Good morning everyone and as always, happy Thursday.

As I mentioned last week; two weeks ago my first child was born! And while it has been a magical and amazing few weeks, needless to say his birth has had a significant impact on my normal routines.

My normal sleep routine has been totally off (Total shocker right?!) My normal weekly schedule is totally up in the air. And I have to adjust my daily schedule on a regular basis.

And as a result my workouts and my diet have really suffered.

Now I’m brining this up because when you experience an event that significantly impacts your normal sleep cycle, weekly and daily schedules, and requires a lot of your time, energy and focus, it is going to significantly impact your workouts and diet too.

And one of the keys to building and maintaining a lean, strong, healthy and great looking body is having the ability to adjust and adapt your workouts, diet and mental approach during times like these.

And let me be clear. Big life events are inevitable. Some you can see coming. Some you can’t. But either way big things are going to happen. And when they do, if you can’t adapt your workouts and dietary program accordingly, you’re either going to drive yourself completely crazy trying to maintain your normal workout and dietary routines or you are going to fall off your exercise and dietary routines completely.

And if you want to build and maintain a lean, strong, healthy, and great looking body, you simply cannot fall off your exercise and dietary programs for long periods of time. Especially not repeatedly.

During times when your schedule and energy levels are off, you need to start by refocusing your mental approach. Change from what I call a progress mindset, one in which you are actively pushing to drive your body forward, to a maintenance or regression minimization mindset. A mindset in which you are either trying to simply maintain the progress you have already made or even more basically, minimize the amount of lean muscle and strength you are going to lose and body fat you are going to gain.

(That’s the mindset I’m in now.)

With regard to your workouts, be ready to decrease the number of days you workout and the amount of time you spend per workout.

You might not need to do both. And depending on your schedule one or the other may benefit you more. But in all likelihood you won’t be able to dedicate the same amount of time to your workouts and you must adjust accordingly.

And prepare yourself to move away from days focused on specific parts of the body and prepare for more general workouts.

For instance, with the birth of my son I’ve scaled back from a four day workout routine with an upper body / lower body split to a three day total body routine.

In addition, I’m prepared to scale back my workouts from around 70 minutes per workout to as little as 45 minutes per workout, if need be.

Next and this is especially important if you are not sleeping much, when its time to do the resistance training component of your workout program, utilize higher rep / lower weight schemes.

Performing sets of 1-5 repetitions (Even 5-8 repetitions) with very heavy weight is neurologically very strenuous and you need to be getting solid regular sleep to be able to safely execute these types of heavy lifts and recover from these types of workouts.

If you are not getting regular solid sleep, utilize higher rep / lower weight sets. Sets with rep ranges around 10 or more. These rep ranges are easier to handle and recover from with less sleep than heavier sets.

Regarding your diet, out of the three areas of focus, I actually think maintaining a good diet is probably the easiest.

This might sound weird, but in my opinion there are so many healthy whole food providers around now, that maintaining a healthy diet is as simple as going on seamless.com and ordering from the best high quality food providers in your neighborhood.

(I have been able to get my diet back on track, and fully back on track, far faster than I have been able to get my workout routine back on track).

Alright everyone – that’s it for today.

So remember big life events are inevitable and will significantly disrupt your normal routines.

And if you want to build a lean, strong, healthy and great looking body you have to adapt your mental approach, workout routines and dietary routines accordingly.

If you don’t – you won’t be able to maintain yourself through these inevitable and logistically difficult times.

As always,

To our health

Your exercise and dietary coach

Zach Moore

And everyone, if you found today’s article insightful, inspiring or enlightening and you have a friend, family member, colleague or peer who you think would benefit from what we’ve talked about here today, pass on this email please.

One of the best things you can do for those you care about is helping them to build a healthy and great looking body.  A body that is strong, capable and moves without pain and a body in which they feel confident and happy.