Total Fitness With Andy Speer (Complete Review)

Screw just strength, or just size, or just aesthetic fitness programs.

Why choose just one goal when Andy Speer’s Total Fitness program combines strength, size, mobility, athleticism, grace, and power into a single eight-week routine for a — his words — whole-body upgrade?

Check out our complete review of Total Fitness with Andy Speer below!

About the Creator – Andy Speer

Andy Speer is a world-class fitness instructor, co-owner of the Soho Strength Lab in New York City, and a one-on-one coach to the “Manhattan elite.” The CSCS and NASM-CPT are also a big freakin’ deal in the Peloton world.

What is Total Fitness with Andy Speer?

Total Fitness With Andy Speer is an eight-week all-skill-level routine to improve — get this — total-body fitness.

With nothing more than a barbell (plus weight plates), dumbbells, a pull-up bar, a dip bar, and 50 feet of floor space, Speer will lead you on a journey toward rediscovering your inner athlete.

Total Fitness workouts focus on two concepts — relative strength (strength compared to your body weight) and absolute strength (how much weight you can lift, push, pull, or carry).

Similar to other total-body programs, by the end, you theoretically should be leaner, stronger, more athletic, and more confident in your physique.

Oh, yeah, and these 30–45-minute workouts also sneakily dodge the “big bucks” Speer charges his high-end, Manhattan-based clientele.

Total Fitness With Andy Speer Features & Details

Real talk, what exactly is Total Fitness with Andy Speer? Before you fire this bad boy up in your BodyFit queue, check out these features & details:

More About the Four Cycles

Speer breaks the program up into four distinct cycles:

Cycle 1 – Bodyweight Training + Loaded Carries

Cycle 1 is a bodyweight-heavy phase meant to challenge your strength, practice tempo training, and increase your intensity, endurance, and grip strength to prepare for cycle 2 and beyond.

Workouts included:

1. Full-body bodyweight strength (FBBS)
2. Loaded carry circuits & triceps (LCC & T)

Cycle 2 – Hypertrophy

Cycle 2 is where hypertrophy training gains traction. Speer blends EMOM (every minute on the minute), supersets, complexes, tri-sets, AMRAP (as many reps as possible) to maximize your training volume and build lean mass.

Workouts include:

1. Upper-body day (UBD)
2. Lower-body day (LBD)
3. Total-body day (TBD)

Cycle 3 – Strength

Cycle 3 is an unexpected yet much-appreciated change in pace. Halfway through the program, your workouts will ramp up the load, lower the rep count, and switch from dumbbell to barbell training to build serious strength

Workouts include:

1. Upper-body day (UBD)
2. Lower-body day (LBD)
3. Total-body day (TBD)

Cycle 4 – Athletic Power

Cycle 4 begins with a mellower deload week to refresh your body before combining everything you’ve learned and practiced over the last six weeks. The program ends on a “high” with power carry circuits, EMOM, AMRAP, agility training, and two challenges (including a badass metcon).

Workouts include:

1. Athletic power (AP)
2. Athletic strength (AS)
3. Recovery & mobility (R & M)
4. Athletic conditioning (AC)

Total Fitness Cycle Schedule

Here’s a sneak peek of your weekly schedule throughout the next eight weeks*:

* Refer to the workout acronyms above to make sense of this schedule! This schedule also does not include the challenges in weeks 2, 4, 6, & 8.

Workouts

If you want to learn about the inspiration behind each Total Fitness cycle or listen to Speer brag about his millionaire Soho clients, you’re more than welcome to watch Speer’s BodyFit videos.

Otherwise, here’s an overview of what you’ll find in the Workout Schedule tab:

Workout Notes

Speer sneaks in a few tips & tricks to make the most of each Total Fitness workout. If the bench isn’t available for inverted rows, use rings or the Smith machine instead. Or, add weight to every set on the bench press with a goal of 5RM by set three.

Warm-Up Circuit

Nearly every Total Fitness session begins with a warm-up circuit for mobility, flexibility, and range of motion (ROM). This single-round of nonstop exercises — each lasting 30 seconds or 8–10 reps — includes cat cows, lateral lunges, calf stretches, and shoulder extension stretches.

Activation Circuit

Next is the activation circuit, which mimics a classic three-round dynamic warm-up. Exercises include 50-foot lateral shuffles, five vertical jumps, 50 feet of skipping, and 25 feet of carioca quick steps facing either direction.

