Lil's Gym
32 Weber St W. N2G 2Z1 Kitchener, ON, Canada

The coolest thing about getting in shape is the ability to CHOOSE what in shape means YOU. Steff has excelled in the gym and found a style of eating that worked well for her too. What do you do when you like the level of muscle & leanness you’re at? Is the game over? We got to work on finding the next game to play which we dubbed ninja mode... What can a ninja do? Damn near anything! Three qualities in her training got Steff in the best ‘real world’ shape of her life: 1 - Bodyweight strength, control, and balance - watch the video for proof! 2 - Energizer bunny levels of endurance - Steff ran her first 10km+ this year 3 - Short term sprint power - HIIT circuits, hill sprints, and short bust running. And she did this all from home with just a set of dumbbells this year. Congratulations Steff for achieving ninja mode! But the game has just begun...

You gotta go slow to go fast! Mo has been on an absolute blitz in the gym since he started at the end of the summer. He's down almost 20lbs, endurance is through the roof, set a personal record bench, and is more flexible and pain free than ever!... So how is he succeeding on so many fronts simultaneously? He's conquered the worst enemy of anyone who's been a high performer for a long time: His own expectations. Playing competitive sports all his life, for many years at a high level has given him perspective on what it feels like to be seriously athletic. But years off the field and in front of the books means he's not where he used to be. And that is damn frustrating. So frustrating that most of us in the same situation would keep trying to start again at full blast, only to get knocked back by life/injuries/setbacks over and over. Mo made a promise to himself to take things slowly and one step at a time. To adopt the beginner's mind and simply take action exactly at the step he currently IS, not WAS. It's through that action that he discovered the exact recipe for an epic comeback: Go slow to go fast, and be where you ARE!

Tasha’s dream was to make some huge career and life changes last year. To have a fulfilling and meaningful job takes soul searching and some serious grit, and that’s exactly what it takes to become a police officer. We’ve helped many hopefuls over the years pass the rigors of police fitness testing, and Tasha is one of our most resilient. Ask anyone who’s been around it, and they’ll all tell you about the hardest part: The freaking beep test. ... It’s a single largest morale crushing, wind sucking, humbling part of testing, and it’s where the majority of applicants get stomped. You can be a fitness enthusiast, a gym rat, pretty tough and strong but if you aren’t putting in the REAL hard training, you’ll fail. And what happens when you fail it? Tasha encountered failed attempts, pandemic stress, and almost every damn reason to quit every single week. But she wanted her life to be better. Tasha doubled down and went harder. She clocked more am hill sprints, more 5k’s in the cold dark late winter, and even more dedication. And at the end, she got what she wanted. She wakes up in the morning now feeling proud of her accomplishments. The moral of the story? Sometimes you have to be stubborn about what you want. It might literally just be one more attempt away!

When life changes, your plan must change as well Liz is a high performer. She strives for A+ in all areas of life. She’s analytical, persistent, and can solve almost any problem. She’s also extremely hard working! So what do you do when your body isn't keeping up any more? ... Especially when it’s busy doing something like making another human being? Pre and Post partum is a challenging time physically, but the mental side can be the worst. You don’t feel how you used to, things don’t respond the way they used to. Anyone who’s looking for an A+ is going to be very frustrated. The old plan doesn’t work anymore. So we made a new plan for Liz. The first step: redefine her priorities. The goal isn’t to do as much as possible. It was to do exactly what was only necessary to stay in the best shape and health as her little bean grew. This let her excel at enduring every bump, roadblock, and sick day along the way. But the magic happened after. Post partum takes time and finesse to recover from. So we set some milestones to hit while she enjoyed her new life as a mother. Level 1, level 2, level 3. And by being consistent, patient, and measured, Liz made faster progress. Here’s Liz now running like a champ! She’s almost back to her old levels of fitness, but that’s just a pitstop on the way even further. Keep it up!

Our man Jayme achieved a ton in a 5 month span. He joined the Lil’s Group program to break his plateau on his strength without sacrificing his bodyfat levels or flexibility. Every time Jayme pushed things he’d either have to lose the abs, or get dinged up and tweak something somewhere. We started by taking one step back from his current best performance. That gave us the space to iron out all of the technical details and bring some new skills into his barbell lifts. At the sa...me time, we identified specific lagging muscle groups that were bottlenecking his strength. This short 4 week phase made him feel like a new man under the bar! It was full blast after that and his strength started taking off. In the next 4 months he achieved the following progress at a lean 155lbs: Deadlift 335lbs to 405lbs Squat 225lbs to 280lbs Bench 215lbs to 240lbs Jayme did it and so can you. Don’t think you have to sacrifice your ability to be ripped, flexible, and athletic to get stronger. The key is getting smart with your training!

