My Experience with Kayla Itsines's Bikini Body Guide
She has taken over the virtual fitness world. In barely a year, she had become the international fitness guru of literally milions of girls thorughout the entire world. Kayla Itsines's successful training program had touched and changed the life of so many people around here that it's difficult to ignore her.
I discovered her two years ago, summer 2013 to be precises and she was barely famous within Australia at that time (she haven't published her first BBG yet!) I was immediately hooked by her personality, her genuine kindness and her genuine desire to help girls getting healthy and fit. To be honest, she was my main motivation and inspiration when I decided to become a personal trainer because I really liked the message and the philosophy she shared with her clients and her Instagram followers. But, despite all this, I never purchased her guides because I was honestly fine with my own training routine. I saw her grow and evovlve, gathering more and more followers and amazing girls, I saw all the bbgsisters transforming, getting even more amazing. But I stayed away of the slowly growing frenzy.
One year ago, a blogger mentioned she was doing the BBG1 and I was super happy to see someone outside Australia knowing her and her program. This blogger mentioned how hard Kayla's workouts were and this convinced me to buy the first training guide (with the HELP nutrition guide because I was curious to know her advices, not because I felt like I needed them). I did BBG1 and purchased BBG2 immediatly when it went out.
At first I really enjoyed the results, I gained strength on the upper body (yay to guns!) and I felt my stamina increase. I struggled with the arms workouts and sometimes with the legs ones (though never with the abs which tend to bore me). I made it through the first BBG, took a break and get back to my routines. Then I did it again afterwards to get ready for BBG2 (though I only went thourgh the workouts once making it lasts only 6 weeks instead of 12). I did week one and two of BBG2 (the first kaylamovement had just begun on IG) and gave up. I was getting bored of the workouts, always the same exercises, always the same ways. I longed for my own designed routine that I planned the day before just how I felt it without any strains (I admit I might have adapt the BBG routine to suit me but at that time I was really getting bored of the exercises and doing abs and arms tended to annoy me and I felt like wasting my time).
But I took what I've learned from the BBG and included it in my routine. Doing more arms and more AMRAP kind of workouts. I gained strength in my shoulders and arms and proudly saw my muscles growing. Until now, it was pretty good, pretty well and I was happy.
However, truth is, something was wrong. I don't want you to think I'm complaining or critisising Kayla's work, but it just didn't work for me. Two months ago I decided to do an two year old routine. And oh boy it was hard. I barely hit the number of reps by exercises and I was utterly exhausted afterwards. And when summer and the sun came back, I tried my old shorts only to realise that my thighs had grown huge and big. First I was okay, that's muscle, yay to gain! But believe me, it wasn't. It was fat, good old fat. I was so upset I began to browse through my old workouts, re-doing some of them to try to figure out what was wrong. And I found what was wrong. I had given up the high intensity side of things, not pushing myself to my max, planning workouts that would avoid me pain due to the building up of lactic acids in the muscles and not doing enough strength training where my muscles would be pushed hard. I got lazy and a bit bored, doing the same exercises over and over. I felt weak and slow and not being able to do two year old workouts really pissed me.
So yeah, Kayla's Bikini Body Guides might work for you, I still believe they are great guides and smart workouts but they're just not for me. Now I'm back on track with my old routine and hell yeah, I feel a hundred times better, pushing hard everytime for shorter period of time.
EDIT - Please go read
THAT amazing post by Linn Löwes on her blog because she perfectly summarised my thoughts about Kayla's guide.
