My Results and Thoughts on LiveFit Trainer

Just over three months ago, I decided to begin Jamie Eason’s LiveFit Trainer bodybuilding program. I had never focused on weight lifting this much before, so I was stoked to try a new type of challenge. The program taught me a lot, and I would 100% recommend it. If you’re curious how each phase went, specifically, you can find the posts below:

• LiveFit Phase 1 Recap
• LiveFit Phase 2 Recap
• LiveFit Phase 3 Recap

Since I’ve been detailing my love/hate relationship with the nutrition plan and workout schedule along the way, I wanted to share my final results and takeaways from the program!

Disclaimer #1: I completed this without a gym, which is kind of a huge part of it. I used dumbbells instead. So take my results and thoughts with a grain of salt because I didn’t complete it as it was intended. (Blog post about this to come soon, including the many exercise variations I used.)

Disclaimer #2: At the beginning of each new phase, I became more lenient on the nutrition part of this system. I also pushed a few workouts back (for extra rest days or other workouts) and did not incorporate a lot of the cardio in phase 3 due to it being very time-consuming and my body being angry (including my IT Band Syndrome).

So let’s get to my results. Although I’m not sharing before-and-after pictures, I did want to talk a little bit about the changes I noticed from the 12-week program. Here are the main three:

• I can lift significantly heavier, which feels amazing.
• My arms  and shoulders definitely look much stronger; the rest of my body looks pretty similar.
• My weight hasn’t changed much (because I didn’t alter my diet much).

As you can see, nothing necessarily groundbreaking happened. Although I look very close to how I did when I first began LiveFit, I think it’s very much worth doing. It was definitely a challenge, and I learned quite a bit by going through the heavy lifting workouts.

What I Liked:

• Continuously lifting heavier each week was a satisfying challenge.
• I was introduced to several new exercises (even though I did dumbbell variations of many).
• The schedule kept me focused and motivated to get in the workouts (which helped me cut down on unnecessary rest days).
• Each day had its own workout (though some weeks were very similar), which made it very easy to follow.
• The structure of the workouts (low weight/high reps; high weight/low reps; etc.) kept each phase interesting because it kept changing just slightly.
• The nutrition plan was very eye opening, and although I didn’t follow it strictly for all three phases, it helped me familiarize myself with portion sizes.

What I Didn’t Like:

• At first, there wasn’t any cardio; by the end, there was cardio most days of the week on top of weight lifting workouts. (It was a LOT to do every single day.)
• There was little core work throughout the entire program. (I’m used to balancing my focus on all areas of the body to improve my running.)
• The workouts got pretty long after awhile (like 1.5 to 2 hours), and some days that just wasn’t realistic.
• The nutrition plan was definitely focused on getting results, and I focused on it strictly for awhile. But after awhile, I wanted to resume the healthy (ish) diet that helps me maintain my happy weight.
• It relied on gym equipment to complete the majority of the workouts. (I obviously knew this when I began it, but it was one of the downsides as I progressed through the program.)

And I think that sums up my main thoughts. Like I said above, you can read more about n each phase by visiting their respective recap posts. If you have any questions about LiveFit, feel free to ask me! I’d be happy to share more about my experience.

Overall, I really liked the bodybuilding exercise program—and that says a lot because I didn’t even use gym equipment, which I hear makes it much more rewarding. I plan to share an entire blog post dedicated to doing LiveFit WITHOUT a gym, because I think it’s worth doing even if you just have access to dumbbells.

Moving forward, I plan to incorporate heavy lifting MUCH more into my weekly workout schedule because it was such a nice change of pace from my usual circuit workouts. In addition to this, I am excited to get back to doing circuits, running, or whatever feels right on a particular day.

Have you ever completed a workout program? What did you think?

Do you incorporate weight lifting into your workout schedule?