The Physique 57 Solution (5 page)

We hope that you will fall in love with Physique 57 and want to continue doing the workouts and enjoying our healthy recipes even after these first two weeks are up. And the good news is that you can, because your body will only get better and better! We still strive to perfect the moves ourselves, to work a little harder, to go a little deeper, and to keep feeling the burn, even though we’ve been practicing the technique for years. And we can tell you honestly that the rewards and the challenges never stop.

You’ll feel amazing when you finish the program in this book—but right now, you should revel in the fun of getting started and get psyched about the incredible transformation that lies ahead. You’re just fourteen days away from looking strong, slim, and sexy. Let’s go!

SCIENCE CAN MAKE YOU SEXY

W
ITH SO MANY DIETS AND FITNESS PLANS TO CHOOSE
from, it can be tough to tell what’s hype and what’s not. Today it often seems like every personal trainer is hawking a brand-new method to help you get in shape and lose weight faster than ever before: “In just ten days!”… “In just six sessions!”… “In just eight minutes, three mornings a week!” Most of us hear these promises and know deep down they CAN’T be true. But that doesn’t stop us from trying them anyway, hoping that this time the program is for real and we’ve finally found the secret to looking great for life.

At first glance, Physique 57 might seem like just another pie-in-the-sky miracle workout. After all, a loss of ten inches and ten pounds in just two weeks is pretty extraordinary! But we’re here to tell you that our program is firmly grounded in the established, proven principles of science and exercise physiology, and that’s how we deliver on the amazing results we promise. And as we mentioned, our workouts are also founded on principles of orthopedic and rehabilitative exercise, which is why, even as challenging as they are, they are so incredibly healthy for your bones, joints, muscles, and mind. Everything that we promise IS possible because it all falls within the parameters of what your body is designed to do—our workouts fire up your body’s own natural strengthening and weight-loss
mechanisms, kick them into high gear, and ultimately supercharge them so they become more powerful and efficient than ever before.

This chapter offers a closer look at the science behind our technique, particularly the physiology involved in our process of Interval Overload. It also explores exactly how the different workout components fit together to produce our signature long, lean physique. When you know that our promises are backed by science, you will also KNOW that the Physique 57 transformation is truly within your grasp. And that’s the very best kind of motivation you can have!

So now it’s time to set aside any lingering doubts about whether or not our program can work for you. We’re going to give you the inside scoop on our innovative method, and delve into the details of how our program works, and why.

Interval training has been widely recognized for years as an extremely effective form of exercise. Bursts of high-intensity work are alternated with periods of lower-intensity activity or rest. The idea is that by taking these breaks, you are able to increase your overall output: The brief recovery periods allow you to work harder during the high-intensity periods and continue to exercise for a longer amount of time. Numerous studies have shown that interval training truly does deliver the goods: It is incredibly efficient not only at improving your cardiovascular health and stamina—it increases the body’s aerobic capacity to exercise longer at varying intensities—but also at creating lean body mass, that all-important body component that determines how you look. As we discussed in
chapter 1
, increasing your lean body mass also boosts your metabolism and rate of caloric burn, making interval training one of the most effective ways to spark fat loss as well. It is the preferred mode of training among athletes, and with good reason: The results are consistent and quantifiable, far surpassing any that can be achieved through simply doing an hour of activity—whether jogging or yoga—at a constant pace.

Physique 57’s interval training regimen is designed to amplify both the process and the results. We stretch between sets to lengthen the muscles and allow them to
recharge so that you can start your next section even stronger. But stretching isn’t the only thing we do during our recoveries; often, we’ll shift the focus and work a different set of muscles. For example, we’ll do thirty seconds of Triceps Dips in between our first and second Ab sections, which gives your abs a chance to recover while simultaneously activating and sculpting the arms. Even within the same set, we will often switch from working one muscle to another (for example, from inner thighs to quads, then back to inner thighs), or between different parts of the same muscle. In this way, you get all the benefits of interval training, while also continuing to work different muscles during your recovery so you can make the most of every minute and keep the caloric burn going.

Our interval training sets are designed not only to challenge the muscles, but also to give them the MAXIMUM STIMULUS POSSIBLE. We do this not just by working them hard—after all, that’s what most workouts do—but by pushing them all the way to overload, or to the point known in exercise physiology as momentary muscular fatigue. And when you reach that point—when your muscles are burning and shaking, and can no longer contract even if you try—you know that you’ve also reached the absolute peak of your intensity. You’ve activated those muscles as much as you possibly can, and you’ll absolutely need to take a break if you want them to perform any more.

Achieving overload may not feel fabulous in the moment, but you
should
feel great about it, because it’s when you hit that point that three major physiological changes take place. First, by stimulating the muscle to such a tremendous degree, you’ve activated the neural pathways between your brain and that muscle at a very high level. These pathways are how your brain sends signals to your muscles to tell them to contract, and by activating these pathways again and again at a high intensity, you create a baseline of activation in the muscle. This means that your muscle fibers remain partially activated, or contracted (as opposed to limp and flaccid) at
all
times, and this accounts for what we call firmness, or tone. The greater your baseline of activation, the firmer your muscles will be. And that’s what makes the jiggle disappear!

Second, stimulating these neural pathways also allows you to recruit more individual muscle fibers within any given muscle, and this is what determines strength.
Whenever you use a muscle—whether you’re lifting or standing or walking down the street—you have the opportunity to activate anywhere from 5 percent to 100 percent of the muscle fibers, depending on your level of conditioning. The more your brain keeps firing signals along those neural pathways, the greater the number of muscle fibers that will respond. You ultimately become stronger because you’re building new neural pathways that are more efficient than ever before, and using more fibers within each muscle as a result. Even better, the more muscle fibers you use, the more calories you’ll burn during your workouts. This is one of the reasons that most Physique 57 clients drop pounds without even having to diet.

