The James Smith Academy challenges are a series of fitness challenges designed to help individuals improve their overall fitness and health. These challenges typically last for a specific period of time, ranging from a few weeks to a few months, and consist of a combination of workout programs, nutrition plans, and lifestyle advice.
Some of the most popular James Smith Academy challenges include the 8-Week Body Transformation Challenge, the 12-Week Beach Body Challenge, and the 6-Week Fat Loss Challenge. Each challenge is designed to help participants achieve specific goals, such as losing weight, building muscle, or improving their overall fitness.You can also read James Smith Not A Diet Book.
8-Week Body Transformation Challenge
An 8-week body transformation challenge is a program designed to help individuals make significant changes to their body composition in just eight weeks. The James Smith Calculator challenge usually includes a combination of nutrition and exercise plans to help individuals lose body fat, build lean muscle mass, and improve overall health and fitness.
Here are some key components that are typically included in an 8-week body transformation challenge:
- Nutrition Plan: A healthy, balanced diet is essential for any body transformation challenge. The plan may include specific macronutrient ratios, such as high protein and low carbohydrates, to support fat loss and muscle gain.
- Exercise Plan: A workout plan that combines cardiovascular exercise and resistance training is typically included. This can include weight lifting, HIIT (high-intensity interval training), and other forms of exercise to help individuals burn calories, build muscle, and improve overall fitness.
- Accountability and Support: To help individuals stay on track and motivated, the program may include regular check-ins, progress tracking, and support from a coach or group.
- Lifestyle Changes: Along with nutrition and exercise, lifestyle changes may be recommended, such as getting enough sleep, reducing stress, and avoiding unhealthy habits like smoking and excessive drinking.
- Goal Setting: Setting specific and measurable goals is crucial for staying motivated and focused throughout the challenge. This can include goals related to weight loss, body composition, strength, and endurance.
It’s important to note that an 8-week body transformation challenge should be approached with caution and under the guidance of a qualified health professional. Rapid changes in body composition can be challenging and potentially harmful if not done safely and sustainably.You can also enroll yourself into James Smith Academy Plans.
12-Week Beach Body Challenge
Week 1:
-Create a fitness plan.
-Set a realistic goal.
-Track progress with a diet and exercise journal.
-Eat a balanced and nutritious diet.
-Drink plenty of water.
-Do at least 30 minutes of cardio each day.
-Stretch after workouts.
Week 2:
-Increase cardio to 45 minutes each day.
-Try a new workout routine.
-Focus on compound exercises.
-Start resistance training.
-Take one rest day each week.
-Start a food diary.
-Write down everything you eat.
Week 3:
-Increase cardio to an hour each day.
-Modify diet based on food diary.
-Increase resistance training.
-Do HIIT workouts.
-Keep track of daily calorie intake.
-Get enough sleep.
-Start tracking measurements.
Week 4:
-Increase cardio to an hour and a half each day.
-Add more protein to diet.
-Focus on form when doing exercises.
-Increase weights when resistance training.
-Incorporate more stretching into routine.
-Cut out processed foods.
-Take progress pictures.
