TIP OF THE DAY:
Adding functional training to your routine, (especially core work) will not only make you stronger but it can help you get through daily activities better.
Functional training are exercises that incorporate multiple muscle groups as well as incorporating your own body weight. Good examples of functional training are push ups, dips, pull ups, chin ups, squats and lunges. These are just some of the very good functional exercises that use ones own body weight. Functional training isn't limited to only body weight exercises but these are a good place to start.
The reason I recommend functional exercises because I feel like they are very valuable for everyday life. For example, being able to do pull ups or chin ups mean you can pull your whole body up out of a dangerous situation. Doing push ups is a way to work our your chest, triceps and shoulders anywhere in the world. Squats and lunges improve leg strength and greatly helps you when going up stairs and even picking up heavy objects for lifting and carrying them places.
One functional muscle group that I that I want to emphasize is actually most important which is working out your abs or your core. Your core is one of the muscle groups you can workout everyday. All movements in some way originate from the core. Whether it is a twisting motion or you use your abs to stabilize yourself to perform a movement you incorporate your core. A lot of people that have become overweight experience back pain, lower back pain especially. This is often cause by the person having weak core muscles and the lower back is being over worked trying to pick up the slack for the weak core muscles.
Sample core workout:
1. Exercise ball crunch
2. One sided bicycle crunch (finish one side before switching instead of alternating)
3. Plank
These are three simple exercises that will help you stabilize your core and firm up your midsection. Excercise one primarily targets the top of the abdominal muscles. Exercise two targets the abs at a diagonal angle and hits the oblique abs and lower abs secondarily. Exercise three helps with stabilization as well as indirectly strengthening the lower back which most people tend to neglect.
Keep in mind that no ab workout will get you the six pack abs or flys stomach that you want. You will develop very strong core muscles doing any core workout consistently. But to get the visual results that you want to see all comes down to the food that you put in your mouth. Everyone has six pack abs. Some people just have more visually showing abs. Proper number of calories and a balanced diet, as well as getting in enough cardio to burn the body fat stored on the body is the key to getting the abs that you want.
Well I hope this helps out. Time to sign off. Get your sweat on and happy dieting.
- Joel via iPhone
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