The Physique 57 Solution (27 page)

We like this split better than the typical Cheerleader Split because it gives you more bang for your buck: With our split, you keep your hips squared, which allows you to stretch your hip flexors as well as the hamstrings—a great multitasking move that is far better for your body.

Coming out of your Gazelle Stretch, place both hands on the floor in front of you.

Straighten your right knee and move your hips back toward the left foot. Don’t sit down all the way, however—your seat should remain off the ground. Press your hands into the floor for stability.

Keep your hips square and lower as far as you can—to your point of resistance. Point through your feet. Breathe deeply.

Repeat on the other side.

SEAT

G
LUTEUS MAXIMUS, MEDIUS, MINIMUS… THESE ARE A FEW
of our favorite things, and the Seat series targets them all. For many women, the seat and hips are the most challenging parts of the body to transform because, thanks to genetics, they tend to be where we store the most fat. Every fitness regimen targets the gluteus maximus—the two large muscles that form the curve of your buttocks—but we believe that you need to work far more than just your glutes if you want to achieve a shapely, lifted seat. So our Seat series is specifically designed to blast away fat by turning up the heat to boost your caloric burn, while going deep into
all
the major gluteal muscles, along with the dozens of tiny muscles in the hip and seat areas that will give you a firm, sexy, bikini-ready bottom.

The first half of our Seat series is performed standing up while holding on to a chair or sturdy piece of furniture. For each move, we start by engaging the seat, thigh, and core muscles in an isometric hold. Engaging the core is especially important during standing seat work, because it allows you to keep your hips still and create resistance for the gluteal muscles. If you don’t brace your abs, you will lose the contraction in your glutes as soon as you start to move your legs. You might feel the muscles a little bit, but you won’t be able to activate them to the degree that you would if your abs were pulled in tight. So the main thing you need to remember with standing seat work is to ALWAYS engage your abdominal muscles!

From there, we go on to perform sets of high-intensity variations that chisel and sculpt the seat through
abduction
movements. These are movements that engage the hip and seat muscles by lifting the leg out and away from the body at different angles. Our abduction movements are incredibly effective because they target the three major gluteal muscles all at once and force you to activate additional muscles throughout the body to stabilize the standing leg and control the range of movement. Our Speed Skater variation ups the ante by combining abduction with
adduction
, which means bringing the working leg in across the midline of the body. Speed Skater is a fabulous multitasking move that generates the most heat of any of the variations—you’re digging deep into both the right AND the left glutes while activating the inner and outer hip muscles, core, and thighs, and mobilizing fat cells for some serious caloric burn. With all of these exercises, you’ll also really feel the heat in your standing leg. And because standing, or weight-bearing, exercises improve bone density, your bones will be gaining strength as well—another plus!

For the second half of the series, we get down on the floor and target the same muscles again from a different angle. After pushing so hard with the standing work, moving to the floor can feel like a relief—but you’ll find that simply changing positions gives you a whole new burst of energy that will enable you to keep going. In floor work, you don’t have to engage the core quite as much, and the positioning is more straightforward. But changing the angle of the spine actually allows you to go deeper into the muscles—when you’re not thinking about your posture or standing leg, you can really drill into all those seat muscles, large and small, with a laser-like precision and focus. By the time you reach the second seat stretch, you will have taken every single one of those muscles to the point of overload—and you will be on your way to a perfect, perky derriere with that coveted dimple on the side.

Our Seat series is intended to be ultra-challenging, so don’t be discouraged if you can’t make it through a full set of reps for some of the variations the first few times you try. You might have to pause in the middle of the set to do a quick stretch or shake out your legs and glutes before jumping back in. That’s okay! You will feel a lot of burn and a lot of heat, but remember: That feeling is MUSCLE CHANGING! Cellulite doesn’t like these moves, and all those tiny seat muscles will respond.

So take a deep breath and get ready to start slimming and sculpting that seat. If you need a little inspiration, let desire drive you through this portion of the workout: What do you desire? A lifted bottom!

You can use these moves to supplement your workouts, or to firm up your seat muscles whenever you have a few extra minutes:

Pretzel: 1 minute (
here
)

Hairpin: 1 minute (
here
)