100% means average, not maximum. These compare you against the typical man of your height. They are not a score out of a hundred and they can go well past 100 — often they should.
Your right arm at 113.8% carries fourteen percent more lean mass than average. Your trunk at 138.5% fat carries 38% more fat there than average. A competitive bodybuilder might read 160% lean.
Read the lean column for development, the fat column for where fat sits. Low fat numbers are good — arms at 67% and 82% mean lean, not small.
| Segment | Lean | vs avg | Fat | vs avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| R arm | 8.33 | 113.8% | 0.9 | 67.3% |
| L arm | 7.89 | 107.8% | 1.1 | 81.9% |
| Trunk | 62.1 | 106.4% | 13.0 | 138.5% |
| R leg | 21.36 | 105.0% | 3.7 | 98.2% |
| L leg | 21.16 | 104.0% | 3.7 | 97.4% |
Every segment is above average and the spread is even. There is no weak link to fix.
Two things are real. Your left arm is 5.6% behind your right — so every unilateral set starts left, and right matches what left did. And 13 of your 25 lb of fat sits in your trunk while your limbs are lean, which no exercise reaches. That one is settled in the kitchen.
The bands: essential fat is 2–5%, athletes 6–13%, fitness 14–17%. Single digits is real and reachable. The question is what it costs to stay there.
Sustained below about 8%, the first things to go are testosterone, sleep quality, libido, training output, mood and immune function — every input the rest of this plan runs on. You would be buying a sharper waist with the energy the 6am wake and the evening work require.
There is also a visual ceiling. Abs arrive around 10–12%. Between 10% and 8% you gain lower-ab detail and some vascularity and pay a great deal for it. In a shirt, in linen, nobody reads the difference.
And the measurement is softer than it looks. Bioelectrical impedance carries roughly ±3–5% error. Your 15.0% could truly be 12% or 18%. Excellent for tracking direction under identical conditions; poor as an absolute. Chasing 8% on a device with that error band is chasing noise.
So: 12% as the year-round set point, 10% as the floor. If something ever needs a peak, drop to 9% for a fortnight and come back up.
Sessions attended is the only metric that counts this month. Everything else is detail.
| 2:00 | Incline walk or rower, easy |
| ×15 | Band pull-aparts |
| ×10 | Shoulder pass-throughs |
| ×10 | Chin tucks, 5s hold |
| ×10 | Slow bodyweight squats — leg day only |
| ×08 | Hip hinge drill — leg day only |
| then | 2 ramp-up sets of the first lift |
This is what keeps the shoulders and knees quiet. Skip it and they speak up by week three.
When every set hits its top reps clean, add 5 lb to lower-body lifts, 5 lb total to upper. When a lift stalls twice, drop 10% and climb again.
Lateral raises are the exception. Don't chase load — chase reps and strictness. A heavy swung lateral raise is a trap shrug wearing a disguise.
Weeks 6 and 12: deload. Same movements, half the sets, 70% of the load. Programmed, not optional, and it is why week 7 feels strong.
Planks before a hinge means hinging on exhausted stabilisers. That is exactly how a lumbar strain happens. Trunk work is the final movement of any session containing it, without exception.
Start standing, bar or dumbbells at the thighs. Soft knees that stay put. Big breath into the belly, 360° of pressure, hold it. Hips travel backwards, not down. The bar stays in contact with your legs the whole descent — lats on, bending the bar around your shins. Stop at mid-shin or where the hamstrings run out, whichever comes first. Squeeze up with the glutes.
If it touches the floor it was not an RDL. If it drifts off your thighs, that inch is heavy leverage on L4/L5 — and a phone in your pocket is enough to cause it.
Skip the slot and come back to it. Do the next movement, check again. Still busy after two more? Swap to the dumbbell version or drop it. Never reorder the session around equipment.
Two weeks off detrains stabilisers faster than the muscles moving the bar. Everything feels ready before it is.
After any break of a week or more: two weeks at 70%. Sets of 8–10, stop two reps short, no grinding. You will feel underworked — that is the point. Progress resumes in week three and lands further ahead than forcing it would have.
If a movement produces a tweak, that movement is finished for the day. No second attempt to check.
