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Thinner Leaner Stronger: Ultimate Female Body by Mike Matthews
Intermediate TRAINING PLAN
Started by 42 users this month
"No matter your age, your genetics – you absolutely, positively can have the lean, sexy body that you dream about."
Started by 42 users this month
“No matter your age, your genetics – you absolutely, positively can have the lean, sexy body that you dream about.”
Thinner Leaner Stronger (TLS), by Mike Matthews is often called the ultimate guide to getting fit. Packed with scientifically-backed methods and a no-nonsense approach to nutrition and exercise.
The best part? It works.
Over 300,000 women have followed this plan, and tens of thousands have applied its teachings and now have beautiful new bodies to show for it. So you’re in good company.
WorkoutLabs has partnered with Mike Matthews to offer you Phase 1 of the Thinner Leaner Stronger training program right here, as part of your Fit membership. Once you’ve read the book and studied its principles, add the program to your calendar and get to work earning your dream physique! 💪
"We who cut mere stones must always be envisioning cathedrals".
In Thinner Leaner Stronger, our primary goal is muscle and strength gain, so there’s only one type of phase. It lasts nine weeks and consists of two parts:
- Eight weeks of hard training designed to maximize muscle and strength gain.
- One week of deloading or resting to facilitate recovery from the previous eight weeks of hard training.
We offer two options of the TLS training program:
The 3-Day Routine:
- Lower Body (Legs and Glutes)
- Upper Body and Core
- Lower Body and Pull (Legs and Back)
The 5-Day Routine:
- Lower Body (Legs and Glutes)
- Push and Core
- Pull
- Upper Body and Core
- Lower Body (Legs and Glutes)
You’ll probably notice that both of the routines emphasizes the lower body but provides enough upper-body work to ensure it doesn’t fall behind in development.
All Thinner Leaner Stronger workouts follow the same formula: 2 to 3 major muscle groups trained along with appropriate warm-up sets as needed. 8 to 10 reps are targeted on each hard set (on most exercises), 9 to 15 hard sets per workout.
Ideally, take 2 to 4 minutes of rest between hard sets.
Furthermore, it’s generally a good idea to do your hardest exercises first in your workouts, followed by the second hardest and so forth, because you always have the most energy and focus in the beginning of your workouts.
Practically speaking, this means starting with your hardest compound exercises and finishing with your easier isolation exercises.
For instance, if a pull workout is going to include deadlifting (and it should), you'd want to do that before barbell or dumbbell rows. If a lower-body workout includes squats, lunges, and lying leg curls, you'd want to do them in that order (from hardest to easiest).
Most people who follow this routine train Monday through Friday and take the weekends off, but feel free to incorporate your off days however you'd like. The important thing is that you do each of the workouts every seven days and in the order given.
One caveat, however, is that you would want to include at least one day of rest between workouts 5 and 1, as doing these workouts on back-to-back days is counterproductive.
Your leg muscles are the largest muscle group in your body and thus need more time to recover than smaller muscle groups that can survive daily beatings, like the abs or calves.
For example, if you need to train on the weekends due to your schedule or lifestyle, you might train Monday (lower body), Tuesday (push and core), and Wednesday (pull), rest Thursday, and then train Friday (upper body and core) and Saturday (lower body), and rest Sunday.
We don’t recommend changing anything in the middle of a training phase unless due to injury, traveling, or some other pressing circumstance. Otherwise, stick with the same workouts for eight weeks before making exercise substitutions or rearrangements.
Good luck. Have fun. And enjoy the body - and life-changing transformation that awaits you!
