Tech-heads

Celebrities are getting the benefits of a fitness contraption that allows you to do 200 exercises in a very small space.

May 2008

Celebrity endorsement is all well and good but it’s important that the celebrity matches the product they are endorsing. Kathy Hilton, Paris Hilton’s mother, for example, has her own line of beauty products that she flogs off on American infomercials. Which is all well and good, except that Kathy Hilton’s beauty, such as it is, appears to be more thanks to the surgeon’s knife than lotions and potions.
The same theory applies to celebrities endorsing fitness equipment – an ab-toning machine endorsed by, say, Roseanne Barr isn’t going to sell as well as an ab-toning machine endorsed by, say, Daniel Craig.

Technogym’s Kinesis Personal is one such machine that is used by celebrities whose bodies are indeed worth emulating. Ronaldo, Kaka and the rest of the generally well-turned-out AC Milan football team have been honing their fine physiques to even greater levels of perfection. The Ferrari F1 team has also been using the Kinesis machine to keep themselves light and lithe enough to withstand the rigours of F1 racing without weighing the cars down on the track.

The Kinesis Personal, a sleek and rather elegant-looking contraption, that features devices that provide resistance and replicate the movements of yoga, pilates and tai-chi. It can be used for rehabilitation as well as building strength and fitness.

Technogym is an Italian company with headquarters in the Adriatic coast town of Gambettola. Company founder, Nerio Alessandri, is the youngest person ever to receive the prestigious Cavaliere del Lavoro, the Italian industry knighthood.

This year’s Beijing Olympics will be the fourth Olympics event that Technogym has been the official supplier of fitness equipment. Technogym was on hand to keep athletes in shape at Sydney 2000, Athens 2004 and the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.

• In Dubai, you can try out the Kinesis machine at the Quantum Health Club at the Monarch Hotel. For more information, log on to
www.technogym.com

So, you want a six-pack…

Our fitness guru Devon Graham unravels the mysteries of attaining the much-coveted six-pack stomach.

This is one of the most mentioned topics in the quest for fitness - and one of the most frustrating. Many who have tried over and over again to “manage their middle” eventually surrender and abandon their goals resulting to a lack of progress and confusion. A lot of guys will later seek consolation by turning to the other six-pack more commonly found in the bars, which simply exacerbates the problem.

Men may be having visions of walking confidently along the beach or wearing a fashionable Armani slim fit suit but a large number of such visions ended with minimal, sometimes zero, progress, and maximum annoyance.

The big reasons for this ongoing failure to rid the mid section of its infamous layer of flab stem from misinformation and lack of, or derailed, commitment.

There is the myth of spot reduction specific to the pursuit of a six pack. This approach is synonymous to failure and frustration, yet astonishingly this unsuccessful approach is still being used in training. Stomach-reducing gimmicks are everywhere. But no gimmick can deliver lasting results. It is critical that myths are dispelled and the correct approach be communicated and applied consistently if you’re to have any hope of attaining fab abs.

First, lets smash the Spot Reduction Myth: Spot reduction means that you train a spot to reduce the layer of fat under the skin. So many are misled into thinking that spot training is the solution to carving out the picture perfect abdominals. This is physiologically impossible and is one of the biggest of all exercise myths. The great travesty of exercise is that when you train an area, your body does not take fat from that area. In other words your body does not burn calories from the fat covering your abs. Instead, the body expends calories quite easily from within the muscles (intra muscular energy expenditure).

It is important to remember that muscles are active tissues and function like fireplaces inside our bodies, always burning away those calories, hence reducing fat. Thus it is relatively easy for the muscles to burn calories from the fat and sugar in the blood.

With regards to the fat stored under the skin all over the body including your target area, the abdominals, it is much harder because it is the least convenient place for the body to get energy for burning calories.

The funny thing is that our bodies (physiologically) tend to be as lazy as we are, always trying to find the easiest way to do anything - and that is the biggest travesty of exercise.

Now we know that spot reduction does not work, let’s look at the successful way to a six pack.

• The best way to achieve a six pack of abs is to persistently focus more on lowering total body fat through strength training, aerobic exercises and sound nutrition program. This appearance is more a result of total body conditioning.

• You need to increase your metabolism by weight training, thus enhancing your calorie burning efficiency. Weight training helps to add lean tissue that is by nature metabolically active, meaning you will burn more calories resulting to increase loss of fat.

• In general, spend less overall time on direct abs exercises. This is just a small part of the equation to get a six pack or really toned abs. Perform 15 – 20 repetitions of each abdominal exercise.

• It is recommended that that you do 30–60 minutes of aerobic exercise, three-to-five times per week. The mode of training can be any or a combination of walking, jogging, treadmill, elliptical, biking or wave machine.

• Finally, for getting that ultimate flat and chiseled washboard stomach as fast as possible, I would suggest a great knowledgeable personal trainer or coach, to teach you what to do and to keep you motivated to do it.

• Devon Graham is the manager of the Quantum Health Club, Monarch Hotel, Dubai. Tel: (04) 5018888