Every girl dreams of admiring her reflection in the mirror, and not running away from it, but few people know how to correctly and without prejudice to their health to make their body fit and embossed.
Many are accustomed to pumping abs to remove their belly, or running to lose weight, although doctors and fitness trainers disagree with this technique.
In the company of a trainer, instructor of group programs Daria Knyazeva, we analyzed five popular exercises-delusions that everyone does (and do in vain). And with the help of our model, sportswomen Valentina Shumilova showed what needs to be done in reality in order to see the effect in a couple of weeks.
In vain you swing the press to remove the belly
— You cannot remove fat from the belly with ordinary straight twists. Moreover, if you swing the press with the wrong technique, the stomach can only increase, — explains Daria.
With the wrong technique, each twist increases the intra-abdominal pressure, which causes the deep muscles to lose their tone and the belly sticks out even more.
What to do: breathe right
Breathing exercises will tighten your transverse abdominal muscles and tune your pelvic floor and diaphragm.
The technique is simple: to begin with, sit comfortably — you can in a Turkish pose or with your buttocks on your feet. Stretch out as if you are being pulled up by the crown of your head, lower your shoulders and bring your shoulder blades to the spine. Take a slow deep breath, as if you want to fill yourself with air from the lower abdomen to the collarbones. Watch how your body moves. On inhalation, the stomach relaxes, inflates a little. The ribs expand to the sides, the chest rises slightly upward. All this happens in sequence: abdomen, ribs, upper chest.
— As you exhale, imagine that you are pushing the air from the bottom up. It’s like zipping through very skinny high-waisted jeans. The abdomen is pulled up, the ribs converge, the chest is lowered. You can fold your lips into a tube and blow air through it. So you will more clearly feel the tension of the abdominal muscles, the trainer advises.
Two or three sets of 10-15 repetitions a day are enough to tone the abdominal muscles. After a couple of weeks of daily practice, you will see how your stomach tightens. Once you’ve mastered the technique, try breathing while lying down (for example, on your bed before going to bed) or standing.
In vain do you bend to remove the sides
— Is there a local fat burning — research has not been proven, but the fitness community in the mass is of the opinion that it is not, — explains the trainer. — Therefore, you cannot make a good figure by bending.
To make the waist appear narrower, you need to pump the muscles of the legs and back. Add proper nutrition to your exercises, and soon it will give the result — a beautiful hourglass figure. Eating right will help reduce body fat, and muscle volume in the upper and lower body will visually narrow the waist.
What to do: push-ups (you can from your knees)
For the back, push-ups with a wide set of arms are suitable. Two sets of 12-15 repetitions, one and a half minutes of rest between them is enough for daily exercises. If pushing up is hard, try doing it from your knees.
To tone and build your legs and buttocks, use squats — three sets of 25 repetitions. And don’t forget to rest between exercises.
In vain you swing your back to make it more prominent and stronger
While strong muscles are important, the spine also needs healthy movement. Pumping muscles without moving the spine in all planes may not help, but exacerbate the situation. Instead of straining your back, try relaxing it.
What to do: Opening a Book Exercise
Lie on the mat, bend your knees so that the angle between your torso and legs is 90 degrees. Stretch your arms in front of you. Begin to slowly turn back so that your feet remain on the mat, and one hand goes behind your back. 15 repetitions per side should be sufficient.
Do the exercise more slowly, at your own pace, to feel how the chest unfolds as you turn. To keep your neck from getting tired, you can put a small pillow under your head.
— During the exercise, make sure that there is no pain and discomfort in the back. Make reversals exactly in the amplitude in which you do not have excess tension. And don’t try to hold out on the effort.
In vain you swing your ass while lunging
Classic lunges, when the body is between the legs and the knee angle is 90 degrees, load the quads more than the glutes.
— With a sedentary lifestyle, the gluteal muscles are constantly stretched and lose their tone over time. Once you start exercising, the body helps the weak gluteus muscles by engaging others that are stronger. In the case of classic lunges, this is the quadriceps, says Daria.
What to do: Shift your center of gravity
For effect, we will slightly change the exercise technique so that the weight goes to the forward leg.
Repeat the exercise 12-15 times on each leg, do not forget to rest during the break.
Jumping in a burpee in vain
A favorite exercise for everyone who wants to make the whole body work at once. But the trainer warns: the burpee technique is difficult, therefore, without a sufficient level of training, it is harmful to do it.
“Often it’s impossible to do it at all, because there are problems with the joints or dizziness appears with a sharp change in position,” says Daria Knyazeva.
What to do: dynamic bar
Replace the exercise with another functional exercise that can be done in one plane. For example, a plank with a turn of the knee and a turn of the body.
The starting position is a plank on the forearms. Pull one leg towards you and smoothly turn the body, then return to the starting one and try the other leg. Two sets of 12-16 times with a short rest break will pump you no worse than a dozen complex burpees.
