As promised, I'm keeping you updated on the next phase of my training. Over the past few months, I've been taking part in an abs exercise program that focused on exposing the ab muscles by limiting calories, high intensity interval training, and intense resistance training.

If you haven't seen it already, you can find the results here.

During my journey through the abs program, there's always the risk of losing muscle. There's the initial muscle growth as your muscles are stimulated by the different exercise scheme, but after that, the calorie deficit and the high intensity training results in muscle loss. That's just the nature of such programs.

And now it's time for me to switch it up a bit. I will now focus on regaining the muscle I've lost over the months but of course, I'm going to do it in a Mighty Grasshopper fashion. Of course I have no intention of getting "huge" or "bulking up" - I just want to fill out my clothes a bit more but stay within the same t-shirt size.

The goal: I have 2 months to build muscle within workout duration of only 7 minutes.

Yep, 7 minutes of weight/resistance training, 5 days a week.

That's it.

Sceptical? I know I am. But I'm going to give it a try.

I will be tracking my progress based on the weight/resistance I'm using, as well as reps I can complete within each workout. I have to admit, I really look forward to cutting down my workouts to only 7 minutes.

How can a workout be squeezed into 7 minutes? Is this even possible? Yes. As long as you keep 3 things in mind:

1. Fatigue the muscles

Not only are you stressing your muscles, but you're continuously improving either in terms of increasing resistance or repetitions.

2. Visualize

Apparently, it's not how much you lift but how much your mind believes to be lifting. A lot of the stimulation on muscles in neuronal - meaning that it relies on your nervous system, not just the stress you put on your muscles. By keeping the mind in the game, you're really creating that nervous connection awareness to stimulate muscle growth.

3. Get in the zone

This is about being in a state of physical and mental awareness where you're just unstoppable. Either it was at work, where you were so focussed on the projects or problems at hand and you just powered through the work with ease. Or perhaps you were playing basketball and you couldn't miss a basket. Perhaps in your martial arts training, the attackers just seemed to move slower than normal. This is about being in the zone. In order to get the most out of 7 minutes, you'll need to be in the zone.

Quite interesting stuff isn't it? I'm going to be my own proof that it works, or it doesn't. Stay tuned!

For those of you interested, you can find the program I'm using here and I strongly encourage you to join me on this new journey.