USE YOUR CORE!

If you've seen my Fitness Tip of the Day on my Facebook Page: A Better Reflection  posted on December 24, 2012 then you know you need to USE YOUR CORE!.

Your core muscles are an integral part of almost any workout. They help control your balance, protect your back, and provide support for many other activities.Contracting your core appropriately helps you get the most out of your activity and keeps you safe.

As a matter of fact you can get strong tight abs without doing a single sit up if you use your core in a variety of workouts . I'm living proof of that thanks to Insanity. Your core consists of the muscles surrounding your abdomen, upper abs, lower abs, and obliques. Try it! You can help focus your abs by putting your hand on your abs or touching or pointing to your abs as you do a particular workout activity. Taking a few seconding to check your abs in this way during a workout will help your body focus on contracting them and will eventually lead to you automatically doing so without having to check as often. You can check your abs any time you have a free hand in a exercise, even if moving both arms is part of the exercise, such as when doing a jumping jack.

 Let's say you have decided to do as many jumping jacks as you can in a minute. Start your jumping jacks. At a certain point to make sure you are contracting your abs, just put one hand on your abs for a few repetitions to make sure you are tightening your abs when doing this move, meanwhile your legs and other arm keep doing the jumping jack movement. Once your are sure your contracting your abs appropriately return to using both arms as in the a tradition jumping jack. Contracting your core during the jumping jacks protects both your back and your knees! Just remember to keep your knees soft as you land.

Since I started my fitness journey I have heard this bit of advice over an over again in almost every fitness program I've tried from EA Sports Active workouts, workouts suggested in health magazines, to the Beachbody workouts I've tried such as Turbo Jam, Tia Cheng, and Insanity "Use Your Core!" or "Contract Your Abs!" because the fact of the matter is that you use your abs to do almost everything like jumping, kicking, turning, squatting, sprinting, or doing a push up.

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