In December we started off with the typical Bicycle crunch as pictured here:
On Tuesday we graduated to doing this with weights in our hands. This move definitely takes coordination (of which my twin sister got most of it). I ended up with two bruised ankles within the first 4 reps. The trick is to keep your legs higher than with a typical bicycle crunch and bring the weights (I used 3 lbs, Lyle used 5lbs) back towards your face - which in turn gives your arms more of a workout. I felt the need to tap the weights (hence the two bruised ankles which was VERY painful) so I decided to tap the bottom of my shoes. We were told to do this till exhaustion... I think I did 25 at most.
The next in the sequence, we did the Long Arm Crunch as shown below, but we had a 10 lb weight in our hands.
As your bring your arms up, you bring your legs up. Again, we did this until we could not do any more. I think I managed 17 the first time. If your back hurts while doing this, make sure you are not pronating it too much.
The third was the Seated Obliques:
While holding a weighted ball, you rotate your torso to each side. Again, I have the need to tap, so I gently tap the ball to each hip. If it feels too easy, lean back to feel it more. An advance move is to also lift your feet off the ground. Lyle could do that without hesitation, but for me it was hard to balance. So, I did it without the ball.
It felt good and you can definitely feel it all over your abs. I should also note, that we did each of these exercises once,ran up and down the stairs or on the treadmill to keep our heart rate up and repeated. We did 3 sets.
Preview for tomorrow: Butt workout
We also did a butt workout. Here is an example of one of the exercises we did:
On Tuesday, we did this with a band around our foot that we were raising, and the same side arm held the band so we could feel it more. We did this until we couldn't do another one and then switched sides. I managed to do 15 on each leg, and 3 sets.
Check back tomorrow to see the rest of our Butt workout.
1 comments:
Great ab workouts! I bet you'll continue to learn even more of them! We did the "butt" workout in yoga last week but more for balance. The instructor actually started the class with it and then tortured us for an hour and 15 minutes-ha! Then we did it again at the end of class and it was amazing how hard it was at the beginning of the class compared to the end. (much easier at the end...) Anyway, kind of off-topic but just wanted to share. I love that yoga studio, it's a heated room up to 90 degrees so you sweat gallons!
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