Week 5:
• Workout 6 days a week
– Cardio (30 mins), Strength Training (30 mins)
• Increase the weight on your strength training exercises
• Increase your aerobic intensity by 5% each week
• Eat 5-6 healthy meals per day with a focus on lean proteins and complex carbohydrates
• Drink at least 8 glasses of water every day
Week 6:
• Continue to do cardio and strength training 6 days a week
• Increase the weight on your strength training exercises
• Increase your aerobic intensity by 5% each week
• Eat 5-6 healthy meals per day with a focus on lean proteins and complex carbohydrates
• Drink at least 8 glasses of water every day
• Add a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) session once a week
Week 7:
• Continue to do cardio and strength training 6 days a week
• Increase the weight on your strength training exercises
• Increase your aerobic intensity by 5% each week
• Eat 5-6 healthy meals per day with a focus on lean proteins and complex carbohydrates
• Drink at least 8 glasses of water every day
• Add a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) session once a week
Week 8 –
Cardio: 30 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic exercise every day
– Strength Training: Complete full body strength training workouts 3 times a week
– Nutrition: Follow a healthy meal plan with lean proteins, complex carbs, and healthy fats
– Stretch/Yoga: Stretch for 10 minutes each day and practice yoga for 15 minutes each day
Week 9 –
Cardio: 30 minutes of interval training twice a week and 30 minutes of low intensity aerobic exercise 3 times a week
– Strength Training: Complete full body strength training workouts 4 times a week
– Nutrition: Follow a healthy meal plan with lean proteins, complex carbs, and healthy fats and include 3 servings of vegetables each day
– Stretch/Yoga: Stretch for 10 minutes each day and practice yoga for 20 minutes each day
Week 10 – Cardio: 30 minutes of interval training twice a week and 30 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic exercise 3 times a week
– Strength Training: Complete full body strength training workouts 5 times a week
– Nutrition: Follow a healthy meal plan with lean proteins, complex carbs, and healthy fats and include 4 servings of vegetables each day
Week 11:
1. Increase your cardio routine to 50 minutes a day, five days a week.
2. Incorporate more advanced interval training into your cardio routine.
3. Increase the intensity of your weight-training routine by adding more challenging exercises.
4. Add two days of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) into your weekly workouts.
5. Increase the frequency of your ab exercises to four times a week.
6. Cut down on unhealthy snacks and sugary drinks even more.
Week 12: Celebrate Your Success! It’s finally time to celebrate your success! You have made it through 12 weeks of hard work and dedication, and you should be proud of your accomplishments. Take a day to enjoy yourself and all the progress you have made. Reward yourself with a day of rest and relaxation, go out for a special dinner, or treat yourself to something you have been wanting for a while. Congrats! You can also follow James Smith Workout Plan.
6-Week Fat Loss Challenge
Week 1:
• Cut down on processed and fast food.
• Start exercising at least 3 days a week.
• Track your calories and/or macros daily.
• Drink at least 8 glasses of water a day.
• Get 7-8 hours of sleep.
• Cut down on alcohol and sugary drinks.
Week 2:
• Join a gym or find an exercise routine that you enjoy.
• Incorporate interval training into your workout.
• Start a strength training routine.
• Cut out unhealthy snacks.
• Eat more protein-rich foods.
• Get into a routine of meal prepping.
Week 3:
• Try a new type of exercise.
• Increase exercise intensity.
• Eat more fruits and vegetables.
• Reduce portion sizes.
• Get creative with healthy snacks.
• Cut down on saturated fat.
Week 4:
• Increase your cardio.
• Start eating more fiber-rich foods.
• Cut back on refined carbs.
• Try mindful eating.
• Incorporate HIIT workouts.
Week 5:
• Continue with your current exercise routine and add in an extra 15-20 minutes of cardio 3-4 days a week.
• Increase the intensity of your workouts by pushing yourself harder.
• Cut out processed foods and empty calories and replace them with healthy, nutrient-dense foods.
• Eat 5-6 small meals per day and don’t skip meals.
• Drink at least 8 glasses of water each day to stay hydrated.
Week 6:
• Continue with your current exercise routine and add in an extra 20-30 minutes of cardio 3-4 days a week.
• Increase the intensity of your workouts by pushing yourself harder.
• Replace unhealthy snacks with healthy snacks such as nuts, seeds, fruits, and vegetables.
• Eat 5-6 small meals per day and don’t skip meals.
• Drink at least 8-10 glasses of water each day to stay hydrated.
• Track your progress with a food diary or fitness app.
The James Smith Academy challenges are suitable for people of all fitness levels, from beginners to experienced athletes. They are designed to be challenging but achievable, and participants are encouraged to work at their own pace and to adjust the programs to meet their individual needs and goals.
