Best Overall Body: Triatheletes

What you see: strong, broad shoulders, a fit core and well-developed, powerful legs
Key muscles: nearly every muscle, emphasizing the shoulders, quadriceps and hamstrings.
Coaching insight: Triathletes train every muscle group, and the result is a fit, healthy body, says Michelle Blessing, coach of the U.S. Olympic Triathlon Team.
Weekly workout: swim 8 hours; cycle 10 hours; run 6 to 7 hours; weight-train 2 hours.
Your best moves: Alternate between weight and explosive moves. First, do 15 squats, then stand in front of a step and jump on and off with both feet as fast as you can for 15 reps. For upper body, do 15 overhead throws with a 2-kilogram medicine ball: Hold it behind your head, elbows bent, then bring it over your head and throw it to the ground. Finish with abs: 20 crunches, 50 oblique crunches and 20 back extensions.
On the bike and on the road: Do intervals. Start with a warm-up, then alternate between 2 minutes of hard effort and 2 minutes of easy effort for 20 minutes. In the pool: After warming up, swim one length as fast as you can; rest, then swim another fast length. Repeat for 10 lengths, then cool down for 10 minutes.
Our model says: I’ll try anything that’s fun and outdoorsy running, rock climbing, mountain biking, says triathlete Petit Pinson. It’s important to find a workout that motivates you.

Get a Gold Medal Body

When the Olympics heat up this month, the spotlight will be on supersculpted,high-performance bodies. Build one for yourself with our insider’s training guide.

Call it the Oscars of the sporting scene: It’s time for the Olympic Games, as the world’s best athletes converge in the Land Down Under to vie for the gold, silver and bronze. And while you’re watching them run, kick and swim their way to glory, you may notice something else besides muscle power: to-die-for bodies. Can their workout secrets help you gain a better body, too?

Yes, if you jump on the biggest training trend: plyometrics explosive moves in which groups of muscles work together which athletes depend on to develop speed, power and coordination. We took the hottest Olympic sports and asked top coaches for their gold-medal moves. We are featuring the Triahlete's workout here but for the other sports, see the September issue of FITNESS. Now you can train like a winner and whip yourself into award-winning shape!

Maximize Your Fat Blast

For most of us, a little fat burning is never enough. We step, spin and punch our way through workout after workout to sweat off our bumps and bulges. So we decided to get technical and research the absolute best way to take a body from its resting state, when it burns about 1.25 calories per minute, to its fat-burning prime — smoking up to 12 calories per minute. The result: This four-step fat-burning formula, which combines 25 minutes of back-to-back weight moves without rest — a.k.a. supersets — with 30 minutes of aerobic intervals. All you need are 5- to 12-pound dumbbells and a bench. Warm up with light cardio for 10 minutes. Do three sets of 15 repetitions of each exercise within each superset. Vary the order of the strength exercises and the activity choice, as well as the intensity of the aerobic intervals. Do this workout three times a week to turn yourself into a fat-fighting machine! We're featuring Superset #1 here. See the March issue for the rest of the routine.

Fat-Proof Your Butt

Take the jiggle out of your wiggle with this super-firming move to target muscles in your butt.

You've squatted and lunged with the best of them, yet your butt still won't shape up. What gives? You've learned the first truth about the backside: It's stubborn! While some muscles respond quickly to exercise, the butt often—pardon the expression—lags behind, since it naturally carries more fat. The key to targeting the whole bunch of muscles (there are 10 to be exact) is to keep your leg moves varied. We asked Los Angeles-based trainer Keli Roberts to give us some butt-defying exercises, one of which is featured here, that hone in on all the muscles back there. Do our workout as featured in the July issue ofFITNESS at home or in the gym; all you need is a bench or step and a pair of light dumbbells. Do one to two sets of 10 to 15 reps for each move, three times a week. Add some cardio activity to your routine, and within six weeks, you'll be sitting pretty with a brand-new behind. Now, squeeze it!

How-to's of good health

In a recent issue of Lancet, I came across an interesting report about a flight attendant who went to a clinic complaining of persistent problems with diarrhea, which had been occurring for seven years. Other doctors had done many tests but had found no explanation other than that she had irritable bowel syndrome. The doctors at the clinic did another battery of tests and also found nothing wrong — until they took a detailed medical history from her. It turns out she was chewing 60 sticks of "sugar-free" gum containing a total of 75 grams of sorbitol every day. Sorbitol is a type of sugar that isn't digested, so it has no calories. But because it isn't absorbed, it gets carried out of the body with a lot of water — and that's what can cause diarrhea. In my book Modern Prevention I reported a similar case of a 47-year-old woman with a four-year history of gastrointestinal problems that others had attributed to a "nervous stomach." I would never have made the right diagnosis until she opened her purse and started sucking some mints. Five minutes later, she took two more. She told me she ate them all day. They, too, contained sorbitol. When she stopped using the mints, her diarrhea cleared up.

Sorbitol is one of those ingredients usually listed in fine print and present in many "sugar-free" products like chewing gum, candy, fruit juices, mints and canned fruit. Diabetics take it because it isn't absorbed like glucose. Doses of ten to 20 grams of sorbitol a day can cause gas, bloating, cramps and diarrhea. I checked the label on a well-known brand of mints and found that a single mint contained two grams! So eating even five or six mints a day could end up giving you problems.