Read Chris Powell's Choose More, Lose More for Life Online
Authors: Chris Powell
Tags: #Health & Fitness / Diet & Nutrition / Weight Loss, #Self-Help / Motivational & Inspirational, #Health & Fitness / Exercise
Chris Powell's Choose More, Lose More for Life (19 page)
4. A Secret Weapon
Now here’s your bonus: 9-Minute Missions
keep you looking young
. Wow! The brief, high-intensity running, jumping, pushing, squatting, and crunching of 9-Minute Mission exercises trigger a sensational neuroendocrine
response. That’s a fancy way of saying that your workouts tell your brain to release some incredible hormone called growth hormone. And let me tell you, that stuff is like liquid gold.
When you do your 9-Minute Missions, you tap into a real-world fountain of youth! In nine minutes a day you start your growth hormone flowing. That miracle juice attacks fat, which is great—the more the merrier, when it comes to anti-fat weapons. But the real gravy is that growth hormone replenishes your cells. Big deal, you say? Yeah, it is. This stuff makes you
grow new cells when your old ones die
.
Young cells keep you healthy and looking young. Have you ever noticed that a lot of hard-core fitness buffs look more youthful than other folks their age? It’s not just because they’re in great shape: It’s because they’ve found their very own fountains of youth. You can, too, by doing s
hort bursts of intense exercise
—your 9-Minute Missions—which pump growth hormone into your veins, constantly rejuvenating your body. Believe it!
Here’s where I give you the phenomenal techniques you’ll be using to put the pedal to your weight-loss metal—to set your body’s four powerful metabolic mechanisms in motion. I’ve created
twenty new 9-Minute Mission workouts built on thirty original exercises
that go beyond the ones I showed you in my first book. (I’ll take you through those thirty exercises step-by-step after I lay out the twenty workouts here.) But don’t worry if you didn’t read
Choose to Lose
. Newbies can totally rock these exercises.
Having thirty new exercises and twenty new workouts to choose from will
keep your routine fresh
and exciting. Plus, I’ve shaved a minute off my original
ten-minute
rule. Nine minutes give you the exact same results as ten minutes, so I’ve saved you a whole extra minute of work! Who doesn’t have nine minutes?
You’ll be doing a totally different 9-Minute Mission—giving your body a totally new challenge—on each of five days a week, every week, for a month (you get two days off per week!). That’s why I’m giving you exactly
twenty workouts: Five 9-Minute Missions a week for four weeks = twenty 9-Minute Missions per month. You’re not going to repeat a single 9-Minute Mission all month, so you sure won’t get bored! And when you switch up the exercises that you use in your 9-Minute Missions from day to day,
plus
do them in the different ways I describe below, you’re
really
giving your body the kind of variety that’s the spice of weight loss. Your body never gets in a groove, never adapts to your resistance training regimen, so it
never stops moving forward
. Each day, each week, your muscles keep growing and your waistline keeps shrinking.
In month two, you’ll do the whole cycle of twenty workouts over again, and when you do, you’ll see some big changes. Going back through the 9-Minute Mission cycle and performing each workout one month after you last did it, you’ll see a significant, quantifiable jump in your fitness level. You’ll be able to do more reps and more circuits in the same amount of time. It’s more workout for your minute: You get a bigger payoff from each and every 9-Minute Mission! And it happens again and again in months three and four and each month that follows. Outstanding.
This system keeps you breaking through your fitness and weight-loss plateaus so you can achieve the results you’re looking for!
Each of the twenty 9-Minute Mission workouts is designed according to one of five protocols. For each, I give you a workout plan, a pinpointed goal, and a Breakthrough Training Tactic for taking your workout to the next level. And to help you get started, I lay out four great 9-Minute Missions for each of the five protocols. Each Mission targets one of the three zones of your body—upper, core, and lower—or your total body, and it doesn’t matter how many reps or how many rounds you complete in it. Whether you do two rounds or twenty rounds, five reps or fifty reps, it’s nine minutes and you’re done. As long as you give it your best effort, you win! It’s all super-easy—so are you ready to shape up?
