It's show time: be ready for your HD close-up in just four short weeks

Muscle & Fitness, July, 2009 by Jim Stoppani

FADE IN:

The good news is, you just got accepted to star in a reality-TV show and it doesn't even have the word "rehab" in the title. The bad news is, every week millions of people get to see you in high-definition. Each pore, every errant hair and any excess fat on your body will literally explode into American living rooms through 60-inch megabillion-pixel LCD televisions.

Taping starts in four weeks. It's time to get serious. It's show time.

What difference can four weeks make? If you're willing to dedicate yourself, you'll be shocked at what you can accomplish in one month. Our "Show Time" program is a comprehensive strategy of weight training and cardio that'll whittle you down like you just did an entire season of Survivor, but without the sunburn and parasites.

our workout is hard, but you've got a lot at stake. You're at a career crossroads and you need to ask yourself: Whose career do I want? William Hung's or Lauren Conrad's?

THE WORKOUT

In the "Show Time" program you'll perform all the exercises as supersets, typically using very heavy weight/low reps for the first move and light weight/high reps for the second. Yet the second and often the third supersets are done in reverse, with the light exercise coming first and the heavy one second. In addition, in many of the second supersets a single-joint (isolation) move comes before a multijoint exercise. Based on cutting-edge research that shows the best ways to burn fat in the gym, this setup will allow you to build muscle and strength while dropping bodyfat.

Why use supersets? Research from the College of New Jersey (Ewing) shows that resting just 30 seconds between sets burned more than 50% more calories during a bench-press workout compared to resting the standard three minutes between sets. (1) Sure, supersets call for no rest between exercises, but it typically takes a good 10-30 seconds to move from one exercise to the next. The same study also found that Io-rep sets burned more calories than five-rep sets, (I) so for good measure we jacked the reps all the way up to 30 on some moves in Week 4 to keep your fat furnace hot in every workout.

While incinerating calories as you train is important, even more critical for dropping fat is the number of calories you burn postworkout. Called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) in scientific circles, this means your body takes in more oxygen after training for recovery purposes, which burns more calories. And the higher your EPOC, the more calories your body torches. That's one problem with doing only high-rep sets: They don't keep your calorie-burning as high for as long postwork-out as heavier, low-rep sets do. Hence our program includes both high- and low-rep protocols.

Study data from the Norwegian University of Sport and Physical Education (Oslo) found that subjects training legs with their six-rep maxes burned significantly more calories for up to 48 hours afterward compared to those using their 12-rep maxes. (2) Similarly, researchers from the College of New Jersey (Ewing) discovered that subjects who did five-rep sets on the bench press burned significantly more calories just sitting around postworkout than when they did 10-rep sets. In addition, a 30-second rest between sets led to a much greater increase in EPOC than a three-minute rest period did. (1)

In each week of the "Show Time" program, the heavy exercises get heavier (and you do fewer reps) and the light exercises get lighter (and you do more reps). This will help you get not only bigger and stronger but also leaner. At the same time, either the number of sets you do per exercise increases or the total number of exercises does, helping to bump up your calorie- and fat-burning each week.

THE CARDIO

There's one more trick up our sleeve to help you shed excess bodyfat: car dio. But we're not talking just any kind of cardio, we're talking high-intensity interval training (HIIT). In sharp contrast to the typical steady-state cardio most people do at a moderate intensity, like daydreaming on the treadmill for 30 minutes at 6o% of their max heart rates, HUT involves intervals of high intensity like running at 90% of your max heart rate followed by low-intensity intervals like walking. Developed by track coaches to better train elite runners, HIIT is becoming more popular in mainstream fitness because it works. In fact, studies comparing HIIT to continuous, steady-state exercise show that HIIT is superior for fat loss.

A 1994 study from Laval University (Quebec City, Quebec, Canada) found that subjects following a 15-week HIIT program lost significantly more bodyfat than those on a 20-week continuous, steady-state endurance program, despite the fact that the latter I burned about 15,000 calories more than the former during exercise. (3) In 2001, a study from East Tennessee State University (Johnson City) demonstrated similar findings: Test subjects who performed eight weeks of HIIT dropped 2% bodyfat compared to those on a continuous, steady-state treadmill program who saw no drop in bodyfat, (4) The most recent study, this one from Australia, reported that subjects following a 20-minute HIIT program lost about six times more bodyfat than a group that did 40 minutes of steady-state cardio at about 60% of their maximum heart rates. (5)