* WORK OUT SMARTER, NOT HARDER In case you're wondering,I'm here to give you some answers: Yes, you can be strong and be graceful. Yes, you can get fit and still have time for the rest of your life. Yes, you can enjoy a workout that makes you feel energized and balanced, and sculpts lean, long muscles. Now, how about some questions: Have you been doing the same workouts for weeks or even months without getting noticeable results? Did you work out regularly in the past, but now feel like you have too little time--or energy--to devote to exercise? Have you been spending a lot of time doing cardio workouts, but you're still waiting for your body to improve? Do you love how stretch class or Pilates makes you feel but also want to sculpt your body or firm up certain trouble spots? If you answered yes to any of these questions, it's time to shake up the way you look at your exercise goals. It's time to work out smarter, not harder. LEAN, LONG, AND STRONG: THE NEW "RECIPE" FOR FITNESS As a personal trainer for more than 20 years, I have had the opportunity to observe a lot of people as they work out. And I've noticed a frequent pattern: Despite showing up at the gym regularly and completing demanding workouts, many women are getting minimal returns for their efforts. Their bodies don't change. Stomachs don't get flatter. Legs don't get leaner. Arms don't get cut and toned. Yet, amazingly, these women don't question their workouts. Instead, they blame themselves, believing that they're somehow at fault for not working out hard enough or long enough. I say it's time to place the blame where it really belongs: on the workout. After all, if you had a recipe for Cajun fish and it tasted terrible every time you tried it, wouldn't you conclude that the recipe was flawed? Well, perhaps the "recipe"you've been following for flat abs, a firm butt, or shapely legs is flawed as well. In fact, if you're concentrating on just one aspect of fitness, I can guarantee you that it is. When most women choose an exercise program, they pick a cardio (also known as aerobic) activity, such as walking, running, Spinning, or working out on a stairclimber or rowing machine. Cardio workouts are great for you, no doubt about it. They strengthen your heart and lungs, burn calories, and increase your endurance. But the truth is, they can do only so much; they can't sculpt your body, increase your flexibility, or improve your strength and posture. Likewise, many women are devoted to their stretching or mind-body classes. Stretching lengthens your muscles, making you more flexible and graceful. But it doesn't burn a lot of calories or fat, and it doesn't give your cardiovascular system a workout. And while mind-body classes offer a great meditative aspect and teach you to connect to your breath, their potential for reshaping the body is limited. Finally, there's strength training, which is using some form of resistance, such as dumbbells or your bodyweight, to challenge and build muscle. Unfortunately, strength training (also known as weight training) seems to suffer from bad P.R. Somehow, women got the notion that working out with weights would leave them looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. As a result, very few women do it, but those who do find that it sculpts and firms up their bodies in a way that nothing else can. But as good as it is, it doesn't improve your endurance, increase your lung capacity, or necessarily make you more flexible and graceful. When you focus on just one kind of workout, you get limited results. To truly get the most out of your workouts--and get the sculpted, trim, flexible body we all want--you need a new approach. Perhaps you've heard the buzzword synergy. Synergy is the phenomenon that occurs when certain actions are combined at strategic moments, and the results are far greater than the sum of their parts. Whereas regular exercise is about addition--20 crunches plus 20 more crunches equals a lot of time--my program is about using synergy to multiply the power of your workouts. You'll take the best of strength training, cardio work, and stretching and integrate them into fat-blasting, muscle-sculpting routines that yield maximum results in minimum time. In fact, my program is built on workouts that take only about 12 minutes, 4 days a week. Add in 20 minutes or so of a cardio activity 3 days a week, and you're on your way to achieving a whole new level of fitness. Instead of just burning calories, or just increasing flexibility, or just defining your muscles, my synergistic workouts will help you achieve all three. After all, we deserve all three. A fit, healthy body is lean, long and strong. THE ULTIMATE IN SYNERGY The single most revolutionary aspect of the Lean, Long, and Strong program is its unique integration of stretches with strength-training exercises to help you reap the benefits of synergy. Each workout is made up of a special combination of moves grouped into what