15 Fitness Mistakes Skinny-Fat Guys Make
By Oskar Faarkrog ISSA Certified Personal Trainer Page 1 of 69
The writing in this eBook is based on my own skinny-fat transformation where I lost 60 pounds of fat and gained more than 40 pounds of muscle stories from my online coaching program. mass and the many success stories from
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Are You You Skinny-Fat? Skinny-Fat?
Being skinny-fat means that you lack muscle tone while being soft around your lower waist.
In clothes, a skinny-fat guy looks like a regular guy, but once the clothes come off all the flab and softness is revealed.
Skinny-fat guys find it difficult to gain even small amounts of muscle tone and we gain fat “just by looking at food”.
Most of us also find it extremely difficult to gain muscle mass on our upper body, body, especially around the shoulders, upper upp er chest, upper back and arms.
In my experience coaching almost 100 men, the skinny-fat body-type is BY FAR the hardest to transform and skinny-fat guys need a different strategy to transform. Page 3 of 69
Here are the characteristics of a skinny-fat guy: • Soft around the lower waist. • Narrow shoulders. • Under muscled arms. • Small wrists. • Low natural testosterone production (testosterone is the main muscle building hormone in your body). • Poor nutrient partitioning (i.e. your body’s ability to use food for muscle gains). • Weak on bodyweight exercises, especially the pull up.
You can learn more about transforming the skinny-fat physique on the link below:
The 2 Phases of a Skinny-Fat Transformation
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Fitness Mistake #1: Training with heavy weights you can’t control. Have you ever seen the classical bodybuilding movie “Pumping Iron” featuring legendary bodybuilders such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Serge Nubret who had some of the most aesthetic physiques ever?
(Serge Nubret training during his prime)
If you look at the way they train in that movie, it’s basically a lot of sets, a lot of reps, short rest time between sets and training for the pump.
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Yes, some of them did train heavy, but heavy is relative.
If you can bench press 500 pounds, using 260 pounds for sets isn’t heavy.
So don’t get fooled into thinking that you need to train with maximal weights to develop your physique.
Training for strength and muscle mass are two different goals which require different types of training methods.
Prior to passing away, the classical bodybuilder Serge Nubret created a thread on forum.bodybuilding.com where people could ask him any questions related to bodybuilding.
The thread got almost 12,000 comments(!!) and Serge provided all of us with a wealth of knowledge. One of his main points was that he never lifted heavy weights (“heavy” being a relative word here).
Serge Nubret stated that you can always “make the weight harder to lift”.
This is the complete of what most people in the gym do.
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Most people use bouncing, swinging and momentum to lift the weight.
They don’t think about engaging the target muscles in the movements they are performing and on a set of 12-15 reps, they might only get in 2 or 3 quality reps.
I used to do 40-50 pound dumbbells for my sets on biceps curls. After reading through Serge Nubret’s topic that weight quickly dropped to about 25 pounds.
Then as I met one of my mentors, Jay Campbell and became better at engaging my biceps I dropped the weight all the way down to 20 pounds.
And now that I’m rewriting this eBook, I’m even down to 15 pounds.
So now, my goal is actually to use lighter weights and stimulate the muscles rather than my ego.
The main benefit of lifting lighter weights is that you can grow the target muscles that are underdeveloped.
For example, most people have an overdeveloped lower chest and underdeveloped upper chest.
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So when these people do incline bench presses, they use the lower chest to push the weight because they haven’t built the mind-to-muscleconnection for the upper chest yet.
This essentially makes their training unproductive if aesthetics is the goal.
Another example is triceps.
When most people do triceps pushdowns they use heavy weights and roll their shoulders and upper body forwards.
When you do that, your shoulders essentially take over the movement and your triceps don’t get much quality work done. And then your triceps don’t grow.
The same goes for any other exercise that is done heavy.
When you lift heavy, you use the muscles that are already strong and developed and this is a HUGE mistake if you’re looking to grow muscles that don’t seem to respond to training.
In addition, when you train with lighter weights, you recover A LOT faster between training sessions because they put less stress on the Central Nervous System.
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This means you can train more often, do more sets during each training session and use a bigger variety of exercises to train your muscles from different angles.
These factors (how often you train, how many sets you do for each muscle group and using a variety of angles to train your muscles) contribute more to muscle gains than heavy weights do.
And then we have injury prevention.
Heavy weights are a recipe for injury and you can see that across all heavy weight training forums where even beginners that are just getting started suffer from low back pain, hip pain and shoulders injuries.
You can see a comparison I did in May 2014 where I checked the amount of injury topics on a popular calisthenics forum called Madbarz vs. a heavy weight training forum called Starting Strength.
Madbarz vs. the Starting Strength forum (as of 5th May 2014):
• Madbarz: 93 topics are about injuries and there are 9,044 users (1.03% of users have made an injury related topic) • Starting Strength: 1,358 topics are about injuries and there are 17,125 users (12.61% of users have made an injury related topic)
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If we assume that each user has made no more than one topic related to injuries, and we take a sample of 1000 people, the starting strength forum will have 126 injured people, while the Madbarz forum has just 10.
