Twelve weeks.

It’s not much time, when you think about it. Call it three months, call it ninety days, call it 2,160 hours. No matter how you parse it, completely changing the way your body looks, feels, and moves in just twelve weeks is going to take work. It’s going to take dedication. And most of all, it’s going to take intensity.

“You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”

—LOUISE L. HAY

I’ve spent the past year pushing my body to the limit, testing out workouts, tweaking and improving, adapting my own exercise regimen into a plan that’s perfectly suited for anyone. Yes, it’s challenging, but I have proof that it works no matter what your experience or current fitness level is. That proof comes in the form of the hundreds of men and women of all ages and sizes who took part in my test panel—people just like you who dropped pounds while sculpting their bodies and boosting their overall physical and mental health. The Pretty Intense Workouts are right for everyone, because they let you use your own body weight for most of the exercises, and they’re designed to help you improve your time and performance week after week, proving to yourself that you’re getting stronger, fitter, and healthier.

Each week, you’ll do seven workouts:

• 3—interval cardio sessions
• 1—upper body workout
• 1—lower body workout
• 1—abs workout
• 1—long circuit

Each workout is designed to take somewhere between twenty and twenty-five minutes, except for the “long circuit,” which will take between thirty and forty-five minutes.

Exercise demonstrations

If any of the exercises in this chapter seem unfamiliar to you, or if you just want a primer on form, you can go to PrettyIntense.com to watch a video of me performing each of the moves featured in this book.

Equipment needed

• Chair/bench
• Jump rope
• Slam ball
• Mat
• Tabata timer
• Set of dumbbells (10 pounds)
• Optional—additional dumbbells (5 and 15 pounds)

As you read earlier in the book, doing two workouts a day just a couple of days a week will have a dramatic impact on your overall fitness gains. I realize that we are often slaves to the scheduling demands of others, but thanks to the shortness of these workouts, hopefully you’ll be able to squeeze two in a few days a week. (Leave at least six hours between workouts to maximize your gains.) Again, an ideal schedule would look like this:

MON	cardio (A.M.) upper body (P.M.)
TUES	lower body (A.M. OR P.M.)
WED	cardio (A.M.) abs (P.M.)
THURS	cardio (A.M. OR P.M.)
FRI	off
SAT	long circuit (A.M. OR P.M.)
SUN	off

This is just how I would do it, and following this regimen has provided me with maximum strength to perform each workout to the highest of my ability. But the most important thing isn’t the schedule you choose. What matters is that you squeeze all seven workouts into your week—and that you perform these workouts with intensity.

Here are some terms to familiarize yourself with before you start:

AMRAP: As Many Reps as Possible. If you see AMRAP, it means I’ve given you a time period in which to do as many repetitions of the exercise as you can.

Ladder: A ladder is when you perform two or more exercises back to back, increasing or decreasing the number of repetitions for each set. For example:

Descending/ascending ladder 15 > 1 > 15

Broad jumps

Air squats

In this case, you’ll do fifteen broad jumps followed by fifteen air squats. Then you’ll do fourteen broad jumps followed by fourteen air squats, and so on all the way down to one of each. Then you’ll start climbing back up the ladder until you’re back to fifteen of each exercise.

Rounds: When you see a number of rounds followed by a series of exercises, it means you’ll perform each exercise for the prescribed number of repetitions, then move on to the next exercise, then the next. Once you’ve completed one set of each exercise, that’s one complete round. So, for example:

5 ROUNDS:

• 20 knee push-ups
• 20 bent-leg triceps dips
• 20 Supermans
• 20 jumping jacks

In this instance, you’d do twenty of the first exercise, followed by twenty of the next, and so on. Once you’ve completed twenty of each, that’s one round. Start again, and keep going until you’ve nailed five rounds. You can do this!

Tabata: Tabata training is a type of workout named for Dr. Izumi Tabata, a Japanese researcher who found that four-minute exercises seemed to be optimal for building lean muscle. Ahh, just four minutes!

But those four minutes are intense. For each exercise, you’ll:

• Push yourself as hard as you can for 20 seconds.
• Rest for 10 seconds.
• Complete 8 rounds (for a total of 4 minutes).

You’ll need a Tabata timer app for your phone to perform this workout, but there are plenty of free options available.

What do you think? Can you handle it?

I know you can.

Get ready. Get set.

Go!

Get Up Off Your Ass!

You’ve heard of hormones like testosterone and HGH, and how they help us burn fat, right? Well, there’s another set of hormones worth learning about: They’re called myokines, and researchers didn’t even know about them until about 2008. But once you know about them, you’re going to want to stand up and pay attention. Seriously.

Myokines are hormones produced by skeletal muscle; when our muscles contract, these hormones are secreted into the bloodstream, where they have all sorts of beneficial effects: They burn fat—both visceral fat (the stuff deep in your belly) and subcutaneous fat (the stuff on your hips and thighs). They improve blood flow and help prevent heart disease. They give your immune system a boost, improve your digestion, and may even help prevent cancer.

The mightiest source of myokines? You’re sitting on it. Our legs and backside contain some of the largest muscles in our body, and what have we learned? Muscle burns fat! Throughout human history, they’ve been constantly contracting to help us stand, walk, run, and jump—and shooting out these stay-young hormones. Problem is, nowadays most of our time is spent sitting on our asses, robbing us of one of our very best weapons for fighting weight gain, disease, and the effects of aging. The more time you spend on your feet, the more time you spend with these muscles contracted—and hence, the more time you spend shooting out myokines. So if you’re working a sit-down job, get up and walk around several times each hour. When you’re in the gym, make sure you’re really focusing on contracting your butt when you’re working your lower body. Get your buns working, and work off the rolls!

Visit http://bit.ly/2jsvrq5 for a printable version of the following workouts.