Last week when I visited India my friends and family commented on how I looked fitter than the last time they saw me! I attribute some of that improvement to Body Of Science. For past 6 weeks or so I have seen reasonable results from this new workout!
Lowell introduced me to this workout, and has been coaching me through past few weeks. The book – Body Of Science describes the workout in detail. However, in short the idea is to design as efficient a workout as possible. Our muscles are made up of four kinds of fibers (slow twitch, 3 fast twitch – oxidative, glycolytic and oxidative/glycolytic) each of those engage in different activities (strength, endurance etc). Our muscle fibers grow stronger only if we push them hard, to the point that they fail. Once that happens the body reacts by building better muscles over a recovery time!! So an ideal workout is the one which engages all the muscle fibers and gets them to the point of failure as quickly as possible! Well that is what, Body By Science is about!
In the work-out one tries to engage major muscles groups one at a time, by putting them under load (i.e weight) and doing it in a slow consistent way until the muscle group reaches to the point of failure and then we try to go for an extra bit (10 more seconds)! To illustrate the point here is a video of pulldown, starring Lowell :
The goal of each exercise is to increase the weight and time under load (TUL), repetitions are not that important. The idea is to start with a weight which one can do for at-least 45 seconds and each time increment the weight as soon as one can comfortably do it for 80 seconds or so. The ideal time for each rep is about 20 seconds! The Body by Science authors recommend 45-200 seconds for each workout, but from what we have been doing 60-90 second seems like an effective range for most folks.
Following are the results from last few weeks doing the five major muscles groups (note: core muscles are taken care of by all workout but specifically by shoulder press, leg press and pull-down).
(Please note: score is a connived measure of the entire routine which Lowell has been experimenting with, its a function of weight, time & reps)
More Resources -
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Lowell’s Blog
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My colleague – Keith Toussaint’s Health Man blog
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Body By Science – website
Comments/ Suggestions/ Questions?