Fitness
Stressed Out? Here's Your New Workout
Fitness
Mission: Can I Get Kelly Ripa's Body?
One writer's journey to find strength (and a thinner waistline?) through the celebrity-worshiped fitness workout, Physique 57
And so it begins
I show up to the relatively new Beverly Hills Physique 57 studio for my first class of my 30-day trial membership, pumped to experience the "unique, rapid results" Ripa, women on the Internet, and my friend Tricia, claimed were only a handful of classes away. Wearing some black yoga pants and a Hanes shirt, I felt cool, confident, ready to work it.I walk into the carpeted studio (carpet? OK no judgment) for the "beginner" class with about 10 other women who all look relatively normal (i.e., not models -- phew) and find a spot in the back of the room. Kyle, the instructor, jogs in. He is lean, tall, and a super good-looking guy in a black tank top. And now I'm nervous.
"Grab a water bottle," he says. "You burn way more calories when you are hydrated." Sounds like crazy fitness instructor talk, but it's true: Researchers at the University of Utah found that adults who consume eight or more glasses of water each day burned significantly more calories than people who only drank four or less. Good thing I came to class with a 32-ouncer.
Kyle then introduces himself individually to each of us, asks about any preexisting injuries, and instructs us to grab a pair of five-pound weights. "Five pounds?" I think. No big deal, right?
Wrong.
SEE NEXT PAGE: The method to the madness
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