Abdominal / Waist Exercises

I hope that you are having a great summer. This post all about the anatomy of the abdominals is a precursor to a series that I plan to start new week about exercise and lower back pain. I am excited to attend a conference today with the Canadian Fitness Professionals all about exercise and lower back disorders

People need to have joints replaced for a wide range of conditions such as arthritis, bone tumours, fractures, pain and poor quality of life. The most common joints to replace are the hip and the knee.  Here are a few tips to help you to prepare for your joint replacement:

This is the sixth week of a ten week blog series filled with exercise pictures and tips. The focus this week is on hip mobility. Opening up your hips will help to take the pressure off your lower back and reduce the chance of a lower back injury.

This is the second week of a ten week blog series filled with exercise pictures and videos. The focus this week is on core strength. There are pictures as well as videos for each exercise. If you have questions drop me a note erin@vintagefitness.ca If you are not able to do exercises from the floor email me or give me a call 416-951-7978 and I will send you a core program that is seated.

Developing strong, flexible hips helps to keep your lower back pain free, ease knee pain and prevent injury. There are a few simple exercises when done regularly will build hip strength and stability.

The benefits of having a strong core go way beyond how your waist looks. A strong core, which includes your abdominal and lower back muscles, will give you better balance, reduce lower back pain and injury and keep you looking trimmer. One of the most common mistakes that the Vintage Fitness (in home training for the 50+) personal trainers see is clients that have an established walking or swimming/aqua-fit routine but do no extra training for their core.

In Toronto this winter we have had something like 33 extreme cold weather alerts and February will be the coldest February for more than 100 years. It is easy to lose motivation to exercise especially if you prefer to exercise outside and don’t like going to gyms.

Your abdominals include your rectus abdominis which is the “6 pack” that runs down the front of your waist, your internal and external obliques which run alongside your body and your transverse abdominis which is a deep muscle just below your belt line. It is important that all of these muscles are properly strengthened to reduce risk of injury and gain strength and stability.

Three Vintage Fitness personal trainers, myself (Erin), Wendy and Dee spent the day last Tuesday at the Sheridan Elder Research Centre in Oakville taking pictures of the top 45 exercises that we use with our personal training clients everyday. We had a lot of fun and learned many new exercises and tips from each other. I will share many of the photos and videos in the next couple of months in this blog. One exercise that was new to me is called Dead Bug.

A common goal of many exercise plans is to reduce waist size and build strength and tone in the abdominal muscles. Last Fridays blog showed the anatomy of the abdominal muscles and described the best exercises to fully train the core. This week I want to let you in on a secret that most people overlook in their quest for a smaller looking waist--a strong, toned upper body.