My ideal physique is a hybrid result from cross training with cardio and weights. Slender “long look” legs comes from repetitive training usually, but powerful, round, thick glutes requires explosive or heavy exercise. Round, broad shoulders can lose their fullness when the arms get too cut, so there is a fine line to walk there too.

The challenge I am up for is: how do I train and diet to achieve this look? How do I shrink wrap my body into a smaller even more defined version of myself without losing the fullness of the muscles?

Today I weight trained glutes, shoulders and lats. The reason why I don’t just stop training with weights is I want to keep the fullness in those areas. I just want to shrink the rest! Just losing muscle without giving it much thought is too “we’ll see what happens” for me, I PLAN, I FOCUS so I reach what I want. One of the areas I am most interested in exploring is how to make sure the glutes grow or stay round without heavy quad training or deadlifts. The way I shaped mine was with the classics SQUATS and DEADS, but for now that time when I could just GO GO TRAIN is over, if these wheels are gonna slim down I cannot keep up the weekly leg training from hell. No, not even with double cardio could I keep it, I’ve tried that and let me tell you: those muscles STAY there no matter how strict the diet or the amount of cardio. Typical scenario for women.

I also keep weight training in order to create a higher metabolic rate. Doing many sets means more mechanical work and more of that equals higher caloric expenditure. It will also take more energy to rebuild after the workout is done, but with the higher reps I assume the stimulus will be much smaller and the breakdown of muscle mass less severe which leads to less calories spent for rebuilding. Anyway, I believe it has the best effect on the metabolism anyway.

Now my goal is to find different cardio styles to practice in order not to overtrain on a certain machine. The wear and tear will add up so by spreading out different styles the joints should be ok. I did some treadmill running today and I actually enjoyed it. Guess whatever I decide I need to enjoy I’ll enjoy. Well, fair enough!

Wonder if the weight will go down soon….:-)