It is unfortunate that I cannot give a detailed example of why I am stopping this program by showing you the actual list of the workouts and diet, but I will try to explain the best I can why this program is 100% crap. I’ll try to do this in a short summary below, and then I’ll explain in better detail everything there is wrong about this program.

As I posted yesterday, last week’s training was a very intense, so intense that I honestly said this program wasn’t suited for beginners. From an excessive load of strip-sets to very short breaks between sets, and relatively low caloric days when it came to cardio and days off, plus a ridiculous amount of coffee on a daily basis, made it a tough week even for someone like who spends over an hour a day 6 times a week, lifting heavy all the time and not wasting any time talking or taking extra long breaks. Now, all of the sudden, I start the second week with an increase in macros (or calories if you prefer) in comparison to last week, with a workout that other than the warm up run and push ups, I didn’t get a drop of sweat out of my body. We’re talking about a one set per exercise with very few exercises in general. To explain better how different this workout was compared to last week’s workouts, is like comparing a marathon to a 5k race. So for anyone to tell me, this kind of plan can get someone ripped with a muscular body in 45 days, is the biggest lie anyone could ever say, leading me to the conclusion that MP45 is one of the biggest scams every created.

If after reading this short summary you still feel like reading more of what I have to say, then feel free to continue reading below, otherwise, by now you should already know is not worth it spending a minute of your life reading anything related this program. You’ll do 110% better watching youtube workout videos and getting a gym membership than dedicating any of your time to MP45.

Anyone with a little knowledge about how muscles work is aware that in order to make a muscle grow you need two things, eat and lift, and by lift I mean lifting enough weights to put stress on the muscle fiber which will cause macro-tears on that will lead the muscle to grow in size and strength. Of course, you can do this the right way (minimizing the amount of body fat you gain along the process) or the wrong way (increasing your body far tremendously along the way). Similar concept applies to body fat loss. With proper eating and exercising you will lose body fat, but just like with gaining muscle, you can lose more body fat than muscle or lose a lot of muscle along the way, depending on how you eat and exercise. Anyone that spends lots of hours a week at the gym trying to gain muscle knows how hard that is and how horrible is the experience to lose muscle because of a poor diet and exercise plan. So far MP45 has demonstrated to me that it is a bad plan that will make anyone who has worked hard for their muscles lose their gains and those without much muscle won’t gain any at all.

For a workout plan to put me through a day of exercises that literally didn’t get my muscles exhausted, burning, feeling a “pump” and sweating like I always do, that says a lot about how bad this plan is. And believe me, this wasn’t because of me not giving 100% of me or using enough weight. One exercise of one set only for back, chest and shoulders is not going to make absolutely anyone lose body fat or gain any muscle ever, especially when the total amount of calories today is even higher than during last week’s excessive lifting. And while earlier today after I finished the workout, I refused to even look at what was due for tomorrow, I just did and is exactly the same thing than today. A couple of warm up sets followed by 1 set for the lower body, that includes 4 weights exercises and some body weight squats and lunges. Not to mention Wednesday is rest day. What in the world…..?

I have tried many programs since I got into fitness, some made by companies like BeachBody, other programs made my trainers, and even some by online fitness celebrities, and in all the years I have been trying programs, I’ve never come across with such a horrible workout program. This is literally the first time I have stopped using a fitness program ever, and on top of that only after a week of doing it. When I started this program I was already convinced it was a scam based on the claims of getting results that usually take months, and sometimes over a year to achieve. In fact, the reason that got me into trying the program was because of this false claims. The one thing I didn’t know was how bad this program really is, starting with the absolutely horrible grammar and layout. It feels like the person putting it together at times was thinking of one exercise when he was supposed to write another exercise, making it very hard to understand the exercise flow. And last but not least, the PDF files have a LOT of pages, which means you’ll spend a lot of time reading explanations about so many things that in my opinion are trying to create this image on the reader’s mind that this program is the best in the world by following all this scientific explanations when the reality they’re just justifying the $97 dollars the reader just paid.

Conclusion: Do NOT spend a dime or waste your time in this program even if you get it for free from a friend. It won’t provide you with any benefit whatsoever. Any of those muscular people posting pictures of them wearing MP45 gear and claiming their looks are thanks to that program are lying and getting paid to attract people to buy the program through the affiliate program MP45 offers.

