How to Get a Model Body - Justin Gelband Victoria's Secret Workout

Every­one has a dif­fer­ent idea of the “per­fect” physique – whether it is curvy, lean and toned, skinny and sinewy, mus­cu­lar, or super buff. I find many types of bod­ies attrac­tive, but for my own body, I like a long, lean, toned look – no added bulk, and def­i­nitely no bulky arms! “Bulky” also means dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. When I hear fit­ness experts say it is impos­si­ble for women to get bulky, I just raise an eye­brow. Have they ever seen a woman’s fit­ness com­pe­ti­tion or some of the female Olympic ath­letes? Granted, it does take YEARS (and often some assis­tance from testos­terone or steroid injec­tions) and spe­cific bulk­ing rou­tines to get like that.

So what causes the bulky look ver­sus the lean and toned look? While genet­ics play a role, it also depends on train­ing and diet. There is no deny­ing that dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties build different-looking bod­ies. You can always tell who is a swim­mer, a power lifter, a bal­let dancer, or a yogini. There is a cor­re­la­tion between how you want to look and what form of exer­cise you need to do to achieve it. So if you want to be mod­e­lesque (long, lean, and toned all over), then you need to know how to get there.

Enter Justin Gel­band, fit­ness trainer to Victoria’s Secret and Sports Illus­trated super­mod­els Irina Shayk, Miranda Kerr, Can­dice Swanepoel, Erin Heather­ton, Lily Aldridge, and more. We have all seen the long mus­cles and lean physiques of these women. They have worked hard to achieve those bod­ies, and he is the designer behind them.

Justin’s super­model clients do not look sickly and thin – they look healthy and toned. He stresses truly healthy eat­ing (which improves your body and your skin, as you very well know), as well as strength­en­ing exer­cises that shed inches and do not add bulk.

Accord­ing to Justin, there are two main com­po­nents to get­ting a toned, lean physique à la Can­dice and Irina:

1. Suc­cess is based 80%-90% on what you eat. This is def­i­nitely not news to you if you have been read­ing the Epic Beauty Guide blog (in order to get clear skin, it’s mostly what you eat that mat­ters!). ;) Justin and his super­model clients fol­low the prin­ci­ples of The Blood Type Diet by Dr. D’Adamo. The diet cen­ters around the fact that lectins (pro­teins) in cer­tain foods can harm or ben­e­fit some – or all – blood types, and that health ben­e­fits can be obtained by avoid­ing the foods that agglu­ti­nate (clump or “glue”) your blood. For exam­ple, accord­ing to D’Adamo’s book, type AB like myself should avoid bananas, mango, and beef, whereas those foods are ben­e­fi­cial to type O. Know­ing what foods can help or harm you may also help you feel bet­ter – more ener­getic, faster recov­ery, fewer allergy symp­toms, and per­haps even help with skin issues.

Some peo­ple have a hard time believ­ing in D’Adamo’s diet sys­tem or that blood type has an effect on what you should or should not be eat­ing. Yes, it does have an effect and has helped many peo­ple, includ­ing Justin’s model clients, but you may want to com­bine the work of Dr. D’Adamo and Dr. Laura Power. Dr. Power pro­vides excel­lent, well-researched insight into lectins and reac­tionary foods for your blood type so you can get the most out of your diet. For exam­ple: chicken is listed as an “avoid” food for sev­eral blood types in D’Adamo’s book, but it is impor­tant to note that “there is no ‘chicken lectin’; there is a ‘chicken galectin’, a cel­lad­he­sion mol­e­cule that [does not bind] to ABO anti­gens.”* This means that chicken is not an “avoid” food for any­one and is not a harm­ful food for any blood type.

*Page 16 of Bio­type Diets Sys­tem in the Jour­nal of Nutri­tional and Envi­ron­men­tal Med­i­cine, Jan­u­ary 2007.

Also, because you guys know that I come at every­thing from a skin care per­spec­tive, I rec­om­mend that you take into account your indi­vid­ual needs to tai­lor the diet to you and your skin. For instance, dairy might be neu­tral or ben­e­fi­cial for your blood type, but you break­out when you eat it, so that would obvi­ously be an avoid for you.

2. Exer­cise on a con­sis­tent basis. Justin trains clients 3–4 times per week for 45–75 min­utes each time for opti­mum results. The key is to always do a full-body work­out (legs, core, arms…and don’t for­get stretch­ing), which encour­ages fat loss and strength­ens every muscle.

