Visual Impact For Women
Visual Impact For Women
Visual Impact For Women
Table of Contents
Chapter 7: Yoga 35
Great for mobility, but not the fastest route to a slim and lean physique. Why
I believe this should only be considered a supplementary form of exercise,
not a way to stay slim and lean year-round.
(I don't bring my iPod to the gym, because observing and listening to what
happens in the gym is crucial to me...and entertaining.)
Here is what I hear today... “We are going to blitz your lower body today.
You are going to have a hard time walking when I'm through, but imagine
how great you are going to look for your honeymoon.”
The woman this trainer is talking to is probably in her late 20's and maybe
has 10-15 pounds of weight to lose. I can tell by her build that she puts on
muscle easy in her thighs and calves. My best guess is that this particular
bride-to-be, played sports when she was younger.
...the trainer takes her to the squat rack and has her do 4-5 sets of 15 reps.
This is followed by dumbbell lunges done until her legs are shaking.
Immediately after lunges, come dumbbell step-ups.
After the workout, the woman has a concern and says this...
“My jeans are getting tighter...I really want to make sure my legs look slim in
my wedding dress. Is the the right workout for me?”
The personal trainer assures her that it is only because she is gaining muscle
under her layer of fat...and that once she loses some of that body fat her legs
will look toned and muscular.
But the bride isn't asking for muscular legs. She wants to look like a sexy
bride on her wedding day...not a muscular fitness model in a wedding dress!
I want to jump in and give her proper advice, but my approach is simply to
observe what happens in nature. I feel like one of those guys who films
documentaries of animals hunting. I'm sure they want to warn the cute
gazelle that a lion is patiently waiting for them near the water hole...but they
don't want to interfere with nature.
I see this same scene play out over and over again...
Perhaps they should get used to looking a bit more muscular, like the trainer
in their gym suggested.
My guess is that most women would MUCH rather have a physique similar
to a “Bond Girl”, than the typical fitness model.
(In fact, it really isn't a guess at all...I have hard evidence that this is the case)
So while most fitness courses help women aim for a physique like Jillian
Michaels...this one will focus more on a traditional fit and feminine physique
with just a “hint” of definition (think Jessica Alba).
The best way to avoid “bingo flaps” on your arms as you get older is to
tighten up the arm and make it compact and firm. You don't want to add
excessive size to any muscle group, because then gravity takes over.
Once you master this technique, you can drop a size or two while firming up
your entire body. The goal of this course is to teach you this skill.
This book is meant to “teach you to fish”. The principles I teach here can be
used in any training environment. The equipment you use doesn't matter as
much as the principles. I will give you some great specific workouts, but I
want you to use the knowledge of the principles to customize these workouts.
Over time you will figure out exactly what workout will help you hit your
goals.
WARNING: You are going to become a handful for any personal trainer.
Some of this info is far ahead of the mainstream literature. I doubt that the
typical personal trainer is going to get what is going on with your workouts.
Possibly the only downside of this course is that it may make you somewhat
untrainable. I know my girlfriend will never be able to workout with a
personal trainer ever again. I've ruined her with this knowledge.
You will be able to modify other trainer's routines and make them
effective...but out of the box they may not allow you to hit your goals.
The LAST thing you will want is for a trainer to push you past the pain
barrier <--- this will make a lot of sense later in this course. You would think
that being pushed hard would produce better results, but that isn't the way
this works.
So I'll end this introductory chapter with a little background about me.
...my legs were so big that I could only fit into really baggy jeans. Around
this same time I saw the movie Fight Club. I was sick of this slightly cheesy
overly muscular look and decided to do something about it!
You see, I never had the intentions of looking like a cheesy gym guy.
My goal after watching Fight Club was to transform my physique from being
a meat-head, to closer to that of a slim and toned male model. Brad Pitt
looked great in Fight Club and he was slightly older than me, so he was a
great role model.
In roughly a year and a half I accomplished the goal of leaning down. It took
me a long time, because there wasn't any mainstream literature on losing
muscle mass on purpose.
From 2001 going forward I perfected the technique of getting lean without
adding excessive size. Guys were coming up to me on a regular basis and
asking for workout advice. I would do my best to explain the concepts, but it
was hard to do in a simple 10 minute conversation. There wasn't a course I
could refer people to. So I needed to do something about it...
The blog was a compilation of all the tips I learned to get this lean
“Hollywood Look”. I wrote about my 7+ years of intense research and
findings when it came to getting fit without adding additional size.
The blog was criticized by the bodybuilding sites, because I was talking
about foreign concepts. Their thoughts...“who in their right mind wouldn't
want to get as big as possible?”
I knew for a fact that there was a LARGE group of men and women
who wanted to get lean without looking like a typical “gym
person”.
