Case Studies - Action Jackson Fitness - 7 Secrets For Chiseled Abs

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“So…why did you call me? What do you want to be different about yourself?”

I really didn’t know how to put it into words that didn’t sound trite and superficial when Jackson asked me that question on the phone. Over the years of being involved in all levels of professional hockey as a photographer I’ve gotten to know many pro athletes. I’m family friends with three Stanley Cup winners. I don’t get star-struck. But it was still a little unnerving to be one-on-one on the phone with Coach Jackson only a few days after finishing Four Weeks to Fat Loss 2.

“I…Well…”—I could feel his impatience growing across the dead air while my throat went dry and I started to sweat my social-anxiety sweat. Finally I just blurted, “I want to be able to mow the grass in the summer without a shirt on and not be embarrassed.” Holy shit did I really just say that to one of the Tonal coaches?

“Cool,” he responded immediately, unfazed.

It was only a few weeks later, on one of the weekly coaching calls, when the topic came up and we got into a lengthy discussion that delved way deeper than that initial, superficial ‘why’.

For me, it was a lifetime of being the ‘fat kid’ and always feeling uncomfortable with my body. It was seeing some of my family members being morbidly obese and struggling to even walk. It was a lifetime of feeling embarrassed with my own appearance. But I had discipline for my workouts. I knew I was ready to work hard. I felt like I had most of the right pieces but no idea how to put them together properly. It was never feeling like I was a proper athlete.

I was a D1 college volleyball player. After college I played competitive volleyball, picked up soccer and golf, started to run, which turned into Spartan races, which turned into multiple Spartan trifectas each year, which turned into triathlons. But I’ve never considered myself an athlete. All throughout that twenty-odd years of being super active and athletic, I bounced around with a sizeable spare tire and fluctuated from almost 270lb down to a “skinny-fat” 188lb. I was never what I would consider “in shape” in my entire life.

Call it a mid-life crisis if you want, but what it really comes down to is my wife and I are within a couple years of becoming empty-nesters, and I’ve never been “in shape” in my life. Retirement isn’t close, but it’s on the horizon, and I see so many family and friends who seem to have just settled into the rut of eating out and not really caring about their health or personal appearance. Something in me snapped and my mind was made up to be healthier for my family, healthier for myself, and to be able to walk on the beach on vacation and not be embarrassed to take my shirt off.

So I signed up, handed over my credit card and my Tonal login info…and got scared shitless. I can work in the gym, but I’ve never made a serious effort to fix my nutrition. Weakly counting macros here and there, but intermittent fasting? Dear god I need to EAT, man! “I’m mildly hypoglycemic” was my excuse for yearrrrssss. But yeah, here we go.

I weighed in just shy of 215lb at the start of my journey. I was logging four miles a day, six days a week running, but everything jiggled and my weight was still climbing. I got started on the nutrition plan a few days before starting the workouts so was down to 212 when the program started tracking me. It took me a solid week to adapt and adjust to the dietary changes. No more sandwiches. No more chips. No more popcorn. It was rough but I started to find my way.

The workouts were intense. I stuck to the diet program, and lo and behold the scale started to move, and quickly.

During P1 I dropped from 212 to just flirting with the 200 barrier. About 10lb lost altogether. I was happy but to my eye the visible changes were just barely starting.

I forgot to mention. I started the program with an inguinal hernia. Many of the lifts had to be modified, I could only do very limited versions of the ab exercises. But I soldiered on with my “bubble buddy.” It did get progressively worse though, and I scheduled surgery between P2 and P3.

Phase 2 I saw enormous gains in my Tonal strength score. It had been relatively flat during P1, but shot up in P2, going from 826 to 989. I think I stopped babying the hernia, knowing that it was going to get fixed.

I had hernia repair surgery November 1, 2021.

I had finally broken the 200lb barrier the week before surgery. Two days after the surgery I’d gained over 11lb. Water. Inflammation. Surgery-weight. I knew that in my head, but mentally it was pretty tough to see that scale back up near 210. That was almost my starting point! The weight did come back off over the course of the next week, though.

Monday was surgery. I rested. Tuesday and Wednesday I got up and walked on the treadmill and stretched. Thursday I rode 5k on the Peloton. That weekend I got back to work. Jackson was kind enough to build me a couple of “deload” workouts to keep me active and lifting while I recovered. I was supposed to do upper body one day, lower body the next day.

I did both workouts every day.

Within another week I was back to full power goblet squats and began Phase 3 in earnest. There were some ab exercises that caused significant inflammation to my surgery area so I avoided those, but otherwise was back to almost full speed.

Ahh, the holiday season. All the pies. All the turkey. All the carbs. But for the first time in my life I was motivated about my eating. I was not going to f’ this up. I stuck to the nutrition plan hard and while I didn’t lose a lot, I bounced around the 200lb mark the whole month. Workouts progressed, but my Strength Score leveled out a bit.

Barbell. Barbell. Barbell. Oh man did I miss good old fashioned deadlifts! Look out, strength score! I went from 1017 to 1152 in just over a month. Plus, once again the scale started to move. Slowly at first, but then sometimes half a pound a day or more. At the end of Phase 4 I was at 191.1 and still dropping. Remember, my lightest ever was 188 but I had almost no muscle tone back then. I’m in FAR better shape today than I was at that point, so even if I never crack below that 188 number I’m happy with where I am, and it’s time to start building more muscle!

The biggest thought is that I’m not done yet. I plan on continuing on with this training program for at least a few more months. Realistically I still have another 5lb or so of fat to lose and a lot of muscle I want to build. But compared to where I started only a few months ago…

Clothes that I was going to send to Goodwill because I couldn’t even get into them are now baggy on me. I wear a size 34 jeans for the first time since high school. While I still have some loose skin, very little of me jiggles anymore. I have visible muscle tone for the first time in my life. Starting from a base of pretty much nothing these photos just floors me…

Aside from the aches and pains from lifting, my joints don’t hurt anymore. I can run easier. Hell, even my posture is better! My weight is in check and I’m in the ‘healthy’ range for the first time as an adult.

Couple last things to note…

Because of the surgery my weight loss was sporadic, so I’ve stayed in caloric deficit for the entire program. I’m on the Phase 2 macros of higher carbs but lower calories. I’ve rarely gone over calories and am hitting pretty high protein numbers, so I’ll be transitioning into more carbs to power bigger workouts and even more protein to continue building up muscle.

In this interim between the end of P4 and the start of Legacy / P5, I’ve been circling back to some of the earlier program workouts. The results have been astonishing. I pulled up one of the P1 workouts and did it in 5 minutes less time with over 2,000lb more weight lifted. Today I blew my all-time single workout max out of the water…