"I know how to keep the skin close to the muscle"

Tracy Anderson. God bless her little cotton socks. She came up with the quote in the title in an article in last Saturdays Time magazine and I was reminded of her genius. God knows I've tried hard to forget!

After reading this article, I was compelled to read to the end, I thought I'd check out her website to find out what black magic she uses to suck in all these women to her web of wonder...

Turns out she has a new product, Metamorphosis, which promises amazing results (apparently you can actually transform your muscular structure. Who knew?). If you work out 6 days a week. 2 hours a time. And follow her insane dynamic eating plan...

She has even managed to redefine the body types since endomorphic wasn't specific enough...

Omnicentric - Those who carry their chunk all over,

Abcentric - Those carrying their excess on their stomach,

Hipcentric - Those carrying some extra on their hips, and,

Glutecentric - those with some back fat/ saggy ass issues.

None of these words actually exist, but, I guess they are descriptive enough...

 Each "body type" has a workout that specifically targets the problem area ( at $89 each!), shrinking the offending body part.

Intrigued, I checked out the infomercial -

hmmm....

That didn't really tell much about the type of exercises that you would expect to find, so...

Ahhh! Ok, I get it. This is looking promising. She really sounds like she knows what she is talking about right...

"60, 80 even 100 reps each side is fine."
"..work the accessory muscles which will pull in the larger muscles tight..."
"Its important when doing arm exercises where you are using the arms as their own resistance, its really important you understand the power of the wrist and fingers...because these are the movements that activate the muscles in the arms."
" It's important to change the workouts to avoid overworking the muscle. That causes bulk."
Huh?

Add to the section on her website where she doesn't recommend lifting weights above 3lbs, ever, and the craziness is almost complete. Seriously, 3 lbs! For gods sake, don't go shopping, or if you do, take someone with you to carry anything you buy over 3 lbs home for you. You don't want to get too bulky now!

So, the warmup... 100 plies,  "hip stretches," forward bends, the all important inner thigh stretch.  Comprehensive no?
Into legs with the butt and thigh sequence, and into a quadruped position, working leg externally rotated and some excellent lumbar extension to get that foot up in the air. then some side kicks from the quad position with some excellent lumbar flexion. So much for the neutral spine...

Then we go for abs and arms. Actually, no we don't. I've wasted more than enough of your time and mine on this trash. And I haven't even gotten to the "nutrition" guidelines.I'm not gonna get into that low fat, calorie deficient can of worms, needless to say severe calorie deficit is expected.


So basically if you want to starve yourself, dance about lifting 3lb weights and get down to that teeny tiny point go for it, knock yourself out. You'll probably faint through lack of food anyway so you might  as well knock yourself out and save some time!

Or...

Check these ladies out, eat well, lift heavy and get strong. Lean will come, as will the curves.

Nia Shanks

Jen Grasso

Molly Galbraith

Jen Comas