Sly Moves: My Proven Program to Lose Weight, Build Strength, Gain Will Power, and Live your Dream

by Sylvester Stallone

Overview

Are you ready to be a contender? Sly’s action-oriented program for getting fit and eating right is a revealing portrait of one of Hollywood’s biggest slaves

Sly Moves—part candid autobiography, part nuts-and-bolts training manual, part motivational handbook— is a refreshingly sensible guide to getting immediate results that last a lifetime. It’s also a provocative inside look at the trials of a body-conscious star rising in the most image-conscious industry in the world.

The truth is, Sly’s personal battle to stay in shape has been as tough as any fight he’s waged on screen. The book begins with a very personal history of Sylvester Stallone’s famous physique, as the Rocky star shares never-before-told stories about his being bullied as a child, finding comfort and strength in the gym, and then later, the wild ride of fad diets, crash-training regimens and workout disasters that fringed on obsession. Sly knows what works and what definitely doesn’t, and these experiences formed Sly’s unique fitness and nutrition plan. Part 2 consists of Sly’s program for getting physically fit without sacrificing life’s other pleasures. All he requires is three hours a week—that’s all Sly needs—for a total body workout, an engaging regimen involving all the major muscle groups and aerobic fitness. The step by step program includes four different levels of exercise: classic, advanced, women’s, and for those who dare, The Sly Challenge, a hardcore session pushing it to the max.

Sly has tried every diet imaginable and so in the Sly Moves nutrition plan he highlights a unique meal plan for a lifetime of good eating. He offers his unique perspective on what works and what doesn’t and offers an alternative for health-conscious readers who want great-tasting satisfying food that can become a way of life. In the section Gonna Fly Now inspires and encourages readers to make Sly Moves part of a long-term picture of health, fitness and well-being. This motivational section includes separate chapters on everything from setting and keeping goals to relaxation techniques to lessons learned from his reality-based boxing show The Contender.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060737870
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/10/2005
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	7.38(w) x 9.12(h) x 0.74(d)

About the Author

Sylvester Stallone, the creator and star of three major movie franchises—Rocky, Rambo, and The Expendables—is the only actor to open a number one film across five decades. Born in New York City, Stallone attended school in suburban Philadelphia and enrolled as a drama major at the University of Miami. His first acting break was in 1974’s The Lords of Flatbush. In addition to his extensive film career, Stallone is an accomplished artist, completing paintings on canvas as well as sculpture work. He has had impressive exhibitions at Art Basil, The Russian State Museum, and most recently at the Nice Museum of Contemporary Art in France. He lives with his wife Jennifer and their daughters in Palm Beach, Florida. 

Read an Excerpt

Sly Moves
My Proven Program to Lose Weight, Build Strength, Gain Will Power, and Live your Dream

Chapter One

The Making of a Contender

Growing up in Silver Spring, Maryland, I'd spend my Saturday afternoons at the Silver Theatre, an old Arabian Nights-style movie palace, mesmerized by matinee idols like Commando Cody, Masked Marvel, and Sinbad the Sailor. Like the comic book characters I loved so much, these movie icons had powerful physiques that made them invincible, and as a 98-pound weakling, I couldn't get enough of their adventures. Still, none of them came close to making an impression like the mighty mortal they called Hercules.

I was 12 when I first saw Steve Reeves in Hercules, and I probably watched the movie 15 or 16 times that summer. My mind exploded! I saw a perfect physical specimen that was both heroic and human, and it was the first time in my life I started thinking about what I wanted to look like physically, how I wanted to develop in terms of proportions. So don't tell me films don't have a lasting impression on children. Sitting in that dark theater, being so enthralled by the images on that screen, is definitely the major reason I am here today.

My own life wasn't quite so heroic in those days. I was born in a clinic on Tenth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York City in the summer of 1946. A forceps accident at birth immobilized the motor nerves on the left side of my face, leaving me with a crooked mouth, a droopy eye, and this famous locution of mine.

