Karp - 14-Minute Metabolic Workouts The Fastest, Most Effective Way to Lose Weight and Get Fit

Copyright 2017 by Jason R. Karp

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Interior photos by Jamie Dickerson of J.Dixx Photography.

Cover design by Tom Lau

Cover photo credit: iStock

ISBN: 978-1-5107-1794-7

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1795-4

Printed in the United States of America

Notice: The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any injury, liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, that is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book. Before starting any exercise program, please obtain the approval from a qualified medical professional.

ALSO BY JASON KARP

Run Your Fat Off

The Inner Runner

Running a Marathon For Dummies

Running for Women

101 Winning Racing Strategies for Runners

101 Developmental Concepts & Workouts for Cross Country Runners

How to Survive Your PhD

DEDICATION

To my parents,

Muriel and Monroe,

who taught me many lessons, including the value of time.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been written if not for many people, primary among them my agent, Grace Freedson. Thank you for all the opportunities you have brought me. It has been nine years and eight books since I received your letter in my mailbox offering to represent me. Im grateful you were willing to take a chance.

Id also like to thank

Jack Karp, my twin brother, for your support. You are the most talented writer I know. You inspire me every day to view writing as art, and to relentlessly work at the craft until I get it right.

Julie Ganz, editor at Skyhorse Publishing. Your skills have helped shape this book into something that can help millions of people get fit and save time.

Tom Lau, the books cover designer, for creating a bold and appealing cover that makes the book fly off the shelf.

Madeleine Ball, the publicist at Skyhorse, for all your efforts to get the book into the publics hands.

Jamie Dickerson, owner of J.Dixx Photography, for your awesome photos that bring to life what I described in words.

Martha Carbajal Moreno, for serving as the books model, adding beauty to the pages and precision to the exercises. Without you, this book would be just a collection of random exercise instructions.

Brett and Kera Murphy, owners of La Jolla Sports Club, for hosting the photo shoot. Your gym provided a great venue for classic and creative shots.

All my friends, acquaintances, and followers, both in person and in social media, for understanding the sacrifices one must make to write books.

WARM-UP

Beginning in the seventh grade, I became fascinated with timespecifically how fast it goes and how each year seems to go by faster than the previous year. When I once shared my perception of time with my ninety-year-old grandmother, she said, Just wait until youre eighty. Im still far from eighty, so I can only imagine how fast time will go by then. It likely will go by in no time at all. Even now, each second that comes is gone just as fast, leaving us with only future and past. The advice to stay present in the moment becomes impossible.

Time is perhaps the main influencer of how much people exercise. People claim they never have enough of it. But as Albert Einstein, the expert of time itself, proved, time is relative. Time has no independent existence, he said, apart from the order of events by which we measure it. In other words, everyone has 14 minutes.

As a personal trainer in a gym a number of years ago, I was talking to one of the members as she rode a stationary bike alongside her workout buddies. While I was explaining how she and her friends could get better results from their workouts, I sensed that she wasnt listening. Perhaps she didnt care for the advice of a young, scrawny-looking runner in cotton sweatpants. A few days later, I saw her again when I was about to go for a run. Seeing me for the first time in my running shorts, she enthusiastically asked, How can I get legs like yours? Smiling, I joked, So, you want me for my body rather than for my mind?

Everyone wants nice legs. Although it took me a lot longer than 14 minutes to get such nice legs, Ive spent much of the last thirty years appreciating the impact that short workouts can have and creating workouts that can make you extremely fit in a short time. 14-Minute Metabolic Workouts is the solution to everyones time problem, giving you great results in 14 minutes or less. If youre a skeptical person like me, you may be thinking, Can I really get fit in just 14 minutes? You bet your biceps and buttocks you can, if you focus and do it right. 14-Minute Metabolic Workouts shows you how.

This book includes a variety of compact, science-based workouts that you can do at the gym, at home, or outside. These workouts target the five components of physical fitnesscardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance, muscular strength, body composition, and flexibility. Among these pages, youll find cardio and sprint intervals; muscular strength, power, and endurance workouts; circuits; plyometrics; and flexibility workouts. For the final chapter, I put all the workouts together in a five-course menu to create a training program for you.

Why 14 minutes? Because its precise. You pay attention. You focus on the effort because you know the time will be gone as fast as it arrived.

Enjoy the time.

CHAPTER 1

CARDIO WORKOUTS

The ancient Greeks may have been the first to acknowledge the existence of the heart, which they named kardia . Aristotle identified the heart as the most important organ of the body and believed that it was the center of mans soul. Im not sure if my soul is linked to my heart or not, but the heart is certainly linked to my life, as it is to yours, since its only responsibility is to deliver blood and oxygen to all of your organs to sustain life. It is always working, from before youre born until you die.

Despite the attention our society gives to the muscles on your legs, arms, and abs, your heart is where life lives. How well your cardiovascular system works governs to a large extent how healthy and fit you are. When you are cardiovascularly fit, you are functionally younger than your biological age. Research shows that cardiovascular fitness is more important than body weight or body mass index in determining your health and predicting your mortality. Obese individuals with at least moderate cardiovascular fitness have about one-half the rate of cardiovascular disease or all-cause mortality than their normal-weight but unfit peers. In other words, its better to be overweight and fit than to be thin and out of shape. Cardiovascular endurance is the most important component of physical fitness because the functioning of your cardiovascular systemyour heart, arteries, and veinsis so essential to overall health. You cannot live very well or very long without a healthy heart.