Most Common Training Styles

Even if you rate Total Fitness a “total bust,” there’s one thing we can’t deny: there’s absolutely no shot you’ll get bored. Mixed within the program’s straight sets are training styles like:

* Rest times vary between 0–30 seconds between exercises and about 20–120 seconds between rounds. Generally, Speer limits the length of rest periods as much as possible.

Trends & Sample Exercises

Andy Speer stuffs Total Fitness with plot twist after plot twist (after plot twist). In addition to a circuit-training theme, fast-paced workouts, and a few random stretches threw into the blender, expect exercises like:

• Single-leg box squat
• Single-arm dumbbell front squat
• Hammer curl
• Push-up
• Suspended row
• Side plank
• Goblet squat
• Close grip bench press
• Dumbbell farmer’s walk
• Dumbbell renegade row

The twistiest of all plots is the challenges Speer includes in the second week of each phase (weeks 2, 4, 6, & 8).

From the Bodyweight Challenge Workout (week 2) designed to test your max pull-ups and chest dips to week 8’s brutal 10-to-1 ladder challenge full of broad jumps, chin-ups, and V-ups, Total Fitness is both predictable and unexpected.

Nutrition & Supplements

Andy Speer describes Total Fitness as an “improve everything plan.” So instead of insane, grog-inducing calorie cuts or protein intakes that require you to slaughter the whole farm, the world-class trainer recommends:

1. Quality food with limited sugary, fatty, and salty foods
2. A protein-rich diet
3. Hydration (shout-out to our hydro-homies)
4. Unlimited vegetables
5. A “maintenance” and “lightly active” reading on the Bodybuilding.com macro calculator
6. A 40/30/30 macronutrient split (give or take 5–10%)
7. Premium carbs, lean proteins, and healthy fats
8. Five supplements – whey protein, creatine, BCAAs, pre-workout, and fish oil

Swolverine Whey Protein Isolate

This is one of our top recommended whey protein powders because of it’s high protein content per serving, extreme deliciousness, and the fact that all Swolverine products are sourced from GMP-certified facilities

When paired with the TF workouts, the diet should push you even further toward a stronger, more powerful, more athletic, leaner physique.

Total Fitness Pros

1. The strategic choice in exercise, rep schemes, and set styles will undoubtedly increase your “total fitness” — strength, flexibility, power, size, and more.
2. If you’re plateauing, supersets, tri-sets, and circuits can break you out of the monotony of stalled progress (2019 meta-analysis).
3. Speer’s choices in supplements are actually decently well-studied. Whey protein and creatine are two of our top contenders, while BCAAs, pre-workout, and fish oil have enough scientific backing to make them worth the investment to some degree.
4. Yes, even progressive calisthenic training can build mass, strength, and power, with studies suggesting the gains are head-to-head with regular resistance training.
5. Total Fitness targets the areas of fitness that many of us willfully ignore, like mobility and grip strength.
6. If you can’t fathom a 4–6-week phase, Speer’s two-week phases with challenges lumped in will keep you invigorated and mentally in the zone.
7. There aren’t any wild red flags implying this program doesn’t or can’t work.

Total Fitness Cons

1. The diet plan is essentially “eat healthily.”
2. Anyone still on the high of a manly mass-building routine from Athlean-X, Kris Gethin, or Jim Stoppani will likely feel a bit dumbstruck by Speer’s bodyweight-heavy and athletic-focused program. (That’s not to say Total Fitness doesn’t work, though!)
3. Unless your goal is simply “get in better shape,” you’ll want to latch your calorie and macro intake onto a more specific physique goal (like fat loss or muscle gains).
4. The same goes with workouts. This program will help you get in better shape, but tackling more specific goals (like passing ACFT training) requires a different kind of training program.

Wrapping Up This Total Fitness with Andy Speer Review

Andy Speer’s Total Fitness is a great program for newbies hoping to get in shape, experiment with new training styles, and improve several areas of fitness at once.

If you’re bouncing back from laggy training or can’t stand the monotony of the average modern training plan, Total Fitness is absolutely worth a try. While it’s a little bland for the crew with prior training experience, it’s a hit for those who seek bigger, better, faster, and stronger.

Rating: 8.0/10