Master the Plank

From Active​.com

There is no exer­cise that works your abs more effec­tively and effi­ciently than the plank. All of your abdom­i­nal mus­cles (trans­verse, obliques and upper) have to work together to sta­bi­lize and sup­port your entire body weight.

It also engages your glutes, shoul­ders, lats, arms and legs. Almost every mus­cle in your body is being toned and tight­ened when you per­form this power move.

Get ready to flat­ten and tone your mid­sec­tion in as lit­tle as 60 sec­onds with all the vari­a­tions of this super pose.

Mas­ter the Plank

Before you try some of the more cre­ative poses it’s essen­tial the you mas­ter the basic pose.

Remem­ber:

1. Draw your navel towards your spine. Think about really pulling your belly up, no sagging!
2. Don’t over­arch your back. You want your whole body from the top of your head to your ankles to be in a straight line.
3. Engage your glutes. This will help you keep that straight line.
4. Keep those angles at a 90 degree angle. This helps your entire body stack correctly.
5. Don’t col­lapse into your shoul­ders or let them rise towards your ears. Pulling your abs tighter will help you direct the hold to your core instead of your neck and upper shoulders.
6. Keep your gaze about 6 inches in front of your face. This will keep your neck from straining.
7. Work up to a 60 sec­ond hold, focus on per­fect form. If you need to rest dur­ing your plank drop your knees down to the ground and then rise back up again into the pose.

Plank Vari­a­tions

Once you’ve mas­tered the basic plank, check out these fun and chal­leng­ing takes on the basic movement:

Oblique Plank: Mov­ing your legs while hold­ing the plank increases the work your lower abs and obliques have to do, plus it gets your heart rate up burn­ing a ton of calories.

Side Plank: Shift­ing the plank from one arm to two forces your obliques and lats to engage– say good­bye to love handles.

Moun­tain Climbers: Want to tone and tighten your abs while ramp­ing up your heart rate? Try this fast paced ab move as a car­dio inter­val between strength moves.

Exer­cise Ball Planks: Doing this bal­anc­ing exer­cise on an unsta­ble sur­face dra­mat­i­cally increases the chal­lenge to your core by forc­ing it to tighten and lift to sta­bi­lize your body.

Step It Up

Adapted from Life­Hacker

Stair climb­ing is a sim­ple exer­cise you can per­form any­where there is a stair­case, whether that stair­case is in your home or in pub­lic. You’ve likely seen films depict ath­letes run­ning up large stair­cases in sta­di­ums before, and this is because it’s great exer­cise. It’s espe­cially effec­tive if you skip every other step. How can you do this as a prac­ti­cal exer­cise? If you have access to a stan­dard stair­case at home, just fol­low these steps:

1. Run up and down the stair­case as many times as you can. Skip steps in-between if you can. Stop when you are so tired you can­not con­tinue any­more. When you get to this point, you mostly likely will only be part of the way up the stair­case. If you made it to the top, chances are you’ve got another climb left in you.
2. Take the total num­ber of times you made it to the the top of the stairs and cut it in half. For exam­ple, let’s say you maxed out at 20 times and that halved num­ber is 10.
3. The next time you climb stairs, run up and down 10 times each (the halved number).
4. Take a 60–90 sec­ond break, then do another set of 10 (the halved number).
5. Take another 60–90 sec­ond break, then do at least 10 (the halved num­ber). If you can do more, do more. Your goal is to push your­self until you’re too tired to go on.
6. As this gets eas­ier, increase the num­ber of times you climb the stairs per set so you’re always push­ing your­self to work harder.

Not every­one has a stair­case, how­ever, so this exer­cise isn’t always an option at home. If you don’t want to go out and use a pub­lic stair­case with reg­u­lar­ity, just add stair climb­ing to part of your every­day life. When you have the option to take the stairs, take them, and run up them skip­ping every other step. This is a good way to work in a lit­tle exer­cise to your reg­u­lar day.

The Benefits of Push-ups

Did you enjoy your med­ley of push-ups this morn­ing? Mil­i­tary, dia­mond, incline, decline and more… these exer­cises have an over­all pos­i­tive impact on your health — beyond just arm strength.

FROM ACTIVE​.COM

Build Strength
Push-ups are one of the old­est and most basic exer­cises and they are very effec­tive. They work out all the mus­cles in the upper body and build opti­mal strength in the fore­arms, wrists, upper arms, shoul­ders and chest. For­mer NFL star Her­schel Walker was one of the top run­ning backs in the game in the 1980s. He eschewed weightlift­ing but he did a reg­i­men of at least 100 push-ups every­day, some­thing he has con­tin­ued well into his retire­ment. “They helped me get in shape and stay in shape,” Walker said. “That’s why I have always done them. Every day.”