How was my first impression in regards to the workout. While I had already written down on my notepad each set I needed to do, so when the time came I only had to write the weight and reps information along with any notes for future reference, I didn’t realize how intense the workout was going to be. Personally, I truly believe this program is really not beginner friendly. Let’s just say that even if a beginner was to use light weights, enough to achieve failure or a max amount of reps as stated on the program, they would probably end up light headed, throwing up or running out of energy before the workout is over.

The program claims that it should be completed in about an hour or so, and even though I timed my breaks between sets and exercises, it took me a little over 2 hours from beginning to end (I use an app to calculate my calories burned which I turn on as soon as I start working out and turn it off when I’m done). The intensity is really high. Each exercise during this first workout consisted of strip-sets, which by the end of each set your muscles were already hitting failure, which was the goal by the way.

There’s also a lot of running, which I think could be a major issue for those with bad knees or other health issues that running can be a problem. I’m guessing other alternatives could be used, like the elliptical or any other form of cardiovascular exercises.

In general, the workout really made me sweat, feel sore, and was completely different from what I’m used to, but again, I truly believe this isn’t beginner friendly. This first day was serious when it comes to intensity and even if a beginner finishes the workout, I suspect the DOMS will be an issue a day or two after the workout. The meal plan has kept me from feeling hungry, which is a good thing, but nothing I can really talk about until the end of the week where I’ll have studied how my body reacts to this plan. Until then, keep working out and bring the beast in you!

MP45? What is that thing? Well, in case you haven’t been paying attention to the internet ads, Facebook fitness groups, and Google results for best fitness programs, MP45 seems to be the newest and “hottest” workout system where some people are claiming these amazing results in just 45 days. Yes, you read that right, only 45 days. Of course, me being me, I already have an opinion about this program based on the pictures I have seen and the blogs I’ve kind of over read when looking for reviews. Personally I believe this whole 45 days transformation claims are total BULLSHIT with capital letters. Yes, I don’t care what anyone says, 45 days to go from obese to rip with ridiculous abs and a decent amount of muscle mass? Seriously, GTFO!

I follow online many professional athletes, people who compete in fitness contests, people who are professionals, people who are knowledgeable, people who either have years of experience or have spent months and years (not a weekend taking a seminar to get a certification that allows you to become a leader of a cult… oops), and absolutely no one will come up with such a ridiculous claim that they can turn anyone into a fitness looking freak in just 45 days. I’ve done P90X in the past, a super intense fitness program and while I have achieved amazing results in just 90 days, not even those who do P90X (except for a few bullshitters who want to fool people into joining their coaching teams) will claim such a drastic transformation unless they have done the program more than once.

SO…. what am I going to do about it besides calling it bullshit. Well, considering that not only I truly believe those people who show the 45 transformation didn’t get such results in just 45 days, but also are probably paid by the owner of the program, since they offer people to become affiliates, I decided I will do this program, committing myself 100% to the nutrition plan and workout split (like I have before with other programs), and give a complete accurate and honest review of the program.

Because I’m currently 3 weeks away of finishing the current program I’m doing (my diet has been crap, which in a way is great so I don’t have the best body/muscle definition by when I’m done with the program), on March 7 I will officially start MP45 and take a picture on a daily basis for my weekly review of the program, which will take about 6 weeks to finish? Somewhere around that. So I’m really hoping the creator of this program somehow discovered the magical workout plan that belonged to Merlin, and makes me eat my own words.

Keep tune for more on March 7

I think most people who want to become active find it pretty boring to go walking or running on the streets. While in Miami we don’t have many areas to go hiking (let’s ignore the Everglades where you can either get eaten by an alligator, a snake or mosquitos) like probably people in North Florida do, we do have some nice parks available. Still, walking could be considered a boring activity. Imagine driving 30 or 40 minutes to one of these parks just to walk for an hour and then drive back home. Well, the good news is, you could always get yourself a mountain bike and visit the trails like the one in Virginia Key.

I must admit that, while I didn’t have the courage to throw myself down from some of the obstacles, I did enjoy the whole trail and found it pretty challenging at times, which is great if you want to burn some good calories. For instance, it took me 1:30 hour to ride 2.06 miles (breaks included) and I burned a total of 1,240 calories. For me, that is definitely a good burn.

My goals now are to visit the Amelia Park next weekend, then the Oleta River Park trail and eventually the Marco Island trail. Somehow I have the feeling I will become kind of addicted to mountain biking and I will be planning a ride each weekend, unless I end up getting a kayak and I start enjoying the ocean as well.