{Justin’s Diet Guidelines}

  1. Avoid salt, which can force your body to retain water and look bloated.
  2. Avoid refined sugar (white sugar, cane sugar, evap­o­rated cane juice, etc.), which causes insulin spikes, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to lose weight as well as con­tribut­ing to acne break­outs and other inflam­ma­tory skin dis­or­ders like eczema and rosacea.
  3. Avoid processed car­bo­hy­drate foods (white bread, pas­tries, etc.) for the same rea­son as #2.
  4. Each meal should include a bal­ance of pro­tein (lean meats, beans, seafood), healthy carbs (veg­gies, fruit), and fat (olive oil, coconut oil; fat also occurs nat­u­rally in meat and seafood, so no added fat may be nec­es­sary, par­tic­u­larly if you’re bad at metab­o­liz­ing it).

{What a Day of Eat­ing Looks Like}

When your bud­get allows, always go with organic fruits and veg­gies, organic chicken and turkey, grass-fed meats, and wild-caught seafood.

  1. Break­fast: eat lean pro­tein and slow-burning, com­plex carbs. Think oat­meal, egg whites, veg­gies, fruit, yogurt (only if dairy doesn’t neg­a­tively effect your skin).
  2. Lunch: stick with a big green smoothie (water, leafy greens, fruit), stew, or a salad (raw, or slightly steamed/sautéed greens) topped with chicken or turkey, wild-caught fish, or grass-fed meat.
  3. Din­ner: eat veg­eta­bles (steamed spinach, broc­coli, cau­li­flower, zuc­chini, asparagus…you get the idea) with fish, chicken, or turkey.
  4. Snacks: go for low-glycemic fruits like berries, cher­ries, pears, apples, kiwi; apple with 1 Tbsp. of peanut but­ter (salt and sugar-free); hum­mus with cucum­ber slices; or a small por­tion of a left­over meal.
  5. Notice the lack of grains like wheat, bread, and corn? Processed and refined grains tend to spike your insulin, which, in short, is bad for your physique and bad for your skin. I have men­tioned this before in another post and in the EBG book. Grains also con­tain lectins, which cause blood agglu­ti­na­tion (a.k.a. clump­ing of the cells) which results in less effi­cient trans­port of nutri­ents and oxy­gen, lead­ing to feel­ings of fatigue (which is also caused by the insulin spike and sub­se­quent crash) and skin issues such as break­outs. If you get a crav­ing, go for grains that don’t spike your insulin and lack phytic acid (an anti-nutrient sub­stance that pre­vents your body’s absorp­tion of key vit­a­mins and min­er­als). Try a slice of sprouted (sprout­ing removes some or all phytic acid) grain bread like Ezekiel or a 1/2 cup of brown rice.

{Justin’s Exer­cise Routines}

Justin incor­po­rates dif­fer­ent rou­tines and exer­cises for each per­son and their needs and goals. He uses a com­bi­na­tion of body­weight exer­cises, box­ing, jump rope, resis­tance bands, med­i­cine balls, glider discs, and a sta­bil­ity ball. In keep­ing with the anti-bulking work­out of a super­model, he does not use weights over 3–5 pounds (depend­ing on the exer­cise), run­ning stairs, or lunges.

(P.S. Justin trains clients in New York and L.A., and has recently started doing group classes and train­ing workshops.)

Work­out #1:
WARM UP:
Stretch 5–10 min­utes, run 1.5 miles (2.5 km), walk, rest, and run back (another 1.5 miles/2.5 km)

CIRCUIT:
– 15 push ups (do them on the knees if you have to)
– Jump rope for 1 min, rest for 30 secs
– Jump rope for 45 secs, then rest for 15 secs
– Incor­po­rate a few yoga moves or flows (try Ash­tanga Vinyasa sun salu­ta­tions)
– …then start again from the top with the push-ups. Do the cir­cuit 3–5 times.

Work­out #2:
Warm up (see above). Then do 30 min­utes of box­ing fol­lowed by 30 min­utes of Pilates. Cool down and stretch.

For killer Victoria’s Secret super­model legs, try incor­po­rat­ing the fol­low­ing rou­tine 3x/week:
– Leg exten­sions (3 sets of 15–20 reps)
– Leg presses (3 sets of 15–20 reps)
– Calf raises (3 sets of 15–20 reps)
– 20 leg kicks either side (use a resis­tance band)
– Bal­ance on one foot hold­ing a 4 lb. med­i­cine ball for 30 sec­onds (do 3 sets on each leg)

Click here for more infor­ma­tion on Justin and his train­ing methods.

Hope you guys enjoyed my first fit­ness post! I started incor­po­rat­ing some of his tech­in­ques in my exer­cise rou­tine about 2 weeks ago and already see the dif­fer­ence. Woohoooo!
~Steph  x

 

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