Increase Metab­o­lism
Push-ups push the body toward phys­i­cal exer­tion. In addi­tion to build­ing strength, they force the heart to work harder and the blood to pump faster. This increases metab­o­lism and helps you burn more calo­ries. The ben­e­fit of the push-up is still felt hours after the exer­cise is done.

Con­fi­dence
Doing push-ups on a reg­u­lar basis will make you stronger and improve your over­all con­di­tion­ing. How­ever, it will also increase your con­fi­dence. You will find that doing push-ups in sets of 25, 50 and 100 will build mas­sive arm and upper body strength. Do it reg­u­larly and you will build as much strength as the guys who spend hours in the gym. This will give you tremen­dous pride in your accom­plish­ment and the con­fi­dence that comes with achieve­ment. It is such a good exer­cise that the U.S. Army still uses the push-up as one of its pri­mary activ­i­ties to get sol­diers in shape.

Build Core Strength
In addi­tion to build­ing upper body strength and gain­ing more power in the arms, shoul­ders and hands, push-ups done with the proper form will help build the core mus­cles in the mid­dle of your body. To do push-ups prop­erly, your elbows must be fully extended at the start and end of a push-up, your toes should be on the floor and your legs, hips and back should be straight.

The Official Compendium of Burpees

Please enjoy this re-post from last year!

BY TRACY

Results from our very sci­en­tific and non-biased poll con­firm that Burpees are the least favorite activ­ity among boot campers.

The Burpee is defined by the Oxford Dic­tio­nary as “a phys­i­cal exer­cise con­sist­ing of a squat thrust made from and end­ing in a stand­ing posi­tion”. Accord­ing to the highly-regarded and rep­utable Wikipedia, the Burpee orig­i­nated “in the 1930s for Amer­i­can psy­chol­o­gist Royal H. Burpee, who devel­oped the Burpee test. Con­sist­ing of a series of the exer­cises per­formed in rapid suc­ces­sion, the test was meant to mea­sure agility and coor­di­na­tion. It is not clear whether the exer­cise itself was invented by Burpee, or if his test merely pop­u­lar­ized it.”

I have com­piled an offi­cial list of var­i­ous Burpee forms:

• The Pain-Free Burpee – if the “burper” (ath­lete per­form­ing the burpee) devel­ops knee or back related pain while per­form­ing the burpee, the burper can do the same num­ber of frog jumps and push-ups.
• The Facil­i­tated Burpee – the burper does not per­form a push-up at the bot­tom of the burpee.
• Dou­ble Burpee – Instead of the burper doing one pushup, they do two in a row to can­cel the drive from land­ing after the jump. This also makes the next jump harder.
• The Sully Burpee (aka the one-armed Burpee) – the burper per­forms the entire exer­cise using only one arm.
• The Mary Ellen and Daniel “Cir­cus” Burpee – dur­ing the act of the kick­ing his/her feet back, prior to the push-up, the burper kicks their feet up as high as pos­si­ble (one at a time). This is a very fluid motion and should only be per­formed by tal­ented and expe­ri­enced burpers.

Do you have any new Burpees ideas? Get your Burpee form added to the offi­cial list by click­ing the “Com­ments” link above this post!

REFERENCE: Wikipedia​.org
IMAGE CREDIT: <a onclick=“javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/www.cafepress.com/+i_love_burpees_light_tshirt,317919475′);” target=“_blank href=“http://www.cafepress.com/+i_love_burpees_light_tshirt,317919475″>Cafe Press

Core Training > Ab Exercise

Please enjoy this re-posted arti­cle from last year. While the com­ments may be out­dated, the info in the arti­cle is timeless!

BY LAUREN

Think core train­ing involves just a bunch of sit-ups, crunches and bicy­cles? Actu­ally, true core train­ing requires much more than just abdom­i­nal con­di­tion­ing. The abdom­i­nal mus­cles play a very lim­ited and spe­cific role in your over­all core.

Your core actu­ally con­sists of many dif­fer­ent mus­cles that run the entire length of the torso. These mus­cles sta­bi­lize the spine from the pelvis to the neck and shoul­der, and pro­vide a solid foun­da­tion for pow­er­ful move­ments of the arms and legs.

Your strength orig­i­nates from the cen­ter of your body out — never from your limbs alone. The goal of core sta­bil­ity is to main­tain a solid foun­da­tion and trans­fer energy from the cen­ter of the body out to the limbs. The more sta­ble the core, the more pow­er­ful the extrem­i­ties can contract.

In addi­tion to improv­ing your over­all strength, core train­ing has some valu­able side ben­e­fits: First, core train­ing cor­rects pos­tural imbal­ances that can lead to injuries. And, core train­ing is inte­gral in devel­op­ing func­tional fit­ness — that is, fit­ness that is essen­tial to reg­u­lar, daily activities.

What are your favorite core exer­cises? Mine is squats. Share your thoughts by click­ing the “Com­ments” link above this post.

IMAGE CREDIT & ARTICLE ADAPTED FROM: About​.com: Sports Medicine