So unless you need to be able to lift heavy for a sport or competition, skip the heavy weights.
It’s not worth it to impress other guys at the gym with a heavy set of bench presses if it comes with the risk of suffering from chronic pain for the rest of your life.
It’s only a matter of time before your form slips on a heavy deadlift or squat and you get chronic knee pain, back pain, hip pain, neck pain, elbow pain or wrist pain.
Unless you’re built with big joints and you train very carefully on a great training program, chances are that you will get seriously injured with heavy weights. It’s just a matter of time.
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Fitness Mistake #2: Neglecting your strength on the pull up and push up.
Can you do 20 pull ups in a row with good form and can you squat down so your butt touches the floor with your heels planted on the ground and hold that position for a minute?
Most men cannot do these two essential things, yet they start their training careers off with heavy weight training before they can even move their own bodyweight properly through space.
Basic bodyweight training and mobility exercises such as squat holds will let you develop your movement patterns, mobility, and basic strength, all while gaining good amounts of muscle mass and losing fat. Page 11 of 69
There’s no reason to skip these essential basics.
Just think about mathematics: The basics are extremely boring, but they make it so much easier to learn the advanced stuff.
Similarly, when you build a house, you start with the foundation. Once you build a solid foundation, everything else becomes so much easier.
An early injury can put you out of the gym for MONTHS, and sometimes that injury will stick with you for years and thereby inhibit your true transformation potential.
Now, some of you may think that “yeah, bodyweight training sounds reasonable, but I don’t care about mobility. I just want to look good naked.”
That’s the kind of mindset I had, but it’s wrong.
When you have good mobility, you have better posture and you move in a more confident way.
This makes you look MUCH better.
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It doesn’t matter how much muscle you have if you have the mobility and posture of an 84 year old man.
Furthermore, good posture is associated with higher testosterone levels (the main muscle building hormone in your body).
Therefore, don’t rush the basics. Get strong at bodyweight exercises, improve your mobility and improve your posture.
Once you’ve done these things, you’re ready to start weight training.
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Fitness Mistake #3: Eating too much protein. When I started training in 2010, I read a bunch of articles on bodybuilding.com about how the pro bodybuilders ate, and there was one common theme:
A very high protein intake.
The reasoning goes that since protein is responsible for building and repairing muscle mass, you need to eat a lot of it.
In most places, the recommended protein intake was a minimum of 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight to build and maintain muscle mass.
Anything less than that and you will supposedly waste your training sessions and get no results.
But that’s wrong and now I’ll explain why.
First of all, consider a 200 pound guy who “needs” to eat 200 grams of protein per day.
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200 grams of protein is the equivalent of:
• 500 grams chicken breast > 100 grams of protein. • 200 grams tuna > 50 grams of protein. • 8 whole eggs > 50 grams of protein.
So, in practice this could look something like this:
• Breakfast: 4 whole eggs. • Lunch: 200 grams tuna and 4 whole eggs. • Dinner: 500 grams grams chicken breast.
That’s a lot of protein to eat on a daily basis, but that’s the kind of ridiculous advice that you find in the fitness industry.
They want a 200 pound guy to eat enough protein to feed an entire African village.
And there are many issues with this.
The first one is digestion.
If you’re skinny-fat and out of shape, your body doesn’t need all that protein.
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How is your body going to use all that protein for repairing and building muscle mass, when you start out with a very low amount of muscle mass and your training sessions are limited in volume, frequency and intensity?
That’s right, it won’t.
Instead, you will get constipated, bloated and feel heavy because you don’t digest all that protein.
The second issue is balance.
How are you going to eat enough starches, vegetables, fruits and healthy fats if you’re sick and tired of eating by the time you’ve gone through the protein in your meal?
There’s only so much food you can eat and protein is very satiating, so eating a lot of it will make it hard to get in other satiating foods such as vegetables, potatoes and rice.
And then you will often try to make up for the lack of high quality carbs by eating quick sugary carbs and other junk which is very light on the stomach.
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The third issue is marketing.
There’s no peer reviewed and well-designed study that shows you need that much protein.
Most of the “scientific arguments” for eating all that protein are made by the marketers who sell protein supplements — not by nutrition experts.
And if there’s a study supporting protein supplements and excessively high protein intake, that study is most likely poorly designed and sponsored by the people who are selling protein supplements.
Look, you don’t need to supplement with protein powder, although I do use it with some clients that find it convenient.
You also don’t need to eat protein every 2-3 hours. (When you eat a protein based meal you will have protein in your system for at least 6-8 hours).
You don’t need to eat a huge amount of protein.
Now, this doesn’t mean no one can follow a high protein diet with results.
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People with great genetics such as professional athletes, fitness models and pro-bodybuilders can digest a higher amount of protein without any negative effects because:
• They train at a high level so their body needs more of EVERYTHING (not just protein) to recover from the hard training. • They have exceptional genetics and digestion which enables them to chunk down huge protein meals and then utilize these proteins for muscle building.
