I’m amazed when I watch pro athletes at the top of their games. They have incredible speed and power. And if you’re a reader you know I’m a tennis fan. I play tennis every morning. So I can’t wait to catch some of the Australian Open tennis tournament coming up in a couple of weeks.
It’s pretty impressive to watch how strong and fast these men and women are. They hit the ball so hard, and can twist their bodies and do incredible things with a tennis racquet in their hands.
Their bodies seem to be built for it, don’t they?
But I’m going to show you that you can have that same kind of lean, muscular body.
In fact, you were designed for it.
Let me explain…
Most people rely on trainers and fitness “experts” who say if you want to melt fat you have to work out in the “fat-melting zone.” This involves doing hours of “cardio” training, or endless “aerobics” or other endurance training that uses your fat stores while you exercise.
Only that’s the opposite of what you should be doing. If you train for endurance, you’re training your body to work against you.
That doesn’t mean you can’t work out to drop fat. Exertion is one of the most effective tools you can use to maintain your ideal weight.
But what you want to do is re-train your body so it performs like it was designed. That way, you can have the lean, muscular body nature intended for you.
Here’s how you do it:
- do sets of exercises that are progressively intense
- rest in-between each set
- exert yourself for no more than 12-15 minutes
It’s that simple.
Here’s why it works:
For the first 2-3 minutes of a workout you burn ATP, or adenosine triphosphate. This molecule is the basic unit of cellular energy. It is stored in the muscle cells and is available at any time. It is also your high-octane fuel for intense effort.
But there is only enough ATP for a few minutes of exercise. When your ATP stores are depleted, your body switches to glycogen, a carbohydrate stored in muscle tissue. Your glycogen stores will take you through about 15 minutes of exercise.
After both your ATP and glycogen stores have become depleted – about 20 minutes – you switch to using fat.
But if you make that switch by exerting yourself for longer than 20 minutes at a time, you’re training your body to store fat for the next time you work out.
If you stop before that, you store energy in your muscles, NOT as fat for later use.
In fact, exerting yourself for shorter periods of time burns up to nine times more fat than endurance exercise.
Researchers at Laval University in Quebec divided participants into two groups. One group cycled for 45 minutes without interruption. Another group cycled in numerous short bursts of 15 to 90 seconds, while resting in between.1
The long duration group burned twice as many calories. So you might assume that they would melt more fat. However, when the researchers recorded their body composition measurements, it was the short-term interval group that showed the most fat loss.
In fact, the interval group lost nine times more fat than the endurance group for every calorie burned!
And by the way, this is why many endurance athletes have body fat percentages ranging from 10-20 percent, while athletes like sprinters and basketball players – who run in short bursts with progressive intensity – have a well-muscled physique and usually carry only 4-8 percent body fat.
Your body prefers, and was designed for, shorter periods of exertion, not hours of running.
So, do you want to train your body to store more and more fat, or would you rather exert yourself for minutes at a time, melt off the fat, and be lean and ripped?
This is what my P.A.C.E. program will do for you, and why we already have 60,000 people doing it. And it’s why I like to talk to you about it often.
Because I want you to have a strong, lean body just like those tennis players at the Australian Open. The good news is, you don’t have to be an elite tennis player to do P.A.C.E. You can start with any challenge that’s within your reach. Even walking.
All you need to do is make your workout progressive. Incrementally increase your exertion level little by little, and you’ll re-train your metabolism and re-build the athletic body you were designed for.
The best part is, doing P.A.C.E. doesn’t take hours in the gym. You don’t have to increase the duration of your exercise to get more fit. This is the mistake most modern exercise programs and trainers make.
What you want is to gradually, but progressively increase the challenge you give your body each time you work out. You’ll shed fat naturally and more quickly than you ever thought possible, and get back the lean, sexy torso you were designed to have.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
1 Tremblay A, Simoneau JA, Bouchard C. Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism. Metabolism. 1994;43(7): 814-818.