Shaping Up

Shaping Up

Inside every woman is a lean, sleek model of herself. A woman whose curvy muscles have thrown off their blanket of body fat. A shapely woman. A strong woman. Maybe even a superwoman who could paint a big capital S high on her toned chest.

This isn''''t wishful thinking. Every woman can uncover her inner model, given a little time and effort. The process is a program of exercise called toning--or body shaping, body sculpting or, most accurate of all, strength training. Whatever you call it, toning involves exercises such as tried-and-true push-ups, partial sit-ups called crunches, lunges and squats. It utilizes weights or dumbbells (usually five to ten pounds) and often elastic exercise bands. You also have the option of using weight machines for toning if you belong to a gym or a health club or you have them in your own home.

Toning routines work on specific muscles or muscle groups, such as the quadriceps and the hamstring muscles in the front and back of the thighs as well as the abdominal muscles, which support the front of the torso like a girdle.

"The nice thing is that you don''''t have to strength-train as frequently as you do aerobic exercise," says Michael Yessis, Ph.D., president of Sports Training in Escondido, California, and co-author of Body Shaping. Brisk aerobic exercise such as running, walking, swimming, working out on a treadmill or doing aerobics usually takes an hour or so three or four times a week if you want to see results. With strength training, however, "you can get by on 30 minutes twice a week," says Dr. Yessis, "although three days a week is preferred."

"You''''ll see a significant difference in your body after six weeks of body shaping," says Rebecca Gorrell, a certified fitness instructor and wellness education director at Canyon Ranch in Tucson, Arizona. "It''''s one of the very few natural ways you can change the way you look," adds Larry A. Tucker, Ph.D., professor and director of health promotion at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

In fact, change comes so predictably that it builds self-esteem in addition to better bodies. Researchers at Brigham Young, led by Dr. Tucker, conducted a 12-week study of 60 women with an average age of 42. Half of the women were assigned to exercise by walking; the rest of the women were assigned to a strength-training group. The scientists found that the body images of the walkers improved during the 12 weeks. But they also discovered that the body images of the women who strength-trained improved significantly more. "We saw substantial mental, emotional and physical changes," says Dr. Tucker.

The Miracle of the Muscle

Why is toning so much faster than aerobic exercise when it comes to showing results? Strength training increases the size of your muscles by increasing the number of myofibrils, the threadlike strands that form each muscle fiber. The long, slender muscle fibers are about the width of a hair, and they can grow as long as 12 inches. Bundles of about 150 fibers, combined with connective tissue, make up muscles such as the biceps on the front of your upper arms and the triceps on the back of them.

Until fairly recently, though, most women associated muscles with muscleheads. We were afraid if we lifted any weights at all, we''''d start to look like Olive Oyls with Popeye arms. So weight training, another name for strength training, has sort of snuck into health clubs under the guise of toning and body-shaping classes.

As you gain muscle and lose fat, your body composition changes--even if your weight stays the same, Dr. Yessis has discovered. The percentage of body fat drops, and the amount of lean muscle rises. (You don''''t actually turn fat into muscle, though, because you can''''t turn a fat cell into a muscle cell.)

And since muscle burns more calories than fat does when your body is at rest, strength training to increase muscle size actually speeds up your metabolism (the rate at which you burn calories) by 2 to 3 percent, researchers say. Each pound of muscle you make burns about 30 to 50 more calories than a pound of fat. Even after a strength-training workout, calories continue to be burned at a high rate for many hours, according to Dr. Yessis. What all of this means is that you get a bonus almost as big as winning a body lottery: Either you can eat more good food without weight gain or you can lose weight more quickly if you need to.

That''''s not the only benefit of body shaping, either. Early research shows that strength training may have some effect on building strong bones to help thwart osteoporosis, or bone loss.

Working Out the Whole You

To help you get started, Gorrell has put together a time-conscious Total Body-Shaping Workout that Dr. Yessis agrees will be beneficial. You''''ll get the biggest benefits by doing the workout on two or three nonconsecutive days each week. In addition to the Total Body-Shaping Workout, this section has exercises to help tone certain muscles of your body, if you want to focus more on specific areas.

But before you jump into the workouts, here are two toning commandments.

Check your breath. You need to fight two tendencies: not thinking about how you breathe and holding your breath for too long when you lift, says Dr. Yessis.

When you lift light weights, such as the ones used in these workouts, Dr. Yessis says you should inhale and briefly hold your breath during the movement in the exercise with the most exertion--the actual lift, for instance. Then exhale as you lower the weights or perform the easier motion. "As long as you don''''t hold your breath too long, you breathe properly while you do the movements and you lift and lower the weights in a smooth, controlled manner, you should be fine," says Dr. Yessis.

One warning: People with heart, blood pressure or circulatory problems should never hold their breath when lifting weights, since blood pressure rises temporarily, warns Dr. Yessis.

Be progressive. "Muscles adapt so quickly that you have to frequently increase the amount of weight or resistance (if you''''re using an exercise band) that you use in order not to plateau," says Dr. Yessis. Increase the weight as soon as an exercise gets to be a little easy to perform. The last repetition of any exercise should be hard to do. To tone and firm continuously, your muscles need constant challenge.

Fitness experts say that after three to six weeks of any toning routine, you should change your program in some way in order to progress. "Besides increasing the weight or adding more repetitions of an exercise, switch to a different exercise that uses the same muscles in a slightly different way," says Gorrell. "Switch to weight machines if you belong to a gym, or switch from the machines to free weights (dumbbells). They each use your muscles a little differently."