In addition to the workout and nutrition programs, participants in the James Smith Academy challenges also have access to a supportive online community of coaches and fellow participants. This community provides encouragement, advice, and accountability, helping participants stay motivated and on track throughout the challenge.
The Bro Split
What I call the ‘bro split’ is the overly popular and, unfortunately, widely accepted method of separating training into certain body parts and allocating an entire day to them, like this: Arms Day Back Day Legs Day Chest Day Shoulders Day Embarrassingly, I’ll admit that in my former professional corporate life I’d keep five bits of paper with these headings on them in a little pot and get Lynn, who sat opposite me, to pick what I was going to train that day.
(You can see how dull my work life was – the randomness of this brought me a little excitement for my lunch break.) This system has conveniently gained popularity by fitting into the work week for the gym bro (formerly me) who wants to lift and get so large and swollen he’d be likely to call himself ‘Lord Swoledermort’.
One of the patterns you’ll start to realize in this part of the book is that much of the context has derived from anecdotal belief and not from the actual science. You could say largely from the beliefs of a younger, more naive version of … me. The ‘bro split’ does have a place for some very experienced bodybuilders. Imagine that a gym session tailored towards muscle growth can last 45–80 minutes – that could easily be the right amount of time for a very experienced gym ‘bro’ to get enough stimulus on his, let’s say, ‘Arms Day’ for growth.
The main issue is that Linda from Norwich is now having a Shoulders Day set in her training regime, and I want to bring the science to light a bit here to stop people from daft programming or, even worse, dull programming, which is going to get Linda back to daft home workouts faster than you can shake a sheep’s tail. Over the years I have had to remind many personal trainers that they are not their clients.
All too often, I look around and I see the trainer getting their client to do their own workout, just slightly modified for the person paying them. Now, you should realize that a lot of PTs are also bodybuilders, many of whom practise a lot of pseudoscience. And another thing to remember is that you can get strong with bad form and you can get in good shape with poor practices.
I mean, you could literally only eat chicken and broccoli and only do a bro split and, in enough time, I’m sure you’d look great – it’s just not necessary, that’s my biggest concern. Training a body part in a bro fashion is not BAD, it’s just not quite getting your ‘bang for your buck’, nor is it the optimal way of doing things for what I perceive to be the reader of this book. Another thing to take into account is that unfortunately, muscle physiology does not play by the rules of the seven-day week.
For this reason, training a body part – say, legs once a week – is not damaging; it’s just not allowing the person to reach their full potential. This is my opinion, of course, so let me tell you a James Smith story. I’m lying back in the dentist’s chair in Sydney. My dentist flashes me the background on his phone in a discussion about training. I notice the bloke is in amazing condition.
I think to myself, Holy shit – my dentist is in better shape than I am. When he takes his tools out my mouth, I compliment him on his ‘rig’, as I’d call it. He says, ‘Oh, that’s not me – that’s, in fact, the body I want.’ I proceed to let him know why he should not have that there, comparison being the thief of joy and all that. I ask him about his current split, and lo and behold, it’s the omnipresent ‘bro split’.
My brain neurons fire and my finest skill comes to light as I decide to create a flossing analogy. So I say to my dentist: hypothetically, every minute of flossing represents a set completed of an exercise on a body part. So I floss for twenty-one minutes, representing twenty-one sets of an exercise, let’s say legs, for instance. Now, twenty-one sets of legs is a fairly normal amount for a 45– 80-minute ‘bro legs’ session.
It may be four to five sets of squats, four to five sets of deadlifts or Romanian variants. It could be four sets of standing calves, four sets of seated calves and some leg extensions or glutes work to finish. You could walk out of the gym like John Wayne and tweet about how much of a hero you are.§ Twenty-one minutes of flossing per week is enough to arouse any dentist. Until, that is, I say that I intend to floss the full twenty-one minutes on just one day a week.
I then propose to my dentist the idea of flossing instead the same amount of time overall, but three times a week for seven minutes a go. It’s the same amount of flossing – all I’d do is increase the frequency, and we’d see a superior return on oral hygiene, right? Now, oral hygiene and muscle growth are not identical, but you get the idea.