In other words, their dietary requirements are completely different from +90% of people who train, so stop copying them.
Instead, aim for a balanced diet where you have a bit of everything, and experiment with different types of foods to find the ones that YOU digest best.
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Fitness Mistake #4: Following a diet plan that doesn’t match the demands of your training program.
One thing a lot of people don’t know is that your training program and diet plan are connected.
The way you eat, affects the way you train and vice versa.
Just think about your average couch potato who wakes up after a night of crappy sleep, then goes to work a stressful job and then comes home late at night to watch TV and eat junkfood.
A lot of the food that guy eats is likely to be stored as fat.
In contrast, think about the professional athlete who trains 4 hours a day and sleeps 10 hours each night.
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He comes home after a long training session, and he could eat the exact same junkfood meal as the couch potato, but he would most likely not gain much fat (if any at all), because his body needs that food after a rigorous training session.
The point here is that you cannot look at diet and training separately.
The more you train and the harder you train, the bigger your dietary requirements are.
This is also why training too much can be detrimental for people who want to lose fat.
Yes, you read that right: TRAINING TOO MUCH CAN BE BAD IF YOU WANT TO LOSE FAT.
When you want to lose fat, you must restrict your calories however when you train a lot, you must eat a lot of calories to support the training.
In other words, training hard and often while trying to lose fat is a BAD idea.
The key here is to find that balance where your diet and training match.
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Getting that balance right where your training and diet match is very difficult and it took me years of experimentation to find my balance, but once you get it right the effort is 100% worth it.
You will start making massive changes to your body while feeling good throughout the process.
A good start for fat loss is to focus 100% on 4-5 short and high quality bodyweight or weight training sessions per week.
These will help you build strength and preserve muscle mass which is very important during fat loss because the amount of muscle mass you have determines your metabolic rate.
So skip the cardio, because it won’t do much for your fat loss anyways (it’s much easier to cut out a snickers bar than it is to run for 20 min).
Training is done to increase strength and muscle mass, not to burn fat.
You burn fat through a well-designed diet plan and sculpt your muscles with weight training.
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Fitness Mistake #5: Exercising instead of training with a purpose. “I’ve been exercising for years, but my body doesn’t seem to respond.”
“Exercising” is going into the gym without any goal, and that’s what most people do.
There are plenty of people in the gym who keep coming back, and they will repeat the same exercise they did last time.
They will do the exact same exercises, use the exact same weight and stop when it starts getting a little bit uncomfortable.
This is fine if you want to maintain your current fitness level or body composition.
In fact, that’s what I do now since I’m happy with my body and fitness level.
However, most of you reading this don’t want to maintain.
You want to get better and in order to do so, you must stop exercising and start training. Page 22 of 69
There’s a big difference between exercising and training.
Training means you follow some kind of plan based on progressive overload.
You want to be able to do more weight… more sets… more reps… more exercises… more difficult exercises.
So for example, if you follow my beginner bodyweight training program, you might do 3 chin ups on a Monday and then try to do 4 chin ups on a Wednesday.
Going from 3 to 4 chin ups might not sound like a big deal, but imagine going from 0 to 20 chin ups over 6 months.
There’s no way your body will stay the same when you make that kind of progress.
It will have do adapt to the new stress by increasing your muscle size and that’s why you need to go into each training session with a plan.
In contrast, when you exercise, you do so without any plan or goal and that won’t lead to any results.
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Fitness Mistake #6: Having an underdeveloped back.
If you’re like most people out there, your gym routine most likely consists of a lot of work for the chest, shoulders, arms and abs.
But how about the upper back, lats and rear shoulders?
All these areas are underdeveloped in almost every lifter, and that’s a shame, because developing these muscles will give you a much more aesthetic physique
.
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When you train for back width and thickness, you will look wide on the upper body and powerful form the back.
And when you train the back of your shoulders, you will get much more wide looking bowling ball shoulders.
Both of these things will contribute to building that aesthetic Vtaper we all want!
When I started training my rear shoulders, my shoulders went from nonexistent to “proportional” within a month or so.
And most importantly, training the back muscles and rear shoulders, prevents injuries and improves your posture.
As I’m writing this, I’ve been training for nearly 7 years and I’m still 100% injury free.
I believe this is largely because I trained my back as hard as anything else from day one!
A good way to know whether you’re training your back hard enough is to check your barbell bench press to bent over barbell row ratio.
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If you can bench press more than 1.2 times as much as you can bent-over-barbell-row, your front is too strong and you’ll need to strengthen your back muscles to prevent injuries.
Therefore, if your bench press is 40 KG but your barbell row is only 30 KG, you have work to do.
Try to get them as close to each other as possible. In most cases, the bench press will always be a bit higher than the barbell row, but you want to strive to keep them as close as possible to prevent injuries and muscular imbalances.
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Fitness Mistake #7: Looking for the perfect training program. “I heard that Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength Program is the best out there.”
There’s no best program out there.