Eating better often lets you eat more! Sabine used the pandemic as an opportunity to focus on her own health and nutrition. By no means was Sabine a slouch in this department. In fact, she was in great shape, but was focused on that last bit of fat that we all wish we could drop. Just a little more lower ab definition or one last inch off the waist. It’s that final little bit that makes a dramatic difference in physique! So she started seeing what she could do by tracking her... food on a regular basis. It was here that we discovered that she was missing a lot of high quality nutrition in her diet. Even though she was maintaining her weight, her body could be working even smoother and have better composition and energy levels with a few tweaks. Over the weeks Sabine started trying new key foods we called superfoods into her diet. These were certain foods that had a huge amount of nutritional value per calorie. And low and behold she started leaning out with the same daily calorie intake as before. The higher ‘quality’ of food she started eating, the faster this happened. In fact, it started happening too fast. So we added calories each week to keep her rate of fat loss smooth and steady. In the end, Sabine ended up dropping 10lbs down to her ultimate forever goal weight while eating 300-400 more calories per day than before. The moral of the story? Higher quality food intake will absolutely let you get better results with the same, or even more food!

Resilience is everything. Andreanne got roped into working out at Lil’s Gym by her partner. She had been fairly active in the past, but never like a gym rat and so this journey was brand new to her! She’s all about strength. Strength of character, body, and mind. But she had a lot of work to do! Your typical white collar job doesn’t turn you into the strongest or more flexible ninja in the gym.... Andreanne worked hard on the basics. Shoulder mobility outside the gym, core strength, flexibility, technique, all of it. And you could argue that her starting hand didn’t have a lot of high cards. She had a clear vision of where she wanted to go. How she wanted to look, feel, and perform. During the first few weeks she caught the weightlifting bug and celebrated every single small win in the gym. One more reps, 1 inch deeper on a squat, it didn’t matter what it was: Andreanne knew every bit of progress mattered. Then the lockdown hit and she didn’t skip a beat. She switched to home training with the equipment she had and took the opportunity to start really attacking the nutrition front, netting her over 25lbs of fat loss this year alone. SO what was her secret? RESILIENCE. No matter the obstacle, the low mojo, the limitation, she doubled down on what she COULD control and cultivated the attitude required to get it done. Andreanne is stronger than just curls and squats in the gym. She’s got real grit and patience to the process of changing your mind and body.. We’re excited to see the next season's version of her!

Laura came to us last September with her game face on. She wanted to get in shape, drop the weight, but more important finally carve out some time for herself in her life as a busy mother of two. Laura’s flexibility and strength needed a lot of work. We started with bodyweight squats to a box and pushups from a bar very high up. One of the biggest motivation crushers that everyone faces is seeing where they’re actually at that first day in the gym. You see the size of the mou...ntain ahead to climb and you doubt yourself. Not Laura. Every single workout in the gym she poured her heart out. The determination and resolve was damn impressive. She did NOT miss workouts. By the spring time she had gotten 2-3 TIMES stronger and was hanging with vets in the crew on finishers no problem. Not to mention a good dress size smaller too! In fact, she had lost 15lbs! She learned to lift barbells, box, run, use kettlebells, and everything in between. Laura was hooked and determined to reach that next tier on the strength and body composition board in the gym. That’s when the pandemic hit. No gyms, no weights, no training. So many of us gym rats were crushed. And I’m sure Laura was too but she sure as hell wasn’t ready to let her momentum stop. She kept training hard, staying accountable to her coach, and really working together with him to transform her eating through the pandemic. Laura has lost a total of 25lbs to this date with more to come. The moral of the story? Laura’s defining character trait was being able to FIGHT no matter her situation. She accepted where she was, what needed to be done, and dug deep. That’s why she’ll continue to improve. What’s next for her? A few more lbs to go to her goal weight, then getting as athletic as possible with her new found physique!

Cathy had trained before in the gym, and knew her way around healthy eating. In fact, she knew a LOT about health and fitness. Cathy was such a hard and motivated worker that she struggled to know when she could stop! How do you know when what you’re doing is enough? Do you keep adding more workouts? Keep cutting out more treats? Eat every meal from a tupperware? When are you done? Every habit you take on, treat you cut out, and workout you sweat through comes at a cost. Pay... the right price, and you can keep your results forever. Pay too much for no reason, and you’ll burn out. It was important from the get go to establish what would get her where she wanted to be and no more. As soon as we outlined what was enough, everything just clicked. On any given day if she fulfilled only what she had to do, she won that day. That's it. Check off habit X/Y/Z and don't worry about the rest. This got her 25lbs of fat loss in 5 months. Most importantly, she’s feeling great and able to keep doing it forever!

It’s not always about coming to the gym and hitting a personal best. Often the most progress comes from workouts where you come in with the mindset to practice. Don’t just get tired - get better! ... Posted @withregram @mads_liddy First day doing deadlifts since March! I was super nervous about this because I was afraid of overdoing it and hurting myself. The ONLY goal for today was to get over my anxieties, hit it and feel great. #kwawesome So happy with this! 175x5 Banded for the top set. Is it my best? No. Is it what felt good today and gave me confidence to go again? Yup! Side note: Funk music makes you deadlift better. It's a scientific fact

Michelle has been absolutely crushing her first few weeks of training! She’s averaging about two pounds per week of fat loss and is stronger every workout! Posted @withregram @cdn_diva Shout-out to my guy Craig for helping me find and reach my limits..and for the life advice! We have some work to do but off to a great start ... #kwawesome