traps
Rhomboids
Plus pretty much every muscle in your upper body
However, the bench press doesn’t JUST use your upper body.
When you bench properly, you use your lower back, hips, and legs as well. Just like our other main lifts (the squat, deadlift, and overhead press), the bench press, while putting an emphasis on specific muscle groups, is a full body movement.
Think about it – while you’re benching, the rest of your body is not just lying there doing nothing.
Your entire body should be working – your shoulders are pinched together and your lats are engaged, while your back, hips and legs are tight, stabilizing your entire body to create a solid base and help you generate drive from the round.
How to bench press: The Setup
There are a lot of different ways to perform the bench press.
We’ll start you out with a standard and basic bench press variation, which we believe is the best (and safest) method for general strength.
Remember: just because you see someone benching a ridiculous amount of weight at the gym does not mean they are using proper or safe form.
They could be an advanced athlete who is making compromises to their form (knowingly or unknowingly) in order to bench higher numbers.
What do you need to perform the bench press?
A weight bench with uprights:
Barbell – the standard weight is 45 lbs, but this may be too heavy to start. No matter how strong you are, I recommend starting with a PVC pipe or broomstick to learn proper form.
If you like to learn via video, please watch “How to Bench Press Safely” from Jim Bathurst, our lead coach from the Nerd Fitness Coaching Program:
How to Set Up A Bench Press
There are many different ways to set up for a bench press – as you’ll see by watching any powerlifting competition, or even by spending just 20 minutes in your local gym.
Some people get on the bench and curl themselves under the bar, some enter the bench from the back and slide in under the bar, and others just lie down and then get tight.
The key here is to set up in a way that helps you get your body tight and ready for the lift.
Before you begin, it might be a good idea to roll the bar forward on the uprights, as this is where you will be lifting it off from.
Having the bar in the same spot in the uprights will help you with a standard set up that is the same every time.
Here’s how to position yourself during the bench press:
Squeeze your shoulder blades together (as if you were trying to hold a pencil between them), press your lats into the bench, and raise your chest up slightly towards the bar.
While you’re doing this, squeeze your butt and plant your feet into the ground. Your entire foot (heels included) should be on the ground, on either side of the bench.
Keep your entire body tight. The raising of your chest to the bar, squeezing your shoulders together, squeezing your butt, and driving your heels into the ground will create a tight arch in your back. (more on this later).
Imagine you are a superhero and pretend you are sucking all the energy out of the room and absorbing it. As you the bar descends, absorb that energy and get ready to explode upward with the bar.
Your shins should be perpendicular to the ground and directly below your knees. If they are out in front of you, your feet are too far forward and you won’t be able to generate proper drive.
When you look up, your eyes should be just north of the bottom of the bar – you should see the bar directly above your eyes. Your head, upper back, and butt should never leave the bench.
Note: Some people (including myself) find it easier to get tight in their upper back if they put their feet up on the bench, grab the bar, get tight in their upper back, and then place their feet on either side of the bench one at a time.
This is just another method and something you can try out after you get the hang of the bench!
Next, take your arms and put them straight up, and grab the bar. Your grip should be with your thumbs around the bar.
A thumbless grip is not to be used on the bench press, as it is unsafe, and often nicknamed the “suicide grip,” as it is far too easy for the bar to fall off of your hands and land on your body (warning: hard to watch).
When you hold the bar, it should be in the heel of the palm (the same spot in your hands as for the overhead press.) Your wrists will not be extended, and your forearms are under your wrists, forming a solid line of support.
If you hold the bar in the upper half of your hand or the fingertips, not only are you not in a strong position, but you could hurt your wrists.
Bench Press Grip
Bring the bar (or, preferably PVC as we are just learning) down to your chest. At your chest, the width of your grip should make your forearms straight up and down (as perpendicular to the floor as you can).
Get a friend to help you (as you won’t be able to see on your own), or tape yourself so you can see. Don’t stress too much about getting your forearms 100% perfectly vertical.
Once you get comfortable with the movement, you may change the width of your grip, as there is wiggle room for personal preference, but this is a great place to start.
Also, keep in mind that your grip may seem way wider or narrower than your friends based on the width of your shoulders. This is normal!
Why would people alter their bench press grip?
A wider grip is more pec-focused
A narrower grip is more tricep focused
You will see powerlifters use a super wide grip because it reduces the range of motion and therefore allows them to lift more weight in competition.
However, more weight does not always mean stronger, and our goal today is safety and strength!
Which is why we recommend a grip with your forearms in a vertical position, it’s the most well-rounded and safest version for overall strength.
If you’re worried about whether you have the right grip in place, record yourself and match it against the videos in this guide. If it’s close, you’re doing great.
Our new app also contains loads of videos and gifs for you to compare your workout too. You can try it out right now (for free) if you want:
The Most Important Bench Press Tip (Keep Tight)
If you’ve set up correctly, your entire body should be tight.
Focus on the following when performing your bench press
Think of your body as one single unit, not single muscle groups.