I call synergy sets. In each of these sets, you'll do precise strength-training exercises followed immediately by specially chosen stretches that make the strength-training move you just completed even more effective. Your muscles will become longer and stronger than they would if you'd done the exercises by themselves. Balance: The Key to Changing Your Body Changing your body requires balance. Not the double pirouette kind of balance you see Olympic ice-skaters exhibit (Oh my, I can't look, she's going to fall!). Not the handstand away from the wall (Is he kidding?) kind of balance that my yoga teacher can do. The balance required to transform your body starts with your exercise program. Simply put, balanceis the state in which all the various elements come together to form a satisfying whole, with out one piece being out of pro- portionoroveremphasized. Asgreat as it sounds, "balance" doesn't get a lot of media attention. Instead, we hear about extremes: the new workout program that requires you to work out for 3 hours a day. The fad diet that promises you can lose 50 £ds in a month. The "incredible" exercise contraption that magically works your muscles for you. It's tough to stay centered in this world of extremes. The problem with diets and trendy workout programs is that they create impossible standards that set you up for failure. We're led into an "all-or-nothing" way of thinking, as we promise our selves, "I will work out every day no matter what" or "I will banish all high-calorie foods from my life forever" or "I will exercise for 2 hours today and not a minute less." Taking such an all-or-nothing approach with yourself is like walking on a tightrope--one wrong move and everything's lost. You won't be able to stay balanced with such a shaky plan. And when you fall (asyou've been set up to do), you get in the habit of failing. You start to feel bad and may even convince yourself that you can't stick to an exercise program, when all you had to do was try a more balanced approach. The Lean, Long, and Strong workouts you'll be doing in this book were built on the key concept of balance. They acknowledge that you have a lot more going on in your day than just working out. So instead of 2-hour workouts, you'll be doing workouts specially designed to get you maximum results in as little as 12 minutes a day. And if you missed your workout yesterday, you don't need to give up; just pick up where you left off. Instead of setting you up for failure, these workouts make success seem easy. Best of all, by combining strength training, cardio work, and stretching, the plan gives you an effective, fast, and practical approach to balancing all your needs: You will become lean, long, and strong. You'll enjoy a trim, sculpted body; feel more agile and graceful; and get through your day more easily, feeling strong and energized. Plus, bringing balance into your work outs will make you more self-aware and more confident. And when you apply this awareness to other aspects of your life, those areas that are not in balance will become more visible, which means you can apply the same principles to them. Ultimately, you won't set yourself up to fail by reaching for extremes, but you will find yourself balancing on the strength of your successes. How do I know that the synergy sets are effective? I see the results every day--in my own body and the bodies of my clients. I developed synergy sets over the course of years, through trial and error, as I revised and reworked my individual exercise program to get the best results. The story of how I developed synergy sets is also in great part the story of my career as a professional trainer. When I first started training at 16 years old, I made a lot of common mistakes. I trained legs every day, ignored my upper body, and spent way too much time doing aerobics. Over the years, I learned everything I could about getting into shape and began sharing my love of fitness with others, first by teaching classes and then by becoming a personal trainer. I've had the pleasure of working with some amazing clients as I helped them reach their fitness goals. And a number of years ago, I wrote the best-selling book Body-Change with one of these clients--and an extraordinary human being--Montel Williams. Since then, I've continued to try out new forms of exercise, but I keep coming back to the same conclusion: Strength training changes bodies best. I started incorporating more stretching into my routine a few years ago because I wanted to increase my level of flexibility for yoga. Previously, I had always rushed through a few quick stretches at the end of the workout. I wanted to maximize my time in the gym, so instead of adding more stretches at the end of my workout, I decided to integreate them between sets of strength-training exercises that I was already doing. The stretches felt so good that I kept adding more. Instead of resting between exercises, I now spent that time