FitSugar

Work It Girl: At Your Desk Abs

FitSugar — Mon, 12 May 2008 03:00:00 PDT

Sitting at your desk doesn't mean you can't work on toning your mid-section. You can work your belly at work without your boss ever knowing you're doing some strength training on the job. All you need to do is pull your navel to your spine, the most basic Pilates move. Here's how:

Sit up straight, keeping your back away from the back of your chair.
Exhale and pull your abs to your spine without curving your back. This will feel a little like a corset. It should feel a little like you are bracing for a punch to the abdomen.
Focus on your low abs; these you can definitely keep engaged while you breathe.
Breathe into your back ribs, wherever you have ribs you have lungs. This is a nice stretch for the intercostals, the muscles between the ribs.
Hold for 30 seconds. Do twice an hour.

Oblique Variation: To challenge your obliques (the abs on the side of the torso) a little more simply tilt your torso slightly to the right and hold that position for 30 seconds. Then, of course, reverse the action by tilting to the left so you can keep even.

Fit's Tip: You can also work your abs when you're waiting at a long traffic light, when stuck in traffic, or heaven forbid, out on a boring date! Try it right now and let me know how it feels.

Source

4 Reasons to Add an Exercise Ball to Your Home Gym

Leta Shy — Tue, 22 May 2012 13:58:44 PDT

The exercise ball may occupy a lot of room in your home gym, but it's one versatile piece of equipment. Find out how to get the most out of your exercise ball below.

A healthier seat: Ditch your normal seat on the couch and sit on an exercise ball instead. Using a ball to sit helps correct your posture, tones your abs, and encourages you to stretch, all of which sounds a lot better than the lower back pain that too much sitting on the couch can cause.

Routine shakeup: Adding an exercise ball to your normal mat routines can shake things up and challenge you. For example, you can plank using an exercise ball at your feet to make holding your pose that much harder, or sit or lay on your exercise ball while you execute arm exercises. Even just practicing your balance by kneeling on the exercise ball can help you tone and whittle. Need some ideas? Try these amazingly effective ab and butt workouts using the exercise ball:

Find out how to do the plank pike and the hamstring curl using an exercise ball with this advanced exercise ball workout video.
Skip boring crunches and do this ball pass ab exercise instead.
Challenge your core and balance with this single-leg squat, done against a wall using an exercise ball.
Lie on the ball and work your arms with this chest press move.

Read on for more reasons to use an exercise ball.

Gym-Free Bikini Workout: Simple Activities to Tone Up Before the Summer

Anna Monette Roberts — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:47:33 PST

Dieting and exercise are obvious choices to help slim and tone you up for bikini season, but there are easy tricks to sneak toning exercises into your daily life. Here are five easy ways to get a full-body workout, without stepping foot in the gym.

Carry your groceries: To target the arms, carry a basket when grocery shopping rather than pushing a cart. Walking with the heavy basket, shifting it from arm to arm, and reaching up and down for groceries makes this a dynamic weight-bearing exercise.
Keep things tight: Whether you are standing in the shower, blow-drying your hair, walking down the street, or sitting at your desk, activate your ab muscles. Your abs are never intended to relax, so challenge yourself to tighten your core all day, especially if you have any nagging back pain.

See more bikini tips.

Essential Exercises For Your Lower Body

Leta Shy — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 02:12:24 PST

As Summer nears, our thoughts turn to what's underneath those layers of Winter clothes. If you're looking to tone your backside and legs before bikini season, here are five essential lower-body moves fundamental to any workout. And don't worry - you can do them anywhere!

The squat: That burning in your upper thighs as you hold a squat tells you just how great this move is for lower body muscles like hamstrings, glutes, quads, and the lower back, not to mention helping with your balance.
Don't forget: While doing squats, remember to keep your weight in your heels, not your toes, and as you lower yourself, pretend that you are sitting in a chair. Learn more on how to do a perfect squat and different squat variations here.

The lunge: This leg-strengthening move works the same muscles as a squat, but the movement required in the exercise helps you work your core muscles and balance as well. Another plus: between walking (forward or backward) or adding weights to your lunge workout, the possibilities are endless when it comes to lunge compound moves.
Don't forget: Make sure that your upper body is straight and upright, with shoulders down and chin up. When lowering your body, your knees should be bent at a 90-degree angle, with the front knee never going past your ankle and bottom knee never touching the floor. Engaging your core muscles will help keep you centered and balanced. When you've mastered that, here are five lunge variations to try.

Read on for more essential lower-body exercises.

Tighten Up! Engage Your Core to Alleviate a Nagging Back Injury

Anna Monette Roberts — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:58:08 PST

One moment of overextending yourself can lead to years of physical therapy and doctors visits to help keep your sports-related back pain at bay. Trainers and physical therapists constantly remind us to keep the abs engaged when completing any exercise, but to really strengthen your entire trunk, you must work it beyond the gym.

Since most of us sit at a desk most hours of our waking day, our abs have become very lazy. We evolved to be on the move with an engaged core supporting every step. Keeping your abdominals pulled in and up makes a kind of natural corset instantly lifting you up, creating traction (or space) between the vertebrae of the low spine. By consciously pulling your muscles toward your spine, your trunk has the mobility, strength, and support needed to safely and (hopefully) painlessly accomplish any physical task, whether it's lifting a leg, reaching for the floor, or rising from a chair. Many people think engaging your abs means clamping down tight in the torso, but that might aggravate the pain more. Click here to learn how to safely engage all deep ab muscles.