As I got older, people teased me all the time and I became a chronic misbehaver. I wasn't a big kid or especially handsome. And with my speech problems and a name like Sylvester, life was becoming a cruel joke with no punch line in sight. I transferred from school to school because of behavioral problems; one teacher actually introduced me by saying, "Class, we have a new student today. His name is Sylvester, as in the cartoon." So for the rest of the year I got "Hey, Tweety Bird!" or "What's up, Poody Tat?" Nice, huh? A real confidence builder.

Back home, my father taught me how to be physically strong. Just watching him was a lesson in the power of kinetic energy. He didn't lift weights, but he'd constantly be moving rocks, cutting down trees, and pushing heavy machines around. There was nothing elegant about it, but the guy was definitely in great shape. Country strong, they call it.

My mother, Jacqueline, was also very physical, but she was a little more scientific about it. Her father was a district court judge who'd once roomed with Charles Atlas, the most famous bodybuilder ever. Mom started exercising with her father when she was very young, and she grew up hitting a punching bag and tossing around a medicine ball.

My mother is a certified eccentric, and one of the most unusual things she's ever done in her life was to open a women's gym in Washington, D.C., in 1954, when hardly anybody went to gyms. Especially not women.

When I was in sixth grade, I was so obsessed with the idea that I could become Superboy, I actually tried to make it happen. I went out and bought some red dye and a wax crayon and painted a big S on a shirt. I found a barber's cape, dyed it red, and then slipped into a blue bathing suit. For days, I'd literally wear this crazy getup under my clothes. It was like I was telling myself that if I wished hard enough, the transformation would begin.

Unfortunately, I decided to share this top-secret information with my friend Jimmy. He promised and crossed his heart he'd never reveal this extraordinary information. Of course, he told the teacher. She brought me in front of the class. "Children, we have a special guest today, Superboy." She made me take my clothes off. Standing knock-kneed in my baggy Speedos, everybody could see what a puny superhero really looked like. After the laughter died down, I took my breadstick arms and pipe cleaner legs and blew out of there, my wrinkled cape flapping pathetically in the breeze.

But it didn't matter. I knew I'd found a superhero I could emulate in Hercules. It helped that Reeves was as impressive off screen as he was in the movie. The son of a farmer from Glasgow, Montana, he began bodybuilding as a teenager and soon developed one of the most remarkable physiques around. After returning home from World War II, he racked up titles as Mr. America, Mr. World, and Mr. Universe before Hollywood made him the biggest action star of his day.

Later in my life, Reeves and I became friends. What I most admired about him was how modest he was. He was never a poser or a show-off. He wasn't one of those guys who announced to the world how fit he was. Steve wore oversized sweat suits. Best body in the world and he covered it up.

Reeves was the real deal, and his influence on my life was truly profound. Here at last was a way out of my awkward youth. If I wasn't happy with myself as I was, maybe -- just maybe -- I could sculpt myself into the person I wanted to be.

After one of those Saturday matinees, I decided to start building myself up, so I went to the town junkyard and just started lifting whatever I could find: a brake drum, half a fender, a steering column. I started tying rocks together with ropes. I'd do curls with cinder blocks strapped to a broom handle. My friends probably looked at me back then and thought, "Oh, this too shall pass."

Soon enough, I found this dungeon-like weight-lifting place called Iron City. We're talking old school. The grizzled old stalwarts there would work out and smoke cigarettes at the same time. It was all iron bars, not a weight machine in sight. It was a hellhole to the passerby, but to me it was a godsend.

What I began realizing was that the body is nothing but an honest machine that will never cheat you. It gives back exactly what you give it, good or bad.

Sly Moves
My Proven Program to Lose Weight, Build Strength, Gain Will Power, and Live your Dream. Copyright © by Sylvester Stallone. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Editorial Reviews

This four-part book by screen legend Sly Stallone transcends the diets and health genre. In the first part, Stallone offers a fascinating retrospective on how he trained for his roles, including Cliffhanger, Cop Land, and Demolition Man. In Part II, he outlines a fitness program that includes Classic, Advanced, and Women's workouts, plus a drill session for occasional extreme workouts. In the third part, the two-time Academy Award nominee offers a six-meal-a-day eating plan that works and explains why fad diets fail. The final illustrated section presents Stallone's diet and exercise regimen during a representative three-day period.