Making the Cut (29 page)

         
Breathe.
It’s very important to breathe properly during each repetition that you complete. Not only is breathing essential for keeping your blood pressure steady, but it also promotes slow, controlled movements, which, as stated previously, will max out your results. Additionally, by holding your breath during even a single repetition of an exercise, you are depriving your body of valuable oxygen and encouraging muscle fatigue. When you are exercising, breathe as follows: as a general rule, exhale during the difficult part (concentric contraction) of the lift, and inhale during the eccentric contraction, as you return to the starting position. To go back to the bicep curl as an example, exhale as you lift the weight to your shoulder, and inhale as your lower it back down. By maintaining this rhythm you will not only avoid falling into the “holding your breath” trap, but you will also naturally boost concentration and focus on your form.

Rule 5: Pace Yourself

Exercise is the architect, and recovery is the builder. Believe it or not, your muscles do not get stronger during the workout; it’s
after
the workout that they grow and develop. Intense strength training places huge demands on your muscles. To adapt to those demands, your muscles need adequate recovery time to rebuild and get stronger. As important as it is to stay the course and not get lazy, it’s just as important to know when to cut yourself a break so that you don’t burn out, and so that your body has a chance to process the work you’re doing.

Do not train a muscle group more than twice a week, and make sure it rests between training sessions. While my plan stresses no rest during the workout, it does call for rest at least two days in between training the same muscle groups. When you work a muscle, the muscle fibers tear. Given the proper rest and recovery, your muscle fibers will repair themselves and grow leaner and stronger. But if you train the muscle too soon and impede its recovery, you can damage the muscle and break it down.
Making the Cut
is precisely planned to give each of your muscle groups the time needed to recover and build between sessions.

Additionally, you should never exercise intensely for more than two hours at a time. When you hear some buff celebrity talking about how he trained six hours a day to get ready for his latest action movie, he’s talking a load of embellished bull that makes the ordinary person feel totally inferior and hopelessly inadequate. Spending that much time working out is not only impossible, given hectic shooting schedules, it would actually be counterproductive, as it would throw the body into a state of overtraining and make it more prone to metabolize its own lean muscle tissue for energy.

TWICE A DAY: MAXIMIZING THE AFTERBURN EFFECT

Although it is important not to overdo it in a single exercise session, you
can
maximize your results by splitting your workout into two separate sessions. For example, you can resistance-train in the morning and cardio-train at night, or vice versa. The concept behind multiple daily training sessions is afterburn. In very simple terms, this means you burn calories not only during exercise but afterward. In fact, for hours afterward your body will continue to burn up to 25 percent more calories, thus elevating your basal metabolic rate.

The exercise afterburn—calories expended (above your BMR) after an exercise bout—is also referred to as “excess post-exercise oxygen consumption,” or EPOC. EPOC represents the oxygen consumption above and beyond resting level that the body is utilizing to return itself to its pre-exercise state, which can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 48 hours, depending on the intensity and duration of the workout. By splitting up your cardio and your resistance training, you will reap the benefits of twice-a-day afterburn without overtraining your muscles.

This is only an option. I know that sometimes life can get so hectic and busy that you’re lucky if you get to work out at all. So if you can’t split your workout in two,
do not fret.
If you’re working out once a day five days a week, I’m happy and you’re golden.

SLEEP AND RELAXATION

As it turns out, your muscles are not alone in needing rest; getting enough sleep is another critical part of the weight-loss formula. That’s right—if you want to lose weight once and for all, you
have
to make sure you’re getting enough shut-eye. Not only will it help you lose weight, but it will also energize you and improve your overall health.

Doctors have long known that sleep affects many aspects of our lives, but not until recently did appetite enter the picture. Research on leptin, ghrelin, human growth hormone, and cortisol brought it into focus. These four hormones control our appetite, our fat and carbohydrate metabolism, and the growth of lean muscle—all of which are directly affected by how much sleep we get. Have you ever experienced a sleepless night followed by a day when, no matter what you ate, you never felt full or satisfied?
That’s
because of leptin and ghrelin; together these hormones work in a kind of “check and balance” system to control feelings of hunger and fullness. Ghrelin, which is produced in the gastrointestinal tract, stimulates appetite, while leptin, produced in fat cells, sends a signal to the brain when you are full. When sleep is restricted, leptin levels go down and ghrelin levels go up. In studies, subjects’ desire for high-carb, calorie-dense foods increased by a whopping 45 percent when they were sleep-deprived. In this same study—a joint project between Stanford and the University of Wisconsin—those who slept the fewest hours had the highest body fat and weighed the most.

But wait—there’s more. Sleep loss results in less deep sleep, the kind that restores our energy levels. Losing deep sleep hours decreases our growth hormone levels. Growth hormone is a protein that helps regulate the body’s proportions of fat and muscle in adults. With less growth hormone in our bodies, our ability to lose fat and grow lean muscle is reduced.

And in case these facts aren’t compelling enough, you have another reason to get your eight hours: lack of sleep can also trigger release of cortisol, a nasty stress hormone that promotes abdominal fat and is responsible for making us feel hungry even when we are full. Sleep is starting to sound pretty important now, isn’t it? Pretty much any way you look at it, lack of sleep can set the stage for overeating and weight gain, and it will only throw you off track.