Soreness in muscle is progress. Pain in a joint is information.
13 of your 25 lb of body fat sits in your trunk. Your arms are at 67% and 82% of average, your legs at 97%. Every limb you own is already lean.
No exercise reaches trunk fat. Not abs, not core work, not more cardio. The gap between how you look now and how you want to look closes here and nowhere else. Training keeps the muscle while it happens.
| 01 | Hit protein every day. Everything else can move. |
| 02 | Eat roughly 2100. Don't go lower — a steeper cut costs muscle, not time. |
| 03 | Sleep by 22:00. A deficit on five hours fails and you'll blame yourself instead of the sequencing. |
| 04 | Weigh in three mornings a week. Judge the weekly average, never one day. |
About a pound a week. Twelve to fourteen weeks from 15% to 12%. If the four-week average hasn't moved, take 150 off the daily number — not 500.
Weeks that get away from you don't count. A fortnight where the deficit never really ran is not a fortnight lost — the clock simply wasn't going. Restart it and keep the retest twelve weeks out.
Tick as you go. Kroger is next door and covers most weeks; Costco is the bulk protein run.
| Time | Meal | Shape |
|---|---|---|
| 07:30 | Breakfast | 2 palms protein |
| 12:30 | Lunch | 1 palm + cup + fist |
| 16:00 | Snack | 1 palm |
| 19:00 | Dinner | 1½ palms + cup + 2 fists |
| 21:30 | Optional | 0% Greek yoghurt |
These hold whether you train at 06:00 or at midday. Training time moves; the meals don't. What matters is the protein total by lights out, not which side of the session it landed on.
A midday session changes one thing: eat something at 11:00 rather than training on a breakfast eight hours old, then take lunch after.
| PALM | Protein — thickness and width of your palm, ~25–30g |
| CUP | Carbs — one cupped hand of rice, pasta, potato, oats |
| FIST | Vegetables — one minimum, two better, never counted |
| THUMB | Fat — oil, butter, nuts, cheese. The one that quietly doubles |
Weigh food for one week if you want calibration, then stop. Vegetables are free. Volume is what makes a deficit survivable.
Alcohol first. A glass of red is ~125, a pint ~200, and it costs sleep quality on top. Not a ban — a cap: two evenings a week, never before a lift.
The second coffee's milk. Keep the good flat white. Make the second an americano or cortado. Free 150.
Late-night eating. The one real risk in an otherwise sound set of habits, and it tracks poor sleep rather than appetite. On the nights it happens, look at what time you got to bed the night before. Fix the sleep and this fixes itself. Don't add a rule about it.
Not cut: carbonara, steak, pasta, bread, the flat white. Cutting things you love is how people quit in week five.
Protein hit, days out of seven. Six is a pass.
Thoracic and below the hips only. There is almost no muscle over the lower back to work, and rolling bodyweight into a spine that is guarding makes it guard harder. Glutes and upper back are where the useful work is — and they are usually what the low back is compensating for anyway.
| Fix | Standard |
|---|---|
| Monitor height | Top edge = eye level |
| Break the position | Every 45 min |
| Phone height | Raise it to you |
| Seat depth | Hips level or above knees |
If you look down at the 32" even slightly, you hold forward head for eight hours and undo everything above. Raise it on books if the stand won't go higher.
Standups are the worst offender in your week — thirty minutes leaning toward a screen. Stand for them.
Week 1–2: the chin tuck feels strange and slightly effortful. The hip flexor stretch may be sharp on the left. Nothing visible yet.
Week 3–4: you catch yourself drifting forward and correct without thinking. This is the actual mechanism — a habit change, not a strength gain.
Week 4–6: visible in a side profile. Take one now, straight on to a mirror, arms relaxed. Retake at six weeks. That's the only measurement that counts.
Sharp or persistent neck or low-back pain, or any numbness or tingling running into the arms or hands, is a physiotherapist question rather than a mobility-drill question. Don't work through it and don't self-diagnose from the internet.
Days out of seven the drills happened. Six is a pass.
No new open loops until Phase 2 ships. Loops close in the order they were opened — not the order that feels easiest.
The lever is scope, never standard. Keep the bar high and make the piece small enough that the bar is reachable.
Be what you respect.