I used to teach a spinning class at the gym, and I loved it. Because I was the teacher, I could get off of the bike during the sprints or just ride a little slower so I could keep enough breath to encourage and instruct the students. I hate sprints – and for years I have believed that my genetics made it impossible for me to love them. When I took my fitness instructor training, we were taught about fast twitch and slow twitch muscles, and that we all vary in our composition of fast (better for sprinting) and slow twitch (better for strength and endurance) muscle tissue. I came to the conclusion that I am all slow twitch and none of the fast, and there’s nothing I can do about it – I could “climb hills” on the bike all day long, but please don’t subject me to a sprint.

I read Chapters 9-11 (the first three chapters of Section 3). This is the “money” section, where she breaks down exactly how to change your life. She talks a great deal about psychology and how we can grow our brains (which we have heard elsewhere, of course). I’m not going to quote (or play fact checker on) her brain/psych. discussion (she highly recommends therapy, and her mom is a therapist, but none of these things makes her an expert in this area), but I am inclined to take her at her word when she talks about exercise science. So, she says that we can change our muscle compostion, including adding fast twitch muscle fibers if you don’t have any to speak of – I had understood that you are stuck with what you are born with, so this was a surprise to me. She also mentions that slow twitch muscles are perfect for running marathons – this flies in the face of my longstanding belief that my body is not made for running. (Great – there goes THAT excuse…)

So how do you build specific muscle fibers? Training. Drills, drills, and more drills. Instead of just climbing fun hills all day long, do those sprints. Then do more sprints… Of course she applies this to every espect of life – you can build certain skills though specific practice (she calls it “target practice”). Some totally random examples: Lousy housekeeper? Practice cleaning! Shy wallflower? Practice assertiveness! Procrastinator? Practice getting things done right now! Then practice some more!

There was quite a lot of valuable advice in these chapters. I will share a little bit with you, including my favorite part.

1. Mentors are extremely important. When choosing your future mentor, aim high but be realistic. No worries if you don’t have access to the actual person – in her case, she studied and learned everything she could about Martha Stewart’s career. Some of what she says here is not new, but I enjoyed reading her real-life examples. She talks about how she turned down an offer to start her own magazine because she thought she should follow Martha Stewart’s example of working at a magazine first (and chose a smaller position at Self magazine instead). Then, with regard to being flexible, she is now focusing on building content for her website – paper magazines aren’t what they used to be, you know (although, with apologies to Mother Earth, I still love them). Reading this gave me some insight into her recent career decision – if she is using Martha Stewart as a guide (and also possibly Oprah), it makes sense that she would want to move from a reality show to a daily daytime spot on her road to having her own daily show (or maybe even her own channel?!?) someday. I get it now.

2. Get feedback and identify specific weaknesses. Obvious advice, maybe, but I think it bears repeating. How useful is it to practice doing something wrong over and over again? This is a tricky one for me because I am shy to ask for feedback, and I don’t like to be embarrassed about doing something the wrong way. I think this holds me back, though. I joined the swim team in high school (because I wanted to learn how to swim). I was miserably slow, and one time a friend teased me about how clumsy I was in the water. Instead of taking the criticism as a sign that I should ask for extra help with my form, I lost interest in swimming instead. To this day I am a lousy swimmer – I think I can probably keep myself alive in an emergency, but I’d sure hate to be tested on this (according to my husband, who is part dolphin, I don’t even dog paddle correctly).

3. Change your emotional attachments. This is my favorite bit of advice. We build emotional attachments to things all the time, and some are pretty destructive. We should identify these instances and change them into healthier ones. Here are a couple of her examples of new emotional attachments:

“Treadmill = looking awesome in skinny jeans, more energy, better sex life”
“Burger and fries = muffin tops, lethargy, self-loathing, muumuus”

Great trick, no? Okay, my turn. Here is the feeling I get when I have to pack or unpack a suitcase – “no fair that I have to spend all day in an airplane to see my family when my husband just has to call them or drop by (he can even walk to their house if he wants to!”

Here’s a better emotional attachment: Packing/unpacking = joy at my good fortune that I can travel back and forth this way.

Scroll down for other posts about Unlimited:

Review
Part 1: Unlimited: How to Build an Exceptional Life, by Jillian Michaels
Part 2: Anxiety and Fear
Part 3: Target Practice
Part 4: You Didn’t Mean Not To