The Physique 57 Solution (3 page)

This breakthrough process works so well because it increases your lean body mass more effectively than any other workout. Your body composition includes muscle, bone, and fat, and the percentages of each determine how you look. Two people with the exact same height and body weight can look completely different because they have different body compositions. The key, therefore, to looking slim and sexy is to not only blast away fat, but also increase your lean body mass, or muscle. You can diet all you want, but if you don’t target your muscles in the right way, you’re not going to see the definition that truly transforms your body. Physique 57 workouts are designed to significantly increase your lean body mass in an incredibly short amount of time. By overloading the muscles to provide them with the maximum stimulus possible and then
further
challenging them through isometrics, we are giving your muscles a one-two punch that pushes them to change at an amazingly rapid rate. We’ll talk more about the science behind this process and how it works in
chapter 2
.

Creating lean body mass is actually harder than you’d think. For many years, strength training has been considered the most effective way to generate and build lean muscle. Lifting weights again and again not only is boring, but can also stress your joints and lead to injury over time. What’s more, certain forms of exercise can actually
decrease
your lean body mass if you’re not careful. If your workout focuses too heavily on cardiovascular training, for example, as with running or aerobics, you will actually
lose
lean body mass because your body breaks down muscle tissue
to generate fuel (carbohydrates) for all that cardio. The same is true if you combine a heavy workout schedule with a low- or no-carb diet. In this way, you can end up sabotaging your efforts. An unintentional loss of lean body mass is one of the reasons that people can be working out frequently but still not seeing results.

The good news is that Physique 57 has been proven to deliver marked changes in lean body mass while also boosting cardiovascular health and generating significant caloric burn—a feat all the more impressive because it is done without using heavy weights or equipment. This rapid change in body composition also accounts for the dramatic loss of inches off the thighs, waist, and arms that our clients experience because, quite simply, lean muscle tissue takes up far less space than fat. The more lean body mass you have, the slimmer you will look, no matter if the numbers on the scale change very little or even remain the same.

But the advantages of better body composition don’t end there: Your lean body mass also determines your resting metabolic rate (RMR), or the number of calories your body burns at rest. Increasing your lean body mass is the ONLY way to permanently boost your metabolism: Muscle tissue burns fifteen times as many calories as fat, so the more of it you have, the more calories you’ll burn throughout the day, even when you’re not exercising. After age thirty, a woman’s RMR decreases at a rate of 2 to 3 percent per decade, so now is the time to fight back! With every Physique 57 workout, you’ll be sculpting your body into a lean, mean, calorie-burning machine. And if you combine our exercise formula with our knockout eating plan, which shaves off additional calories and boosts your metabolism even more, you’ve got a recipe for major change, and a body capable of staying fit and slim for life.

Our revolutionary combination of isometrics and Interval Overload is perhaps the most important way that we stand out from other workouts. It’s the core of our process and, together with our lengthening stretches, the catalyst that boosts lean body mass and transforms your physique. But there are many other aspects of our
program that are radically different from other fitness methods and contribute to the overall package and fantastic results that our clients love. Here are some of the other ways Physique 57 outshines the other techniques and regimens you’ve tried before.

1. Major caloric burn
. A typical Physique 57 workout burns up to 650 calories depending on your body weight and fitness level—significantly more than other forms of exercise, including an hour of Pilates (390 calories), an hour of Spinning (300 calories), running a mile (100 calories), or even swimming a mile (400 calories). The truth is that many popular fitness methods, such as Spinning and running, actually have a surprisingly low rate of caloric burn; Spinning burns fewer calories because you are coasting on momentum for most of the workout, and running, while terrific for your cardiovascular system, just doesn’t burn a lot of calories—you have to run a lot of miles to make a difference on the calorie front. And when it comes to more static exercises like yoga, forget it—you’re hardly burning any calories at all!

Physique 57’s high caloric burn is a direct result of Interval Overload: Your muscles will burn more calories when you push them to the point of fatigue. When you’re really feeling the burn and the heat, you’ve entered your optimum calorie-burning zone. Plus, our technique focuses on strengthening the muscles, and muscle tissue, as we’ve said, burns fifteen times as many calories as fat. The stronger you get, the more calories you’ll burn during your workouts—a fabulous cycle that keeps the pounds coming off!

2. Innovative choreography
. Our dance-inspired exercise moves are a breath of fresh air in the workout world: Instead of triceps dips, we do the Triceps Can-Can; instead of lunges, we do the Curtsy; instead of squats, we do Thigh Dancing. All of our moves are designed to be fun and feminine and to remove any sense of intimidation. With Physique 57 you can say good-bye to many dreaded moves from other workouts, including jumping jacks, jogging in place, torso twists, and endless sets of crunches.

3. Variety
. If you walk into a class at any gym across the country, the class will
likely consist of lengthy sets of reps: eight lunges on the left side, eight on the right side, eight on the left again, and so on. It’s tedious and exhausting and everyone watches the clock. In our workouts, we constantly change up the positions and the tempo, so even if you’re working your thigh muscles for twenty minutes, the variety of exercises keeps you focused and challenged, and time flies by. As a bonus, working the same muscle in different ways actually builds muscle faster than doing the same moves again and again, making better results the icing on the cake.

4. Efficiency
. Physique 57 is designed to make every second count and give you maximum results in the least amount of time. In just 57 minutes, our strategic sequence of moves works every muscle group in the body and even zeros in on different fibers within the same muscle. In addition, because of isometrics, most of our signature moves target not just one muscle group but several. In fact, we use the core muscles during 80 percent of the workout. Our Pretzel move, for example, actually works your seat muscles and your waistline so that you are simultaneously sculpting both. How’s that for multitasking?

