Jeff Seid's Real Workout Routines & Diet Plan

Some hobbies become overly insular. Sometimes, we get so caught up in our own lifestyles that it’s hard to remember that some folks don’t know the way into our circles. Jeff Seid is the millennial’s bodybuilder. He’s plugged directly into the pulse of regular people and he uses his platform to bring folks in and build them up.

Of course, this means he’s also an incredible example of bodybuilding himself, he’s a strong competitor and a great role model for his followers. What’s his secret? Well, we finally crack it wide open for you to examine yourself.

Jeff Seid’s Empire

Jeff Seid isn’t quite a household name just yet, but he’s quickly becoming one of the most well-known names in bodybuilding online communities. He has a pretty sizeable presence across several social media platforms. He has well over a million followers on his youtube channel, which has recently seen some slowdowns in content, but what’s there is educational and entertaining.

His Instagram is much more active, which a following of over four million, fans and tons of students on his personally tailored online bodybuilding and fat burning programs. He’s cultivated online communities of people that are passionate about improving their health and altering their lifestyles without cutting out the simple pleasures like their favorite foods or living a life outside of the gym.

Jeff Seid’s approach to weightlifting and bodybuilding is pretty welcoming to newcomers, and his entire business model revolves around lifting up people that want to improve themselves with carefully considered diets and workout plans. He’s not just some feel-good online advocate though.

Jeff walks the walk while he does all of this talking. He’s been athletic his entire life and started lifting weights as early as age 11. He isn’t just an enthusiastic amateur. He’s a serious competitor, going as far as entering several Mr. Olympia and placing in the top 16, as well as other bodybuilding competitions like the Europa SuperShow, NPC USA Bodybuilding, and the PBW Championships.

He’s pretty well decorated, especially considering how many other hats he wears. His modeling, bodybuilding, workout personalization, and social media influencing has pulled in a decent amount of cash for Jeff Seid, he claims about $800,000 a year. He’s a busy guy, but that doesn’t mean that he ever slouches on his workouts. His entire brand is all about presenting his body in the best possible light, so he’s got a pretty stringent routine and diet plan.

The Workout

Jeff Seid’s workout is pretty intense, but when you look at it, it’s nothing that someone with some gumption and a gym membership can’t keep up with. Jeff Seid’s workout varies most in intensity when compared to most other workout plans. It’s naturally the kind of workout plan someone that’s in love with working out would build.

The Jeff Seid workout plan is a 5-day workout plan. There are two built-in rest days, which are key to recovery and muscle growth. Jeff admits that sometimes when he’s training, he’ll shave off a rest day and use it for training up a particularly stubborn muscle group. Even with that extra day of hyper-specific training and the number of days with full workouts, he doesn’t over-train any one muscle group.

The plan has you revisiting muscle groups, but you can see that there’s one day for really grinding down a particular group and a second for revisiting and polishing them to a tight chiseled shine.This workout plan is well-balanced. It’s definitely the perfect plan for an intermediate to advanced lifter that’s trying to get into bodybuilding.

All of your muscle groups are targeted pretty evenly, and the flexibility of the rest days gives you the opportunity to fine-tune your workout routine to the specific needs of your body. If you feel like you have an area that’s lagging behind, you don’t have to totally retool your work week to week. You can just add a little extra time on what would otherwise be a free day.

It’s also a great workout routine because it doesn’t bogard your time. You’re going to have to set aside some time every day to accommodate this workout routine, but it fits well into the schedule of a normal human being with a regular job. This routine doesn’t ask you to have a full home gym or a personal trainer.

There’s no need for three showers a day, and you’re not going to have to set aside time every evening for a second or third workout. It asks for dedication once you’re in the gym and under the iron, but once you’re suited up for your day, it lets you get back to living your life so you can actually show off the progress you’ve made.

