Got Some Leftover Holiday Weight? Read This

Got some leftover holiday weight you’d like to eradicate in a hurry? Use this high-intensity training plan and be leaner within a month.

- Joe Wuebben

The holidays got the best of you, yet again. You couldn’t resist the brownies and the mashed potatoes and the buttered dinner rolls and the rum and the eggnog. The feast lasted, what, six weeks, give or take? Now it’s a state of emergency. The number on the bathroom scale is shockingly high, and the mirror is telling you that’s bad weight, not lean muscle.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Meaning: You need our appropriately named Emergency Shred training protocol, designed by Bill Shiffler, owner of CrossFit Renaissance in Philadelphia and a competitive amateur bodybuilder (renaissancephysique.net). Give this program your undivided attention for at least the next couple of weeks, and your holiday weight should be gone come February

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

Emergency Shred is a five-days-a-week plan consisting of two broad methodologies intertwined throughout: hypertrophy training (HT for short) and metabolic conditioning (MC).

With HT, you’ll do staple mass builders for all major muscle groups with moderate rep counts. You’ll also focus on two to three muscle groups per hypertrophy workout. MC workouts will be performed in all sessions, similar to CrossFit “metcons,” utilizing compound, functional movements at high intensities.

“The combination of hypertrophy and metabolic training is the best of all worlds,” Shiffler says. “You get the muscles that show and the muscles that go. Building muscle and maintaining a higher level of lean body mass help increase your basal metabolic rate, the rate your body burns calories. The metcon workouts further stoke the fat-burning fire.”