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“How did you like your grand opening?”
“Fantastic!” My friend Avis was all smiles. “Dr. Sears, people are hugging me and thanking me…”
I knew we’d have a good turnout for the grand opening. But this blew me away. “It’s even better than I expected.”
As more people showed up, Avis would look at me and mouth, “O M G!”
We had 250 people in the new PACE Fitness by Avis studio, and the air conditioning almost couldn’t keep up.
Some of the people I met told me they drove over an hour – all the way up from Miami – to come to the opening.
They were asking me when they’re going to get a PACE studio down there. A few of them were trainers who signed up to become PACE-certified. It won’t be long before there are many more PACE studios.
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Terri L. was a big hit. We had a before and after poster of her on the wall, and everyone wanted to take a picture with her underneath it. We did two PACE demonstrations, and Terri did both of them. I couldn’t be happier at how PACE has changed her life.
Terri’s not the only one. I had one man come up to me at the opening and shake my hand.
“Do you remember me?”
“Of course I remember you. You’re W.W. You look totally different. You look transformed.”
“I’ve been telling your staff they should use my story too! They want me to come in for a visit, I just haven’t had a chance to come to the clinic yet.”
And he does look great now. A normal body… and when he started PACE he weighed 315 pounds. I personally took his “before” picture.
W.W. saw the poster of Terri and now my staff wants to make a poster with him in it. He started out just like Terri did. He walked for just a few minutes at a time. As he became better conditioned, he upped the intensity to a brisk walk and progressed from there.
To make sure he did a real PACE workout, he accelerated the challenge by shortening his rest periods, and by getting up near – but not at – his maximum intensity faster with each set.
That’s one of the most important features of PACE, and I was glad to hear W.W. remembered what I show all my patients who do PACE.
I show them how to incrementally, progressively increase the intensity. Because PACE isn’t about going all out as hard as you can. You always leave yourself a little bit of room in your workout where you could have gone harder. As you get closer to your peak, you become more aware of it, and by controlling it you have room to improve the next day.
You see, to succeed at something, you have to focus your conscious intent on it, and it has an effect. So instead of focusing on going as intensely as you can, what you do with PACE is to turn your attention to the level of intensity.
We have a capacity for doing things this way that we ignore. We try to distract ourselves by watching a video or listening to music, but that makes exertion totally ineffective. Be aware of your level of intensity and your mind will coach your body, giving you better results. It becomes very natural.
Every time you work out, it gets a little bit easier to go at a slightly higher level of exertion. This progressivity over time – flirting with that maximum intensity without reaching it – raises your peak output and builds capacity.
In a very short period of time, you’ll be using more energy, burning off more fat and building muscle with each workout… but it won’t seem like you’re working hard. Your body takes over and makes it easy to do because it’s how you were designed to exert yourself.
W.W. told me at the grand opening that after he had gotten better conditioned by walking PACE-style, he wanted to start doing body weight exercises. So he started to do one of my favorites. And he still uses it because it’s so effective. It’s called the “up-down.”
It’s almost like a combination of walking, a pushup and a lunge. You can do them anywhere. All you need is enough space for the length of your body.
- Start with your feet shoulder width apart, arms hanging by your sides
- Raise your arms above your head
- Bring your arms down, bending forward into a slight squat
- Fall forward touching both hands to the ground with your rear slightly raised
- Step each foot out behind you one at a time into the pushup or plank position
- Step each foot back underneath you
- Lunge back up into the starting position and repeat
As you become more fit, you can do a “modified up-down.” Instead of stepping each foot backward one at a time, you can hop both feet backward into the pushup position, then hop them both back underneath you and jump as high as you can, landing back in the starting position.
Because your perceived intensity will be less, measure your workout by something objective. You can use your heart rate, the speed you ran, the number of up-downs you did in a set, how high you jumped, the setting on a machine at the gym… something that you can cycle through.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
P.S. to watch the Grand Opening video click here