The problem of looking like a gym person is that it makes it appear as if you
are trying too hard. That is why the men and women in Bond movies are
great physique role models. James Bond is in phenomenal shape, but looks
stylish. If he was much more muscular he wouldn't have that cool “GQ” look.
Same with the women in James Bond movies. They look incredible, but you
don't think “gym bunny” the moment you see them.
Despite being a little more focused towards guys, my blog was more popular
with women. When I checked my website analytics it showed that 60% of my
readers were women...and 40% were guys. A large portion of my traffic also
came from Australia.
*** I dig the readers from Oz, because they were the ones who really got the
comments rolling on my site in the beginning and made it interactive ***
By 2009, my “little” blog was getting 7,000+ unique visits per day!
I now had the good “problem” of not being able to answer all of the
comments anymore. In 2009 alone, I had over 3 million visitors to my blog
and over 16,000 approved comments. The Internet is CRAZY that way!
In May of 2010, I released a product for men called Visual Impact Muscle
Building. I planned on writing my women's ebook shortly after, but creating
the men's product took a lot out of me.
I had been pushing hard since 2007 and simply needed a breather.
I took it easy in the summer of 2010...went on a West Coast road trip for
most of August (and had a blast). It was exactly what was needed to recharge
me to create this women's course.
So over 8 million visits & 20,000 comments later...I have finally created the
course I have been thinking about creating for the past 10 years. My hope is
that this course will empower you with the knowledge to create the body you
have always hoped for.
Well, let's just start with the “elephant in the room”. This is where I disagree
with the majority of trainers. Sure, most women aren't going to gain 20
pounds of muscle overnight or anything...but legions of women have
complained on my site that training increases the size of their thighs.
If lifting makes muscles bigger than a woman wants, then it is too much
bulk...period! Even a 2 pound gain in the hips and butt make a difference on
the frame of most women. The biggest response women hear over and over
again is something along these lines... “Women have less than 10% of the
testosterone than a man, which doesn't support fast muscle growth.”
So why do so many women claim that lifting makes them bulky? Perhaps
they are all lying :)
Myth #2: Adding muscle burns calories to help you drop body fat.
Gain 10 pounds of muscle to burn an extra 120 calories per day? How about
eating a little less per day and doing strategic cardio. A good cardio session
can burn 500-600 calories per session. You could easily create a 700 calorie
deficit with diet and cardio.
My advice? If you want to gain muscle, then work on gaining muscle. If you
One of my favorite fitness authors hates cardio. I still respect the guy and
think he gives great advice. I even recommend his course for people who are
challenged for time. He teaches circuit training for fat loss and believes
cardio is a “waste of time”.
Here is what I say to that ---> Take ANY workout and add my strategic
cardio routine to it and you will burn more calories and lose more body
fat...compared to doing the same routine without cardio.
The biggest advantage of cardio over other forms of exercise is that you can
do short intense sessions to boost HGH levels...or you can simply burn
calories directly at a lower intensity. The best way is to combine both types of
cardio in the same session. I'll talk about this in great detail in the next
chapter...so stayed tuned.
Meal frequency has nothing to do with losing weight. It is fine to eat as few
as 1-2 meals per day or more than 6. There is nothing magical about eating 6
meals per day.
The overall calorie intake is what matters. So if you eat 6 times per day, you
are going to have to eat smaller meals. If you only eat 1-2 times per day, you
are going to be able to eat larger meals...but you may get hungry in between
meals. A lot of this comes down to preference. I eat 3-4 times most of the
week and 1-2 times per day on other times.
Myth #5: Lifting heavy will increase muscle size, lifting light will increase
muscle tone.
Did you know that lifting to failure or simply approaching failure is what
causes a muscle to grow...regardless of the rep range? This is one of the big
takeaways I want you to have after reading and studying this course.
By the time you are finished with this course you will be sold on
low reps well short of failure. If you want to add size, then simply
add higher reps and push until the reps are hard to complete.
The only reason he had the cast do that much cardio was that they were
cramming 8 weeks of training into 2 weeks. Cornel was flown to Thailand
last minute to whip Leo and the cast into shape.
Cornel knew that the only viable option was to have Leo do crazy amounts of
cardio. He had Leo and the cast do unreal amounts of cardio in addition to
resistance training. The reason cardio was the only option was that he could
dial down the intensity so the cast of “The Beach” wouldn't become badly
overtrained. You couldn't add large amounts of circuit training because it
would break down the body.
I'm not saying that it is advisable to spend such a large amount of time doing
cardio. The point I'm trying to make is that it is the one variable you can
increase when everything else is “maxed out”.
You can only lower the calories down so far before you are starving and
slowing down your metabolism.
