My Three Month Pre Summer Workout Plan – Focusing On Losing Fat Followed By Gaining Muscle

Sure, it would be nice if you didn’t have to step up your workout and clean up your diet to get ready for the summer months. But in reality, with the dark winter months, come warm cookies and some “heavy” meals. As long as you have maintained a pretty good level of fitness, just fine-tuning your summer workout plan and focusing on your diet will get you back to where you’d like to be.

Ahhh, summer! Just stick me on a chair next to my woman with a Corona in my hand and I’m one happy man! It’s funny — seems like I always have big plans for the summer, but the most enjoyable times are the simple ones.

My Pre Summer Workout Plan

My overall approach this year (and seems like most years to follow will be the same) is to lose some of the extra fat that has sneaked up on me over the winter months and then to gain a little bit of muscle for the summer months.

If you haven’t heard of the shrink wrap effect <=== video #3 on that page, that is the basis for my approach.

Losing fat and then building muscle creates a much better appearance than building muscle and then losing the fat.

If you are a woman, you probably don’t want to focus too much on building muscle, just losing fat and then toning the muscle you have. If that’s the case then Visual Impact for Women is the most comprehensive workout plan I’ve seen for women.

Summer Workouts VS Winter Workouts

Guess what – there really isn’t anything out-of-this-world about this “summer workout plan” – surprise, surprise! What will be the most significant factor in getting in shape for the summer will be your focus and drive. It’s just easier to stay on track if you know that your shirt will be coming off soon!

Month #1 – Fat Loss

Since the focus for the first month is on fat loss, I am going to be working out five times a week — sounds like a lot but hear me out. I’ve found that for me, five workouts a week produces much more benefits than three and even four times a week.

As I outlined in an older post about muscle definition workouts, I like to do a two-day split that looks like this:

• Day 1 – Chest & Back
• Day 2 – Shoulders, Arms & Abs
• Day 3 – Rest
• Day 4 – Chest & Back
• Day 5 – Shoulders, Arms & Abs
• Day 6 – Crazy 8 Workout
• Day 7 – Rest

For these workouts I do 8-10 total sets of only 5 reps for each per muscle group.

Most of my workouts are followed by high intensity interval training. Since the number one focus of month #1 is to lose fat, I will do HIIT for 10-15 minutes followed by 15-20 minutes of steady state cardio after every workout. The beauty of the these types of workouts is that you are only doing resistance training for 25-30 minutes so your entire workout is just at or just over one hour — not too bad.

In order to get my fifth workout of the week in, I will do the Crazy 8 exercise at home on day six.

Months #2 & 3 – Gain Muscle Mass & Density

After doing the above workout along with a focused diet plan, I expect to have shed my extra cargo and am now ready to add some size and density. I started this summer workout plan at the beginning of April, so for May and June I will really focus on muscle size and density.

For May I will be doing 4-5 sets of 8-12 reps (to failure) with no more than 1 minute of rest between each set. This is quite brutal but will help you blast your muscles and add good size. When building mass, I like to do 4 exercises per muscle group — except triceps and biceps, I only do 2 different exercises.

• Day 1 – Chest, Shoulders & Triceps
• Day 2 – Back, Biceps & Abs
• Day 3 – Rest
• Day 4 – Chest, Shoulders & Triceps
• Day 5 – Back, Biceps & Abs
• Day 6 – HIIT
• Day 7 – Rest

After one month of focusing purely on fat loss while maintaining muscle, then one month focused on gaining size, I will shift my focus to building the density of the muscle to get that strong and defined look.

For June I will be doing 5 sets of 5 reps per exercise. Since it’s summer and I prefer to be outside instead of working out, I will only be doing 2 different exercises for each muscle group.

• Day 1 – Chest & Back & Abs
• Day 2 – Shoulders, Arms & Abs
• Day 3 – Rest
• Day 4 – Chest & Back
• Day 5 – Shoulders, Arms & Abs
• Day 6 – Crazy 8 Workout
• Day 7 – Rest

Well, that’s my plan for getting in shape for this summer. As I mentioned, this really isn’t out-of-this-world! With a solid diet plan — I’m planning on the Eat Stop Eat approach so that I can enjoy BBQ & beer — and focused workouts, I’ll be ready for the beach!