Now that the weather is awesome, and staying awesome, you’re probably out and about constantly. You’re eating things that you “shouldn’t,” drinking things that you “shouldn’t,” and missing more workouts than you “should.” Wow, that’s a lot of should and should nots. It’s enough to make a chore out of fitting in workouts and staying on a diet.

Summer shouldn’t be that stressful! So, what do you do? Don’t worry. There’s a way to maintain your muscle and strength levels, as well as stay lean, despite eating and drinking like a pig.

Quick Workouts, Focused on Compound Exercises

You can easily get away with doing just a couple of resistance-training workouts per week when you are just looking to maintain muscle and strength levels. Now, this workout strategy won’t cause you to put on a ton of muscle mass, nor will it be very likely to cause you to get a lot stronger (although, both of these things may happen). The idea here is that you’re trying to maintain the level you’re at. And if you’ve been working hard on the diet and training up until now, you should be in a great position to just enjoy the body you’ve built.

We’re going to focus on compound exercises. These are exercises that recruit many different muscle groups with one exercise. So, you won’t find isolation exercises like bicep curls going on here. But that doesn’t mean your biceps won’t get worked. They just won’t be worked by themselves. We’ll hit all the major muscle groups, which will keep you looking great all summer long.

Workout 1: Strength Maintenance

Keep the weight relatively high, and the rest periods short. We’re going to use antagonistic exercises that work opposite muscle groups. That way, you can be working one muscle group, while the other one rests. If you have never worked out this way before, you will find it to be much more intense than usual. Until you get used to it, you may find yourself using less weight than usual, or even stepping down in weight on each set. That’s okay. It just means that you were challenging yourself and not using weight that was too light!

Alternate exercises, and keep the rest periods to no more than 1 minute. And that includes the time it takes to change weight. So, you would do one set of bench press, take maybe 15 seconds to change the weight for the rows, and rest another 40 seconds or so while you get ready to do the rows.

Group 1, 5 sets, 5 reps per exercise:

1) Dumbbell Flat Bench Press

2) Dumbbell Bent-Over Row

Group 2, 5 sets, 5 reps:

1) Military Press

2) Pull-ups/Lateral Pull-downs (Pull-ups are preferred, but if you cannot do them for some reason, then use the lateral pull-down machine)

Group 3, 5 sets, 5 reps for the squat, 1 hold of plank per set:

1) Squat

2) One continuous minute of plank

After this, get on some kind of cardio equipment, whether it’s an elliptical machine, treadmill, exercise bike, or whatever else. You’re going to do 20 minutes of interval training. That means you’re going to push yourself for 24 seconds, and then rest for 36 seconds. Make sure that you get your heart rate up to at least 80% of your maximum (90% of your max is better!). Do those intervals for 20 minutes, and then you’re done!

Workout 2: Size maintenance

We’re going to use the same alternating exercise strategy here that we did in the first workout. The difference is that the weight will be a little lighter, and we’ll do fewer sets, but more reps per set.

Group 1, 3 sets, 8 reps:

1) Incline Bench Press

2) Seated Cable Row

Group 2, 3 sets, 8 reps:

1) Dumbbell Shoulder Press

2) Cable Crossover

Group 3, 3 sets, 12 reps:

1) Walking Dumbbell Lunges (12 reps per leg)

2) Hanging Leg Raise (hold each rep as long as you can)

Afterward, we’ll do the same 20 minutes of High Intensity Interval Training that we did in the first workout.

Each of these workouts should have you in an out of the gym in about an hour. And you only need to do each workout once per week. This will be enough to keep you in maintenance mode. The only caveat is that this only works if you’re staying active. It won’t be as effective if you just sit around all day doing nothing else. But who wants to do that during the summer??

Diet is the most important part

But by “diet,” I don’t mean not indulging in those great foods and drinks that are at the lake, beach, cookouts, or wherever. You can still eat and drink those foods. You just have to make up for it somewhere else. If you overindulge one day, you need to “underindulge” on another.

Let’s say you need about 1800 calories every day (your BMR). One day, you eat 3000 calories. Sounds bad, right? After all, that’s nearly double your daily calorie requirement.

It’s a simple fix: Just fast for a few hours the next day. It’s not as difficult as it sounds, and the longer you fast, the less hunger you will feel.

Here’s my strategy:

I will start timing my fast from the last time I ate, which is usually an hour or two before bedtime. Then, add in 8 hours or so of sleep, and I’m already up to 10 hours. That’s half of my fasting time already!

I usually wait at least an hour after waking before hitting the gym. That gives me time to get really awake and get the blood flowing. My stomach is pretty grouchy at this point, but no worries. I just drink a large glass of water, which takes the edge off.

Then, I’ll hit the gym. The beauty of this is that when you go workout, the blood flows away from your stomach, which automatically makes you feel less hungry. The idea here is not to do tons of steady-state cardio on a treadmill or elliptical. Lots of steady-state cardio has been proven to cause people to eat more food and be less active. That’s not what we want.

The key is to integrate resistance training alongside some interval training. This way, we can keep your workouts short, and you can get away with doing less over the summer when you’re more active, anyway. I find that I’m not really that hungry for up to 4 hours after completing a resistance training workout.

Adding all of this time up, you can easily get to 18-22 hours of fasting. It just takes some discipline. Just because you feel hungry doesn’t mean you have to eat.

Just pick a day when you’re busy. I know it seems counter-intuitive to fast on a day that you work out, but it’s all part of staying busy. Many times, we just eat when we’re bored, instead of when we are truly hungry.

Combine this workout strategy with this intermittent fasting, and you can get away with eating things that you shouldn’t, drinking things that you shouldn’t, and not getting to the gym as often as you should. You can keep the body you’ve already built and when all the activity dies down, you can return to your regular workout routine. You shouldn’t feel guilty for enjoying yourself this summer. As long as you’re utilizing these strategies, you don’t have to feel as if you’re not doing enough. Life is short! Live it!

-Drew

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