stretching. Holding a stretch for 30 seconds was also a reminder to focus on my breathing and not on what was on my desk waiting for me at home. Quickly, I started seeing the benefits of my integrated workouts. Stretching between sets of an exercise took me to the next level of connecting to my body. After 20 years of lifting weights, which I loved, I was able to dial in on a whole new level of fitness by integrating the best stretches with the most efficient strength-training exercises. The intensity of my entire workout increased as one movement flowed to the next. Plus, it felt phenomenal. I could literally feel the energy flowing through me. Stretching helps you connect your breath to your body, and I found that the focus on my breathing calmed me down and helped me focus even more intently on the workout. The lengthening stretches not only felt great, but when I did the next set of strength-training exercises, I could feel the exercises in greater depth. It was the difference between looking quickly at a painting in passing and taking a moment to experience the vibrant colors. I like to think of it as "training in color"--integrating stretches throughout my workout brought a whole new dimension to the experience. Best of all, I discovered that I reaped benefits all day from those few extra moments spent stretching in between sets of an exercise. My mind was calmer, and my body felt even better than it had with my old workouts. To give my clients the same amazing benefits, I started integrating complementary stretching (stretches that directly correspond with the muscles being worked) into their workouts. For instance, if we did an intensive exercise for the glutes such as a lunge, we would follow that immediately with a great stretch for the glutes. Benefits came right away. Their routines flowed easily, they had less soreness after a workout, and they maximized their results with a minimum of time invested. Inches were lost, clothes fit better, and slouching was replaced by walking tall. Their legs looked longer and their abdominals and arms were better defined. My clients also told me they could feel, or connect to, their bodies better with the integrated strengthening and stretching. And the added stretches along with the focus on the breath helped prevent injury and brought them a sense of calm. After seeing these results in my clients, I knew I needed to share these routines in a program designed just for women. Women--with their quest for leaner legs, firmer glutes, flatter stomachs, and more-toned arms--need a commonsense workout that works. You now hold that program in your hands, and with it, the detailed map to getting lean, long, and strong in workouts of just 12 minutes. MORE "SECRETS" FOR SUCCESS While the cornerstone of my workout program is the synergy set, that's not the only unique feature. You'll also get maximum results in minimum time with the following core features of the program. Customized plans to target key trouble spots. We all have them: those areas of our bodies that we'd particularly like to tone up. Maybe you've just had a baby, and you really want to firm up your abs. Or maybe summer's coming, and you'd like to tone up those thighs so you look great when you wear a pair of shorts. In part three of the book, I'll give you specific focus programs to target key trouble zones. And if your goal is all-around fitness, you'll also find a total-body, fat-blasting program that will give you amazing results. Precision combination of com£d and isolation moves. You'll also enjoy the benefits that come with the unique design of each workout routine. Each set of strength-training exercises builds on the previous one, combining a mix of com£d and isolation movements, which more effectively sculpt your body. For example, in the lower-body workouts, you'll do standing exercises followed by targeted leg exercises done while lying on the floor. This way, your muscles have already been challenged by the time you start the floorwork, and there's no need for dozens of ineffective reps. Strength Training: Debunking the Myths Where the belief that women shouldn't lift weights got started, we'll never know. Maybe we saw teenage boys lifting weights and growing like weeds, and we assumed the same would happen to us. Somewhere along the line, many of us developed the belief that lifting dumbbells would immediately turn us into a female version of the Incredible Hulk. Let's take a closer look at the three most common reasons women usually give for not doing strength- training exercises. I don't want to get big. This is the most common excuse, but I'm here to tell you it's just not going to happen. Even if you wanted to develop big muscles, it's pretty difficult for a woman to get big and bulky from weight training. Excerpted from Lean, Long and Strong: The 6-Week Strength-Training, Fat-Burning Program for Women by Wini Linguvic All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
