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Hot
Point Fitness author Steve Zim is a personal trainer/gym
owner who has "a small army" of personal trainers that
use his method. Zim personally trains mostly celebrities
and professional athletes, especially Olympic figure skaters
and professional baseball players. His clients aim for
optimal physical appearance as well as physical performance.
Their sports depend on strength, agility, flexibility,
and speed. According to Zim, you can achieve your own
best personal fitness level by using the Hot Point
Fitness program. The goal: to transform your body
into the best shape ever.
The
main difference between Hot Point Fitness and
most fitness books is intensity and structure. Zim leads
you through each workout, much like your own personal
trainer would. "Hot Point Weight Training is designed
to work each muscle to 100 percent of its capacity, and
consequently completely transform the way the muscles
in your body look," writes Zim. "The point of Hot Point
Nutrition is to speed the metabolism and make it burn
calories at a white-hot pace. Hot Point Aerobics will
super-heat your muscles, and burn fat from your body quickly,
safely, and forever," he says.
Zim's
program is precisely structured and divided into three
28-day phases. During phase 1, you become a regular exerciser
by spending one hour at the gym, three days per week.
Phase 2 keeps you in the gym for 90 minutes, four days
per week, and gets you to the point of "needing" to exercise.
Phase 3--up to two hours a day at the gym, five days per
week--brings you to an athlete's level of fitness (strength,
flexibility, and endurance).
Zim
developed his weight-training exercises by using MRI technology
and infrared imaging to examine which muscles work during
which exercises, and how hard. He was amazed to learn
that traditional weight-training exercises only work 20
to 30 percent of the targeted muscles. He altered exercises
and perfected techniques to build muscle density (not
necessarily muscle mass), optimally by working muscles
to exhaustion.
Zim
describes the exercises clearly, with plenty of attention
to technique. Each is illustrated by several photographs,
which vary in quality (sometimes the lighting or clothing
color doesn't provide enough contrast between model and
background). Experienced exercisers will find almost all
the exercises familiar, but will learn much from the technique
recommendations that make the difference between a humdrum
workout and an effective, muscle-blasting one.
~Joan Price,
Editor
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The 30-Minute 