In any case, I highly recommend anyone living in Miami or South Florida to get yourself a mountain bike and start enjoying the trails we have available, since we don’t have mountains to explorer.

While the answer could be narrowed to two very simple facts, I would dare to say it goes beyond those two reasons, but for the purpose of this blog and to avoid getting into a ridiculously long post, I’ll stick with those two, which are diet and health.

I’ve been following Josef Rakich on Instagram which got me into trying his program. I mean, considering the price and pictures of those who have tried his program, I dare to say there really wasn’t much to lose.

So, is it really worth it? That’s the question that brought you here, and here’s my answer.

IF you are one of the many people out there overwhelmed with the amount of information online where every “expert” says a different thing and you feel like you’re walking around in circles without getting any solid information or getting any results, the answer is yes. Just like I’d say yes to P90X, Insanity, the Jillian Michaels DVDs you can by at your local Walmart, etc.

IF you are looking to get your fitness to a new level, and maybe achieve the looks of those people who apparently have tried his program and look amazing? I would say you should probably look somewhere else for a different plan. And here’s why. While you will get results, there’s no question about it, based on my experience with other plans I’ve done, there are two major factors in this equation that I don’t like.

1- The workout plans are exactly the same for the most part during the 3 months of training. The one thing that changes is the amount of reps/sets. I even went from the lean option to the bulk option and the workout plan was exactly the same. Now, I personally get bored easily of the same routines after a few weeks of doing them. I usually change them between 4 and 6 weeks. With this plan, you go will stick to the same plan with no changes. Is this a bad thing? I’d say YES. Forgetting about boredom or hitting a plateau, there’s never a personalized assessment where Josef or anyone working for him looks at your pics and says, hey, you seem to be lacking of shoulder mass, or chest, so we’ll make the program for you to develop those muscles you’re lacking a little more to get you to a proportionate look. That right there is not a good thing.

2- The diet plan gives you the option to select which kind of foods you don’t like to eat. That is a good thing, the same way they provide you with how much of each food to eat per meal and the total amount of macros per meal. So far so good, BUT, anyone who knows how fitness works knows, food is the most important part of how your body composition will be affected with the exercises you do. So what I found with the meal plan is, as closed as I followed the meal plan, my body didn’t change as expected. Now, I’m not saying the meal plan is badly designed, I just believe it is a little generic in the sense, from previous experiences, based on my fitness goals, there were modifications and certain adjustments made to the plan in order to achieve the desired goals.

So in conclusion, when doing both the lean and bulk plan, I felt there was something missing with the meals, something to get better results, and the workouts got me bored even if with some exercises I got strong and with others I got better. It was the lack of variety and change that got me bored of this plan.

At the end, my results didn’t match any of those who claim they got amazing results in the 90 days. Was it my fault? I’m not sure. I dare to say it wasn’t, but who really knows.

Left home at 4am to drive up to Tampa, with enough time to get ready for the race, including setting up my GoPro camera. Temperature was around 42º by the time my race was about to start, which is not a big deal, but when you’re about to run and most probably jump in cold water, it becomes one of those “oh crap, this is going to be fun…. not” moments.

Overall, I thought the race was tougher than my Super race from last year, but I think two main factors that got me to this realization has to do with to very specific issues. The first one, right at the beginning of the race, during the second obstacle, while helping a lady jump over the wooden obstacle, the force she applied in order to reach the top wasn’t downwards but find of forward, literally throwing me to the floor and hitting my knee and wrist against the concrete floor. Although my knee hurt just at that moment, my wrist was the one with more damage, which became worse as I had to keep using my hand throughout the race. The pain became excruciating and there was nothing I could do about it… because I wasn’t going to quit and I wasn’t going to do 30 burpees just to skip each obstacle. The second issue was the amount of stairs we had to climb during 75 to 80 percent of the race. I’ve never in my life climbed so many stairs before in a single day.

I’ll be honest, while I enjoy helping others to overcome obstacles, that initial injury that cost me having to deal with so much pain and ending up not being able to use my hand for a week after the race, taught me that not always I can sacrifice myself for those around me, especially during a race. The worse that can happen during a Spartan race is, that if you can’t complete an obstacle, you’ll have to do 30 burpees, and even then you’re getting something physically positive out of it.

My goal now is to prepare and focus for next year’s Beast race, which most probably will be in Atlanta, and for once I will try to focus on timing other than recording videos with my GoPro. This along with a Tough Mudder race and smaller obstacle races will keep me busy for a while when it comes about outdoors physical activities.