Monday: Chest & Calves

• Barbell Incline bench press: 6-10 reps x 4 sets
• Dumbbell bench press: 6-10 reps x 4 sets
• Dumbbell flyes: 8-10 reps x 4 sets
• Incline dumbbell flyes: 8-10 reps x 4 sets
• Dips: 3 sets to failure
• Cable flyes: 8-12 reps x 3 sets
• Standing calf raises: 8-20 reps x 5 sets
• Seated calf raises: 10-25 reps x 5 sets

Tuesday: Back

• Deadlift: 6-10 reps x 3 sets
• Bent-over barbell row: 8-12 reps x 4 sets
• Wide grip chin up: 10 reps x 4 sets
• Seated cable rows: 8-12 reps x 4 sets

Wednesday: Rest Day

Thursday: Legs

• Barbell squat: 8-15 reps x 4 sets
• Front barbell squat: 6-10 reps x 4 sets
• Leg press: 8-10 reps x 4 sets
• Quad extensions: 8-12 reps x 4 sets
• Lying leg curls: 8-12 reps x 4 sets

Friday: Arms & Calves

• Barbell curls: 6-12 reps x 4 sets
• Alternating Dumbbell curl: 8-10 reps x 3 sets
• Preacher curls: 15 reps x 3 sets
• Dumbbell 1-arm triceps extension: 15 reps x 4 sets
• Skullcrushers: 10-12 reps x 4 sets
• Standing calf raises: 8-20 reps x 5 sets
• Seated calf raises: 10-25 reps x 5 sets

Saturday: Shoulders

• Shoulder press: 6-10 reps x 4 sets
• Side lateral raises: 10 reps x 4 sets
• Bent over rear delt raise: 10 reps x 4 sets
• Rear delt pec flyes: 12-15 reps x 4 sets
• Barbell shrug: 10-20 reps x 4 sets
• Dumbbell shrug: 8-12 reps x 3 sets

Sunday: Free Day

Sundays are the real gem in the workout plan. You can use them as a second rest day if you feel like your body could use one. They’re also the day that you can turn into a watershed day for a stubborn muscle group you feel like you may have plateaued with. This is the day that Jeff Seid uses to even out his body when he’s building himself up for a competition.

This small window of flexibility sets this workout routine aside from others. It’s rigid enough to force you out of bed every morning in some capacity, but it’s not so rigid that you’re going to be forcing your body to wring itself so tight that you’re exceeding your limits in ways that will stifle your muscle growth.

This routine is also just a sample of one of Jeff’s multiple workout routines. He stresses the importance of switching up your workouts. If you’re sticking to the same routine for months, it’s likely that you’re just going to peter out and stop growing in the ways you’re aiming for. The entire goal of exercising is to present your body with challenges that it needs to learn to overcome.

Lifting weights isn’t just about moving iron plates around, the core of weight lifting is breaking down your muscles and having them rebuild themselves in a way that makes them bigger and more capable of overcoming the challenges they were facing down.

This is why you track your progress and aim to lift heavier weights. It’s why you need to rest and feed your body good clean food, and it’s also why you can’t just find one good routine and stick with it for the rest of your life. If you’re serious about weight lifting you know that you need to keep a wide array of exercises in your back pocket.

You’re going to have to learn how your muscle groups interact and what exercises you can slide into your routine to continue challenging them in unique ways.That doesn’t mean that you’re wearing out an exercise forever after you’ve done it for a few months. Figure out two or three variations and cycle through them throughout the year.

When you feel your body getting used to a variant, switch it up and keep doing that until you make your way all the way back around to where you started. 

Building good muscles on your body requires keeping a good head on your shoulders. Be ready to take notes on your progress, writing things down is going to be one of the most useful tools on your belt.

If you’re willing to keep track of your progress, learn from your mistakes, and keep yourself open and honest about when it’s time to switch things up, then you’re going to be putting yourself way ahead of the other folks in the gym. Building muscle is about more than just grit, it’s about discipline and organization.

The Rest Days

Rest days are one of the most important aspects of this workout routine. You’re going to be revisiting muscle groups throughout the week more often than you do with a pull/push split or a 4-day split. That means that your muscles are going to be in a state of needing recovery more often. Your rest days are much more scarce when you spend five days in the gym. That means a few things for the rest days you have left:

A rest day doesn’t have to be totally idle. In fact, a good rest day is an active rest day. You can find all sorts of ways to get your body up and moving without being strenuous. Light cardio or even a decent walk is enough to get blood flowing through your veins. Think of rest days as an opportunity to shore up your defenses. Find activities that will limber up the tight muscle you’ve been building and low-impact tasks that will encourage blood flow.

