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Resistance Fighter

05/31/05
UNION TRIBUE
May 31, 2005

Resistance Fighter
Machine helps former pro rider build strength, drop pounds

As Luwain Ng painfull discovered eight years ago, you can lead your horse to a hurdle, but you can't make it jump.

Wher her trained show horse aborted a leap over a 3-foot barrier, Ng went airborne without landing gear. The accident toll: a broken collarbone, two mangled shoulders and a critically injurded career.
 
A professional equestrian in Hawaii at the time, Ng was no more used to having her mount cross her up than she was to losing. "I had been competing all my life, and I had won everything in Hawaii," she said.

Ng, who lives in Carmel Valley thesedays, found a new career in the investment business.

And the next time she went head over heels it was for a fitness program that has put her, at 43, in the best shapeof her life.

Since she began working out last July with the GRAVITYSystem, a machine using her own weight for resistance, she has shed 15 pounds and two dress sizes. She's also improved her core strength and the range of motion in her accident-impaired rotator cuffs.

"I fell in love with it," she said of the GRAVITYSystem. "It was everything I was looking for. For me, I have to like exercise. Otherwise, I won't do it."

Ng takes group classes in the GRAVITYSystem, also known as GTS, at The Training Club in Carmel Valley. After 45 minutes of exercises choreographed to music, she'll often hop on a stationary bike for an hour long Spinning class.

It's a total body – and mind – workout.

"I could be having a bad day and dread going to the gym," Ng said. "But the classes take me away, and my mood changes. It's motivating and fun."

HARD CORE: Ng, who took Pilates classes before beginning her current routine, finds that she can target the same core muscles in the trunk area in her group classes with GRAVITYSystem, a spinoff of the Total Gym machine. She works out five times a week with the gravity machine, which featuresa glideboard that she sets on an incline. The higher the incline, the greater percentage of body weight providing the resistance. Routines change regularly, with an instructor closely monitoring participants' form.

"I've gone from 20 percent of my own body weight to 60 percenton the incline," Ng said. "When I started, I couldn't do 10 abdominal crunches. Now I can do maybe 80 to 100. I noticed a huge difference in my waistline, and my upperbody is getting stronger."

EASY RIDER: A stationary bike has replaced high-spirited horses in Ng's riding regimen, and she hasn't fallen off yet. The thrice-weekly sessions, which complement her resistance training, have helped reduce her weight from 160 to 145 pounds on a 5-foot-3 frame. "I'm always striving to lose more," she said. But she's no slave to the scales. "I haven't weighed myself in four weeks."

Ng tried the low-carb thing and something called "the salad diet." All they did was leave her grouchy and grumpy. "I would lose weight but not dress sizes," she said. "I just try to eat in moderation. "The exercise
seems to do the rest.

An early riser, she downs a bowl of Special K at about 5:30 a.m. with soy milk and flax seed that she grinds in a coffee grinder. Then she drives to her office in Rancho Santa Fe, where she begins work at 6:30 a.m. Lunch breaks find her fueling up with a Lean Cuisine frozen entree or a salad. Dinner can be anything from steak, fish or chicken to pizza or pasta with vegetables and a salad, after leaving the gym at 6:15 p.m. For nutritional insurance, Ng takes multivitamin with herbs and minerals called Wellness Formula.
 

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