Group Personal Training Will Get You Ready for Pool Season
When someone types in “Gyms near me” its usually to find a new way to get in shape for a life event or for pool season.
March 20 didn’t just mark the first day of spring this year, but it also marked the beginning of the final stretch toward summer! Of course, as temperatures rise and pool season nears, we start thinking about breaking out those bathing suits! Are you ready?
If not, don’t worry, Fit Fx is here to help get your body, particularly those abs, bathing-suit ready with these 12 easy-to-follow steps!
One: Burpees! Believe it or not, everyone’s favorite exercise is truly an ab carver! Tossing burpees into any workout can help melt off even more calories and really tighten up that core! Our abs are fast healing muscles, so don’t be afraid to mix in the burpees with every workout.
Don’t remember how to do a burpee? No problem, here are the steps: First, stand with your feet shoulder width apart. Next, go into a nice, deep squat and put your hands forward and on the ground. Third, while bracing yourself with your arms, kick your legs out behind you and in one motion go into a pushup. Next, pull your feet back up and return to your squat position. Lastly, jump up like a spring with your arms reaching for the ceiling! Make sure to keep the tempo up during these and you’re guaranteed to feel the burn!
Two: Kick the Salt! Sure, salt can make a meal a little tastier, but you know what else it can do? Sodium causes water retention in our bodies, which leaves us looking a bit softer than we would like, hiding all that hard work we put into sculpting our bodies!
Don’t let your hard work go to waste with something that can easily be fixed in your diet. If we put just a little more attention to detail into what we’re eating, the results will go a long ways! Say no to that extra pinch of salt when cooking or seasoning your meal and stay away from the preserved foods! When you’re strutting poolside, you’ll be happy you did!
Three: Make Friends with a Medicine Ball! In case you haven’t been introduced, welcome to the world of resistance training! When we use an external resistance to contract our muscles, we’re on the fast track to strength, tone, and endurance! When it comes to our abs, the medicine ball is an excellent source of resistance!
Twisters are an awesome way to incorporate a medicine ball into your routine! Get into a seated position on the ground with your legs out in front of you. While holding a medicine ball in your arms, cross your legs, lift them slightly off the ground, and rotate from side to side with the medicine ball. You’re guaranteed to feel the burn with this exercise and you’ll be sculpting away in the process!
Four: Pack in the Fiber! We’ve all heard that fiber is an important part of our diet for a healthy heart, but did you know it can help show off those abs as well? Fiber is chock full of nutrition, but low on calories, meaning we take care of those cravings with less, yet sufficiently healthy, food, which leads to weight loss!
We can find fiber all over the place and in some of our favorite foods, including: fruits, vegetables, beans, peas, nuts, seeds, and whole grains! Eat up!
Five: Say Goodbye to Love Handles! One of the hardest areas for us to shape are those pesky areas on our waists, officially known as our oblique muscles, but affectionately known as love handles. One of the primary reasons for this is because we are neglecting those areas with plain old sit ups and crunches. Fear not, a simple modification is all we need!
The v-crunch is an excellent way to target those problem areas! Here’s what you do: lie on your side with your lower forearm supporting yourself on the ground and your other arm behind your head. Next, raise your legs off the floor and at the same time bring your torso closer to your legs by pushing down with your lower arm. Lower yourself back down with control to feel the burn in those oblique muscles. Try doing ten on each side and don’t be afraid to do them daily!
Six: Bring on the Lean Protein! Shredding those abs doesn’t mean we can’t eat! Part of having that awesome six-pack is having muscles to show off down there, which can be accomplished through eating healthy, lean protein.
We want to focus on lean protein so that we can not only target muscle growth, but also manage blood sugar, which are both key elements to rock solid abs! We can find excellent lean protein in the following foods: ground turkey, chicken breast, grilled fish and egg whites.
Seven: Hanging around! We’ve already addressed those pesky love handles, so now let’s talk about that nagging lower abdominal region. Much like the oblique muscles, the lower abs will become an afterthought if we only do standard crunches and sit-ups. So, we need to target that area!
Hanging leg lifts and ab crunches are amazingly effective ways to address those lower abs. As the name might suggest, we need to get ourselves into a hanging position, which we can accomplish on a pull-up bar. Once we’re hanging, the first exercise is to keep our legs extended and lift them as far as we can toward the ceiling. Alternatively, we can bring our knees up toward our stomach, simulating a crunch instead. In both situations, we want to lower our legs slowly back down to maximize the effectiveness!
Eight: Sugar, You’re Going Down! America is addicted to sugar! If we could all just cut down on our sugar intake, not only would we be a much healthier country, but we would be a much fitter country! Even if we build strong abdominal muscles, sugar alone can put a fluffy blanket right over the top of them and throw those efforts to waste!
No, we don’t need to kick sugar entirely out of our diet, but there are much better sources than what we are used to! Fruits still put sugar in our diets and keep us away from those dangerous refined sugars. Remember, we are creatures of habit, so once sugar is out of our daily habit, we will no longer crave it and it will be a thing of the past with our abs being the thing of the future!
Nine: Climb Mountains! Well, not literally, but mountain climbers are a killer core workout that will spike your cardio levels like you wouldn’t believe! Toss these into your workout routine and watch the inches melt away!
Here’s how it’s done: First, get your body into a plank position. Next, drive your knees up toward your chest, one at a time, all while keeping your back flat. The more you pick up the pace, the better the workout. If you can picture yourself vertically, you’d look like you were climbing a mountain!
Ten: Take a Break from Grains. Grains are without a doubt a nice nutritional supplement to your diet. Unfortunately, they don’t do your abs any favors. Grains encourage fat storage in the body and it won’t be an issue to part ways with them for a bit while we uncover those abs.
The reality is that we typically find our grains in bread, which means carbohydrates, which like to fluff you up! Point your diet in the direction of lean proteins and vegetables and the desire for grain will just disappear.
Eleven: Sprint! Short, intense bursts of cardio are an awesome way to drive our heart rate up and kick the fat off our midsection! Start with what you can handle and make your way up to high intensity sprints where you push your limits!
If you really want to maximize the effectiveness of your overall workout, then do your sprints between sets. This will really add an excellent metabolic element to your routine and get that metabolism working in high gear!
Twelve: Join Fit Fx! Health and fitness is a big responsibility and having a group of fun, educated trainers to maximize your results in the least amount of time possible is an awesome way to get your body bathing suit ready in no time. Getting the most out of the time we have to work with is exactly what our professional staff is trained to do!