Meditation
In Buddhism the purpose of meditation is to achieve inner peace and enlightenment through liberation of the mind. If you have an undisciplined mind, your life is ruled by the constant chatter of random thoughts and by unthinking reactions to life’s circumstances. In contrast, if your mind is liberated through practiced mental concentration, you’ll discover that you possess a much greater depth and inner serenity lying beneath the chatter. Finding this reserve of inner peace is one of the goals of meditation. Studies have shown that meditation greatly improves psychological and physiological well-being. Scientifically speaking, this is accomplished as brain waves in the stress-prone right frontal cortex move to the calmer left frontal cortex. This mental shift decreases the negative effects of stress, depression, fear, and anxiety. By quieting those parts of the mind, you will make room for greater feelings of vitality, creativity, and happiness. You will feel empowered to take charge of your life and future instead of simply leaving it to nature or fate. Cultivate this mental discipline as a means of attaining your dreams and living a happier, healthier life.

Rule 6: Know When to Hold and When to Fold

Many people want to lose fat and shrink the “problem areas.” Well, I got news for you—you can stop buying all the latest workout videos promising iron buns and abs. You can work those thighs with the latest gadget until you’re blue in the face, but
it is physiologically impossible to spot-reduce fat.
Fat is burned systematically across the body, according to patterns established by one’s individual and utterly unique genetics.
Targeting exercise to one region of the body or another won’t make fat disappear from that particular region.
In fact, it can be counterproductive and create the exact opposite of your desired effect. If you do tons of crunches in an attempt to flatten your tummy, you can actually build muscle mass underneath the fat, making your “problem area” look bigger. The
only
way to flatten that tummy is to shed body fat, and the best way to do that is to employ the training techniques in my program.

Now, for those of you who are looking to cheat genetics a bit—come on, who isn’t?—this is where body-sculpting comes into play. You may remember that term from the late 1990s, when body-sculpting was the hottest fitness fad going and everybody wanted to “sculpt” their bodies without having any concept of what it meant. Body-sculpting is not for individuals who have a lot of weight to lose; it’s for those who want to fine-tune the
shape
of their physique, for example by creating the illusion of height or the suggestion of a smaller waist. They accomplish this by growing certain muscles and shrinking others. I am not the most curvaceous woman in the world—I am actually short and stocky, with a thick, square torso. I’ve always wanted a more hourglass shape and a narrower waist. In order to create that desired shape for my body, I build the muscles on the outside of my upper body (my lats or my lateral delts). Then I totally
avoid training my external obliques
so the muscles waste a bit and get smaller. By growing my upper body in the right ways and shrinking the muscles in my lower torso, I’ve been able to create a “V-taper” effect and the illusion of a smaller waist. Below are some guidelines for how you can concentrate on specific muscles to create whatever visual effect you’re looking for.

THE V-TAPER (HOURGLASS SHAPE)

The trick here is to build the muscles in your upper back and shoulders and shrink your internal and external obliques (the ab muscles on the sides of your upper and lower waist).

EXERCISES TO DO

1. Wide-Grip Lat Pull-down (Chapter 3)

2. Standing Lat Pull-down (Chapter 3)

3. Terry Pull (Chapter 3)

EXERCISES TO AVOID

Any exercise involving the external and internal obliques

LONG AND LEAN

These tricks give you the appearance of being taller. You can achieve this look by improving your posture. Poor posture comes from a weak core and a weak upper back. If you have no core strength, then you are most likely slouching, which makes you look significantly shorter. In addition, most of us have weak upper back muscles and very tight chest muscles. This causes us to roll our shoulders forward, giving us a hunched-over appearance.

The following moves will pull your shoulders back and strengthen your core, so you will stand up taller and more confidently.

EXERCISES TO DO

1. Seated Cable Row (Chapter 3)

2. Back Extension (Chapter 3)

3. Medium-Underhand-Grip Pull-down (Chapter 3)

EXERCISES TO AVOID

Excessive chest exercises (these exercises roll your shoulders forward)

SINEWY ARMS

Get rid of sloping shoulders and flabby biceps and triceps using the following exercises. These moves will make your shoulders bigger, rounder, and fuller so that the rest of your arm flab looks smaller.

EXERCISES TO DO

1. Military Shoulder Press (Chapter 3)

2. Lateral Shoulder Raise (Chapter 3)

EXERCISES TO AVOID

None

Get Organized
The concept of self-organization is about as self-explanatory and straightforward as it gets. The goal is not necessarily to become neater or more punctual, although those things are good. Rather, the goal is to become ready for whatever life has to offer. Often we are so hampered by our disorganization that we can’t take advantage of today’s opportunities. Stop thinking of clutter-clearing as a tremendous chore, and start thinking of it as one of the most effective self-improvement tactics available to you. Keeping your home and work environments organized can benefit your mental and physical health in a multitude of ways. Streamlining your life also streamlines your thoughts. Studies have shown that people who live in a cluttered environment are more easily distracted, overwhelmed, and stressed. By clearing things out and organizing your life, you are making a statement that you are ready to let go of all the superfluous crap you’ve been hanging on to and be open to new possibilities. Every magazine and piece of paper you recycle, every book you give to the library, and every knickknack or item of clothing you pass on to a new owner creates space in your life for new insight, energy, and joy.

Rule 7: Know the Techniques

You’ll get more out of your workouts if you understand the techniques on which they are based. The following is a brief explanation of each of the advanced techniques I used to create this highly effective workout plan. Each technique is slightly different, but all are based on letting you get the most out of your workout. When combined, as they are in
Making the Cut,
they give you the most intense and goal-oriented workout plan you could hope for in a book.