All of the best athletes in the world know the importance of a good rest day. Building your body is a constant push and pull. You need to be breaking your muscles down as much as you’re allowing themselves to build back up. Alternate which muscle groups you’re working out, feed yourself well and keep track of your progress, and you’ll do fine.

The Jeff Seid Diet

The Jeff Seid diet is pretty straightforward. It’s just an examination of the nutrients your body needs most. You can tell from this example diet Jeff Seid has presented that he’s careful about what he puts in his body without completely eliminating the foods that make eating an enjoyable experience.

The most important aspects of this diet are learning what your body needs, and finding creative ways to feed those needs. When you get down to it, bodybuilding is the process of reallocating protein in your body. You’re spending your time breaking your muscles down, adding tears to them so the protein in your diet has somewhere to go.

You’re putting protein in your body so you have the building blocks to repair your muscles with. If your diet is lacking the raw material to rebuild your damaged muscles, then you’re wasting your efforts and losing out on muscle mass. You also need to make sure you’re not over-stuffing yourself.

If you’re jamming your body full of nutrients that you’re not utilizing, then your body has to do something with them, and usually, that means turning it into fat.

This diet is more about tracking your needs and meeting them in ways that are smart and efficient. You can stick to this, or you can use it as a scaffolding to build your own custom workout diet.

Meal 1:

• Oats (1-1 ½ Cups / 340g)
• Banana (1)
• Egg beaters (1 cup / 170g)

Meal 2:

• Protein Shake
• 2% Milk (16oz / 473ml)
• Flaxseed Oil 1tbsp

Meal 3:

• Chicken/Turkey/Fish (170 – 225g / 6-8oz)
• Brown Rice (1 ½ cup / 340g)
• Green Beans / Broccoli (2 cups / 470g)

Meal 4:

• Protein Shake
• 2% Milk (16oz / 473ml)
• Flaxseed oil1tbsp
• 1pc fruit (optional)

Meal 5:

• Chicken/Turkey/Fish (170 – 225g / 6-8oz)
• Brown Rice (1 ½ cup / 300g)
• Green beans / Broccoli (2 cups / 470g)

Post Workout Meal:

• Mass Gainer
• 2% Milk (16oz / 473ml)
• Flaxseed Oil 1tbsp

Meal 6:

• Cream of Rice (113g / ½ cup)
• Banana (1)

Nightcap:

• Casein protein (2 scoops)
• Complex Carbohydrate Powder (3 scoops)

This is a diet that’s not exactly devoid of carbs or sugar or anything like that, in fact, you can see how it’s flexible enough to allow you to eat a lot of the same things you’d be eating even if you weren’t obsessively tracking your macros. This is definitely a diet for someone that’s working out a lot. If you’re not working out as hard as Jeff Seid, then you’ll have to adjust it to fit your needs a little more closely.

Same as Seid

A lot of celebrity workout plans revolve around their lifestyles being so different from ours.

This workout plan is different from those because it takes into account the daily demands of having a job and a life that needs to squeeze into the spaces between workouts and working. If you’re looking for a workout routine and a diet to emulate, you could do so much worse than Jeff Seid’s.

It also speaks volumes about his approach to health, and the workout plans he customizes for his clients. It’s easy to get wrapped up in fitness and make it your entire identity, but it doesn’t have to be that way. This workout routine is about working smarter rather than harder. You’re not going to be spending hours at a time in the gym, breaking and then coming straight back for more before bed.

This is a plan designed to get the most of your muscles and get you back out to enjoy your life outside of the gym. It’s a plan that works well for dudes wanting to get cut so they can show it off at the bar or the beach. It’s a plan that’s designed to give you an incredible body with exactly the right amount of effort. It allows you to add more or scale back, and it leaves room for customization.

Seid Says

Of all the famous workout routines out there, this one is one of the more achievable by us common folk. That’s probably born out of the fact that Jeff Seid has his irons in a lot of fires. He’s incredibly popular, and he’s paid to be in the public eye, but that doesn’t stop him from keeping his nose from the grindstone.

This works out well for us because we get to see what it’s like when someone with a full schedule and the same resources available to most people makes their way down the road of fitness. It’s not easy, but it’s well within your reach, and Jeff Seid’s workout routine should act as inspiration and motivation to anybody struggling on their bodybuilding path to glory.