One of my favorite teaching principles when working with health, fitness, and weight management students and professionals is “Inch by inch, it’s a cinch.” This is my personal exercise slogan and a philosophy I want to share with you. I established the philosophy as I launched my career in fitness.
Right after I completed my master’s degree in physical education at San Jose State University, I landed a fabulous job as fitness director of a new athletic club in Los Gatos, California. Over the next eight years I taught thousands of fitness classes and trained a great many wonderful men, women, boys, and girls. My passion for fitness grew so much that I became well-known in the San Francisco Bay Area for my creative ways of teaching exercise and how much my students enjoyed my classes. It wasn’t long before I was invited to fitness conferences around the United States to share my ideas about group fitness exercise classes with other certified fitness professionals. For clarity, the term “group fitness” includes all forms of fitness performed in a group setting and led by a qualified instructor. My circle soon expanded to fitness conferences in Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Taiwan, and Europe.
I then laser focused my energy and academic interests to attain my PhD at the University of New Mexico, where I am now an associate professor in the Department of Health, Exercise, and Sports Sciences. My areas of study were health promotion and exercise science.
During my studies a new ambition took hold: improving the education of fitness professionals around the world. Once I realized how meaningful my graduate education was to me, I wanted to pass along my knowledge to others, so I began writing fitness-related articles for industry-leading fitness journals, with a zeal to educate fitness pros throughout the world. The research studies I conducted were focused on solving many of the questions facing fitness professionals. My presentations at conferences also evolved, and I started presenting research-oriented lectures, which remain my focus today.
And here I am today, sharing my story with you. I feel so fortunate that my passion for fitness education has been rewarded in unexpected ways. I currently have over three hundred peer-review articles, I’ve been invited to present at over one thousand fitness and science conferences throughout the world, and I have been awarded every major honor in the fitness industry, including induction into the National Fitness Hall of Fame. And through it all, with my first students, current students, and all the fitness professionals I have had the pleasure to teach, my mantra has remained “Inch by inch, it’s a cinch.”
This step-by-step philosophy has proven to be the most successful approach to goal attainment I have ever utilized. I will repeat it multiple times through this book, because it applies to so many aspects of your health, fitness, and weight management—so get ready. I invite you to adopt this slogan for your fitness journey. As catchy as it is, it embodies a proven scientific methodology to weight management called the “small steps” approach, which we will discuss thoroughly in the book. From my professional experiences working with people of all ages and abilities, this process of small steps universally leads to gratifying, successful outcomes that you can sustain. With a modest investment of your time, you can follow the concepts, weight management strategies, and exercise programs in this book and create your ideal fitness plan. All of which is to say, your ultimate power lies with the lifestyle choices you make every day. You can do it!
Before we dive in, I’d like to give you a quick tour of this book. In Section 1: Exercise, HIIT, and You, I cover essential information for launching your journey into fitness, including chapters on the health benefits of exercise; an introduction to HIIT training; the health benefits of HIIT workouts; how to power your HIIT workouts; and how to succeed in exercise and my START MOVING NOW program.
In Section 2: Optimal Weight (Fat) Loss Strategies That Work!, I provide an inspiring and all-inclusive section on weight management. I also cover an important array of hot-button issues related to weight management, energy balance, low-carbohydrate versus low-fat diets, dieting and longevity, and stress and obesity. In the same section I present fascinating weight management information from a landmark study on over ten thousand of the biggest real-life weight loss losers, and I summarize the common strategies they stick to in their daily life. I also answer fifty common questions on health, nutrition, and weight management. These questions come from actual fitness fans, just like you.
Section 3: Let's HIIT the Workouts! presents the magnificent HIIT workouts in all their sweaty, life-improving glory, and includes a guide on how to train properly. All of these workouts are drawn from research studies, and I have adapted them specifically for all fitness levels. Yes, there is a way to adapt HIIT workouts for all fitness levels by using a perceived exertion model to gauge your exercise intensity. (It’s just like it sounds: you use body cues to perceive how you feel during an exercise.) Perceived exertion is a training intensity approach to HIIT training that I, and other certified exercise professionals around the world, have found to be a particularly safe and effective way for people of all fitness levels to enjoy HIIT. Also, every workout in this section can be adjusted from approximately 10 minutes to 20 minutes, as they are variable duration workouts. With these kinds of workouts, you adapt the length of your workout to your fitness level and/or daily fitness status. For instance, on some days you may want to train for 20 minutes, while on other days you may only have 10 minutes for your workout. For those of you who enjoy doing muscle strengthening exercises, in this section (in Chapter 21: The Future of HIIT Workouts—25 MORE Workouts!), I also introduce a very popular new training program called HIIT circuit training. These workouts combine the HIIT workouts with very popular muscular fitness circuit training for a fabulous total body workout you are sure to enjoy.
Finally, Section 4: 100 WINNING Ways to Cut Calories in Your Daily Life is my special gift to you. Here’s why I call it a gift: in my numerous years of working with exercise devotees in the fitness world, one of the most common questions I get is, “what are ways I can cut calories in my daily life?” Many people don’t want to jump into a new diet; they tried dieting and realized it just doesn’t work for them. They are, however, still looking for ways to cut calories daily. Well, I’ve got the answer. I’ve gathered one hundred bona fide ways you can reduce calories on a daily basis. I am hoping you will find great enjoyment and personal satisfaction in seeing how daily smart tips to reduce calories will help you achieve and maintain weight management success. Are you ready to get started? Let’s HIIT it!
Section 1
Exercise, HIIT, and You
Chapter 1
Exercise: The Quality of Life Super Pill
When I travel around the world I am often asked the same simple question: Why should I exercise? Let me explain it this way: Now more than ever, an abundance of evidence suggests that exercise is a super pill that is guaranteed to give its users a higher quality of life, needn’t cost a penny, and doesn’t come in a capsule. I will turn to my academic side to share with you the benefits of exercise, a topic I’ve written about extensively during my professional career.
Simply put, exercise and regular physical activity are considered a primary strategy for preventing, delaying, or combating numerous diseases. Interestingly, the importance of exercise for improving health was recognized by Hippocrates, the famous ancient Greek physician who wrote the following in the fifth century BC: “All parts of the body . . . if used in moderation and exercised in labors to which each is accustomed, become thereby healthy and well developed and age slowly; but if they are unused and left idle, they become liable to disease, defective in growth, and age quickly.” This ancient wisdom was validated in 2012, when the journal Comprehensive Physiology published one of the most comprehensive scientific reviews on the benefits of exercise yet. This paper confirmed that regular physical activity and exercise are a primary prevention for thirty-five