Exercise for Your Nether Being : Slow Burn

There are two basic forms of exercise which I recommend; one is a certain form of cardio-vascular exercise called PACE or Peak 8, and the other is a form of weight-bearing exercise called Slow Burn. The term ‘Slow Burn’ comes from a book of the same name by Fredrick hahn, and is a very specific approach to strength training which gets to the essence of what the benefits, without all the extra ‘packaging’, so to speak.

In Slow Burn, a series of exercises are done which effectively target all of the different muscle groups in sequence. Leg lifts, and  arm curls will not be new to anyone who has worked out, but it is the form and technique of Slow Burn which makes it different — the basic idea for each of the different muscle group exercises is to work each muscle group with very slow movements, to the point of complete muscle fatigue, when you literally can’t move that muscle another inch. The amount of weight for each exercise is adjusted so that this point of total fatigue is reached between 3 and 4 repetitions, and between 60 and 90 seconds. A metronome set to 60 beats per minute (1 per second) is suggested, to count out the seconds, so that you can easily count 10 to 12 seconds for each movement on its way up, and then another 10 to 12 seconds as you’re returning back down. The goal is to achieve a slow, steady, and smooth movement, without any jerking, straining, or grunting as you go.

To complete the full set of the Slow Burn routine takes less than half an hour, and to achieve the maximum benefit, it is only necessary to do once every 7 to 10 days. Avoiding exercise with the “not enough time” excuse suddenly disappears in light of Slow Burn. It is also much safer than the conventional form of strength training, and is a more thorough workout, as it works through all 3 layers of muscle (fast twitch, medium twitch, and slow twitch), which regular weight exercises cannot do.

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