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Shortcut to Shred Program Overview

Start dropping body fat immediately with the 6-week training regimen that's already transformed thousands of physiques.

Shortcut to Shred Program Overview

Shortcut to Shred Program Snapshot

  • Length: 6 weeks
  • Workouts per Week: 6
  • Training Split: 3-day training split repeated twice a week for six weekly workouts. Chest, Triceps, and Abs trained on Days 1 and 4; Shoulders, Leg, and Calves on Days 2 and 5; and Back, Traps, Biceps, and Forearms on Days 3 and 6.
  • Equipment: Commercial gym or well-equipped home gym.
  • Featured Techniques: Cardioacceleration, microcycle periodization, rest-pause, drop sets. 
  • Rep Ranges: Two primary rep ranges are used every week (one rep range the first three days, the other on the next three days), as follows: 9-11 and 12-15 reps per set in Weeks 1 and 4; 6-8 and 16-20 reps per set in Weeks 2 and 5; and 2-5 and 21-30 reps per set in Weeks 3 and 6.
  • Rest Periods: 60 seconds of active rest (cardioacceleration).
  • Cardio: cardioacceleration  between working sets.
  • Meal Plan: Shortcut to Shred Diet Dieting 101  or  Intermittent Fasting  to maximize fat loss.
  • Summary: Shortcut to Shred is a science-backed, six-week program designed for rapid fat loss and muscle definition. By combining cardioacceleration, periodized weight training, and intensity techniques like rest-pause drop sets, this program delivers efficient, effective results for anyone looking to shred fat and build muscle simultaneously.
  • Note: If you’re a beginner or just getting back to the gym after an extended time away (months or years), this program will likely be too intense/advanced for you. If you’re a beginner, consider my Beginner to Advanced Program before doing this program.

There are very few men and women out there who don’t want to be leaner. All of us wish we could possess impressive muscularity and a ripped set of abs. Yet unfortunately, many find that more difficult to achieve than expected.

While diet and supplements are critical for getting lean (and I’ve laid it all out for you in the Shortcut to Shred nutrition section), training is a very critical component. When it comes to training, the truth of the matter is that both weight training and cardio are necessary for dropping the most body fat in the shortest time possible. Yet in today’s fast-paced world, many people don’t have time to tack a long cardio session onto to the end of their lifting routine. Luckily, there's cardioacceleration!

Turn Fat Loss Into Overdrive With Cardioacceleration

If you aren’t familiar with cardioacceleration, I’ll bring you up to speed. It’s a form of cardio that’s changing the way everyone thinks about training. It combines weight training and weight lifting into one workout. Simply put, you do a set of weights (for example, the bench press) and then immediately follow it with one minute of cardio. Then, you immediately do another set of weights and hit another minute of cardio. You go in this manner for the whole workout, and in an hour or less you’ve lifted and done your cardio and can call it a day.

In addition to allowing you to get in and out of the gym faster, the benefits of doing cardioacceleration – both in terms of fat loss and muscle building – are even better than doing your weight lifting and cardio separately. There are a number of reasons for this. One study from the University of California-Santa Cruz found that when they had subjects do one minute of cardioacceleration between sets, the subjects experienced better muscle recovery. This is likely due to greater blood flow to the muscles, as you’re keeping your heart rate up throughout the entire workout. Increased blood flow means more nutrients and anabolic hormones are being delivered to the muscles. It can also increase muscle pump, which can lead to greater muscle growth due to the stretch it places on the cells.

Where enhanced fat loss via cardioacceleration is concerned, the most obvious reason is that you burn more calories by going back and forth between cardio and weights than by standing around after every lifting set. Another reason is that, because you’re only doing one minute of cardio at a clip, you can go more intensely than you’d be able to if you did 20-30 minutes of straight cardio. This higher intensity burns more calories during the workout as well as more calories (especially from body fat) long after the workout is over. In fact, this “afterburn” could go on for over 24 hours following the training session.

Many who are new to cardioacceleration are confused over whether it's better than HIIT (high-intensity interval training) or not. But what few realize is that cardioacceleration is HIIT. Instead of the typical HIIT, where you alternate between intervals of high-intensity exercise and rest or low-intensity exercise, with cardioacceleration you do intervals of high-intensity cardio-based

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