You can only do so many weight lifting workouts before your body is
broken down beyond repair.
You can only do so many intense circuit training routines before you
become overtrained (plus some of those exercises done to failure have
the potential to put on size...fine of you are trying to gain muscle...not
so good if you want to slim down.)
So what if all these variables are pushed to the limit and you have more
weight to lose?
You add cardio to the equation! This strategy has been used successfully for
decades. Given enough time, you can create large calorie deficits with cardio.
The biggest issue with cardio is that it is time consuming. This is why so may
trainers have come forward with circuit style routines that save time.
The problem with these brief “circuit style” routines is that in my observation
they only get people about 80% of the way to their goals. Back in the 80's
These days I go into the gym and don't see as many lean members.
It kind of frustrates me because I know that some of the time they spend is
redundant and unproductive. I could have them refocus part of their time in
the gym to strategic cardio and their results would dramatically improve.
The strategic cardio I am going to teach here skips past the unproductive
portion and gives you much more bang for the buck. There is a way to make
cardio much more efficient.
While all of that sounds nice…it is only 1/2 of the fat loss equation!
You see…those Free Fatty Acids are going to get deposited back into the fat
cells, if they are not used for energy during the workout. With just a little bit
of planning and cardio done strategically, people can get much better fat loss
results with their workout.
The reason I'm a big fan of High Intensity Interval Training on a treadmill or
other piece of cardio equipment...is that you can tweak the intensity perfectly
to the ideal setting. You dial down the settings if the workout feels too
intense or dial it up a notch to add more intensity.
For those who are unfamiliar with interval cardio? The basic idea is
alternating a period of time walking with a period of time
running...until the workout has been completed. Typically this is
done for no longer than 10-20 minutes.
Interval cardio gives the perfect resistance to shape the legs hips and butt. If
done a 3-4 times per week, there isn't really any reason to do a bunch of
direct lower body resistance training.
This flies in the face of most the women's routines you see in fitness
magazines and online. The fact is that running stairs on a stepmill machine or
sprinting on a treadmill...will slim and tighten all of the muscles in your
lower body simultaneously.
In fact at times you'll need to dial down the intensity of this type of cardio.
Most of the time interval cardio will offer “just the right” amount of
resistance to your legs and butt. Over time this will slim down and firm up
your legs and entire lower body...but occasionally you will even have to be
cautious with the types of interval cardio you do.
Elliptical: A lot of people put down the elliptical as not being intense.
This is actually why I think it is such a great piece of equipment! This is
the perfect lower intensity steady cardio to do after your interval cardio.
Nordic Track: This is a great one for steady state cardio. It takes a few
times getting used to, but works well.
Stair Stepper: This can be used for intervals, but I've found this to work
best as a lower intensity version of cardio done after intervals. I'm
seeing less and less of these in gyms I visit.
Rower: I have never really been able to maximize this machine, but
many swear by this. If it works for you then by all means you can
include it in your workout routine.
So there are a few cardio machines that lend themselves well to intervals and
some are much better for the lower intensity cardio that follows. I like to call
the ones used for intervals as “primary” cardio machines. The ones that you
The idea is to use two different pieces of equipment for your cardio workout.
So if you do your intervals on a treadmill, then walk over to the elliptical and
do your slower steady state cardio. Mixing up the cardio will make the time
go by quicker than sticking with the same machine the entire time.
Proper cardio is one of the most important tools in getting the slim
and lean feminine look. A side benefit is that it will make you
healthier over the long haul.
The problem with higher rep training is that it is more likely to create a
“pump” in the muscles. After much debate, “the pump” has been shown to be
a key component in maximizing muscle size.
High reps force blood into the muscle fibers. Over time this will
increase the size of the muscle fibers as well as the number and size
of the capillaries. Great for bodybuilders...BIG vascular muscles! Is
that what you are aiming for?
The pump is so sought after by Bodybuilders that one of the best muscle
building supplements does nothing but increase the pump. Ever heard of
Nitric Oxide (NO2) supplements? These are aimed at increasing the pump to
a muscle...for better muscle building potential.
Training for the Pump (by my friend Jeff Anderson, aka The“Muscle Nerd”)
Jeff Anderson has a bunch of great products online about adding muscle mass
quickly. He has become a friend of mine over these past two years and
definitely knows what he is talking about. Since you are a woman and most
likely don't want large veiny muscles...
High rep training won't make you significantly stronger, but it has the
potential to increase the size of the muscles. There are other variables in play
when it comes to gaining muscle quickly, but high reps will get you there
quicker than low reps.
...my guess, however, is that you are NOT after a lot more size.
So using lower reps is a better approach. I train with my girlfriend and she
never goes above 5 reps with resistance training...while I will go as high as
15 reps (since I want to increase size as well).
