Jamie Eason’s LiveFit Trainer – Phase 1: Building Muscle

I have officially completed phase 1 of the Jamie Eason Live Fit Trainer yesterday.

Phase 1 lasts 4 weeks and it is a split training, meaning each workout targets one muscle group. All the cardio-haters can rejoice, this is the muscle-building phase of the program so there is no cardio!!!

Week 1 and 2 consist of 4 workouts each week: chest/triceps, back/biceps, legs/calves and shoulders/abs. Despite these workouts being easy and they only take about 30-45 minutes, my muscles were seriously sore afterwards, especially my legs. This goes to show that even though I work out regularly, my muscles need more training.

Week 3 and 4 consist of 5 workouts each week: legs, back/biceps, chest/triceps, again legs and shoulders/abs. We’re hitting the lagging muscle group twice a week, which is in my case obviously legs. I actually had to skip the second leg day in the third week because my muscles were so sore after the first leg workout (even after 3 days) that I could barely walk, sit down or stand up.

I have made a few adjustments to the program during these 4 weeks:

• I confess that I did some cardio. I just couldn’t survive without it. I am not a cardio addict at all and I usually hate it (except running or biking outdoors) but I just really felt like I need to incorporate a bit of HIIT after weight training, only 12-15 minutes. HIIT usually doesn’t reduce muscle mass so I don’t think I did too much damage to my progress.
• I didn’t eat for bulking as I should have because I was afraid of not fitting into my jeans in the end but we have to eat more calories (above the maintenance level) to build muscles. My long-term goal is fat loss so I decided to follow the IIFYM nutrition plan instead, targetting fat loss with the suggested 15% intensity and macros set to 50C-30P-20F.
• I eat 3 times per day, and not as suggested every 2-3 hours. I recently came to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter how often I eat and when I eat. I also eat carbs at night and it makes no difference.
• Even if I wanted to and I do want to, I can’t go 5-6 times to the gym, I just don’t have so much time. With summer here I also want to enjoy the nice weather and, despite loving the gym, be more active outdoor. So I decided to combine the lower-body workout with an upper-body workout, I have two days per week where I do legs followed by an upper-body workout and no cardio.
• I missed one leg workout because my muscles were toast and I needed to recover to avoid more damage and eventually injuries but that’s one workout out of 18 so I completed 94,44% of phase 1 which is good enough for me.

Overall phase 1 was so much fun, I loved the workouts and, even though I don’t notice any big visual changes yet (could be because of the no-bulking nutrition and the added cardio), I feel stronger and I am sure that I have built some tiny muscles, they’re just hiding under there somewhere. 😉

I am really looking forward to building more muscles in phase 2 and finally leaning out in phase 3!

The workouts are available online on Bodybuilding and with the BodySpace app for iPhone and Android which is very easy to use to track the workouts in the gym. Unfortunately BodySpace is not available for Windows Phone 8 so I am using the workout logs from Body and Lifestyle Challenges.