Okay, so I keep reading up on what it takes to be truly healthy, proper diet different fitness trends.....but I haven't hit the gym....yet. Here is the latest article I found on MSN.com
June 2009: Bikini Boot Camp
By Flannery Dean
Summer is on its way—are you ready for a bathing suit? Get into swimsuit shape with a bikini bod-inspired bootcamp workout.
Visit our Bikini Boot Camp challenge at www.bootcamp.fitbits.ca and follow three Canadian women as the shed fat for summer!
Whether it’s a one-piece or two-piece, the swimsuit looms large in the imagination of many women. After six months of winter layers (and comfort foods), stripping down and hitting the beach isn’t easy.
“I think the bikini represents confidence—the fact that you can put that on and go out in public and say ‘hey, here I am’,” says Lindsay Nealon, owner and founder of Bikini Bootcamp, an eight-week group fitness course that operates in provinces throughout Canada. (Find one in your area at www.bikinibootcamp.ca)
Inspired by her time in California, Nealon started Bikini Bootcamp in 2004. The response was immediately enthusiastic. “I started with a group of eight in the spring of 2004 and by the spring of 2005 we had 30 groups of 12—we blew up!” she shares.
For Nealon the key to getting bathing suit-ready is simple: make your workout fun and challenging. “I love working with women and a major goal of mine is to create balance,” explains Nealon, who is also the mother of two small children. “Our bootcamp is different. We’re not the 6 times a week, 5am, ‘Drop and give me 20’ military style company.”
Instead, groups meet twice weekly. In addition to these group sessions, participants are given an individualized plan for two workouts to be done on their own during the week, bringing the workout count up to a manageable four times a week.
But that gentle approach doesn’t mean that each 75-minute workout isn’t intense. Each session may begin with a playful warm-up—a game of Duck, Duck, Goose or a quick soccer drill—but it soon kicks into an intense cardio/strength training workout.
Sessions have a particular body focus each time, but you can expect to work the whole body with classic military-inspired exercises like jumping jacks, pushups, lunges and squats as well as large muscle-firing sequences/poses taken from Pilates and yoga.
It’s that commitment to going over and above the usual workout pace that gets the best results. “There has to be at least one part of the workout where you say ‘Holy crap, I could not do this on my own,’” laughs Nealon.
Fitness trainer Tara King of FlirtyGirl Fitness (www.flirtygirlfitness.com) in Toronto also believes in challenging the body to get maximum results. Consequently, her “Bikini Bootcamp” fitness class—it is drop-in, so no pre-registration is required—largely consists of 60 minutes of intense circuit training.
“I like to do a lot of drills,” King explains. “The whole class is in the form of circuits, so it goes from cardio to weight training and then back to cardio again, just so the body never gets used to doing one thing. That way, you’re going to get maximum calorie burn.”
For those who want to get into bikini shape quickly, King says at least 30 minutes of intense cardio is essential.
“And not just cardio that’s kind of easy,” she says. “You need to get up to your maximum heart rate where you are actually burning calories.”
One way to do that is interval training.
“Skip at a slow pace for about 30 seconds and then bump it up and skip as fast as you can for about 15 seconds then back down for 15 seconds—just back and forth like that so the body doesn’t get used to one thing.”
Another killer sequence to throw in the mix: The Pyramid.
“You do 10 squats, then you drop down and do 10 pushups, then you do 9 squats and 9 pushups, etc—it’s a little bit of death training but it’s really great for sculpting. It’s also a bit of cardio because you’re going from a vertical position to a horizontal position.”
Both King and Nealon stress the importance of nutrition in achieving your goals, however. For King, a fatty diet can undo all your hard work at the gym.
“Nutrition is huge. If you’re not eating right you can do as many Burpees as you want, but you won’t see results. Staying away from refined sugars and really fatty foods, sticking to lean meats, vegetables—you need to eat like that just to have the energy to workout even.”
That post-workout cocktail isn’t doing you any favours either, says the trainer.
“Beer and cocktails—they’re going to stick around your midsection. I’ve told the girls, if you keep drinking you can do a 1,000 crunches but you’ll never get rid of that fat around your belly.”
