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The Ultimate Body
10 Perfect Workouts For Women
By Liz Neporent
About The Ultimate Body
Which exercises are the best for toning your thighs and legs? What routine will help you lose weight once and for all? Why should you skip crunches if you're trying to trim your midsection?
In The Ultimate Body, you'll find answers to these questions, along with ten perfect workouts that are designed to achieve targeted results quickly. You won't have to dedicate hours a day to working out or wonder if you're spending your time wisely. Below are just a few of the highly effective routines that Liz has assembled. She also offers loads of tips for mixing and matching the workouts to meet your individual goals, as well as personal stories from fitness experts and people who successfully put into practice Liz's routines.
- The Perfect Beginner Workout: If you've never exercise before or it's been at least six months since you've moved a muscle, this is the program to start with. The buff starts here - with Modified Push-Ups, Partial Ab Rolls, and Pelvic Tilts.
- The Perfect Weight Loss Workout: This fast-paced circuit workout is designed to burn calories and pump up your resting metabolism by building muscle. All you need are a jump rope and a step bench.
- The Perfect Gym Workout: If you're intimidated or baffled by all the contraptions at your gym, Liz will set you straight and calm your fears with this challenging machine circuit. Plus: tips on choosing - and using - health clubs.
- The Perfect Mind-Body Workout: This gentle, yoga-based routine promotes calmness, reduces stress and increases flexibility. It's great for those days when you need a break from strenuous exercise.
- The Perfect Travel Workout: Because you don't always have access to exercise equipment when you're on the road, Liz has included a cardio/strength workout that requires nothing but a flight of stairs, a bath towel and a chair.
Excerpt From Chapter 1: Perfect Motivation
Between carpooling the kids, dropping off the dry cleaning, and staying late at work to finish up a project, it seems as if there are never enough hours in the day for everything you need to do, let alone exercise. And in fact, most people claim they don't exercise due to a poverty of time. A recent Ladies' Home Journal poll found that more than 35 percent of women cite lack of time as their number one reason for not exercising or eating well, and a recent Fitness Products Council poll found that nearly 75 percent of Americans age thirty to fourty-four would like to work out more often but can't find the time. I could tick off similar results from dozens of other polls, surveys, and studies.
Time management is a problem for all of us, but I often find that the busiest people are the ones who are avid exercisers. So how do these sweat-loving high achievers fit fitness into their lives?
- Prioritize. "I couldn't find the time until I found the time, if you know what I mean," says Jan, a thirty-two-year-old executive assistant. I think that's true. if you've ever gone through a period where you did exercise consistently, you probably weren't any busier than you are right now. "If getting into shape is truly something you feel you have to do, then you somehow find a way to get it done. It's as if time suddenly appears in your day," Jan theorizes.
- Schedule. Violet Zaki, one of my favorite exercise video stars, once told me that when it comes to working out, she does what she says she's going to do, not just what she feels like doing. that comment has always stuck with me. I think about it every time I feel like skipping a workout I have planned.
Write down your workout appointment or zap it into your Palm Pilot. then when the time comes, keep that appointment with yourself as if you are the most important client in the world. (You are.) Bottom-line it for yourself. If you decide it's important to you to achieve the body of your dreams, exercise becomes a can't-miss proposition.
- Seize opportunities. I always tell my clients to keep spare workout gear on hand in case the opportunity presents itself to exercise. Sometimes a meeting is canceled or your mom pops in and offers some impromptu babysitting - what a waste to have a block of time if you don't have your walking shoes! Keep your gear in your briefcase, your pocketbook, the backseat of your car, or ant other place that's usually accessible - you might catch a lucky break.
- Work out smarter, not longer. Unless you're training for the Olympics or a marathon, you don't need to dedicate your entire life to working out. When it comes to exercise, the more-is-better mentality really doesn't apply. The trick is to figure out what your goals are and then do just enough to achieve them. That's what the workouts in this book are designed to do. most can be done in under an hour; some take far less time than that.
- Break it up. Still don't think you have enough time? It's not necessary to do all your exercise at once. Studies show it's just as effective to do a little here, a little there. For instance, doing a ten-minute walk in the morning, a ten-minute walk at lunch, and a ten-minute walk in the evening will give you the same results an one half-hour walk. To create the time you need for this particular workout, you might get up ten minutes earlier, go to bed ten minutes later, and shorten your lunch break by ten minutes.
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