5 Ways to Achieve
Low-Rep Overload
Both fat loss and toning play essential roles in creating an ideal physique. But now, it’s time to go one step further. It’s time to add body sculpting. Sculpting offers much more than toning.
Toning is just tightening up the body you already have. Start with wimpy calves and tone them up, and you end up with toned wimpy calves.
Sculpting means changing your shape… creating the body you wish you had. I’m not saying we’re going to change your body type, or if you’re 5’5, we’re going to make you 5’8. But, if you want to transform a flat buttox into a rounded one, or broaden your shoulders to make your waist look smaller, or add a beautiful sweep to your thighs, you can do it. It’s not magic. And it’s not wishful thinking.
Using a body shaping program, you can change your shape. The secret? Athletes worldwide use a technique when training for a competition. I use it in my own workouts. It’s called low-rep overload.
Overloading in general means forcing your muscles to work harder than they’re used to. Traditional floor exercises usually use high-rep overload, which means exercising against just a little resistance and doing lots of repetitions until the muscle you’re working eventually gets tired.
Low-rep overload means exercising in such a way so you can only do a few reps per set….less than 20.
Both methods will improve muscle tone. But only low-rep overload has any real power to change muscle shape. Trying to sculpt muscles with lots and lots of reps is like trying to dig a big hole with a tiny spoon. You may get the job done, but it takes 10x more effort and 10x more time than necessary.
Low-rep overload is your key to getting the fastest results with the least effort. You can get low-rep overload in five ways…
1. Increasing resistance… Using a harder version of an exercise or picking up a heavier weight
2. Modifying form… Changing a workout so that an exercise becomes more difficult. This often means switching up starting positions so that muscle has to work hardest during the part of the movement where the muscle is strongest.
3. Putting exercises in optimum order… Order makes a big difference. It’s possible to sequence exercises to make each move build on the previous one. If you think of exercises as building blocks, putting those exercises in the best order is like stacking those blocks up rather than laying them end-to-end.
4. Grouping together all the exercises for each part of the body… For example, all those for your chest, then all those for your triceps, and so-on.
5. Limiting rests between sets
Today’s workout uses all five of these methods. This special approach packs a lot of body sculpting into one workout. Along with your aerobic training, you just need four short 30-minute workouts per week. Two for the lower body, and two for upper to create your ideal physique.