Go Deep Into Your Forward Bend

Jenny Sugar — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:10:41 PST

If you run, bike, ski, or sit at a desk all day, chances are your hamstrings are screaming for some attention. Get on the floor and give them what they crave - a seated forward bend. This pose looks simple enough, but here are some ways to increase that deep stretch in the backs of your legs.

Before folding forward, sit with your legs straight out in front of you. Take your right fingertips and pull the flesh of your glute up and away from the sit bone. Repeat on the: left hand moves left cheek. Moving the cushioning of your seat out of the way helps target your hamstrings more effectively in the stretch.
While still sitting upright, increase the stretch in the backs of your legs even further by gently pressing the backs of your knees into the floor. Flex your feet to also engage your calves and shins, but do keep your heels on the floor so you don't hyperextend your knees.
Actively roll both thighs inward, creating a more grounded base for your hips to hinge from. This action in the thighs also help keep the feet flat, as the pinky toe side of the foot has a tendency to curl away from you.

Continue reading to learn

Sugar Shout Out: Five Things You Didn't Know About Kate Middleton!

Allie Merriam — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:55:00 PST

Video: Five things you didn't know about Kate Middleton

10 Sneaky Toning Moves You Can Do at Work

Self — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 04:30:38 PDT

We are pumped to share one of our fave stories from Self here on FitSugar!

Your office nemesis isn't that know-it-all in the cubicle over, it's lurking right beneath you: your chair!

The more you're sitting, the less calories you're burning... not the ideal bikini body plan.

Picture this: when sitting, your activity in your muscles drops and the calorie-burning rate decreases to just about one per minute. And, women who spent more than six hours per day of sitting (less than a full day of work!) had a 37 percent higher death rate, according to a study from the American Cancer Society. It's scary stuff.

Since I haven't quite mastered the art of jogging while responding to emails, I asked creator of the MELT Method Sue Hitzmann and creator of FitKit Office Amie Hoff to share tips for combating the effects of being chair-bound. And since turning your office into a pseudo-gym can garner a few strange looks, they've kept their exercises as sneaky as possible. Just tell your bosses what's good for your health is good for their bottom line, and try to convince them to bring these healthy vending machines to the break room!

Check out these easy moves after the break!

Pilates Moves For Your Arms and Core From Kim Kardashian's Trainer

Self — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 04:18:48 PST

We are pumped to share one of our fave stories from Self here on FitSugar!

If you're a novice like me, you might not realize that there are many different kinds of Pilates. And those incarnations are not defined as "hard, very hard, and nearly impossible."

Celebrity trainer Sara Kapuchinski just opened her new LA studio i heart fitness xo, where she teaches West Coast-style Pilates to a revolving A-list clientele including Khloe and Kim Kardashian, Christina Ricci, Modern Family's Sofia Vergara and Glee's Romy Rosemont.

Kapuchinski started out as a weekend trainer, whose day job was as an A & R executive in the music industry. Soon, she realized that teaching fitness felt more personally satisfying. "Music was fun, but I was more gratified training people," she recalls. "After sitting at a desk from 9 to 5 and staying up 'til all hours, I was experiencing a lot of neck and back pain. And, like most people, I was amazed that classic Pilates did the things that it was supposed to do: my posture improved, I lost inches in my waist and my neck and back pain basically disappeared."

After a bit of investigation, the trainer found that Pilates on the West Coast, which is heavier on cardio, was more her speed: "Pilates is so great for your body, for your core (that mysterious thing), but a lot of times you leave a class feeling like you need to sweat. I wanted something that was a bit more cardio-driven without having to go take a Boot Camp."

Read on for three of Kapuchinski's heart-pounding Pilates moves!

Common Gym Mistakes and the Equinox Fix

Susi May — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 04:08:00 PDT

We all have our moments of weakness at the gym. And by weakness, I don't mean that you suddenly lose the ability to lift 12-pound dumbbells over your head; I mean mental weakness, loss of motivation, and neglect of proper technique. Let's face it, we tend to go easier on ourselves than a personal trainer would. Since we all cannot afford to shell out the big bucks to have a personal trainer push us, I spoke with Lauren Fairbanks, an Equinox trainer, about common workout mistakes. She's spent some time making people sweat and has been able to catalog four common problems she sees regularly at the gym. Fear not, she's going to help us fix these issues, too.

It's not always about speed: Lauren sees a lot of people "going through repetitions way too quickly." Blazing through your reps means you're not working through the full range of motion of your muscles and joints. You're often sacrificing form for speed. The simple fix is slow it down, focus on the quality of your movement, and check your form in the mirror. If you're not sure you're doing an exercise correctly, check with the front desk to find the trainer on the floor. There should be a trainer hanging out on the gym floor, helping gym patrons with questions on form and how to work certain machines.
One set is never enough: Lauren also comes across gym goers short-changing themselves and only doing one set of an exercise. Research has shown that doing two to three sets of an exercise will make you over 40 percent stronger than just doing one. Lauren suggests you "shoot for at least two to four sets of any exercise." The fix just might be to push yourself a little bit harder. You're tougher than you think!

See if you're guilty of the last two mistakes.