Don't do programs designed for someone else's needs

The machine circuit has its origins in marketing. Health clubs could entice members more easily with sleek, shiny machines than with lumps of inert and intimidating iron in the form of barbells and dumbbells. Machines helped them get people in and out of the gyms more efficiently, which is why some entire chains -starting with Nautilus and culminating with Curves-built their businesses around people using machines in a designated order. I don't mean this as a blanket smack-down of all exercise machines. Cable machines are terrific. Some other types of machines are useful for research and medical rehabilitation. And some are just fun to use. But most of the machines in your local health club weren't designed for any purpose beyond enriching the manufacturers and club owners. Benefit to you? Well, it's better than doing nothing, but there are far better ways to use your time and energy. The second type of workout is an improvement, but it's still not a routine that was created with your needs in mind. It's an abbreviated version of the workouts popularized by competitive bodybuilders, who train for many hours a week and spend much of that time doing exercises for their smallest muscles. Their goal is to create a physique with dramatic contours and contrasts, and then display it onstage. What does that have to do with you? Nothing ... unless you have dreams of being a competitive bodybuilder. I'm guessing you don't. So when you choose to do the typical type of program that's suggested for the typical American woman, you're either succumbing to marketing or to the notion that a miniaturized bodybuilding program is ideal for everyone, regardless of her interest in bodybuilding, or lack thereof. Why are those the only options? Because health clubs are designed to offer you those options. It's not about you; it's about them. Believe me, there 's a better way. OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ... People like me, people who write about exercise and nutrition for a living, are fond of metaphors. We like automobile metaphors when we write about nutrition (food is fuel, in case you haven't heard) , and we like building-construction metaphors when we write about strength training ("Build a strong foundation" is sound advice, and can be applied to just about any description of any exercise program) . But the best metaphor is probably electronic: The typical workout routine suggested for women is like a personal computer that runs on Windows. Windows was built from a platform that was originally designed for an operating system called DOS. Every subsequent version of Windows adds new features to that platform, attempts to address the platform's flaws , and tries to do all this without creating any new security holes through which viruses and worms and spybots and Trojan horses can sneak. But the new Windows is always limited by the basic fact that it's constructed on software that should've been scrapped years ago. Meanwhile, Apple computers have relatively few problems, mainly because the company's engineers simply started over with a new operating system. And when they realized the limitations of that system, they created a new one, OS-X, which was again built on an entirely new platform and didn't carry over any of the previous system's flaws. That, in essence, is what Alwyn has done with the programs you'll find in The New Rules of Lifting for Women. He starts with three basic assumptions that few exercise scientists and experienced fitness professionals would dispute: • Each workout should incorporate exercises for all your body's major muscles, since those are the ones that have the most potential to get bigger and stronger, and to shake up your metabolism. • Absent a medical or sport-specific purpose, exercises that focus on small muscles are usually a waste of time. You can't accomplish anything with a biceps curl that couldn't be achieved with a chinup or underhand-grip lat pulldown. • When in doubt, choose exercises that most closely resemble the actions your body was designed to do. The last point is the one I'm most passionate about. When you do a workout on a randomly configured set of machines, you aren't choosing exercises that mimic your body's movements. You're choosing exercises that support the health club 's marketing and layout. And when you do thumbnail versions of bodybuilders ' routines, you aren't doing exercises designed to make your body perform better, to make it stronger, faster, and more athletic. A fundamental truth: The entire point of bodybuilding is to look like something you aren 't, to give the appearance of strength and athleticism without actually developing those qualities. People in my profession like to use the word "training" instead of "lifting" or "working out. " Your goal in the gym-or in any type of exercise-is to train your body to do something it doesn't already know how to do, or doesn't do well enough. Thus, if your goal is to lose fat, you don't "work out" to achieve it. You train to lose fat. You teach your body to use more fat for energy while storing less, with the goal of having a leaner body. You do that with the one-two punch of increasing muscle mass while also speeding up your metabolism in every possible way-burning more calories during exercise, burning more calories between workouts, burning more calories while digesting your meals. If you had to sum up my philosophy in three words, it would probably be "Form follows function. " Yes, it's unoriginal, but it works in this context. It's hard to increase the size of your muscles if you aren't actually stronger. And it's hard to speed up your metabolism, with the goal of getting leaner, unless you make your muscles bigger. They may not look bigger, as I 've said, but you'll get the best results when you add size to the muscle fibers. Thus, you need to get stronger to get leaner. When you get stronger, you also get more athletic, since the best athletes are also the strongest, and the weakest athletes lose. When you're leaner, you'll look stronger and more athletic. Which makes sense, because by that point you are stronger and more athletic.