Reset Your Fitness with Rihanna and Halle Berry's Body Guru - EBONY.com

Recently, I had the distinct honor of sitting down with the mean behind the famous bodies of everyone from Rihanna to Halle to Kanye and beyond, well-known celebrity trainer and author Harley Pasternak to discuss his latest book in stores now, The Body Reset Diet ^[1] , and the tips and techniques he uses to help his clients.

“The Body Reset Diet focuses on a 15-day complete reset of your body, your appetite, your palette, your digestion, and it’s really easy,” says Pasternak. “It breaks it down to 60-second meal preparations, gives you really easy exercises that you don’t need to go to the gym for, and it’s really what I do to prepare someone for a movie role or a music video.”

Pasternak is a believer in circuit training – short, intense bursts of activity that builds muscle and help to tone bodies – combined with simply being more active throughout the day.

“What’s really exciting, is the new survey that Vitamin Water did, looking at boredom in their workouts. For a lot of my clients, I’ve got to keep them interested in their workouts and excited about them.

“The survey found that over 50% of people surveyed are bored with their workouts. Most of those people get bored at the 30 minute mark during their workout, and even more people found the treadmill is the most boring part of the workout. So, when I’m working with my celebrity clients, they don’t have a lot of time to work out. They usually have less than 30 minutes so getting people to workout intensely and intelligently for shorter periods of time is more effective.”

What other fitness tip does he give his clients? Fitness tracking tools!

“Trying to be active throughout the day so that, when they get to the gym, they really don’t need to spend time doing cardio. They can just focus on resistance training..” When it comes to a fitness-tracking tool, Pasternak sets the goal moderately high. “I tell them, ‘Try and take 10,000 steps every day.’”

When it comes to building a training circuit, Pasternak likes to focus on groups of body parts at a time, and he keeps the workout as fast-paced as possible. “We keep them moving so that we don’t waste any time.”

Pasternak graciously let EBONY.com inside of the training routine he uses for his clients to tone and tighten the booty area:

“This week we’re focusing on the muscles of the back of the body, so we do an exercise called the 'Superman^[2] ,' to pull back the mid-section of the body. We do an exercise called the 'pike plank^[3] ,' which is great for the front of the abs. We’ll do a 'skater lunge^[4] ,' for the thighs and the butt, and we’ll do a back row^[5] , to pull the posture and the back of the upper body.”

As nutrition is a huge part of Reset, he makes it very plain. “People will learn to love their blender!” To help the people who make meal skipping a habit, he encourages smoothies, soups and dips that are easy to make with little mess to make people get back in the habit of eating not only regularly, but healthily, too. “People will have no excuse for skipping breakfast in the morning, or unhealthy meal or snack when, within 60 seconds, they can have a really simple, easy, quick smoothie, soup or dip made in a blender.”

All in all, Pasternak aims to keep his advice simple. “I just really want to drive home the message of getting people moving more throughout the day, and making exercise and fitness a little more interesting and fun.”

I don’t think anyone will object to that!

Erika Nicole Kendall is the writer behind the award-winning blog, A Black Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss , where she chronicles her journey of going from 330lb couch potato to certified personal trainer, nutritionist, and all-around fitness dynamo. Ask her your health and fitness-related questions on twitter at @bgg2wl.^[6]

References

1. ^{^} The Body Reset Diet (www.amazon.com)


2. ^{^} Superman (www.youtube.com)


3. ^{^} pike plank (www.youtube.com)


4. ^{^} skater lunge (www.youtube.com)


5. ^{^} back row (www.youtube.com)


6. ^{^} A Black Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss (blackgirlsguidetoweightloss.com)