The Gold-Medal Workout

To look like an athlete, you need to train like one. Our Olympic workout shows you how

By: Alwyn Cosgrove, Photographs by: Thierry des Fontaines,
Illustrations by: Kagan McLeod

Pound for pound, Olympic gymnasts are perhaps the strongest athletes in the world. But it's not because they pick up a lot of heavy objects. "I don't lift weights at all," says Team USA gymnast David Durante. "I'm either practicing gymnastics or doing body-weight exercises." Which just goes to show that you don't need high-tech training equipment to be strong and muscular. One problem, though: "Not just anyone can mount the still rings and do an iron cross," says Durante. "It takes years to develop the specific muscles that allow us to perform our routines." And that's why we've created a plan that will let you train your muscles the way a gymnast does but without having to be a world-class athlete. By combining the classic body-weight exercises (you'll add resistance to some) and cutting-edge training techniques found in this workout, you'll build shirt-splitting muscle, real-world strength, and a more athletic-looking body. And you won't have to spend hours at the gym -- you'll be in and out in under 40 minutes.

Your 4-Week Training Plan
Do these workouts 3 days a week, alternating between the three routines each time and resting at least a day between sessions. For example, you might do Workout A on Monday, Workout B on Wednesday, and Workout C on Friday.

Workout A
In Step 1, do the first exercise (chinup), rest for the prescribed amount of time, and then do the second exercise (dip). Rest again, and repeat the sequence until you've completed all the sets. Note that when the reps decrease, you should increase the weight in order to keep the exercise challenging. (See the exercise descriptions on the following pages for details.) Follow the same procedure for Step 2.

Step 1
Chinup
Dip

Week Sets - Reps Rest
1-------4------8----120 seconds
2-------4------6----120 seconds
3-------4------4----120 seconds
4-------4------8----120 seconds

Step 2
T Pushup and Inverted Row
Sets---Reps---------------------Rest
4 ------as many as you can ---120 seconds

Workout B
For Step 1, alternate between exercises as you did in Workout A, resting 60 seconds after each set. Do 3 sets of 10 reps of each movement. For Step 2, do the same number of sets and reps that you did in Step 1, but for just one exercise. For Step 3, see the exercise description for the Swiss-ball plank.

Step 1
Bulgarian Split Squat
Stepup

Step 2
Hanging Leg Raise or Incline Reverse Crunch

Step 3
Swiss-ball plank

Workout C
For Steps 1 and 2, alternate between exercises the same way you did in Workout A. However, rest only as long as you feel you need to between sets, and use the weekly guidelines below.

Weeks 1 and 3: Do as many sets of 5 repetitions of each exercise as you can in 20 minutes.
Week 2: Do 30 reps of each exercise in as few sets as possible.
Week 4: Do 45 reps of each exercise in as few sets as possible.

Step 1
Chinup
Dip

Step 2
Pushup
Inverted Row

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