Five Easy Exercise Wins to Help You Get Beach-Body Ready
Here at Aspire we’re busy getting bodies ready for the summer season and helping clients look and feel the best version of themselves that they are aspiring to be.
We’ve called in the help of our independent fitness guru, Marla Murray from Bestlife Basics to give us five easy exercise wins to help you get in shape, improve posture and feel great about yourself. And best of all, the exercises are easy enough to every day and should take no more than 30 minutes!
Walk
So, simple, yet so effective. Most of us just don’t walk any more. So, get your body back into walking. The secret is that for most of us, fat burn happens at a lower heart rate than we think. (Read my future blog for the bodies different energy substrates, and when and how the body uses them). That’s why body builders talk about long state cardio, what they mean is walking for a long time at a low to moderate heart rate. So, go for a walk, leave running for when you’re training for a race. Aim to start at 30 mins for 5 days a week and work your way up to 60 mins for 5 days a week, and watch the fat melt away.
Plank
Planking helps to build a strong core. Do this to realign your posture after sitting all day. Because so many of us sit most of the day, we are not only not using our glute muscles; we are slouching and therefore not using our core to stabilize our body. Planks help you build those core muscles responsible for trunk stabilization. This exercise will help improve your posture, and reduce your risk of falling as you age.
The key is to correctly perform this exercise, head, back and bum in alignment. You should feel your abdominal muscles engage during this exercise. If your bum is in the air, then you are not engaging your abdominal muscles. The goal is two minutes; if you need to, begin with 10 seconds and work your way up. Do three to five sets of planks.
Wall Sit
For beginners, I like the wall sits as oppose to squats because you don’t need to know how to squat properly to build strong legs. Simply find a wall and slide down into a sitting position, and hold that position for as long as you can. The goal is two minutes, begin with 10 seconds and work your way up, again three to five sets.
Back Exercises - “Y”, “I”, & “T”
As mentioned above sitting all day is not doing us any favours. Many of us are in a kyphotic posture for most of the day. By spending most of our day like this we eventually make this our permanent posture position. These exercises “Y’, “I” and “T” help reposition our back muscles. Do these everyday at least twice a day, for most of us that will be morning and evening. No more than four repetitions for each exercise.
Press-Ups
Prolonged sitting in a flexed posture causes stiffness and pain in much of your body. The best remedy of course is to walk and stand more. Include exercises to adjust your posture. There are many exercises to help with this, but the press-up is king, combined with the above back exercise. Strengthen your chest muscle to help hold your neck and shoulders in the right position.
Begin at your level and progress as you and when you can, the goal is 10 press-ups three to five sets.
Remember, warm up and cool down with some stretching.
Look out for my future blogs for great warm up and cool down exercises and stretches.
Why not take advantage of my FREE BODY TRANSFORMATION SESSION, Claim Your Free Session and come in for an assessment and some insight into how to get in shape.
