45 Year Old Gareth Transformation Secrets Revealed

A Project Manager in Finance who lived off restaurant food and weekend boozing with his mates made an incredible transformation at ONE in just 12 weeks.

Gareth, who is a manager in the finance industry in Hong Kong came to ONE with the goal to gain back his strength after a nasty shoulder injury from playing rugby. Not only did we achieve this but we also got him into the best shape of his life in just 12 weeks.

Summary

Transformation Time - 12 Weeks

Body Weight - 107kg > 93kg

Body Fat - 27% > 12%

Waist Size - 42” > 32’

Challenges

With a very hectic schedule and demanding job, Gareth would often enjoy his weekends socialising which involved eating out and the occasional booze. The weekends would usually put his weekly caloric intake into a surplus so we had to figure a way of manipulating his food and drink choices so that he was able to stay in a calorie deficit.

3 Pillars that Determined Gareth’s Success

Having a Game Plan - We only had 12 weeks with Gareth as he planned a long trip back home to the UK, so we were determined to get him in top shape by then. We built out his whole cardio and workout schedule so he knew exactly what was coming in the weeks to come.

To summarize the plan, we started with very little cardio in week 1 with only 2x Low Intensity Steady State cardio sessions 20mins each and training 3x a week with us at ONE. As the weeks progressed, we ramped up his LISS cardio sessions by 5-10mins each week, introducing a HIIT session per week, while also increasing his weight training volume at ONE as the weeks went on. It sounds pretty intense but remember we ONLY had 12 weeks so we had to really knuckle down and get the work done.

Meal Prep - We needed to make Gareth’s job as stress free as possible due to his busy schedule so we recommended meal prep company Nutrition Kitchen as his choice of nutrition for the next 12 weeks. This made his life so much easier taking out all the guesswork for him.

Keeping It Enjoyable - What really pushed Gareth to achieve this amazing result in such a short time was visually seeing his body change week to week. We would take progress pictures every week along with skinfold measurements. Gareth would be motivated by the amount of progress he was making week to week, which kept his head in the game and sticking to the plan 100%.

Diet

Calories - In order to drop a tonne of body fat in just 12 weeks, we started with an aggressive deficit of just 2100kcal. Gareth weighed in on his first day at ONE at 107kg holding onto 27% body fat so we were not worried about retaining muscle at this point but to lose as much initial body fat as possible early on. As Gareth got leaner we were more cautious on retaining as much muscle on his frame.

Macros - For the whole 12 weeks we went with a low carb high fat approach which he felt completely fine on throughout the journey. This was provided by Nutrition Kitchen’s 3 Low Carb Meals per day. Protein was kept consistent at 200g supplemented by 2 scoops of whey protein per day.

Supplementation and Water

Whey Protein

Multivitamins

Fish Oil

Curcumin

ProBiotics

4 Litres of water per day

Training

With Gareth’s training we did a GBC (German Body Composition) Style approach which consisted of 3x Full Body Sessions a week where we were able to hit each muscle group more than 2x per week for optimal training frequency. From his initial assessment session we established that his shoulder was still under rehab so we avoided all heavy overhead pressing movements and went for light isolation work with higher reps when training his shoulders. Coming from a rugby background we knew Gareth was able to get really strong so we really put a lot of attention in progressive overload which was well achieved even in a calorie deficit.

The staple exercises we kept in Gareth’s program was the Trap Bar Deadlift, Bench Press, and Split Squat. We got real good at these movements and focused on pushing for big numbers while executing the exercises with perfection. Here is what we achieved:

Trap Bar Deadlift:

First Week - 120kg x10

Final Week - 180kg x10

Bench Press:

First Week - 70kg x10

Final Week - 90kg x10

Split Squat:

First Week - 12.5kg x10

Final Week - 30kg x10

Here is an example of how Gareth’s program looked in Week 1:

A1: Trap Bar Deadlift 4x8-10

A2: Incline DB Press 4x 8-10

B1: Leg Press 4x10-12

B2: Wide Grip Lat Pulldown 4x10-12

C1: Walking Lunges 3x15

C2: DB Bicep Curls 3x15

D1: Leg Extension 3x15

D2: Assault Bike 3x 30sec