There’s the best program for YOU, for YOUR goals, at this EXACT TIME of your training.
This “best program” can quickly change as you progress in your transformation.
For example, when I started training I found that bodybuilding programs didn’t work well for me.
I lacked strength in order to benefit from these kind of programs. (You won’t benefit much from high volume training when you can barely bench press an empty barbell).
Now, years later, high volume training is pretty much all I do and it works really well for me.
The same goes for my online coaching clients.
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As they move from Phase 1 to Phase 2, their training demands change and therefore their training program has to change as well.
And that’s why you should follow a training program that fits your current fitness levels and is designed for your unique body-type.
If the training program isn’t designed for YOU at the right time in your training career, it will not produce great results.
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Fitness Mistake #8: Bulking before cutting. When you want to transform your body, there are two goals to choose between:
1) Get lean. Also called “cutting”. 2) Gain muscle mass. Also called “bulking”.
Cutting (fat loss) requires a caloric deficit in your diet while bulking (muscle gains) requires a caloric surplus .
I first tried to bulk with a slight caloric surplus for a few weeks at a time, but got nowhere with that.
Then I changed to cutting and instead of losing fat it seemed like my shoulders and arms were just getting smaller.
Eventually, I did cut off all the excess body-fat I gained in my first year of training, and ended up looking pretty much the same as when I started.
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The progress photo below shows my “2 year progress”, where I was spinning my wheels with cutting and bulking:
Focusing on muscle gains before getting lean is a big mistake because:
• When you’re lean your natural testosterone production is higher and testosterone is the main muscle building hormone in your body. In other words, when you’re lean you will be able to gain muscle mass at a faster rate. • When you’re lean you can see the muscle gains you make because they aren’t hidden under fat. • Gaining muscle mass always comes with some fat gains so you want to make sure you’re lean enough to have room for some slight fat gains.
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The progress photo below shows how I lost body-fat between April 2012 and November 2012 and later gained a lot of muscle mass from my “lean base”:
As you can in the progression from November 2012 to April 2013, I gained over 10 pounds of lean mass in just 4 months.
The reason is that I had changed the way my body works by getting lean.
With a high natural testosterone production and better nutrient partitioning, I was able to pack on a lot of muscle mass in a short amount of time.
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Fitness Mistake #9: Worrying about small details that don’t matter. When I started training at age 16, I remember one of the first things I researched was protein supplements.
I was still at that age where I believed that a supplement can help me gain 20 pounds of muscle mass in 12 weeks.
So I wanted to know what the best protein supplement for muscle gains is.
At the same time, I was eating a horrible diet full of white bread, sugar and deli meats, partying every week and sleeping 5 hours per day and training just 2 days per week.
Now, think about this for a second: What option would give you the best Return-On-Investment?
Option 1: Changing from protein powder A to protein powder B.
Option 2: Sleeping 2 hours extra per day saying no to going out ,
drinking most weekends and training your ass off 4 days a week instead of 2-3.
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What do you think would give you the best gains over a time period of 1-2-3 years?
Of course the answer is: THE BASICS.
You will get a lot more out of focusing on training often, eating healthy and getting long high quality sleep, than anything else.
Therefore, take a look at your current diet, training and sleep and start fixing the basics before you obsess about small details such as protein powder.
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Fitness Mistake #10: Having expectations that don’t match the work you’re willing to put in. A typical reader email goes like this: “Oskar, I want get ripped in 12 weeks but I’m working 16 hours a day so I can’t cook healthy meals and I can only get 5 hours of sleep per night train.”
I didn’t cook healthy meals every week.
I also didn’t sleep 9 hours per day during my whole transformation.
But, it also took me about 3 years to build a good body.
In contrast, one of my clients, Logan Rando is extremely motivated and made immense progress in his 1st year of training.
Compared to me, Logan was dedicated to his diet plan.
He ate clean food every single day and rarely (if ever) cheated on his diet plan.
In other words, he made faster progress because he outworked me.
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Here’s Logan’s 1 year transformation on my beginner bodyweight program and later my coaching program:
(Click Here to view Logan Rando’s 5 minute testimonial video)
So make sure your dedication and expectations match
.
If you aren’t willing to follow a proper diet plan and training program, you can’t expect the same results as someone who does.
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Fitness Mistake #11: Relying on a training partner. Have you seen those guys at the gym who make the bench press into an assisted rowing exercise?
Maybe YOU are one of these guys.
Either way, you need to know that this kind of training is not only dangerous, but also unproductive.
As a beginner, your joints and muscles are not ready to max out, so it’s a VERY bad idea to start training with a partner who pushes you too much.
In contrast, when you train with a partner that is much weaker than you, you will spend a lot of time talking in between sets and wasting time.
In addition, most training partners will show up for a few weeks and then suddenly the excuses start coming in:
“I feel sore today.” “I have school work.” “I didn’t sleep much.” “I have a cold.”
Sometimes these things are true, but in most cases they are just excuses. Page 36 of 69
It’s not like you can’t show up at the gym just because you didn’t sleep much or because you have a cold.