5. It’s good for you
. Despite the vigorous nature of our workouts, our moves are based on orthopedic and rehabilitative exercises, and thus provide a safe, organic way of reshaping your body. Remember, Lotte Berk originally developed her own exercise regimen as a way to strengthen and retrain her muscles after an injury. There’s no pounding, as with jumping jacks or running, and our moves don’t put pressure on joints and ligaments the way step aerobics or StairMasters do. Many clients who come to us with injuries say that Physique 57 is the only workout they’ve found that doesn’t cause additional problems or pain. Our leg lifts are perfect for weak knees; strengthening your abs takes pressure off your lower back; and our weight-bearing (or standing) exercises improve bone density. You’ll never finish our workouts feeling beat up. Sure, you’ll feel tired, but you’ll also feel energized and glowing from having challenged your body in a healthy way.

6. It looks good, too
. If you’ve ever studied dance, you know that a ballet master or choreographer will often tell his dancers that their bodies should
look beautiful during every single second of a performance, and from every angle. Whether you’re going into a turn or coming out of a turn, whether you’re about to kick a leg up or your leg is coming down, you should always appear graceful enough that if someone snapped your picture, the photograph would turn out well. We couldn’t agree more, and all of our moves and sequences have been created with this in mind. No matter how hard you’re working, we want your body to look like a painting, so we’ve given you moves like Figure Skater, Mermaid, and Gazelle Stretch. Now, isn’t that more appealing than doing sweaty, grunty squats?

While the past few years have seen an upsurge in other dance-based workouts, these regimens lack the innovative variations and sequences that Physique 57 uses to zone in on and target even your deepest muscles. Most important, they fail to challenge your muscles to the point of overload—and unless you hit that sweet spot where you’re really feeling the heat, you’re not going to see the truly transformative changes you desire.

A Physique 57 workout is designed to target and tone every muscle group in the body in just 57 minutes. The six different series within the workout—Warm-Up, Thighs, Seat, Abs, Back, and Cool Down—comprise anywhere from one to three sections. Each section is made up of moves, and each move consists of different sets of reps called variations. Together the moves and variations build on one another to systematically sculpt every one of your muscles and ensure that you remain in the calorie-burning zone. We also stretch in between sections to release and lengthen the muscles you’ve been working, and give your body a chance to recharge so that you can start the next section even stronger.

Because we know boredom saps both strength and enthusiasm, we’ve structured the workout so that no one section within a series ever takes longer than eight minutes, and many take far less. You won’t believe how easy it is to get through
a killer thigh sequence when you know you only have three minutes to go before you stretch. And within the sections themselves, we rarely spend longer than a minute working the muscles in any given position. This rapid-fire pacing keeps you present and focused on the moves and variations you’re performing so that you can really give it your all with every rep.

The six different series within the workout are:

A Physique 57 warm-up is unlike any other. We don’t devote time to stretches or gentle aerobics—instead, we grab our free weights and dive right in. While biceps curls and push-ups might be the main event in other workouts, for us they’re just the beginning. Our warm-ups will get your heart rate up and start the caloric burn; plus, this is where we do some of our best shoulder- and arm-sculpting work. Most people don’t realize that working your arm muscles burns the
least
amount of calories of any muscle group in your body, so we do our main push for the arms here rather than giving them a separate series of their own. We use free weights to generate heat and sculpt your biceps, triceps, and shoulders in a very short amount of time.

The thighs are the largest muscle group in your body, and they generate the biggest calorie burn; thus, we spend a lot of our time working them because they are your single best ally in reshaping your body. Our Thigh series is split into three different sections, each followed by accompanying stretches; because the muscles themselves are so large, you really need a variety of moves to hit all the trouble spots. The first two sections are done standing up and use different leg positions to target your thighs from every angle, as well as the lower leg muscles, especially the calves. The third section is always Thigh Dancing, one of our signature moves that gets you down on the floor and provides a fun, ultra-efficient way to sculpt your quads
and
waistline. Together these moves are guaranteed to shrink-wrap your thighs, smoothing and slimming them to be fabulously jiggle-free. Just watch those inches disappear!

Almost every workout regimen targets the gluteus maximus—the two large muscles that form the curve of your buttocks and determine whether you have a shapely, lifted seat. But the seat area also includes the gluteus medius, minimus, and dozens of other tiny muscles that are equally important if you want to look great in your sexy undies or bikini bottoms. In this third series, we work all the angles of the seat to make sure that we’re hitting every single one of those muscles, with a focus on the lower seat, which is where we store the most fat. The first half of our seat work is done standing up to give you a healthy dose of isometrics as you work to maintain the proper postures; the second half is done on the floor, which enables you to go deeper and target the glutes’ innermost muscle fibers. As always, we stretch when we finish each side to release those seat muscles, relieve the burn, and get you fired up and ready for more!

Our totally unique abdominal series includes three sets of moves done in three different positions: Flat Back, Round Back, and Curl. These moves and their variations are incredibly effective at involving and strengthening all four sets of abdominal muscles: the rectus abdominis, the transversus abdominis, and the internal and external obliques. Each position changes the angle of the spine to give you a new isometric hold, which in turn enables you to recruit and engage different muscles. As a result, you can sculpt and cinch even the deepest layers of the entire abdominal wall—something that traditional sit-ups and crunches fail to do. Because we know that ab work is agony for many people, we only spend three to four minutes in each of the positions and intersperse fun moves like the Forearm Plank and Triceps Dips. And rather than stretching between each section, we hold the stretches for your abs until we’ve finished working the other side of your core, the back. We keep things moving so that before you know it, it’s over—and yet you’ve hit those abdominals harder than you ever have before!