Body by You – Guide to Total Women’s Fitness – Mark Lauren

Mark Lauren is a military physical training specialist for the Special Operations community, a sought-after personal trainer to civilian men and women of all fitness levels, a triathlete, a champion Thai boxer, and the author of the internationally popular body-weight bible You Are Your Own Gym. He lives in Tampa, Florida.

Joshua Clark is the author of Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The founder of Light of New Orleans Publishing, he has edited such books as French Quarter Fiction; Southern Fried Divorce, Louisiana: In Words; and How You Can Kill Al Qaeda (in 3 Easy Steps). He is also a certified personal trainer, who has not set foot in a gym since Hurricane Katrina closed his fitness center.

Introduction

For a decade I’ve used my bodyweight movements to create the leanest, strongest, most confident people on earth in as little time as possible. I honed the exercises in this book while preparing nearly a thousand trainees for the extreme demands of the most elite levels of the United States Special Operations community. Now the military’s most advanced forces—from SEALs to Green Berets—use these movements.

This is not “boot camp” run by some gym instructor in spandex who’s never laced up a pair of combat boots. This is the world’s most effective and efficient workout program from someone whose day job is to physically train troops who’ve worn their boots through countless miles of mud, sand, and snow. Cool high-tech gear and weapons aside, the things that most determine a soldier’s survival and victory are physical fitness and resolve: my areas of expertise.

My first book, You Are Your Own Gym, owes its continued success among popular fitness books to teaching people to exercise alone, anywhere, anytime. I’ve heard from countless readers who tell me that they have followed my program and now look and feel the best they ever have in their lives. While this feedback is extremely uplifting, gratifying, and personally inspiring, it’s also not much of a surprise, considering I’ve already seen the effects on the hundreds of troops I’ve trained.

You Are Your Own Gym remains the “bible of bodyweight exercises.” Through its 125 exercises, comprehensive training tools, and workout routines, it has helped sculpt the physiques of tens of thousands of people. While many women have told me of their great success with You Are Your Own Gym, I’ve also heard that it didn’t always meet a woman’s needs and concerns—from having less time to work out to wanting to address different physical goals. I tailored Body by You to those needs. Some of the movements I share in this book are new, and some are updated or adapted from exercises in You Are Your Own Gym. Taken as a whole, these exercises will guide you from where you are now to where you want to be, to look and feel the best you ever have in your life. You’ll find that the workout never stays the same for long and the results—toned arms, flatter abs, tighter buns, leaner legs, and curves in all the right places—just keep on coming. I’m not going to show you how to “lose” the fat on your belly or thighs. I’m going to show you how to—as we say in the military—“engage it for permanent termination.”

Let’s state the obvious: Women and men are different in lots of different ways. But the reality is that women’s muscles are made up of the same fibers as men’s. Our fat cells are identical. Our hormonal differences are what raise an interesting issue. Male testosterone levels make large muscles possible. Without the same high levels, women can’t bulk up in the same way as men—so stop worrying about that. What you will get out of my method is a solid foundation of strength, the kind of strength that leads to a lean physique and powerful athleticism. You will find the natural athlete that lies at your core. Feel the pride and joy in challenging yourself to rise beyond your own expectations and the peace and strength and beauty that come from it.

Physical ability represents not only your mastery of the world around you but also of yourself. An essential source of self-confidence is pride and control over a finely tuned body. Follow my program and you won’t ever have to run to anyone else for help because you’re not strong enough or don’t have the endurance. You’ll be fit enough not only to cope with anything you want but to enjoy anything you want. You won’t have to think if you can do something, only if you want to do something.

I like to say that you are the only piece of exercise “equipment” you will ever need to be in the best shape of your life. You now hold in your hands the only user’s manual for that equipment you will ever need. Face it: For thousands of years, humanity’s greatest female physical specimens—from ancient Greece’s female athletes to tomorrow’s G.I. Janes—have not relied on Gold’s Gyms or weights in their basements. Male or female, the human body doesn’t require machines and dumbbells (or cardio!) in order to stay fit. Free yourself from the dependency on gadgets, trainers, and common misconceptions. They are all crutches, keeping you from getting into the best shape possible.