Whoa. I’m using a lot of fitness jargon! This little glossary should clear up any confusion you might be experiencing.
9-Minute Mission:
This is the total workout. There are five diff erent styles of missions: Sprintervals, Stepladders, Enduros, Super Circuits, and Rapid Rounds.
Circuit:
A full round of exercises in a mission, from the first exercise to the last.
Interval:
A period of time during which your body is either working at specific intensities or resting. Interval training alternates these periods.
Rep:
An abbreviation for repetition, which is a single, full completion of an exercise movement, from the first step to the last.
Rest:
An interval during a workout when you aren’t moving, but letting your body recover before the next interval of exercise.
Round:
A circuit.
While we’re exercising, we all carry on an
inner dialogue
in our head. The conversation might not be in actual words, but the feelings become strong when you begin to notice your muscles burning, your heart beating faster, and your rapid breathing. Your brain immediately monitors these sensations to see if you’re in danger and when you should stop exercise so you don’t get injured. This sets up a struggle, because your body’s discomfort typically triggers your brain to say “stop!” well before you’re remotely close to injury. Many call this the
mental barrier
, and it can block you from the results you’re capable of achieving. It can keep you from taking good fitness up to great fitness. But you can break through your mental barrier!
Doing the diff erent 9-Minute Missions, you’ll experience diff erent physical responses. Pay attention, and you’ll eventually discover your
own personal
mental barrier. In each workout description, I lay out the physical sensations you can expect. I also equip you with a
breakthrough training tactic
that you can use to blast through your mental barrier, accomplish your mission, and reach the victory (and fitness!) you deserve. By smashing your mental barrier again and again, you take back your power, to take control of your inner dialogue. When you do this day after day, your fitness skyrockets, your weight drops, and you begin to appreciate how strong you really are, both mentally and physically!
There are three steps to dominating your inner dialogue and breaking through your mental barrier:
SEEK OUT
your mental barrier: Intensify your mission until you can hear your inner dialogue clearly. Listen as your body tries to talk you into stopping. “This is hard. I can really feel the load on my muscles. I should stop before it gets uncomfortable.” “The burn is getting intense. I don’t know if I can stand it much longer. I should stop so the burn goes away.” “My breathing is getting heavy and my heart rate is going up. I should stop and catch my breath.”
PUSH AGAINST
your mental barrier: Keep going with your mission until your body’s arguments become urgent. If you’re anxious about the burning in your muscles, you might hear, “I’m scared! My muscles are burning so brutally! I have to stop!” If your breathing is becoming panicky, your body might be screaming, “I’m scared! I can’t breathe! I have to stop or I’m going to suff ocate!”
BREAK THROUGH
your mental barrier with two tactics:
+2 method → When you reach the point in your mission where your muscles are blazing and too fatigued to do another rep, there’s a way to keep chipping away at your reps until you complete your mission. Stop and rest for five seconds, then perform two more reps. Stop again and rest for five more seconds, then do two more reps. Continue until you complete your mission.
Power breathing→ Your body has a natural tendency to go into hyperventilation, or panic breathing, but there’s an extremely effective
way to overcome this. The key is to keep your jaw loose and breathe aggressively through both your nose and mouth. Each time you inhale, try to inflate your lungs an extra “inch” at the top of the breath, then exhale quickly but not forcefully. Keep breathing like this until you complete your mission. You’ll be able to remain in mental and physical control!
This strategy is all about work and rest. Under this protocol, your Missions challenge and develop your muscular and cardiorespiratory endurance as well as your stamina. A 20-second burst of exercise work doesn’t seem like much at first, but it becomes a real challenge in the later rounds. Focus power breathing early on, and as your muscles begin to burn out, use the +2 Method to conquer the mission!
Goal:
Do as many repetitions as possible during each interval. Keep track of your total repetitions and write them down. When you do the 9-Minute Mission next month, compare your numbers and watch your progress!
