Meet Dana. She’s a 68-year-old semi-retired CFO, and grandma of 2. Just about 2 years ago, she was 26 pounds heavier than now, and struggling with her fitness. Fast forward to now, and she’s 2 dress sizes smaller, much stronger, and way more confident.
How did she do all that? That’s exactly what we’ll cover in this article. But if you want to hear Dana tell her own story, check out this 2-minute video:
And if you want similar results for yourself, we have a special program called “fitness over 50.” To see whether this program is right for you, just fill out the application form on our home page. Doing so does not obligate you to anything. It’ll simply set up a quick, 10–15-minute chat where we’ll discuss your current situation, and figure out whether our services are for you. There’s no pressure or sales pitch.
Dana’s Life Before
Dana is an accountant by trade, and is now semi-retired, but working for herself as a CFO (chief financial officer).
She’s a very successful professional, but as often happens, driven, smart professionals often trade in their health for their career.
This was certainly the case with Dana. She found herself 26 pounds heavier than she should be, and 2 dress sizes above where she felt comfortable. She also didn’t feel particularly toned or strong.
Usually, when people find themselves in this position, they don’t go to a personal trainer first. They try DIY (do-it-yourself) approaches, like different diets, and haphazard workouts.
That’s indeed what Dana has tried.
She was going to the gym, but didn’t really see the fruits of her labour. She was spending time, but not getting the results she was after. Frustrating.
She’s also tried different diets, including low carb, no carb, the soup diet, Weight Watchers, and others. Despite 40 years of trying, nothing really worked long term.
See, the problem wasn’t the diet. That was just a surface-level problem. Every diet works. If you stick to it. But that’s the big “if.” Sticking to it was the hard part. Every approach lacked accountability.
After inevitably every attempt she had failed, she felt frustrated at herself for not being consistent and prioritizing her own wellbeing.
After all, accountability seems so simple. It doesn’t require advanced knowledge, and yet, that’s the biggest reason diets fail – not because they’re not nutritionally sound. But simply because we don’t stick to them.
After 40 years of failed attempts, she decided that finally, accountability was worth paying for.
Fast forward a few years, and Dana had now been getting my newsletter for a while. She liked that I wasn’t a fly-by-night personal trainer (I’ve been a personal trainer since 2006), and that I have extremely rigorous criteria for my staff. I don’t just hire any random personal trainer. I only hire the best.
So at that point, I set up Dana with one of my top trainers, Deanna, and they got to work.
Dana’s Exercise Program
Here are some of the highlights of Dana’s exercise program:
Format
Deanna has Dana using circuits What are circuits? It’s a way of organizing training. It means moving from one exercise to the next, before going back to the first exercise for a second time.
There are several different ways of organizing training. The most common of which is something called “straight sets.” That is – you do an exercise. Then rest for 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Repeat that exercise. Rest again. Repeat the exercise for a third time. Rest a third time. Move on to the next exercise.
While there’s a time and place for straight sets, it makes less sense for someone trying to lose fat. Why? For two main reasons:
- In a 1-hour workout, you spend just as much (if not more) time resting as you do actually doing the exercise.
- Fatigue accumulates from one set to the next, and performance really drops.
Circuits solve both of those problems. By choosing several exercises for unrelated muscle groups, while one muscle is working, a different muscle is resting. An example of this would be leg extensions (which work the quads – the front of the thighs) with lat pulldowns (which work the mid-back and arms). While the quads are working, the mid-back and arms are resting. While the mid-back and arms are working, the quads are resting.
This maximizes the amount of workout time actually working out and not resting in between sets.
Because working the mid-back and arms is considered rest for the quads, the resting muscle group inevitably gets more rest than if we were doing straight sets, so performance doesn’t drop as much between the first and last sets.
Very efficient. We like efficiency.
Exercise Selection
When I look at other personal trainers’ exercise programs, I see complete neglect of entire muscle groups. While there’s a time and a place for it (for example, if there’s an injury, or someone is specializing in a certain muscle group for whatever reason), when I ask why, it’s often due to a combination of neglect, and a lack of knowledge of basic anatomy. I don’t hire those personal trainers, as I talk about extensively in my article on my hiring process.
Deanna covered all of the major muscle groups.
The majority of the exercises also focused on what’s called “multi-joint exercises.” Those are exercises that work more than one muscle at the same time. Again – we like efficiency. An exercise like squats works both the quads and glutes simultaneously. That cuts the workout time in half, compared to doing one exercise for the quads, and a second for the glutes.
Some examples of the exercises used were:
- Lat pulldowns
- Stepdowns
- Glute bridges
- Chest flyes
- Calf raises
- Rows
These are just the highlights of Dana’s program. There were more elements to it, and it evolved over time (she didn’t stay on this program forever).
Furthermore, if you just read about the exercises, you’d miss the “secret sauce” of the exercise program – the progression model, and the workout-by-workout adjustments that were made based on Dana’s progress from the previous series of workouts, energy/fatigue levels, and more. After all, no exercise program should be a static program, where you’re doing the same exercises for the same weights, sets and reps every single time. An exercise program should be dynamic, intelligently, purposefully, and systematically changing the exercise variables to move the client forward… as opposed to haphazardly changing the program whenever you feel like it, without rhyme or reason… like a lot of personal trainers do.
Dana’s Results
Methods are nice, but results are even nicer. So what kinds of results did Dana achieve? Exactly what she was looking for:
- She dropped 26 pounds
- That corresponded to 2 dress sizes (from size 6 to 4)
But besides the fat loss results, she made some great improvements in strength:
- Her lat pulldowns improved from 40 to 60 lbs. So her arms and back are stronger.
- Her leg curls increased from 15 pounds, up to 35 – so her hamstrings (backs of the thighs) are stronger.
- Her squats improved from nothing to 30 pounds. So her thighs are stronger.
- Her rows improved from 35 to 50 pounds – so her mid-back muscles are stronger
Dana’s Obstacles
Lest you think that success was easy to achieve for Dana, it wasn’t. There were some obstacles along the way, like:
- Dana travels a lot. Sometimes, she doesn’t exercise at all when she’s gone, sometimes she doesn’t have access to all the equipment that she has at home, and sometimes, she does, and sticks to it.
- Her husband had a surgery, and she had to take care of him as her top priority.
Yet, despite those very real-world obstacles, she was able to achieve such great results. The lesson is that you don’t need to be perfect to make excellent progress. Consistency in the long-term trumps short-term perfection.
How Dana’s Life is Different Now
How is Dana’s life different now that she’s much leaner, and significantly stronger? Pretty dramatically.
- Every health marker of hers improved. She used to have slightly elevated blood pressure. That normalized (it’s now around 115/74). She also used to be a prediabetic. That’s no longer the case.
- She can now travel to distant destinations, and not be limited by her fitness levels. Over her time with us, she’s travelled to Japan, Chile, Argentina and Peru. Previously, she’d be out of breath on rigorous hikes, and would need to take frequent breaks. Now, she can walk for hours on uneven terrain, without getting out of breath or taking a break.
- She’s also more confident about life in general, and her ability to take on new challenges, take care of her loved ones, etc.
- Additionally, she’s a lot more toned.
Overall, we’re very proud of Dana and how far she’s come. If you want similar results for yourself, we have a special program called “fitness over 50.” To see whether this program is right for you, just fill out the application form on our home page. Doing so does not obligate you to anything. It’ll simply set up a quick, 10-15 minute chat where we’ll discuss your current situation, and figure out whether our services are for you. There’s no pressure or sales pitch.