Drive your feet into the ground, tighten your entire lower body and core, squeeze your shoulder blades together, and squeeze the bar. You should feel like one solid, single unit.
When you tighten your body, your neck, upper back, and butt should be on the bench (and your feet and heels on the ground).
When you drive your heels through the ground, squeeze your shoulder blades together, and raise your chest to the bar, it will form a small arch in your back – this is natural and what we’re aiming for.
You don’t want to push your lower back into the bench to create a “flat back,” or try to not create an arch. If you have heard people talking about not using an arch in the bench press, they are most likely referring to the extreme arch used by many powerlifters:
That is not what we are going for here – that is a way to help you lift more weight by reducing the range of motion, and is only safe to look into when you have been benching for a long time and really know what you are doing. For overall strength, we recommend benching with a full range of motion instead of trying to reduce it.
Now, feel how tight your body is? It is very important that you keep this tightness throughout the entire movement.
Proper Bench Press Form
Now that we are set up and have our hands around the bar, we want to think about having our elbows tucked in and not letting them flare out.
One way to do this is that when you grab onto the bar, think about trying to bend it in half upwards towards the sky.
This “upward bending” cue will also help you engage your lats, which doesn’t actually help you with the press, but do help you keep your body tighter.
We review how to bench press with proper form in this video (taken from NF Prime):
Here’s how to perform the bench press:
#1) Unrack the bar and position the bar directly above your shoulders (without losing tightness – keep squeezing your shoulder blades together!).
#2) Continue to look up at the ceiling, unlock your elbows and lower the bar to your chest. Don’t just drop the bar to your chest – you want to pull it down towards you with control.
#3) At the bottom of the movement, you want the bar to touch a few inches below your clavicles. If it’s up by your throat or on your stomach, it’s in the wrong position.
#4)Once the bar touches your chest, press up to put the bar back to its starting position.
Note that unlike the deadlift and squat, the bench press movement will not be in a straight up and down motion.
Because of our anatomy, the bar will follow a slightly diagonal path down, and then follow the same path back up.
#5) While pressing, remember to keep your elbows tucked in, and don’t let them flare out.
Think about squeezing so that your biceps touch the side of your chest (though you won’t be close enough to have this happen), or try to get your elbows under the bar.
You don’t want to be too tucked though – the goal is about a 45-degree angle:
#6) As you press, the same parts of your body that were touching the bench before should still be touching the bench, and your feet should still be on the floor. Don’t let any part of you (the most common is your butt) come off the bench.
To help prevent your butt from coming off of the bench, instead of pushing up when you drive with your heels, think of pushing up and back, towards the front of the bench (where your head is).
#7) To re-rack the bar, move the bar backwards to the uprights and touch them with the bar, and then let go of the bar. Don’t look at the racks, you know that they are there! For beginners, it’s great to have a friend help you guide the bar back to the right position in the rack.
What’s a Beginner Bench Press Weight? (Determining Your Starting Weight)
Okay okay, you’re wondering how much you should put on the bar as a beginner who is starting out with bench pressing.
This is a very important question, and for somebody that is trying to level up as quickly as possible, you’ll be tempted to put WAY more weight on the bar than you can probably handle.
In other words, your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.
Hell, even veteran powerlifters who can bench press 500+ pounds will always start out by just bench pressing the bar.
You can too. Nobody in the gym cares. I promise you.
NOTE: The bar STILL weighs 45 pounds, which MIGHT be too heavy for you. That’s okay! You don’t go to show people how strong you are at the gym, you go to the gym to get stronger.
So start by making sure 45 pounds isn’t too heavy for you.
If you are even SLIGHTLY concerned that it might be, consider using dumbbells or finding a smaller/lighter barbell in the gym and using that to build up to the strength with the bar.
HOW TO BENCH PRESS MORE:
Now, if you can bench press the bar safely, great.
Do 3 sets of 10 on your first day in the gym.
When it’s time to bench press again, add 2.5 lbs (1.2KG) to each side of the bar, and repeat.
You’ll then be lifting a total of 50 lbs.
Each week, add 5 pounds total (2.5 to each side) to the bar. This will be “slow going” at first. However, even at a paltry 5 pounds per week, you’ll rapidly reach a point in the next 6-12 months where you’ll approach a weight you can no longer lift.
“BUT STACI, I CAN LIFT WAY MORE THAN THE BAR, WHY START THERE?”
Because you need to train your body correctly, and we’re looking to build momentum. When you practice perfect form with light weight, your body starts to learn the proper pathway for the bar. Your muscles, tendons, and joints all learn how to bear the load of a weighted bar.
The entire strategy of our new app, Nerd Fitness Journey, is based off this strategy: slow progress over time. And because we’re nerds, you’ll actually build a superhero along the way (because why not!).
5 Common Bench Press Mistakes
Not keeping body tight – As soon as you lose tightness, you have the potential for missing the rep. Make sure even when you are warming up and the weight is light, that you keep your entire body tight.
