60-SECOND SWEAT

Book excerpt: The 60-Second Sweat combines hot fitness trends High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) and Metabolic Resistance Training (MRT) into a single efficient and effective training program, with each exercise requiring no more than 1 minute at a time. There are—literally—thousands of fitness programs out there to choose from. What makes the 60-Second Sweat different? For the past 15 years, Patrick Striet has run a fitness training facility in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he has worked with hundreds of every day men and women—working moms, college students, senior citizens, middle-aged men, and more (plus a few elite athletes). Through this experience, he has identified the barriers most people face when it comes to exercising consistently—lack of time, lack of results, injuries, boredom—and specifically designed the 60-Second Sweat to address them. The 60-Second Sweat is: Efficient: Most mainstream fitness programs call for a 5 to 6-day per week commitment, with workouts ranging up to an hour (or more) in duration. What’s more, most programs focus on one component of fitness in each workout. For example, you might do cardiovascular exercises for 45 minutes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and then strength train for an hour on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Who has time for that? Not me…and probably not you either. With the 60-Second Sweat, you’ll work out between 20 to 40 minutes a day for 3 to 4 days a week, and you will never be performing the same exercise or activity for more than 1 minute at a time. Effective: HIIT (high-intensity interval training), in which you alternate between bouts of intense exercise and short “rest” periods, has been a growing fitness trend for several years now, and for good reason. Research has shown that it’s more effective than traditional steady-state workouts for both building cardiovascular fitness and shedding fat. However, it neglects muscular fitness, which is key for boosting metabolism. So the 60-Second Sweat combines HIIT with MRT (metabolic resistance training) to build strength along with cardiovascular fitness in one comprehensive workout. Safe: Keeping in mind the typical orthopedic issues most “real world” adult face—cranky knees, aching backs, stiff shoulders, and sore necks—the 60-Second Sweat gives equal weight to every muscle group, and not just the showy mirror muscles emphasized by many fitness programs. Exercises progress gradually in difficulty and intensity so that you start seeing results right away, building from a beginner level to advanced in just 9 weeks. Varied: The 60-Second Sweat is a balanced and functional movement-based plan, requiring basic and fundamental human movement patterns performed with bare bones equipment. During the 60-Second Sweat workouts, you will never be performing the same exercise or activity for more than 1 minute, so you will never get bored. Every exercise, set, rep…every minute…will count for and towards something: developing the best and fittest you! Bottom line: the days of inefficient, archaic, time-consuming, unsafe, and impractical fitness workouts are over. Based on the most up-to-date principles in modern exercise science, the 60-Second Sweat is a program, not just a workout. It is not a short-term fix, but, rather, a roadmap to the fittest, most confident you. While the 60-Second Sweat workouts will certainly challenge you and leave you dripping in sweat, that’s not the end goal. The purpose of the programs in this book is for you to attain phenomenal and sustainable fitness…safely and realistically…1 minute at a time.