She's Tough Sample Chapter

[Excerpted from She’s Tough by Kylie Hatmaker]

Now that we’ve plowed through the personal back-story, the motivational section, and had a look at a few role models living and doing exactly what we have in mind for ourselves, we’re getting mighty close to particulars. Let’s knock some out of these out of the way with a little Q & A.

“I like what I’m hearing about tough but won’t this take a lot of time? It’s not like I have 26 hours in a day, you know?”

I hear you, the time crunch is a common lament and is actually one of the more common reasons why some say they will forgo the tough track and opt for the hour-long Zumba, spin, or step-class session instead.

But, lament no more my tough sisters, to get the hardcore results we’re touting in this book takes less time than most all standardized exercise sessions.

“How much less time?”

Well, often your tough session will take even less time than it does for your less-tough friend to drive to her Zumba session.

In other words, you can get tough and be tough and get on with what’s next in the day before your yoga counterpart’s designer gym bag hits the “exercise” floor.

Doesn’t seem possible does it? To show you I’m not just blowing smoke here I will direct you to a few different scientific sources at the end of this section, but if you want to skip what the long-winded folks in lab coats have to say, here it is in a nutshell.

In trial after trial participants have been broken into three groups.

As a rule Group One is your control. They are assigned no exercise regimen at all during the trial run.

Group Two is assigned what we have been fed to believe for years about long slow distance (LSD) training, that is, getting your heart rate up to a moderate level and sustaining this elevated rate for the specified time--anywhere from 30-60 minutes depending on which “expert” you want to believe that day.

Group Three is assigned the new way (the tough way) which is a series of High Intensity Training Intervals (HIT), that is, if Group Two is expected to jog at a light to moderate pace for 30-60 minutes per exercise session, Group Three is expected to do 3-5 all-out, fast-as-as-you-can-run 100 yard sprints with 3 minutes of rest between efforts.

If we assume three mandatory exercise sessions per week, Group Two is putting in (optimally) a total of three hours of training per week.

Group Three, once we minus out the rest time between HIT intervals is training 4.5 minutes per week if they only do three sprints per session, or 7.5 minutes per week if they opt for 5 sprint intervals per session.

OK, time-management-wise, HIT, or the tough way is waaaaayyyyy better. You wind up with oodles more time to do what’s next on you to-do list even if that next item is just more “Me” time.

But, time-management is not our main concern here, is it? We want to know how well these slackers in Group Three did against the disciplined put-the-time-in folks of Group Two in measures of physical improvement.

First, Group One, the do-nothings, how do you think they did?

Yeah, no improvement on any fitness scale. No increase in VO2 Max, no gains in strength or stamina at all, and zero fat loss.

Group Two, our long-timers? They saw a slight increase in VO2 Max, slight stamina improvement, very little gains in strength, and as for fat loss, well, unfortunately, not much.
Now for our Group Three slackers. Improvements across the board. And these aren’t small gains that I’m talking about, at the very minimum HIT matches LSD, but more often than not in test after test, trial after trial, match-up after match-up HIT exceeds the benefits of LSD training by a long shot.

HIT results show up in all modes of physical effort:

Running harder and faster is superior to running slower and longer.

Lifting heavier and more explosively with fewer repetitions is vastly superior to lifting lighter weights, slowly, with lots and lots of reps.

Fewer repetitions of a difficult exercise are superior to more repetitions of an easier exercise.

So, the science says we can accomplish more in less time, that’s a win-win no matter how you measure it.

“Accomplish more in less time, sounds too good to be true. What’s the bad news in this story?”

Well, none really, if your head is on straight, but we’ve got to acknowledge what the acronym HIT stands for:

HIGH--Meaning, well, high or serious levels of output.

INTENSITY--To reap the big results in minimum time you’ve got to redline it. There is no cruising or phoning it in in this type of training. You can’t just strap on your iPod and trot around the neighborhood. If you want the quick results in minimum time you can’t cheat the acronym.
You must train at high intensity and keep your sessions regular, in other words, no “I don’t feel like it today because…” Can that stuff, and do the work. Keep your focus on the good news, it’ll be over soon.

“Won’t I have to train like a man to get these results?”

If you want to be tough as we define it in this book, no you don’t have to train like a man.

That’s good news, right?

But…

Men, who get tough don’t have to train like men either.

“Wha?”

Men and women who want to get tough need to lose the idea of “this is what boys do” and “this is what girls do” and simply do what athletes do.