If you stick to 5 reps or less (and avoid failure), there is very little
chance that your muscles will increase in size. In fact, most likely
your body will become smaller, tighter and more compact as you
drop a bit of body fat & slowly gain strength and muscle definition.
This leads us into one of the most important chapters of this entire course...
His findings are that it doesn't matter whether you lift heavy for 3-5 reps...or
lighter with 10-15 reps: If the last rep or two requires maximum effort, then
you will achieve similar outcomes.
When my blog started in 2007, it was 100% aimed toward increasing muscle
definition without adding muscle size. A year before this study was published
I was telling both men and women to avoid training to failure if muscle
definition (not size) was their main goal. This was something I figured out
years ago...and now there is finally a study which backs this.
The first thing you need to understand is that it is possible to gain strength in
a muscle without adding size. In fact, this is the best approach for firm,
compact muscles.
The harder a muscle contracts, the more force it can generate. Your nervous
system is what causes the muscle to contract. Your nervous system operates
well below capacity when it comes to sending impulses to a muscle group.
...so this more efficient muscle will feel firmer to the touch than a muscle
which isn't as strong for its size. As the strength increases, so does the
firmness and “muscle tone”.
2. Fatiguing the muscle will most likely lead to an increase in muscle size.
So if you want size, but don't care as much about tone, then aim for
muscle fatigue.
Lifting short of failure with low reps = the “perfect storm” for muscle tone.
A lot of people in fitness circles hate the term “muscle tone”. They simply
believe that the only way to increase tone is to increase muscle mass and
decrease body fat. This is because very few people have explored the concept
of increasing the strength of a muscle while purposely avoiding adding size.
Most personal trainers pride themselves on pushing their clients harder than
Pushing hard while lifting is a great way to add size to the muscle. Done
properly it is also a great way to add size and strength simultaneously. But
pushing close to failure is to be avoided if you want to gain strength and
definition without size.
Note: Some personal trainers are very skilled. I'm just talking about the
average personal trainer in this case.
Lift with low reps and a couple reps short of failure to increase muscle tone
without adding size to the muscle.
Honestly...it isn't the type of resistance that makes the biggest difference.
What makes or breaks your workout routine is the set and rep scheme.
Any form of resistance that allows you to train somewhat heavy for
strength... in the low rep range...while avoiding failure by a few
reps...will get the job done.
So this does limit body weight training to a certain extent. There isn't
anything wrong with using your body weight for resistance, it is just harder to
tweak the weight to hit the right rep range.
Many machines allow you to work you way into body weight training.
As she is getting stronger she is using closer to 100% of her body weight for
5 reps. Like all of the lifts, she is stopping about 2-3 reps short of failure. At
some point she won't need to do these as “machine assisted”.
Note: The normal route to teach someone to get stronger at chin ups and dips
is to do them to failure each week and try to add a rep each workout.
Remember, the normal route will add size to the muscle group. My girlfriend
will slowly get stronger...avoiding failure...increasing muscle tone without
increasing muscle size.
A big benefit of free weights is the ability to track progress from gym to gym.
A Nautilus incline press will provide a different degree of resistance than say
a Hammer Strength incline press. Even if you were using the same weight, it
would provide a different amount of resistance to your muscles.
“Variable Resistance” = Biggest benefits of machines over free weights.
When you curl a dumbbell, there is very little resistance in the bottom
position (Start of Lift). The resistance increases until your arm reaches the
midway point (Middle). At this point you are holding close to the full weight
of the dumbbell.
So the mid point is the part of the curl with the most resistance. As you work
from the midpoint up to the top...resistance decreases. Once the dumbbells
reach the very top of the lift, there is very little resistance at all (End of Lift).
Arthur Jones was the first to do this with his Nautilus machines. He tweaked
these machines to perfection, to make sure there was the same amount of
resistance throughout the full range of motion of a lift.
So when you hop on his Nautilus Curl Machine, for instance...you will still
feel your biceps contracting hard at the top position of the curl. You also have
a much harder time using momentum, because there is full resistance at the
bottom of the curl as well.
The main body weight exercises I recommend are machine assisted dips and
machine assisted pull ups. The other body weight work I would recommend
is for abs...plank variations and lying leg raises (a few other options for abs
as well).
Note: There are a few guys I follow who come out with fresh body weight
routines 1-2 times per year. If you want to challenge yourself and mix things
up, drop your gym membership for 3 months and follow their course.
The sets and reps are different than I suggest in this course...I've found that
you can follow these for 3 months without fear of bulking up. Adam Steer,
Scott Sonnon, Ryan Murdock, and Craig Ballantyne all put out great stuff.
...by the time the 3 months are up, you will be dying to get back in the gym.