These kind of training partners are the worst because they give you an excuse to skip the gym on a regular basis.
Now, this doesn’t mean that all training partners are bad.
However, it means that you should be very careful when selecting a training partner.
And my advice is that you wait with finding a training partner until you have at least 6 months experience on a proper training program.
Once you have more experience, you will be in a better position to know how far you should push yourself each training session and what kind of training partner is good for you.
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Fitness Mistake #12: Thinking of transforming as a sprint rather than a marathon. “I want to look great naked in 6 months.” “I want to lose fat now.” “Please tell me some tips to get ripped fast. (While putting in as little effort as possible.)”
There’s nothing wrong with looking for solutions that will enable you to reach your goal physique fast.
However, there’s a big issue if you want to avoid hard work to get results faster.
No matter how you put it, the only way you will build a great body is by consistent, hard work for +1 year.
The people who look for quick fixes, easy solutions, secret diet pills are similar to the people who sell these gimmicks: even if they do become successful, they will miss the most important lesson of getting a good body: the character growth that comes as a result of working hard for a goal that you want to achieve.
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You see…
I have seen a lot of steroid and hormone users at my gym, and while they have become more muscular and more shredded than me (in a shorter period of time), they lack the character development that comes from years of working hard.
Most of them are big on the outside, but small on the inside.
The same goes for people who sell these diet pills and fitness scams.
They may look successful to an outside observer, but on the inside, there’s no way they can possibly feel good about what they do.
So think twice before you decide to go for a “quick fix” rather than putting in the work.
The decision can shape the way you do things in other areas of life such as business, career and relationships.
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Fitness Mistake #13: Not being open to new approaches. If you asked me about bodybuilding back in 2010-2012 (where I looked like I didn't even lift), I would have told you that you need to eat a high protein diet and lift heavy weights, because that’s what all the credible sources say you must do to build a great physique.
Then, one day I came across a book called “How Much Protein” by Brad Pilon.
This book completely challenged my beliefs about protein intake, and recommended a much lower protein intake than the magazines (I believe it was 70-130 grams of protein per day depending on your size).
In the beginning, I was skeptical about the advice provided in that book, but I decided to give it a shot, because the arguments made in the book were sound.
The book basically stated that there are no good studies supporting the kind of protein intakes recommended by the major bodybuilding and fitness magazines.
The book ended up changing my life in a major way.
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I stopped obsessing about hitting my daily protein target of 200 grams, a target that I was convinced I must hit to be able to build any amount of muscle mass.
What I’m trying to say is that you should try out different things once in a while and listen to people who have done what you want to do.
Don’t be that guy who quotes “pubmed abstracts” to disprove whether something working or not.
Most diet and training studies are poorly designed anyways and you can find a study that “proves” pretty much anything you want it to.
Therefore, you need to actually try things out first, regardless of what some study says.
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Fitness Mistake #14: Wanting to look like a fitness model or actor who get’s paid to look great. One of the biggest fitness mistakes I see among skinny-fat men is related to expectations.
I have guys email me pictures of how they want to look, and these pictures are often of fitness models or actors that MAKE A LIVING FROM THEIR BODY.
These guys get PAID to look a certain way.
When an actor or fitness model has 8 weeks to get ready for a role or a photo-shoot, they can’t leave it up to chance and potentially lose a lot of money.
So they take drugs, hormones and steroids to speed up their results.
These give them a huge advantage over those of us who train drug-free.
In this article I cover a 1996 study which shows that guys who inject testosterone gain 2 times as much muscle mass without doing any kind of training, compared to guys who train three times per week without injecting testosterone.
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You read that right: A guy who injects testosterone but doesn’t workout, gains two times as much muscle mass as a guy who does regular workouts without injecting testosterone.
So yes, steroids and hormones do work extremely well and you can’t compare your results to someone who takes them if you don’t.
Below I will show you an example of a great drug-free physique:
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The photo is of famous fitness YouTuber, Scott Herman who is roughly 170 pounds at 5’10”.
Scott has worked out for over 10 years and he has above average genetics. (He has never been fat before).
I’m 100% certain that Scott Herman is drug free because:
1. It took him over 10 years to build his physique. 2. The picture is taken in great lighting, with a muscle pump and from a good angle. In his videos, he doesn’t look that big. 3. He’s naturally a lean guy which means he has a low amount of fat cells. 1 This enables him to maintain a ripped body year around while having a some-what full and muscular look.
Scott Herman is what I consider to be the peak of a natural bodybuilding physique.
His physique can be achieved by those of you who are naturally lean and willing to put in 5-10 years into building muscle mass.
1 Fat
cells form during puberty. If you’re fat while growing up, you will have more of them and these will never go away. They’re always ready to get filled up when you eat big meals, thereby making it much harder for those of us who carried a lot of fat while going through puberty to stay lean.
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The rest of us skinny-fat and fat guys will be able to achieve a bigger and fuller looking physique with more body-fat and perhaps more muscle mass, but we won’t be as lean as Scott.