I bet somewhere along those lines would be the first thing to pop up in people’s minds when reading 3000 burpees. I mean, who would even consider doing such a ridiculous amount of burpees and claim they’re sane anyway?

Well, here’s the thing, people constantly talk about how they want to get stronger, how they want better conditioning, how they don’t have time to go to the gym and still want to get in shape, but when it comes about hard work and do exercises that will have a big impact in your body, most people change their minds and decide they are not ready. The truth is, we have been ready since we decided to change our lives and get in shape, whether because you don’t like how we look, we don’t have energy, we want to improve our health, or whatever reason you have. You need to realize the biggest obstacle to get things done is our own mind and how it will try to talk us into quitting our plans to feel better about ourselves by constantly asking us which would be prefer, to lay down on a couch watching your favorite show while eating your favorite comfort food or be doing a crazy ass exercise called burpees which suck tremendously?

The reality is, our minds need as much training as our bodies do. We need to train our minds to be and stay focus on our goals, and to change the mindset of comparing what got us sick, overweight or in the current state we are today to that mindset of how worth it and happy we will be when we reach our goals.

Hard Work Pays Off! This is a true statement. While any form of exercises, including walking, is beneficial to our health and bodies, the harder you work, the more results you will see, the faster they will happen, and the stronger you will get.

So 100 burpees daily for 30 days will probably suck depending on how many you do at once, but even if you can’t do more than 5 before running out of breath, that is perfectly fine. Do sets of 5 throughout the day until you complete the 100. Each time just try to do one extra rep on random sets. Look for ways to push your body little by little, always keeping in mind everything you do today will have a bigger effect tomorrow.

The time to start is today, not next week, not next month, but today! Make the decision, stick to it, and in 30 days look back and see how much you’ve accomplished and how much you’ve improved just because you decided to join this craziness and committed to the challenge.

I personally consider re-racking weights part of my workout. I understand if one lifts very heavy, after finishing the exercise the last thing we want is to be picking up more heavy weights, especially 16, 18 or more 45 lbs plates from a leg press machine, but the way I see it is, you’ll be pushing your body even further by getting the benefit of lifting more weight but also leaving the equipment ready for others to use.

It won’t be the first time I have stopped my workout to go help women unload weight from the equipment they’re about to use because some brainless douche decided to walk away from the squat rack leaving the barbell with three 45 lbs plates on each side of the bar. Let’s say you an uneducated animal who don’t care to help other guys at the gym, but at least do it for the women who also use the equipment. Although you probably won’t care anyway if someone sees you as a walking piece of sh*t for having an attitude at the gym, but there is no reason why you shouldn’t leave the gym equipment ready the way you found it when you first were going to use it. It’s not your fucking gym!

Another issue I see all the time is how mainly guys would leave a bench dripping sweat from top to button and not taking a minute of their time to wipe the bench off. I’d like to know how they would feel if I was to stand next to them, wipe the sweat off my face with my hand and rub it on them. I’m sure their reaction won’t be a nice one. So then why the hell would you leave a bench in such condition when you’re done using it?

I think part of the blame goes to the gym and their employees. Many of this big chain gyms have signs asking members to clean after them, to re-rack weights, and yet the employees won’t move a finger to let members know they need to follow rules. I worked for a small private owned gym for almost a year, and we would walk to members and ask them if they were done they needed to re-rack the weights. I can tell you after the second time they would start doing it without being told to do so.

My only wish is that this post gets to many people and somehow get them thinking about this, and hopefully they start changing their habits at the gym.

As mentioned before, Shortcut to Shred seemed to be a promising solution to cut down or shred body fat. The concept, which is mainly based on reducing carbohydrates during a 3 phase setting, puts you on a caloric deficit, which one way or another would make anyone lose weight. Of course, the main goal is to lose body fat and little to no muscle mass, but this is where it gets tricky.

My Experience
I have to admit that, as much as I tried to stick as close as possible to the macros, I found it pretty hard to reach the amount of fats I needed to eat without affecting the protein and carbs quantities. It could have been easy to just add a spoon or two of olive or coconut oil to my meals, but I wasn’t a big fan of that idea. So other than the fats (which make for a lot of calories) I was pretty accurate with the rest of my macros.

