jono.blog

I always preach that the most important part of your body to train is your core. You should really train your core every single day. A huge part of gaining core strength is to always be thinking about good posture, especially for those of you who have desk jobs. Good posture at the desk can be difficult because most of us don’t have a proper ergonomic setup. With a little creativity however, you can do things to FORCE you to sit properly at your desk.

Learn To Practice Good Posture

Get a swiss ball (one of those big ass inflatable gym balls) and use that instead of your chair. Sit closer to the front of the ball and keep your legs bent about 90 degrees and shoulders back. If your not used to doing this, you’ll get tired fast so instead try to do it for a few hours at a time until you build the proper strength. If you can’t use one of those swish balls, try doing the same thing on a chair or stool without any back support. Focus on not slouching, on think about keeping the bottom part of your stomach tight. You’ll notice this gets a lot easier if you practice it every day.

Daily Core Exercises

Like I mentioned already, do planks every single day. If you don’t know what planks are, read it in my previous post, “Top 10 Exercises You’re Not Doing“. Work at building up the amount of time you can hold it before collapsing. If you can hold it for 5 minutes, your core is decently solid. It’s import however that you mix it up a bit, and do some variations of this exercise:

• Exercise 1: Do planks with feet spread apart as wide as possible, while still maintaining proper form
• Exercise 2: While in plank position hold one arm directly forward and life opposite leg off the ground. Hold this for two seconds, and then switch arm and leg.
• Exercise 3: Hold planks until your getting pretty tired. Now in the same position, drive one knee into your chest life your in a ground fight. Do it as hard as you can, then retract and drive the knee in. Doing this 20 times is quite difficult!
• Exercise 4: Do side planks. This works more of the obliques. Rest on one arm on your elbow and palm on the ground. Put your other arm on your hip and keep your body as straight as board. You should only be on one foot (on the outside part) while the other foot is resting on top of it.
• Exercise 5: Do jackknives. Although these are awesome for the abs, I feel that they focus more on core. Read more about it i my previous article:  Top 10 Exercises You’re Not Doing.

Get A Six Pack

If your going to try’n turn flab to ab, you must consistently do ab and core exercises. I recommend doing them every day or nearly everyday. But before you get into this, examine your body and see how much fat you have on your stomach. If you do abs everyday, you might be ripped, but you won’t be able to see them with fat on top. It’s import to do as much cardio as you do weights also, to keep the fat off / burn it so you will be able to actually see muscles on your stomach. Here are some of my favourite ab exercises:

• 

  One Foot Ab Crunch. On a gym mat, hold one leg in the air, bent at the 90 degree degrees. The other leg should be bent and planted. Pull now from the core in, and make sure your not using your neck to lift yourself up. To the right is a great video on how to properly perform this exercise.

• Medicine Ball Crunches. Site on the ball so that your shoulder blades just touch, with the ball partly under you butt. Keep your hands behind your head and look to the ceiling, pulling your shoulders off the ball. When you look straight up it forces you to pull more with your abs rather than forward with your upper body and neck. Do your maximum until you can’t do any more, then rest for a little bit and repeat.
• Bicycle Crunches. Laying on a gym mat, put your hands behind your head and start peddling in the air like your riding a bike. As you bring one knee in, pull your opposite elbow until it touches or nearly touches the knee.
• Hanging Knee To Chest. Hang off a chinup bar, with your body completely relaxed. If the chinup bar is to short bend your knees but make sure your legs are behind you. Now without swinging, drive your knees up to your chest and slowly lower down. When your knees come back down, stabilize yourself before doing another rep. Do this for your maximum rep range for four sets.

Stretching

After you exert yourself (and make sure its after) you should stretch for 5-10 minutes. The reason I stress after is because streching cold muscles can lead to serious injury. Stretching is vital to proper muscle development.