Experts recommend that women who want a summer body do more strength training to achieve their goal. Photo: IC

As the temperature in the capital rises, the time for taking off heavy winter clothes is here. But not everyone is ready to show what lies beneath.

Jin Wei, 28, an engineer in Beijing, is planning to take up some gym habits to build a "beach body."

"I put on too much weight on the cold days; I need to lose some weight, and I also want to build some muscles," Jin said, adding that he is researching articles on how to get a beach body online.

"I plan to go to the beach during my vacation this year, so I want my body to be in an ideal state," he said.

Jin is not alone in the pursuit of a beach body. Chen Lijuan, a fitness instructor with Fit More, who has been in this field for over a decade, told Metropolitan that they have seen a significant jump in the "number of people coming to the gym to work on their beach body for the hot season."

An online search for "beach body" on search engines google.com and baidu.com yields hundreds of websites, many of which promise a beach body within 30 days on their regimen.

"These websites are not reliable. It depends on the individual's physique. It's easy to lose weight, but very hard to add muscle and get the inverted-triangle shape," said Chen.According to Chen, to have a beach body, people should focus more on muscle definition instead of just building strong muscles.

"People need to have low body fat and defined muscle lines to build their beach body," she said. To achieve this goal, they need to do more full-body strength training. They also need to do aerobics and have a reasonable diet.

Skipping, running and climbing staircases are recommended aerobic exercises.

"Swimming is not a good choice. It is a slow way to lose weight, and it does not help to build muscle definition," Chen said.

As for dieting, Chen recommended that people consume moderate amounts of carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and minerals in each meal. "For those who are fat, they must cut back on consumption of carbohydrates and eat more vegetables and fruits."

Holiday website icelolly.com did a survey among 2,000 people in the UK to find out what their ideal beach body is by making up the parts they chose from celebrities, the Daily Mail reported in August 2015.

The findings showed that instead of craving super-slim figures, they tended to like toned body features.

Chen, who saw the "ideal beach body" pictures, told Metropolitan that compared to people in the West, Chinese people tend to like slimmer bodies, but the craze for muscle tone is the same. "The torso from Channing Tatum (an American actor who starred in Magic Mike (2012)) that the respondents chose as the ideal beach body would be considered a bit fat in China. Chinese men like a leaner look, especially in their upper body," she said.

Chen said that Chinese men, from junior high school age up to 70, do strength training and aerobics at the gym. But for Chinese women, the age range is limited to 25 to around 40. "About 90 percent of women only jog, run, or do aerobics, which does not help to build muscle definition. They should do more strength training," she said.

Chen pointed out that if a man does both strength training and aerobics one hour a day, three to four times a week, it may take him half a year to achieve the beach body goal.

"For women, they need to spend a year and a half to two years exercising to achieve a beach body," Chen said.
Newspaper headline: Beach body ready?