During phase one, the amount of carbs gave me plenty of energy, not only to do the exercises in between each set, but also to lift very heavy. During phase one and two I was able to achieve new personal goals, lifting up to 315 lbs on my deadlifts, and over 800 lbs on legs press, but the motivation and happiness didn’t last long. Phase three requires to eat one third of the initial amount of carbs eaten during phase one. This, for anyone familiar of how important carbs are for energy purposes, was a major hit on my performance. My energy levels dropped dramatically affecting my workouts from the amount of weight lifted to the amount of reps, and in some cases sets. Forcing myself to reach the amount of weights I was used to lift during phase one and two became a painful experience realizing my body wasn’t capable of performing the same way without enough carbs.

One major problem with this program, and personally my biggest concern is, that while my body fat percentage dropped, I lost muscle mass during the time I did this program. This, is the one thing those of us who worked really hard for will want to avoid at all cost. I personally blame it on the constant low carbs during the third phase of the program. I think if at least there would have been some kind of cycling, it would have been the best option, not only to keep the energy and strength, but also to retain muscle mass.

Conclusion
If you are looking to drop weight, mainly from fat, but also sacrifice some muscle along the process, this program will probably be a great option. You’ll have to be mentally strong to fight the lack of desire to do cardio in between sets, especially during phase three. One thing is for sure, I wouldn’t try to do this program again, even if I was in a hurry to lose body fat in a short period of time, not unless phase three had me eating more carbohydrates.

Progress

ITBS is an overuse injury of tissues of the outer thigh and knee. The iliotibial band runs along the lateral or outside aspect of the thigh and is an important structure that stabilizes the outside of the knee as it flexes and extends. Inflammation of the IT band can occur as it crosses back and forth across the bony prominence of the femoral epicondyle as the knee flexes and extends causing pain on the outside part of the knee especially during running when the heel strikes the ground.

As I had mentioned before on my ITBFS or ITBS. What is Iliotibial Band Syndrome? I have been suffering from this for a while already. In fact, since my mid 20s I started experiencing pain on my knees, although it wasn’t until my 30s that I found out it was ITBS.

Many online articles have been written about what could be the cause, and different treatments. While in my opinion, the article I make reference too on my other post, has been one of the most complete in my personal opinion, I still didn’t find a way to get rid of my problem. After trying as many methods I could, I ended up giving up and not trying anymore.

My directed my focus towards working my legs from every possible angle, using heavy weights, trying to make them stronger and bigger. I mean, if I couldn’t run anymore, at least I wanted to have bigger lower extremities. What I didn’t know was, that by doing this I was already fighting ITBS and apparently making it go away.

Not until a couple of weeks ago, I decided to run again for warm up before my workout. Usually, with the knee straps I could get to two minutes of running before I started to get knee pain (without the straps it would be less than 2 minutes), but I noticed that somehow I ran 4 minutes and I didn’t feel any discomfort. This was without wearing the knee straps. I was surprised, but I didn’t want to push it and get to the point my knees would hurt. This stayed in my head, wondering what had happened that I didn’t get any pain. A few days after, I decided to try running 6 minutes, if possible, and see what the outcome would be. Once again, I felt no discomfort or pain at all. The excitement started to really wonder how far I could run before I would feel any pain, but my analytical mind kept me from doing something crazy and push my knees too far.

More recently I ran for 10 minutes and once again, my knees were perfectly ok with it. What is happening?, I thought. I haven’t really don’t any of the suggested therapy (stretching, foam roller, massages) but it seems my ITBS has somehow disappeared? Well, tonight I was committed to try not 15, but 20 minutes of running nonstop, which ended up being 2 miles even, and to my surprise, my kneed were absolutely fine.

I can’t tell you how excited and happy this makes me, knowing there was absolutely no discomfort during the time I was running for such a long time, at least for me. I began to realize, maybe the root of my problem was in fact weak hip abductors and glutes muscles, which I have constantly worked out since I decided to focus on my legs more than I did before. While I had done hip abductor exercises before, when trying different methods to treat the ITBS, it seems it wasn’t long enough to see any results. Now I’m basically doing 4 to 5 sets of 12 reps each using all the weight available on the machine, plus all the squats and other exercises I am doing, has been the solution to rid myself from this extremely frustrating condition.

While many treatments suggest to not stop running during the time ITBS is being treated, I eliminated running completely from my list, and it seems not running at all didn’t make a difference for me to get better. I will keep increasing the time and distance as I have an upcoming Sprint Spartan race. If it ITBS is officially gone completely, I finally see myself registering to run the Beast Spartan race in a near future.