I love being in the gym and am training six days a week; I do a lot of high-intensity interval training so that my heart rate gets really high, and I practice, as I'm doing that, taking really deep breaths, and that really helps in a song and in a style of music where you have to sing long, flowing lines.
Sound in a space affects us profoundly. It changes our heart rate, breathing, hormone secretion, brain waves. It affects our emotions and our cognition.
Never, ever exercise in front of a TV or while reading. You lose 50 percent of the benefit of the exercise by not hearing and feeling your heart rate, your sweat and the pain levels that need to be encountered in fitness training.
All the circuit training, it's cardio circuit training, so everything you're doing, you're still running up your heart rate. You're burning, I think, triple the amount of calories than if you were just weight lifting.
I generally don't use an iPod for track work, as I'm focusing on heart rate and times. When I'm in the gym or running alone, there's always music. If I'm in the weights gym, I usually go for rap or rock music; for running, it's dance or cheesy pop.
For me, managing my energy means slowing myself down before the big event. I slow down the racing thoughts in my mind. I concentrate on and slow down my breathing. I listen to and steady my heart rate.
I don't happen to think magazines should be full of thin people. What I do say is that we can all work a little harder with what we have. It is possible to achieve a better body shape and heart rate with nutrition and exercise.
I go to the gym four times a week for 45 minutes to an hour without fail; I like using weights for muscle tone and the bike and rower for my heart rate. I do quite a lot of floor exercises.
Generally speaking, I love a workout that includes stretching and toning exercises for legs and core on the mat paired with ballet-inspired cardio and Barre exercises to get the heart rate up and take the results to the next level.
I find that the thing that makes every body look the best is great toning, and really, really targeting the muscles, and low cardio, where you're sculpting and getting your heart rate up but not beating yourself up.
