Build muscle and strength fast

For the majority of people, we look to put them through a program of fat loss first. This is for three reasons:

1. You will look more muscular if you are leaner and therefore have more muscle definition.

2. Once you are lean, we can then increase calories for a focused muscle-building phase. This way we can minimise body fat increases while gaining lean muscle.

3. From a position of improved body composition, your body will be able to better partition nutrients, meaning that it will make the most use of the calories you eat.

What sets 'The Physique Protocol' apart from any other personal training business In Ireland or abroad is that everything we do, both inside and outside of the gym, is laser-focused on giving you tangible results and measurable outcomes.

We don’t just put you through mindless exercise just to make you feel tired and sweaty. Every single movement and exercise in your workout has a specific purpose to help you achieve your specific goal – whether that is losing fat, improving your blood pressure or enhancing your general health.

Our training methodology is focused, controlled and executed to the highest possible standard.

It’s not uncommon for many clients to discover a new-found love for fitness when they see and feel the myriad benefits that weight training and optimal nutrition can elicit.

It depends! For the majority of the population and particularly those here in Ireland that experience cloudy skies and rain most of the year, I would recommend some essentials, for example Magnesium, Vitamin D3, multi-vitiman and some form of essential fatty acids . These ensure that your body is functioning optimally and can recover effectively from the stimulus we apply in the gym.

I also recommend performance supplements, such as caffeine, to make sure you can get the most out of every single minute in your training session.

However, supplementation does not supersede effective training, nutrition and recovery.

Yes, it’s more than possible to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, achieving what is often referred to as ‘body recomposition’. 

This change is due to the combination of a calorie deficit to reduce fat stores alongside a training plan that signals to the body to retain muscle.

Because most clients are new to resistance training or have not trained to the same intensity as our programs, many increase their level of muscle mass alongside losing fat. 

Growth will happen if you put your body in the right conditions to do so. Most people make the mistake of hopping between programs, failing to record their workouts or progress and underestimate the importance of proper recovery and stress management.

People also get caught up in the latest fancy fad exercises on Instagram. But what we should focus on is doing the basics and doing them well. Most of the time, it is a rotation of key movement patterns that can come in a variety of forms and variations. We can tweak these to create an unlimited range of exercises to keep things interesting while still nailing the basics.

We go for effective, not fancy. The art is in the coaching of each exercise and unlocking your true physical potential.

This depends on your goal, preferences and lifestyle. In most cases, we encourage clients to obtain most of their food intake from high-quality, single-ingredient sources, such as lean meats and sources of protein, lots of green fibrous vegetables and healthy fats, like nuts, avocado or olive oil. 

This is because such foods not only improve multiple health markers, such as blood pressure, cholesterol, and insulin sensitivity, they also enhance satiety, energy levels, hormonal health and nearly every other physiological process.

However, we also appreciate that our clients are not robots and that they have lives. This is why our trainers work with each client as an individual with unique commitments. While some sacrifice may be necessary to achieve your goal, your trainer will work with you to find solutions and strategies that work for you. 

We don’t necessarily prioritise weight training over cardio, but they do play different roles within a transformation.

In order to improve body composition, we nearly always need some level of fat loss and to do that we need to create a calorie deficit. It is very hard to do this through diet alone without being very restrictive, which can only be effective for so long. It’s also very hard to do this through exercise alone and one high-calorie meal can easily offset several hours’ work. That’s why we use a combination of reduced calorie intake and increased general activity levels to increase our deficit.

It’s important to remember that cardio is simply one option in the fat loss toolbox. There’s nothing magic about cardio; it simply increases the number of calories you burn in general (as well as making you better at that form of exercise).

However, it can also place competing demands on the body when it comes to adaptation and recovery from resistance training, which is why we tend to recommend low-impact forms of activity, such as walking, for the most part, and minimal or even no cardio in many cases.

Once we have created the demand for our body to tap into its stored energy, we need to make sure this comes from tissue we don’t want to keep (body fat) rather than tissue we do (muscle). Rather than simply to burn huge numbers of calories, resistance training functions to retain and build lean tissue during times of caloric restriction. This has numerous important implications for physical appearance as well as wellbeing:

• Improved aesthetic – think looking good naked as well as in clothes.
• Improved nutrient partitioning – you make the most out of the foods you eat and reduce the risk of conditions such as type II diabetes.
• Improved strength and reduced risk of age-related sarcopenia and osteoporosis.  Reduced risk of all-cause mortality.
• And the most important one… being able to eat more!

In summary, we create a calorie deficit through increased activity and nutrition changes. The level of this deficit determines whether we lose weight and how fast. We can then encourage the body to tap into body fat by resistance training, eating adequate protein and optimising recovery.

No, you do not need to put on excessive amounts of body fat to increase your muscle mass. In fact, a common mistake is that people mistakenly believe they need to eat an enormous surplus of calories to gain muscle tissue.

However, this is likely to result in you gaining just as much muscle mass as if you were in a moderate surplus or maintenance, but with a lot more fat! When you then diet down to reveal the additional muscle, you’re likely to lose the marginal gains as a by-product of fat loss. Increasing body fat also makes you liable to be less metabolically healthy, which has zero advantages, whether from a health, training performance or nutritional perspective.

You don’t need to squat, bench and deadlift to gain muscle. These are simply movement patterns, of which there is a multitude of different variations to suit each and every individual. There are no golden rules when it comes to exercise selection for muscle gain. What works is the exercise that allows you to be most stable and generate the most amount of force, safely and under control. The only variable we then need to control for is progressive overload over time, making sure the session volume (sets x reps x load) increases over time.

When you begin your training, you will go through a detailed movement assessment designed to test not only your current capabilities but your mobility and working ranges. We then select the exercises based on this information, rather than shoe-horning you into an exercise you can’t complete.