Training with The Foundation Fitness - Month 3
It’s been three months since I started training with Mark from The Foundation Fitness and I couldn’t be happier with my results. Training with Mark has single handedly been the best personal decision I’ve made for myself in the last six months. Not only has he transformed me physically, but I am mentally stronger and more confident. I’m also learning so much about human anatomy, nutrition and recovery.
During the first month, we got a sense of the level of intensity I can train at, the amount of volume I could handle and how my body responds to a macro-based meal plan. Although I was strong and in shape prior to training with Mark, my workouts weren’t focused enough or changed my body much because it was in homeostasis. We focused on getting lean ,and by the end of 30 days, I lost around -4% body fat and a few pounds. The last two months have been focused on building muscle and really shaping the body that I want to achieve and pushing up calorie intake. My body fat has gone up about +1.2% higher than the leanest that I was at, but I’ve put on +2 lbs of lean muscle mass. That’s great!
The most visible changes are in my core, arms and back. At the end of six months, I’ll show you a before and after photo so you can see what the changes look like.
Training
In terms of my training program, we have kept the exercises relatively steady. You need to have consistency and do the same exercises over a long period of time to see results and have your body learn to adapt and push more. My training sessions with Mark are intense - I train with him 2x a week, 1x by myself, and 3 days of other group fitness workouts (usually spinning, boxing, HIIT/bootcamp). I am 100% focused in our sessions and I’ve been very aware of my form and make sure I engage the correct muscles. We increase weight and volume in each session and I’m really proud of how fast and much I’ve progressed. For example, we started my deadlifts around 115 lbs and now we are at 175 lbs. We usually have three working sets and aim for the rep range to be around 8-12. You can see some clips of my training sessions with Mark in the stories section of my Instagram called “TRAIN” and he shares tips and internal cues for each exercise too, so be sure to turn audio on.
Diet
I am on a macro-based meal plan and the macros are determined by Mark. Keep in mind that macros differ for each person depending on their body and goals. During the first month, I was hungry ALL the time. My body had to get used to using food as fuel and eating the correct amount. Like I’ve said before, eating is science. You have to be responsible and manage your caloric checkbook just like your financial one. We’ve increased my carbohydrates twice in the last two months. We jumped from eating 100 grams of carbs in month 1 to 240 grams currently. Mark increases my carb intake in large increments because if you don’t, your body won’t change much and you won’t get a sense of how your body will respond to an increase in intake. Every time there is an increase, it’s a bit difficult to eat that much. I’ve adjusted my meals and snacks to eat denser, and higher caloric foods. Now that I’ve been eating like this for a month, I’ve fully adjusted and started to get hungry again…which means Mark will probably increase my carb consumption up again soon. You can read more about my current macro-based diet here.
If you want to train with Mark in person or online, you can contact him here. I promise it’ll change your life. He also has a long wait list of people who want to train with him, so be sure to contact him soon!