Butt coming up – make sure your butt stays on the bench at all times! It’s easy to let it come up off the bench once the weight gets heavy and you really start driving through your heels. Instead of thinking about driving upwards through your heels, think about driving up and backwards. If you’re struggling with your butt coming up, either try putting plates under your feet or re-evaluating your foot position (or lower the weight).
Bouncing off your chest – when you come to the bottom part of the lift, don’t bounce! Lower the bar to slightly graze your shirt, and then press.
Half reps – One of the most common faults I have seen in the gym! Make sure you are hitting full range of motion every single rep (down to chest!).
Wrong starting, middle, and ending positions (pictured below) – we’ve learned in the past that a vertical line is the most efficient way to move a bar, but with the bench press, the safest is to move the bar at a slight curve. The bar will start and end above your shoulders, but the middle point of the bar will be below your clavicles. If your middle position is above your shoulders, in a vertical line, your middle position is too high.
How to Ask for A Spotter with the Bench Press
Spotting is a very important part of bench pressing – not only having someone spot you, but having you spot other people. It can be extremely dangerous to bench press alone.
A spotter’s purpose is to ensure the safety of the lifter – not to help the lifter with reps.
The spotter always watches every rep while staying out of the way.
The only thing they may help with is giving you a lift off, but after that, it is all you!
*A lift off is when you help the lifter take the bar out of the rack, and then let go of it when it is in the correct starting position.
You don’t need a spotter for your warm-up sets, but everyone should have one for their work sets.
How do you ask someone to spot you? “Hey, will you spot me real quick?” usually works (it’s really that simple!). I’ve never had anyone turn me down.
If you’re always at the gym at the same time as someone else, make friends and spot each other.
That way you’re not always nervous asking someone random to spot you.
If someone asks you to spot them, always ask:
How many reps they are going for?
Do they want a lift off?
How would they like to be spotted?
Some people don’t want you to touch the bar unless they tell you to; others want you to help them guide the bar up if they start to fail, and others want you to take the bar immediately if they fail the rep.
Some want a lift off, and some don’t.
When you ask someone else to spot you, they will probably ask you the same questions!
What if I don’t have a spotter? Can I bench press without a spotter?
If you don’t have a spotter, you can use the power rack to bench.
A power rack would look like so:
NF Coach Jim demonstrates how to bench press using a power rack here:
Just set the pins at a level just barely below your chest, so if you miss a rep you can get out.
If you don’t have a power rack, and absolutely don’t have a spotter – you can either not put clips on the bar, and then let the weight slide off one side at a time, or do the “Roll of shame,” where you roll the bar down your body, sit up, and pick up the bar.
However, both of these methods are dangerous and you’re risking injury by doing them. Please do not bench press alone – especially when just starting out. Even if the weight seems light, it’s very possible to injure yourself.
The best thing you can do is to ask someone at the gym to spot you.
There’s nothing weird about it all – in fact, it’s normal and expected!
If that’s not an option, consider dumbbell presses or another chest exercise until you can find a spotter.
Frequently Asked Questions about The Bench Press (Plus Tips to Get Started)
1) “I see people with their feet up on the bench – what’s going on?”
This isn’t technically correct – but it’s really a completely different movement than your standard bench press. It eliminates the use of the lower body in the movement, and can be good for people with injuries or as an assistance exercise.
I’ve seen it the most in bodybuilding routines. We recommend you stick to the bench press form we presented until you master the movement.
2) “If the bench is one of the ‘big 4’, why do some people not bench press?”
The bench press is a great way to build strength. But out of the big 4, it is the lift that has the most alternatives available.
While it’s hard to replace a heavy deadlift, you can easily replace the bench press with push-up and dip variations and continuously get stronger with just your own bodyweight for a very long time.
I personally keep the bench in my program because I enjoy it, but also because it’s a competed lift in powerlifting.
Steve, however, has chosen to not bench press and replaces it with bodyweight variations of push-ups and a lot of gymnastics ring work.
3) “Okay, I get it! What do I do now?”
I’m glad you asked! I have three great options for you:
Option #1) If you want step-by-step guidance, a custom strength training program that levels up as you get stronger, and a coach to keep you accountable, check out our killer 1-on-1 coaching program:
Option #2) Exercising at home and need a plan to follow? Check out Nerd Fitness Journey!
Our fun habit-building app helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally).
Try your free trial right here:
Option #3) Join the Rebellion! We need good people like you in our community, the Nerd Fitness Rebellion.
Sign up in the box below to enlist and get our guide, Strength Training 101: Everything You Need to Know. It’ll help you start incorporating the bench press into your training:
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So that’s all there is to it! Next time you are in the gym, give the bench press a shot!
Start with just the bar, and add weight each time when you hit your weights. Just don’t forget to have a spotter!
So, what kind of benching questions do you have for us!?
-Staci
PS: Don’t forget to check out our other articles in the Strength 101 Series!
