Lift Heavy and Eat Light!

The importance of low rep strength work is often underappreciated

Especially it's effect on your physique and it's appearance of "tone"

Lift Heavy, Eat Light.

In my now 10+ years experience and helping people (mostly women) get ready for physique contests and transformations, there has always been an underlying current to the different successes had and missed. But if I had to put a definite finger on the usual culprit for short circuiting success it would be not paying enough attention to the lower rep ranges, and getting caught up in the “lifting weights to lose weight” routine (reps of 15 etc) .

This is a huge error, and usually ends up leaving the competitor frustrated with their lack of progress.

You lift weights to maintain/gain muscle!

Michelle and Megan were unique cases, that really started to take off once we added in the heavier weights. Megan is super ripped here and that's why she looks "bigger" She was about 110lbs. haha.

You do cardio/intervals/complexes/calisthenics for your conditioning (cardio respiratory)
You DIET to lose weight.

If you keep these things top of mind when designing your current routine, you won’t fail.


I’ll give you an example.

Take a 130 pound woman. Have her run 6.0 mph (ten minute mile) for a full hour.

Calories Burned 590. Not too bad. But look.



1 measly cup of peanuts
828 Calories.

3 cans of Ginger Ale
750 Calories.

5 tablespoons of Peanut Butter
500 Calories


It’s ridiculous to think that working out is a key to anything other than “physical” and Mental fitness. Which is GREAT, don’t get me wrong!

But it’s not ideal for losing that last little bit of fat on your tummy, or getting your ass a little tighter!

I roll back to people that I speak to often, that say things like

“I’m joining a boot camp so I can lose weight”

Heavy Cleans do more for your upper back and shoulders than most isolation excercies. Bianca was an expert!

I cringe.

Nowadays I usually bite my tongue, because it’s this type of mentality that has plagued these people forever, and yes, they will be healthier and may lose a few pounds, but over and over again they will fail when the diet fails.

You can’t bootcamp your way to ultimate fitness, if your diet is wrought with poor decisions, or even worse, if your cardio compensating…. Trying to out exercise your diet.

This is a colossal fail. You never will. EVER!

I worked at a company for a decade, where we had a private gym, with 24/7 access and healthy options everywhere, free supplements etc… Yet these same people, who trained as much as 10 times a week, would only start to get in real shape when their diet was made their priority.

Granted, most were in better shape than the average bear, but even those people who worked out like fiends, still had to keep their diet in check, or that pesky little muffin top would start creeping out the sides again.


So when you are designing your program, be sure to include the following variables

Some low rep work – heavy in the 3-5 rep ranges a couple of times per week.
Some moderate rep work – in the 6-10 ranges a couple of times per week
Some conditioning work-3-5 times per week

A good base program would to start every day with a heavy movement as recovery allows – 3-5 reps

Move to something with a little more volume – one or two movements in the 6-10 range ( 2-3 sets)

Then on to your Crossfit/metcon/circuit training etc…


The strength movement should not interfere with the conditioning movement.

How heavy is too heavy?

No such thing .