Core Performance: The Revolutionary Workout Program to Transform Your Body and Your Life

You probably look at elite athletes and think they have something you don't. Certainly, they can do things the rest of us can't, but they have the same muscles and require the same food. They have to strike a balance between exercise and recovery, or they'll wear down. They need to get leaner and stronger without compromising their endurance or flexibility. And if they don't train intelligently and cautiously, they'll get hurt. Same as you.

Of course, athletes have hours a day to train, and you're probably lucky if you can squeeze in 60 minutes. So it's no wonder that you focus on one or two types of exercise--aerobics, bodybuilding, Pilates, yoga, kickboxing, or Tae-Bo--and assume you don't have time to work on all the other aspects of fitness.

Core Performance is the first program that delivers strength and muscle mass, endurance and a lean body, balance and flexibility, athletic quickness and power--all in less than an hour a day. How? By giving you a personal coach who has worked with some of the most famous and successful athletes in the world today.

Mark Verstegen, owner of Athletes' Performance in Tempe, Arizona, and Carson, California, has trained the best of the best: Nomar Garciaparra. Mia Hamm. Roberto Alomar. Mary Pierce. When Verstegen trains an athlete, millions of dollars in salary and signing bonuses are at stake. Bottom line: If he didn't deliver, he'd be out of business. And he's busier than ever.
What works for these gifted athletes will work for you. Sure, you can't do as much exercise as they do, but you don't need to. It takes less than an hour a day to build the type of fitness that improves your life in almost every way. You can straighten your posture, eliminate aches and pains, sleep better, and approach everything you do with more vigor and a better attitude.
Sure, you will get bigger muscles, a tighter waist, and more strength and power. But the biggest benefits come from the inside. The intense focus on the muscles of your core--abdominals, lower back, hips, and thighs--will help you stand taller and prevent the back pain from which most people eventually suffer. The detailed nutrition section guarantees that you'll feed your muscles, starve your fat, and get boundless energy when you need it most. And the attention you'll pay to recovery from your workouts will give you a straight path to the results you want.

li0The potential is within you, and the power to unleash that potential is within Core Performance.

Mark Verstegen directs a 25-person team of performance specialists and nutritionists to train some of the biggest names in sports, including soccer star Mia Hamm; baseball's Nomar Garciaparra, Roberto Alomar, and Vernon Wells; WTA tennis players Meghann Shaughnessy and Mary Pierce; golfers Jim Carter and Billy Mayfair; NFL veteran Trace Armstrong; hockey goalie Nikolai Khabibulin; and NBA forward Rick Fox. He serves as director of performance for the NFL Players Association, is an advisor to Adidas, and serves as a consultant to numerous athletic governing bodies, including the U.S. Tennis Association. Verstegen and his wife, Amy, a former Washington State University soccer player, live in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Pete Williams is a contributing writer to Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal and USA Today Sports Weekly. He has written about fitness and performance for numerous publications and is the author of two books on the sports-memorabilia business: Card Sharks and Sports Memorabilia for Dummies. A graduate of the University of Virginia, he lives in Florida with his wife, Suzy, and son, Luke.