I fail to see how a push-up, or a pull-up, or a sit-up, or any inert piece of iron is imbued with gender specific qualities that render it off limits to the opposite sex.

If we recall the wisdom of treating men and women like their weight classes and not their genders and simply scale our workload to the corresponding weight classes and fitness levels we are finally approaching the topic with some common sense.

“I’ll admit that fast results in minimum time sounds good, but I just don’t think I’m up to working that hard.”

First, yeah, I know that’s not a question but let’s treat it as one. The good news about HIT training is that it is all scalable.

What I mean by scalable is that HIT requires you to redline your efforts at all times, but redlines are completely subjective.

My 100 yard sprint may be a walk in the park pace to you, no worries I still reap the excellent results.

You may only be able to power clean 75 pounds which may seem ridiculously low to another, but that’s OK, you’ll still have the science on your side.

Whatever the task is in front of you as long as you give it all you’ve got with your current level of intensity the method will work for you.

Another good thing about HIT redlines is that they are movable. As you adopt the HIT method your redline will tick upward as your fitness improves.

It is by always pushing that we realize setting the bar higher and higher is what gives us our results and our rewards.

“You make a good case for HIT but I see some mighty lean ladies wearing yoga pants, so doesn’t that mean that low-intensity work is just as effective?”

Not by a long shot.

Look at it this way, yoga (and even yoga pants) are often self-selecting, by that, I mean those with a figure that is conducive to wearing yoga pants in public will purchase and wear yoga pants in public. (Please, recall one of the top manufacturers of this garment refuses to make or sell sizes above a certain number to continue to perpetuate this lean brand mystique).
Let’s look at self-selection in other physical endeavors. Basketball, lots of tall folks, aren’t there? Now, did basketball make them tall or did the nature of the game select for tallness?
Gymnastics, the nature of that sport selects for small-framed light human beings (even in the male divisions). When was the last time you saw an Olympic gymnast who was of NBA basketball height?
Again, did gymnastics make these people small, or did diminutive people gravitate toward the sport.

With that in mind, I toss out the idea that a product that is made only for slimmer, leaner folks self-selects our thoughts to assume that the yoga did the job of what’s filling the pants rather than the product and activity marketing selecting for the pants-fillers.

But if you want to try an experiment via science as we have been doing, hit yoga for 90 days and then compare it with 90 days of HIT training and see which one gets you in those pants sooner.

You already know which one that me and the empirical evidence says will do the job.

“Yeah, I hear you about intensity and time-saving, and all the sciency sort of thing, but what I’m really interested in is toning up my butt, and losing a little off my tummy; why would I need to do all of these other tough exercises that don’t even touch these areas?”

Ah, the old “spot-reducing” business. The thinking goes along these lines, “I’d like to lose some fat off of my belly so I’ll do lots and lots of sit-ups, crunches, planks, (insert core exercise of choice) and that will do the trick.”

Sounds good in theory, but the reality is the human body does not operate in that manner.
The body is a complex inter-connected whole, just as you can’t eat a BLT hold-the-mayo and use the force of your mind to will which part of the body those sandwich calories go to, you can’t exercise one small part of your body and expect it to have a slimming effect on that intended target. Oh, if it were that easy.

Look at it this way, if exercise of one part of the body led to significant “slimming” or increased muscle size in that area alone we’d see some pretty bizarre looking athletes out there.
Think of tennis players, these are athletes who are either right or left handed and swing that racket with maximum force day in and day out with only one arm.

Now, the last time you watched the US Open did you see the Williams sisters, or Andy Roddick striding the court with giant right arms, or super-slim right arms?

Nope, that’s because the human body reads effort and codes that effort by its own standards. Professional tennis players have equally developed arm and shoulder musculature not because of equal effort put in on both sides, but despite a great deal of effort inequality.

Shelve notions of spot-reducing and target slimming and go with what science says works--HIT training.

The good news about HIT training is that it provides just the results that you desire without the specific targeting. Yes, HIT is tougher than an extended crunch session but it will do the job quickly and efficiently.

By the way, beyond developing and maintaining tennis skills what method do you think these tennis pros (and all other pro athletes for that matter) are doing to build their conditioning and physiques? Yep, HIT training, the very thing we’ll be doing with this manual.

That’s the end of our Q & A, now for some of those sources if you want to look into the science further.

Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights? Fitness Myths, Training Truths and Other Surprising Studies from the Science of Exercise
--Alex Hutchinson.

The First 20 Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer
--Gretchen Reynolds.