The third major change that takes place occurs on a cellular level within the actual fibers themselves. Contrary to popular belief, you cannot actually “build” new muscle fibers—you are born with a set number of fibers in each muscle that is largely determined by genetics. But you CAN build more strands of actin and myosin, the protein filaments within each fiber that are responsible for moving your muscles, thus increasing your muscles’ strength and power, and changing their size and shape, which is what gives you definition. Bringing a muscle to the point of overload will push it to grow actin and myosin faster than regular interval training or any other form of exercise. When the muscle reaches the point of momentary muscular fatigue, it knows it has to adapt to the stimulus being provided, so it responds by growing new strands of these all-important proteins so that it will be ready the next time. Once again, these changes result in greater caloric burn—stronger muscle fibers use more energy, and the more energy you need, the more likely it is that your body will start breaking down fat to fuel the movements.

Of course, the key to Physique 57’s Interval Overload is that there is no time at which your muscles are perfectly adapted and able to breeze through our sets with ease. No matter how fit or familiar with the program you are, we ALWAYS take you to the point of overload. We keep changing the pace, the moves, and the angles to make sure that you always feel the burn and reach that sweet spot where transformation is taking place. We hit these same muscles again and again, sculpting and toning them to give you a lean, gorgeous shape and a rock-star metabolism that will keep you thin for life. But Interval Overload is far from the only way that Physique 57 stimulates change in your muscles. Even as you’re fighting your way
through sets of reps, we’re working your muscles in a second way that many consider to be equally challenging: isometrics.

When it comes to fitness, there are only two kinds of exercises you can do: isotonic and isometric. Isotonic, or dynamic, exercises are what we usually envision when we think about working out. These are the exercises that make you move: Your muscles contract, your joints bend, and your limbs shift from one position to another. Most important, the length of the muscle changes as it contracts through a
range of motion
. When you do a biceps curl, for example, your biceps muscle starts out longer and shortens bit by bit until you achieve a full contraction. The reps, or variations, that we do in our interval sets to bring you to the point of overload are isotonics: From hip shakes to curl-ups to squeezes on the ball, all of these exercises have you moving your body and stimulating your muscles as a result.

Isometric exercises, on the other hand, stimulate the muscles without any visible contractions or movements. With isometrics, you contract and then
brace
your muscles to hold the body in a static position, rather than move through a range of motion. The muscle is engaged, but there is no movement as there is with isotonics. Instead, you find the optimum point in the contraction and stay there. Yoga, for example, is highly isometric—there are subtle movements that take you from position to position, but mainly you’re finding and then holding the postures. Isometrics are also at work when you keep your abs pulled in and your spine aligned during push-ups, or hold your arm above your head during barre work in ballet.

If you think that isometrics sound easy compared with isotonics, trust us—they’re not! If you’ve ever tried to hold a Roman Chair position against a wall for more than a minute or two, you know that isometrics can be TOUGH. In fact, often simply holding and bracing a particular muscle can be just as rigorous as targeting it through reps because you’re not relying on momentum from the movement to carry you through. You can even achieve overload through isometrics if the muscle contraction is challenging enough and you hold it for an ample
amount of time. Even a move as basic as holding a playground ball over your head can really fire up the muscles in your arms, shoulders, and core.

There are two significant advantages to performing isometrics: The first is that they tend to activate a lot of smaller, ancillary muscles that get overlooked if you focus solely on isotonics. Isotonic movements, by their nature, tend to work just one or two muscles at a time—and while that can be very effective, it’s also limiting. You can’t, for example, spot-target every single one of the tiny muscles in your seat or every inch of the inner abdominal wall through isotonic movements. The muscles are simply too small and too deep. However, engaging a larger area of the body in an isometric hold can actually recruit and stimulate those hidden muscles as they are called upon to keep you stable and help the larger muscles maintain the position. Holding your torso at a forty-five-degree incline, for example, during your thigh work, engages the entire core in a way that doing a simple curl-up will not. Similarly, maintaining a T position with your upper body during seat work (see our Figure Skater move,
here
) will not only activate your back and core, but also increase the intensity on the glutes and surrounding seat muscles. Ultimately, isometrics are a fantastic way to involve more muscles, especially hard-to-reach ones, in every move.

We also love these subtle yet potent exercises because they tone your muscles without increasing their size, ensuring that you retain a slender, feminine shape. On a cellular level, isometrics produce many of the same changes as isotonics: They stimulate the neural pathways in your muscle fibers to produce a greater baseline of activity, which in turn leads to greater strength, firmness, and tone. However, because you are bracing and holding the muscles in place rather than moving them through a range of motion, the changes you see in the shape of the muscle are less pronounced. In this way, isometrics are an essential part of what creates our signature long, lithe, dancer’s physique: They tone the muscles but avoid adding bulk.

As we discussed in
chapter 1
, isometrics provide the foundation for almost every one of our workout moves. Each move begins with an isometric hold, or starting position, that is specifically designed to fire up your ancillary muscles and make the interval sets or reps for that move more challenging and effective. For example, in Standing Crane (
here
), you begin by standing with both hands on your
chair, your torso angled slightly forward, and your right leg bent to bring the right heel up behind your seat muscle. From there, you go on to perform your reps—pulses, knee circles, and other isotonic movements designed to get you to Interval Overload—all while keeping the working leg bent at the proper angle and maintaining the position of the torso. The isotonic reps target the glutes, so that’s where you’re going to feel the burn. But with the isometric hold, you’re also activating your hamstrings, calves, core, and even upper arms.