With that said, we will be able to cut down and get very lean for limited periods of time, but it will be hard to maintain very low body-fat levels long-term since it’s not where our bodies naturally want to be.
Also, another point I want to make is regarding photos.
Here’s another photo of Scott Herman taken in less good lighting and from a worse angle:
He looks completely different in this photo.
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The reason is because lighting, training pump and angles make all the difference.
I could change up just the lighting and angle to take a before-after photo of my body in the same day! That’s how much they matter.
So, what kind of look should us skinny-fat guys aim for? A good and realistic goal for most of us is to build a V-tapered upper body with wide shoulders, a flat waist and some ab-definition, but not necessarily 6pack abs.
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The photo above shows that while it can be hard to get visible abs if you’re naturally skinny-fat, it’s very possible to build A LOT of muscle mass in the right places and draw attention away from the mid-section.
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Fitness Mistake #15: Using the mirror to track progress. When you look at yourself in the mirror, you will be the last person to see your progress because the changes are so gradual.
In addition, you can’t expect the people that you see on a daily basis to tell you that you look better.
Most often, they will either not say anything since the changes will be so gradual.
Or they will say something discouraging like: “It looks like you’re getting skinny so you should come eat some McDonalds with me”.
You see, the people around you will always say they want you to become healthy, but what they say and do are two different things.
Therefore, the best thing you can do to stay motivated (and consistent) with your training and diet is to track your progress.
With my clients, I have them check-in with me every Sunday in a shared Google Sheet where they put in their key body measurements and training stats.
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This ensures that I can monitor their progression and make adjustments to their plan whenever needed.
Below, I will show you 2 examples of how progression tracking can look like.
Example (1): Client who wants to get better at bodyweight exercises:
The sheet above shows my client’s 5-6 week progression where he went from 0 to 10 pull ups (and he was only training 80 minutes per week due to his busy work schedule).
This is amazing progress for a skinny-fat guy in his mid thirties.
Also, the sheet above look messy.
Some weeks there’s progress, other weeks there’s no progress or the sheet isn’t even filled out. Page 49 of 69
That’s not unusual for my clients.
The truth is that even the most dedicated people fall of the wagon once in a while, but the difference between the ones who make it and those who don’t is persistence.
The clients who make the biggest changes to their bodies are the ones who relentlessly look for solutions whenever they’re travelling or busy and who pick up where they left off as fast as possible when they fall of the wagon.
You don’t need to do everything perfectly to get results. You just need to take the right actions most of the time.
Example (2): Client who wants to get wider shoulders:
This sheet shows my Indian client Harshit Godha who wants to build wide shoulders.
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In 8 weeks Harshit added almost 2.5 inches (6 CM) to his shoulder circumference while losing more than 10 pounds of fat and almost 2 inches on his waist.
This kind of progression is again, amazing for skinny-fat men.
Harshit is young and hitting the gym 6 days a week for 90 minutes and following a diet plan to the letter, so he is pretty much an “ideal scenario” when it comes to how fast a skinny-fat guy can progress.
Here’s a photo showing Harshit’s progress:
(Harshit Godha after being on my coaching program for about 12 weeks. Click Here to read my case study about him.)
And the photo leads me to the next point.
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In addition to tracking their progress in a spreadsheet and making adjustments to their plan based on their weekly check-ins, I also have my clients take monthly progression photos.
Progression photos are phenomenal because of the following reasons:
• They are the only way to see your actual body progress. • When you see even small amounts of progress on your photos, you will get a big boost of motivation to continue with your training and diet. • Sometimes body-measurements aren’t enough because when you lose fat and gain muscle mass at the same time, your measurements might stay the same but your photos will show a big difference.
I would even go as far as saying that had I not taken progression photos and regular body measurements, I would most likely have quit training before I got to see any results.
Be proud but stay hungry, Oskar Faarkrog,
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Testimonials By Coaching Clients Steve Chavez, Peru
1a) Why did you hire me as your body transformation coach? I watched your transformation pictures and video and it amazed me, I didn't thought anyone that was skinny fat could be in that shape and I could relate to all the problems you had been through. Also I read all your blog articles and they all made sense to me.They were to the point and filled with your experience, they were exempt of any motivational bullshit and completely logical, also by reading your replies to comments I noticed that you were honest since you never claimed to have all the answers. I never considered online coaching at that time but by seeing all the trial and error you went through for years, I thought of all the valuable knowledge you had to offer me if I got you as a coach so I'm glad I found you offered that service. Page 53 of 69
1b) Was it an easy decision? I never did online coaching before. And I didn't thought I would ever do it since I've always heard that it was easy to get scammed, but after reading your honest advice and doing the application form for your coaching it was clear to me that that risk didn't exist, so that made the decision easier for me, it was the best decision I made for my personal health.
2) How has my coaching helped you with your body transformation? More than just helping I'd say it was the root cause. Without your coaching I wouldn't been able to improve my physique.
