Who is Natacha?
Natacha is a British fitness influencer, with both a youtube channel and Instagram account dedicated to fitness. She focuses mainly on functional and plyometric workouts, and lots of her videos place an emphasis on performance and fuelling your body, over aesthetics. She currently has seven training guides: ‘Cut’, ‘Cut Reload’, ‘Build’, ‘Move’, ‘HIIT’, ‘Restart’ and ‘Home’. I personally went for her ‘Cut’ guide.
The Guide
As the name suggests, ‘Cut’ is a 10 week guide specifically designed for effective fat loss. This is comprised mainly of workouts but also includes a nutrition guide. Note that this is a guide, not a ‘plan’. She does not tell you what to eat each day for 10 weeks. Instead, she shows you how to work out how many calories you should be eating to best fuel your body.
Price
The price for this guide is £41.99 ($59.99). This seems to be a fairly average price for workout guides so I wasn’t too fussed about paying for it at the time. Having finished the guides, I would happily pay more than this. I think the quality of the workouts is much higher than other guides I’ve purchased in the past, and the way it’s changed my outlook on fitness is invaluable.
The Workouts
The week is split into 6 workouts: plyometric, upper body & HIIT, lower body, active rest day, full body, HIIT. The active rest day does not include any kind of workout. Instead it acts as a reminder to work in whatever kind of low impact exercise you like best – dance, yoga, walking, stretching, swimming etc. Each workout throughout the 10 weeks is completely different, which I absolutely loved. She constantly introduces new moves, which kept me from getting bored too easily. Some of my very favourite workouts in the guide were the plyometric ones. This was a new way of working out for me and I found them both super fun and effective!
The App
You access the guide through an app called Aflete. I actually really enjoyed using this method and found it much better than the PDF workout plans I’d used in the past. It’s super functional, providing all the reps and sets for each move in the workout that you can tick off as you go. It also includes a space for inputting your weights, allowing you to track your progress as the guide continues. There’s also a timer at the top of each workout which meant I particularly appreciated as it meant I didn’t having to leave the app and come back into it every time I needed to time a certain move. For each move, Natacha includes a video of her doing the exercise, along with any variations if it’s more advanced. This was super useful, particularly for moves that were a little more unique!
Cons
Your gym needs to be fairly well equipped if you’re looking to use this guide. Although a lot of the moves use only body weight or dumbbells, there are still many that require equipment. This includes both long and short resistance bands, a bench, a box, leg press, medicine ball, squat rack, TRX or suspended rings, cable machine, exercise bikes, treadmill, rowing machine, lat pull down, both types of hip abduction machines, a smith machine, and somewhere to do pull ups. It is possible, however, to alter most of the moves, if you find that your gym doesn’t have something, or you could sub a different move in. Overall I didn’t find this to be too much of a problem as most of the gym equipment included is relatively basic.
The Results
- Weight: no change
- Body Fat Percentage: from 19.6% to 17%
- Waist: – 1 inch
- Hips: – 2 inches
- Chest: no change
If you’d like to see some before and after pictures, check out my video review here!
Overall
I would honestly give this guide a 10/10. It made me fall in love with the gym again. I gained muscle and strength. I learnt new moves. I lost fat. I found a new style of working out that suits me much better than anything I’ve done before. I changed my mindset over food and increased my calories to get the most out of my training. I now train for performance instead of aesthetics. In the least dramatic way possible, it’s changed my life a little bit.
