GO Exercise

It’s not always easy to stick to your exercise routine.  Here are three tips to keep you consistent and coming back to your program each day!

1. Set realistic goals - Don’t try to conquer the world in one day.  It took you awhile to gain the weight - give yourself time to lose it and to get your exercise routine into place.  Set realistic goals and benchmarks so that you can feel good and feel like you are reaching your goals.

2. Pick the right program - Just because your friend attends 5 aerobics classes each week doesn’t mean that you’ll enjoy aerobics. Find a routine that’s right for you, whether that includes using a Bender Ball, Easy Curves, swimming, walking or going to the gym.  You need to enjoy the exercise - not your friend or your mom.

3. Reward yourself - Set goals for yourself, whether these goals are daily or weekly, and then reward yourself.  Don’t make the rewards food oriented - offer yourself a manicure, an hour off to read, a bubble bath or a trip to the mall if you reach your goals.

As we have learned, crunches are a great way to strengthen the complex and important muscles of the abdomen. Your efforts are concentrated to target precisely the crucial muscles needed for great muscle health and great good looks.

To get even better results from your exercising, it is a great idea to include a Bender Ball in your exercise program. The Bender Ball stabilizes the back and helps you to target the muscles that you need to work on. Studies show that including Bender Ball in your workout improves outcome as much as four times.

With crunches the back remains supported, either on the floor, or with an exercise ball like the Bender Ball as opposed to sit-ups where the back is actually lifted up off the floor.

Begin crunches by lying down on the floor on your back, with knees bent. You begin the crunch by curling in the shoulders toward the pelvis. Hands are kept behind the neck, or else crossed over the chest. Since pressing with force on the head or neck can cause injury it is a good idea to take care to not place the hands behind the head itself.

It is actually useful to create a type of shelf to rest the head in with your hands, to support the weight of the head so the neck flexor muscles are in a relaxed state during the exercise. There is no fear of injury to the neck as long as the neck is kept extended and the neck flexors remain relaxed, since the hands will not be putting extra force on the head.

Crunches are not only safer than sit-ups, but they work better to isolate the abdominal muscles for exercise, getting more effect from less effort. Since the hip flexors are used during sit-ups, some of the energy expended is used to contract the hips and the hip flexors in turn take away some of the movement from the abdominals.