3) Did your body transformation help you overcome other issues in life? Many, the clothes now fit me better, I haven't just improved my physical health but also my mental health. Also there's another perhaps not planned consequence of the body transformation. It used to be impossible for me to go out of my house after eating lunch or any other significant meal, I felt bloated and overall irritable and also avoided eating on the street. This caused me a lot of social issues. Thanks to the constant exercise and the customized diet plan, nowadays I can go out after lunch and eat on the street normally.
4) What kind of results have you gotten since you started following my coaching program?
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Results have being the best I've got in my entire life. I'm in the best shape I've been. I think the pictures say all of this. Before I followed intermitent fasting, HIIT and a routine that was designed for me in a gym, I didn't get any noticeable results.Yours were the best results by far.
5) How do you feel about the structure of my diet plan? Do you feel strong and energized on it? Is it easy to prepare the meals and stick to the diet throughout the week? Is the best diet I've followed. Since you customized according to my needs it was simple and easy to maintain and I never felt it was hard to follow it. The pinneaple does magic to my stomach, I never feel bloated now and I feel energized over the day. I'm plannig to stick with this diet for the rest of my life.
6) How do you feel about the structure of my training program? Do you feel your muscles get worked well in a time efficient manner? Is the best workout I've had, I've never did a single pull up, managing to do pull up reps was a breakthrough for me. I really like the bodyweight exercises, I feel accomplished when I progress on them and also I feel stronger and more agile after doing them. With weights exercises I feel I somehow get clumsier. It's really fulfilling seen I'm getting closer to that vtaper form.
7) What makes my training programs and diet plans better than those you tried before?
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They take into account the skinny-fat body type, since it comes from your own experience being skinny fat and overcoming it.
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8) How did you like the weekly progression check ins and monthly progression photos? Did they help you stay focused and stick to your plan? They showed me how to train. Before the only way of tracking progress I had was by watching myself. They made me visualize progress and served me to be motivated and to stick with the plan.
9) During my coaching you had access to my private email address and you could ask any questions that came up. Do you feel I gave you timely and clear replies to your questions? All of your replies were clear and on time.
10) How clear are the exercise and diet instructions in my documents? Were they easy to follow? They were simple, short and with the neccesary detail. I followed them easily.
11) What does a typical day in your life look like? Before it was a sedentary life. Now I workout usually first hour morning and work on my computer until late night. If for some reason I cannot workout in the morning I do it late at night. If I miss a workout now I feel bad and uncomfortable, like I'm losing shape.
12) Is there anything you would like to add? If so, please do it here.
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Your program has improved my physical and and mental health. It was the best investment I've ever made. Also a life lesson I got by reading your blog that can be applied to accomplish other long term goals as well was that one must not rely on motivation but on habit. I'm going to maintain your training program and diet as a lifestyle.
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Gordon Martin, US
1a) Why did you hire me as your body transformation coach? I hired you because you struggled with your weight growing up. You know what it feels like to struggle with body image in a world that tells men that they are not allowed to have body image issues. Most of all, you were able to overcome all of these obstacles and build an amazing physique! I knew you were the real thing before I hired you!
1b) Was it an easy decision? Yes! You were incredibly supportive from the time we first chatted on Skype.
2) How has my coaching helped you with your body transformation?
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I have lost over 25 pounds and about 4.5 inches since we started. I still have a long way to go, but I am so much happier with my body.
3) Did your body transformation help you overcome other issues in life? The combination of support, healthy food, and exercise have made me feel less stressed out and more capable of handling daily challenges. When I get in a bad mood, it’s time to work out!
4a) What kind of results have you gotten since you started following my coaching program? For the first time in 36 years, I am losing fat rather than gaining it! I already look better than most of my friends who are out of shape and overweight.
4b) How do these results compare to the results you got on other programs you followed prior to my blog advice and coaching? The results are slow but steady. Other programs always offer a quick fix… the quick fixes sometimes work. Then you stop, and you gain everything back again. Your coaching is more like running a marathon rather than sprinting a short distance. I now realize that it will take another year or so before I reach my goals, but you have given me the tools to reach them slowly but surely. You helped me build new, healthy habits!
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5) How do you feel about the structure of my diet plan? Do you feel strong and energized on it? Is it easy to prepare the meals and stick to the diet throughout the week? I have never eaten so much on a diet! There were many times I simply felt that I couldn’t stuff another bite in my mouth. I shop and cook once a week. Right now, my fridge is stocked for the week… salmon, chicken breast, ground turkey meat, grilled vegetables, rice, sweet potatoes… I have the most delicious meals that only require 3 minutes in the microwave. No more endless snacking on garbage that never fills me up. The food always makes me feel full and happy and never bloated or slowed down or gassy.
6) How do you feel about the structure of my training program? Do you feel your muscles get worked well in a time efficient manner? I loved the customized bodyweight workouts. For those of us who travel a lot, there are no more problems with finding a gym. Also, the workouts are short and to the point. I like working out now, but I still want to be done in an hour or less. Your workouts were perfectly timed and easy for an out-ofshape beginner to follow and work on.
