CrossFit
CrossFit is a fitness craze sweeping Southern California and the world. The movements are based on functional fitness, meaning fitness that can save your life. Typical activities include weightlifting, sprinting, rowing, jump roping, and box jumping. Typical equipment includes barbells, dumbbells, gymnastic rings, pull-up rigs, kettlebells, and medicine balls, in addition to plenty of bodyweight exercises, like hand-stand push-ups (look them up to believe them).
Though CrossFit can easily be done from home or any gym (just look up a workout on CrossFit.com), it is generally offered in hour-long class structures at Crossfit affiliated gyms. Classes feature a warm-up, a skill or strength building component, and a workout of the day (WOD). These workouts change daily and run approximately twenty minutes. But don’t let twenty minutes fool you, CrossFit demands twenty minutes of high-intensity cardio, power lifting, Olympic lifting, gymnastics, balance, flexibility, and endurance.
In addition to being a training mechanism for military organizations, law enforcement agencies, and fire departments, CrossFit is a certified sport. The “CrossFit Games,” held every summer since 2007, offer top male and female champions $250,000 – $1,000,000 in prize money. Now that’s some incentive to get in shape!
Crossfitters like Jessica Biel and Matt Damon typically follow The Zone or Paleo diets for optimum body sculpting.
The Bar Method
The Bar Method has an interesting history as a regimen established by the Nazi-fleeing German Dancer, Lotte Berk. In London, she developed the Lotte Berk Studio where she assisted Brooke Shields, Joan Collins, and Brit Ekland in sculpting their starlet bodies. Over time, the Lotte Berk method was redeveloped into The Bar Method it is today.
The Bar Method combines interval training, isometrics, and dance conditioning for fat burning, muscle carving, body reshaping, arm sculpting, waist trimming, and posture enhancing – all without impact to your delicate joints. While The Bar Method only has locations in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Washington, it is easily available on DVD. Celebrities who sing The Bar’s tune include Drew Barrymore, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Anna Paquin, Zooey Deschanel, Ginnifer Goodwin, and Denise Richards.
Insanity: The Asylum
Insanity: The Asylum is the sequel to P90X’s Insanity workout. Insanity: The Asylum is offered on a series of fitness DVDs and promises body transformations from average to elite in just 30 days. Though you may not end up with instructor and celebrity fitness trainer Shaun T’s ripped body in thirty days, you are sure to see quick results. This cross-training, plyometric, strength, power, and resistance method will show you how to shape your body, using just your body.
The program recommends beginning with the 60-day Insanity program in order to get in shape for Insanity: The Asylum. The program also recommends investing in a series of Beachbody dietary supplements for optimum results. Actress and musician, Demi Lovato recently tweeted, “Just did the Insanity workout DVD… Amazing… So intense but I loved it!!!”
Just because you don’t live in Los Angeles doesn’t mean you can’t have the toned bodies sported by Hollywood studs and starlets. Invest your time in Crossfit, The Bar Method, or Insanity: The Asylum and get ready for quick results. Here’s an incentive: when you can finally squeeze back into that swimsuit, treat yourself to a Cali vacation. You’ll fit right in!