This book will not teach you to move through the gym with ease. It will teach you to move through life with ease. You will learn to use the body you have to build the body you want. With just a small commitment of time—without having to go to and from a gym—you can fit this program into even your busiest schedule. The effort and time you put into my program will not be great, but the benefits you get out of it will be.

This book is about you. You are the boss now. Your destiny is controlled by you. Not by your gym. Not by complicated fitness equipment. Not by dumbbells. Not by benches and bouncy balls and treadmills and yoga mats and infomercial contraptions. Not by some trainer. Not by your friends. Just by you.

It’s about you being leaner, stronger, more confident and energetic. You having the best body you can. You getting these results faster than ever before. And sustaining them as long as you live.

I offer you all body: a flatter stomach, tighter thighs and glutes, more-toned arms, sculpted shoulders, stronger pecs to give your bosom a boost, a back that turns heads when you wear an evening dress, legs that look great in a pair of shorts. Everyone around you, both men and other women, will notice the changes in your body. You will look as strong on the outside as you feel on the inside.

I offer you no bulk: No filler. No flab. No gab. No bloated chapters with unnecessary chatter. I offer you only what you’ll need to look and feel as good as possible. I want to free up the rest of your time to do more of whatever you enjoy.

Looking good is not some mysterious, complicated, grueling process. Being truly in shape is not a fantasy destination. Even becoming an elite athlete, if that’s what you want to do, is surprisingly simple. All you need are a few minutes of strength training a day and a good understanding of the basics of nutrition. You find those minutes, and I’ll show you what to do. You give me just a little more time, and I’ll explain the nutrition basics that will simplify your eating choices for good.

As much as I want you to look and feel good, this book is also ultimately about saving your life. It’s a plain fact that unfit people are at far greater risk of suffering painful illnesses, immobility, and disease, from osteoporosis and arthritis to mortal threats like heart attack. Physical inactivity is the cause of one third of all deaths due to diabetes, colon cancer, and heart disease. We are all training for our lives. Whether you like it or not, life is the ultimate sport; you must approach it as an athlete would.

Even if you haven’t lifted anything but groceries in years, this book is the first to offer you total fitness independence. It will shatter old stereotypes and open your eyes to previously unimaginable possibilities of female athleticism. You will be training your body to do what it couldn’t before. To use muscles it didn’t before. To be fit and therefore look better than ever before.

It sounds hokey, but I truly believe everyone possesses not only an inner beauty but an outer one as well. There are not ugly and pretty people. There are only fit people and unfit people. No one who is fit is not beautiful in her own way.

Whether leading training sessions or missions, competing in Thai boxing competitions, or enjoying the few vacations I get, I’ve been fortunate to travel a good part of this earth. From visiting my relatives in the Philippines and Germany—where I lived until I was nine, without speaking a word of English—to my military tours throughout the Middle East and Asia, I’ve met people in just about every shape and form in which they exist. And never, not ever, have I found a kind of people that is not breathtakingly gorgeous. Of course, all the world’s nationalities and ethnicities meet and mix in America, more than in any other country, and the results all are beautiful.

What’s not beautiful to me is the typical advertising of women. I see it in all the world’s cities now: enormous billboards cast two stories high, parading some phony Western ideal of beauty—tall, bone thin, and mainly white. And it’s sad and a bit maddening to see so many millions of innately beautiful women walking the streets below, trying to emulate this ridiculous, marketing-driven ideal.

Most models have a body type possessed by a minority, mostly by very young and naturally thin women, and only for a genetically select few is it carried into their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, and beyond without proper exercise and nutrition. From an early age, women are conditioned to value this standard, which is extremely difficult (if not impossible) to achieve and maintain.