Rather than doing an hour of legs, where fatigue can kick in very soon (especially in the relatively untrained), it’s a better idea to allocate smaller periods of time to accomplish the stimulus we would like. I personally wouldn’t advocate anyone do a bro split unless they are very experienced or they’re on anabolic steroids (which I also do not recommend).
Looking at the science, it does actually slightly contradict my theory: ‘Under volume-equated conditions, Resistance Training frequency does not seem to have a pronounced effect of gains in muscle mass.’ However, I still have a reason for advocating a more frequent split, which isn’t discussed in the above conclusion. I feel that in untrained and even intermediate trainees, greater training frequency can allow not only a greater volume of training each week, but an improved intensity, without being undone by fatigue, not to mention the importance of enjoyment when training for the untrained and intermediates to encourage adherence and sustainability i.e. people enjoying their workouts.
To conclude, although matching volume (the number of sets performed in a week) is the key underlying factor in muscle growth, it’s worth noting that increasing the frequency of sessions (how many times a body part is trained) may not, on its own, elicit more muscle growth. However, the effects of a more sensible split and a higher intensity could – and usually do – lead to increased volume of training before fatigue sets in. I think it’s also very important for us to realize that not everyone either wants to or enjoys training an entire body part for the duration of a session, even if they’re physically able to.
If someone’s first session with a PT consists of training a body part for an hour to extreme fatigue, I very much think that could reduce the chances of that person coming back. 31 So let’s say Leg-Day Lewis has just welcomed Linda into the gym for her Shoulders Day. Linda is relatively untrained, and ten minutes or even four to five sets is more than enough for muscle growth to occur in her shoulders. Now, my problem is not with people training, especially not weight training.
I just have an issue with the fact that it could be done better without much having to change for the person in question. Let’s say Linda comes to me and asks on the spot what I would get her to do instead. I could prescribe her a training split that looks a little like this:
Monday (20–30 minutes) 4x sets squats 3x sets leg extensions (then train another area of choice)
Wednesday (20–30 minutes) 4x sets barbell hip thrusts 3x sets Romanian deadlifts (then train another area of choice)
Friday (20–30 minutes) 3x Bulgarian split squats 2x lying hamstring curls 2x seated abductions (then train another area of choice)
Linda would see the same volume (twenty-one sets), but with a more even split. This means more frequent bouts of stimulation and recovery. Not only that, but her intensity can remain higher during a shorter period of work. Now, I’ve assumed Linda’s goals here, but with only perhaps twenty minutes taken up, it means she can train other body parts on the same day.
Push movements include bench press, shoulder press and dips.¶ Pull movements are rows, upright rows and pulldowns. She now can train legs (above) for twenty minutes three times a week and do the same with push movements (chest and triceps) and pull movements (back and biceps). Poor Linda nearly dropped a week’s wages to go with Lewis to train shoulders for an hour. Instead she could have done seven very difficult sets of legs, seven very difficult sets of push and seven very difficult sets of pull. It would take the same time as the twenty-one sets of shoulders that Lewis had planned.
James Smith-Personal Fitness Trainer
James Smith is a well-known personal trainer and fitness coach based in the UK. He has gained a large following on social media, particularly on Instagram and YouTube, for his straightforward approach to health and fitness, often challenging mainstream ideas and advocating for evidence-based practices.
James is known for his no-nonsense approach to training and nutrition, emphasizing the importance of consistency and adherence to a sustainable lifestyle rather than quick-fix solutions. He has written several books on fitness and nutrition, including “Not a Diet Book” and “The Grind Bible”, which have become popular among his followers.
In addition to his online presence, James runs a coaching and training business, where he works with clients to help them achieve their fitness goals through customized workout and nutrition plans. He is also a frequent speaker at fitness conferences and events, where he shares his expertise and insights on the latest trends and practices in the industry.