Hopefully soon the long hot summer months will be upon us and we will be heading to the beach in our droves to enjoy the fine weather and to hopefully show off our fine bodies in the sunshine. But what about those of us who have not quite got to the stage where our bodies look like that of a Greek God, what can we do between now and the start of summer? What should we be eating and how can we train to make sure that we get the best possible results achievable in a relatively short period of time?
For the purpose of this article lets presume that you are all going to the gym twice or three times a week and have at least a basic knowledge of health and fitness, hopefully all you should need to do between now and the beach season is intensify your training, burn a layer or two of body fat and eat slightly better to see great results. The trick to having the perfect beach body is to work primarily on building a big chest, strong muscular arms and wide shoulders and from their take the next step to include a cardiovascular workout as well as a deep weights program to focus on other key muscle groups.
Although doing cardiovascular training is the key to losing that top layer of body fat which hopefully makes all of the previous weight training worthwhile you need to get the foundations stones of a good body in place before you look to add cardio training to your plan. Mixing too much cardio with a high intensity weights plan can be counter productive and lessen any muscle gains previously made due to re-directing the blood-flow away from muscle groups that need the blood flow most to help them grow.
The secret of a perfect beach body is getting the mix of weight training, cardiovascular training and nutrition correct. Many people get two of the three building blocks correct but neglect the nutritional side of the plan which is equally as important as the other two components. You need to feed your body and muscles correctly to enable your body to recover after a workout as well as feeding the muscles to enable them to develop and grow. You will achieve no significant muscle gains if you do not feed the muscles correctly. You should always try to eat a either a protein bar, protein shake or at the very least a banana as soon after training as possible, any high protein food such as a turkey sandwich on brown bread will help to feed your muscles correctly.
With the correct nutritional plan you will soon start to see big gains on the important muscles you will need for showing off at the beach. Large pectoral muscles, washboard abs, broad shoulders and bulging biceps are the major muscles that will get you noticed on the beach this summer. So many people neglect their legs and do not train them correctly, if at all. Your legs are a major muscle group and by working them you will achieve the results that you desire sooner.
Part of the idea of this training plan is to increase your metabolic rate to help you burn more calories throughout the day and therefore burn more fat, lifting heavy weights helps to achieve this increase in your metabolic rate which is something that many people are not aware of. By raising your metabolic rate in the first few weeks of the training plan you will find that at the latter stages of the plan you will burn body fat that much quicker and more efficiently
For the second part of the workout plan you will need to focus on burning away body fat whilst trying not to lose muscle mass, this is a tricky balancing act as too much cardio will start to eat into your muscle reserves. The key to this period is to increase the amount of protein in your diet to help feed the muscles but reduce your calorie intake overall to help burn off any remaining surface body fat
To get the maximum results from your cardio workout you should look to complete 2-3 cardio sessions per week, if you can include interval training into this plan your results will be even greater still as interval training really raises the weight loss ceiling
It is not easy to achieve the perfect beach body but with the correct eating plan and a focused training routine it is a lot easier to get right and before you know it you will be turning heads as you walk down the beach wearing your sports sunglasses looking like the man who conquered the beach workout plan.