7) What makes my training programs and diet plans better than those you tried before? The personal interaction and accountability. When I first started, I often found myself choosing healthier food options because I did not want to have a bad weekly check-in with you. I knew that if I did bad, you would question my commitment, and I would feel like a lazy fool.
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8) How did you like the weekly progression check ins and monthly progression photos? Did they help you stay focused and stick to your plan? I will probably do weekly check ins and monthly progress photos for the rest of my life. This is the ONLY thing that consistently works for me. It’s Monday morning, and I am already thinking about what I need to do to have a great week and lose some more inches off of my mid-section. Making photos of yourself is a great way to critique your physique. It’s totally different than simply looking in a mirror.
9) During my coaching you had access to my private email address and you could ask any questions that came up. Do you feel I gave you timely and clear replies to your questions? You were always easy to reach and gave me thoughtful, educated answers to my questions.
10) How clear are the exercise and diet instructions in my documents? Were they easy to follow? Very clear and easy to follow. I would tell future clients to turn off their brains, listen to Oskar, and get ready to lose some weight.
11) Is there anything you would like to add? If so, please do it here.
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You are one of the few people on the Internet involved with men’s health topics that actually cares and can get results for clients. The money I spent on your coaching services are the best money I ever spent!
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Logan Rando, US
Hi, my name is Logan Rando and I’ve been a skinnyfattransformation reader for one year and two months.
I began my fitness transformation in December of 2014 and I stumbled across Oskar’s website while reading through some fitness forums.
For several months I had been killing myself in the gym, lifting heavy weights five days a week. My results were lacklustre and I constantly felt lethargic and irritable.
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I was putting in very hard work at the gym yet wasn’t gaining the muscle I felt I deserved. Even worse, I felt that I was retaining fat in all the wrong places. I still had a visible belly and very little definition. I had friends that put in half the effort I did yet were receiving stellar results? I thought to myself… what am I doing wrong?!
When I discovered Oskar’s website, skinnyfattransformation.com I had a moment of clarity.
For the first time in my life, someone was specifically addressing my build and my genetics. The “skinny-fat” physique perfectly described my body type.
When I read about Oskar’s personal transformation from skinny-fat to ripped, I knew I had to try his body-weight regimen for myself. My mind raced with excitement as I drove to the gym from work that day.
I was so eager to try out his back-to-basics routine that I drove so fast and actually got a speeding ticket on the way over to the gym.
After 6 months of doing the beginner body weight routine I found myself 30 pounds lighter, with visible abs and a lean build.
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I took a vacation to the Dominican Republic and was constantly complimented on my physique. Friends who hadn’t seen me in months were astonished and inspired by my transformation.
My progress inspired one of my friends, who also had a skinny-fat body type, to join me at the gym.
I knew this program worked for more than just me when I saw him lose his love handles and chest fat while gaining a toned masculine build in a few months’ time.
After making the best progress I ever had, I felt amazing but was hungry for more. I knew I was ready to take my fitness to the next level, so it was a no-brainer when I made the decision to work with Oskar in the online coaching program.
After skyping with Oskar he made note of my personal fitness goals and designed an exercise routine and diet plan tailored to my goals and lifestyle.
Following the fitness regimen could not have been simpler. Oskar laid out each exercise with the prescribed rep range, number of sets, and rest periods.
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The diet plan included nutritious foods that I like to eat and was incredibly easy to follow.
I was never tempted to fall off the wagon because Oskar built into the plan two cheat meals per week. I constantly looked forward to my meals, felt satiated, and was energized for my intense workouts.
In the past, workout routines I found online had me lifting so heavy that I was quickly drained of energy and struggled to complete the remaining exercises. The results I received from these efforts were nonexistent! The routine that Oskar designed challenged me to work every muscle group in my body in a timely, effective manner. I always left the gym feeling satisfied that I put in a hard day’s work while hitting each muscle groups effectively.
Simply put, the return on investment that Oskar’s plan yielded far exceeded that of any workout I had previously used.
The most important part of the training process for me was the constant line of communication I had with Oskar. On a weekly basis I input body measurements into a google spreadsheet. With this data, Oskar could monitor exactly how my body was changing and could adapt the plan to minimize fat loss while maximizing muscle gains.
Within 24 hours of updating my stats, Oskar would provide valuable feedback and adjust the plan if needed.
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Whenever I needed clarification or had a question, I could count on Oskar getting back to me very quickly. I felt that I received a lot of value and personal attention from the program.
After completing a 12 week coaching program with Oskar, I’m pleased to say that gained significant size to my biceps, shoulders, and back all while maintaining a lean figure.
Oskar and I skyped at the conclusion of the program and he provided me with the tools and knowledge to continue into the future. I’m absolutely confident that I’m prepared to continue to make muscle gains on my own!
If anyone is unsure about whether or not this coaching program is for you, I urge you to try Oskar’s body-weight routine, see the results you get, and then ask yourself if you want more. Oskar is determined to help you reach your fitness goals and will be along with you every step of the way.
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