Defy your genetics; nature designed you to hold as little muscle and as much fat as possible. But fail no more. Our plan turns back your evolutionary clock—starting today

Men's Fitness, April, 2005 by Lou Schuler, John Williams

2 Go partway

All of us could build bigger muscles if we could only work with heavier weights. Trainer Don Alessi (alessifit.com) uses partial repetitions to hit muscles with bigger loads than they could otherwise handle. Take a weight that's slightly heavier than you could lift once and lift it through your strongest range of motion four times. On a curl, for example, you'd do just the last few inches of the movement. Or you could do squats in which you go only partway down. (You might recognize this as "cheating"--and you'd be right.)

After you've finished one set, rest two minutes, then pick up a lighter weight and do the same exercise for 6-8 reps through the full range of motion. Rest two minutes, then repeat both parts one time.

3 Break the taboo

You know you're not supposed to work the same muscles two days in a row. But MFtrainer Chad Waterbury does exactly that with his athletes in Tucson, Ariz. Let's say you do heavy bench presses on Monday. On Tuesday, you'd do 100 total reps of pushups or bench presses with a weight that's about 25% of your maximum. Simply do two sets of 50 of a very light weight, with a five-minute rest in between.

The idea is to get more blood into beaten-up muscles without damaging them further, which helps them recover faster. That way, they'll be back to full strength in less time, allowing you to work them more frequently--two and even three times weekly--for greater growth. Se instead of working your chest muscles only once a week, you might hit them hard on Monday, perform your 100-rep workout on Tuesday, and then hit them hard again on Thursday or Friday. You can use this method for any muscle group-quadriceps, triceps, abs, and so on--but use it for only one or two muscle groups at a time.

THREE WAYS TO FIGHT OFF FAT

1 Flux your muscles

The more you exercise, the more calories you burn. Easy to grasp, right? The same actually applies to food. The more you eat, the more calories you burn digesting the food. (Protein, as you've probably read a couple of thousand times, burns many more calories than carbohydrates, and fat uses hardly any calories during digestion.)

The combined effect is called "energy flux." The more calories you eat and burn through exercise, the higher your energy flux. A University of Colorado study published last year shows that maintaining a high energy flux is the key to maintaining a high metabolism, and thus controlling your weight. Se you really do want to exercise more so you can eat more.

The effect of any type of sweat-inducing, breath-deepening exercise is the same: You're moving more calories around, and the more that calories move, the less likely it is they will stick to your love handles. This is what keeps you lean.

2 Turn up the heat

An important part of energy flux is the thermic effect of food. Big phrase, simple concept: The food you eat turns up your internal calorie-burning furnace. "Typically, this accounts for about 10% to 15% of your total daily energy expenditure," says Christopher Bell, Ph.D., an exercise researcher at the Colorado State University.