Goodbye Muffin Top

Who else has gotten lazy with their core?

Am I the only one? I think I’m surrounded by fibbers.

Actually, I’m probably not surrounded by fibbers; it’s me. I’ve gotten lazy with my whole body. Again. What’s wrong with me???!!!

I’ve been sitting on my butt trying to finish my manuscript like a real writer should.

This means I’ve been literally sitting on my butt at my desk for sometimes hours at a time.

I think my butt has gotten bigger. My left hip is definitely aching for its lack of attention.

Did I ever mention I have hip dysplasia? It’s fun. Actually, it doesn’t bother me in the least. But it does mean my legs from my hips down to my feet curve inward and my hips hurt if I don’t pay attention to them by exercising them on a regular basis.

I was doing really well for the last two years – no hip pain whatsoever. But since I’ve cracked down on my writing, my exercising has gone by the wayside and my hips hurt again.

(By the way, I’m almost done with my rewrite. 3 chapters left and then I go back and edit about 280 pages. Fun.)

…

(Yeah, I honestly am having a lot of fun.)

I should concentrate on my whole body but right now I want to concentrate on my flabby doughnut belly.

This should be not simple but doable. Easy to understand at least.

It’ll hurt a lot the first week I should think but hopefully after that the burn will be normal. I had surgery about a decade ago that left scars on my abdomen. When I neglect my core exercises, some of the scars get tight and will pull when I start up again. Very painful. After a while they limber up and it’s fine again. I guess it’s just like the hips…except not really.

What makes you neglect your fitness?

Reforming Old Habits

I’m trying to get back into the habit of exercising every day. It’s been difficult because I’ve had so many other things on my mind. It doesn’t look as if those things are done yet (in a good way) so this next week might prove to be difficult as well, but I have at least made the attempt.

In the past I’ve used ActivTrax to help me stay on task and get a great workout. I stopped for a long time because I had a class I loved that left me super sore every time. Since I no longer have that class, I’ve started up my ActivTrax regime.

Let me remind people that if they stop exercising for longer than 3 days they will start to lose muscle. I’m going to add to that by admitting that, due to various illnesses, I stopped pushing myself as hard as I should have been.

Yep. My old AT plan was way too much for me.

Way too much.

After messing with my personal settings etc on the AT website, I’m able to use it again. I did upper body one day and was super sore the following 3 days. I had planned to do lower body the next day but that didn’t happen due to a lack of gym time (my fault). I was, however, able to start my new running plan.

Fitness Magazine’s Your Fastest 5k.

And then life got in the way and I went to the Write on the River conference. I’ll be posting about that later on my writing blog.

I’ll continue running on Monday. I know the plan says to rest on Monday but whatever. My days don’t usually correspond to the plan’s days anyway. It’s always been more convenient to have Sunday as a rest day and silly for me to rest on Monday.

There’s a charity 5k happening on June 1^st that I wanted to participate in. It’s being hosted by my husband’s church.

Should be fun. I’m not active in the church but I thought this would be a good way for me to support it.

Oh yeah. I’m up to 14 push-ups in my push-up challenge. I missed yesterday and today. Oops…But I’ve missed plenty of days with the other two as well. What can I say? I got bored. Let’s shrug it off and concentrate on the fact that I can do 14 full push-ups! Woo!

Do you stress when you fall behind in your fitness or do you go with the flow?

Lazy and Unmotivated

I am a lazy and unmotivated butt.

Except I am doing my 30-day challenges so I guess I’m not being a total lazy butt. I can do 9 full push-ups in a row! Woo! This from someone who wasn’t able to do even 1 full push-up before. Tomorrow I get to do 11. Eep!

I’d like to say I’ve been on time with my challenges but I can’t. There have been days when I’ve forgotten all about them so I fell behind. But I keep going at least.

Planks are kicking my butt. I can no longer hold the plank the entire length of time. But I pause the timer, rest a bit, then do the rest. Like today my time was 2 minutes but I couldn’t do it so I held it for 1 minute, rested about 10-20 seconds, then held it another minute. I maxed out at 90 seconds before. My lower back wanted to die and it wasn’t a pain I wanted to regularly put myself through so I’m going to go in 1-minute intervals from now on.

So here’s where I am with my challenges:

• Planks – 150 seconds
• Push-ups – 11 reps
• Butt: Bridges – 30 reps, Lunges – 35 reps, Squats – 45 reps

I thought giving myself a whole week to plan the next post would improve the quality of the post but it ended up giving me an entire week to procrastinate.

The plan was to give lots of info on how to work the glutes. That’s not going to happen because I didn’t look up any information. Read my writing blog (Kathryn St. John-Shin’s Writing World) to see what I did get done this last week.

In lieu of my blog laziness, I’ll nix the butt info dump and skip to the workout (thank goodness I already had one planned!).

If anyone can read that writing, they have better eyes than I do.

Let’s go to Tone It Up and get a hot Malibooty! If you look at this workout and the one above, they look amazingly similar. I put in Malibooty mainly for the title and because it gives you a number of reps for each move.

Everyone wants her body. Men, women – it doesn’t matter. We just have different definitions of the verb “to want.”

What’s your favorite move to work your tush?

Inner Thigh Workouts

Spot Reduction – the act of focusing on one area of the body exercise-wise in the hopes of reducing the amount of fat there

Spot reduction is a myth – it doesn’t work. Getting rid of fat comes from a combination of cardio, strength training, and a healthy diet. Your genes will determine where you lose your fat.

However, focusing on one area will still gain you muscle. So if you work your core more in an attempt to whittle down your waist, you won’t find the fat melting off your belly but you will find your core growing stronger and that’s always a plus.

Having more muscles also allows you to get through more cardio at one time not to mention that muscles burn more calories than fat does so it gets easier to lose weight.

I mentioned in my previous post – Focusing on Certain Muscle Groups and Stretching – that someone recently asked for advice on how to work specific parts of her body. I gave a quick sketch on stretches and am now going to give an inner thigh workout that I found on Blogilates. It’s an awesome site full of great workouts.

I’ve recently come across some new information on the Inner Thigh Lift. I was always taught to lie on my side with my top leg bent behind the bottom leg to get it out of the way. This works but it seems it doesn’t work as well as bending the top leg and resting it in front of the bottom leg.

I tested this out and find pros and cons with both positions.

Top Leg Bent Behind:

• Pro – Bottom hip was stationary
• Pro – Felt the burn in inner thigh
• Con – Was able to lift bottom leg too high (as mentioned in above pic)
• Con – Had to adjust my body to relieve hip pain (pressure from lying on the hip bone)

Top Leg Crossed Over Front:

• Pro – Seemed harder
• Pro – No hip pain (wasn’t lying directly on hip bone)
• Con – Bottom hip wasn’t stationary so it would try to roll when I’d lift my bottom leg
• Con – Bottom leg kept trying to change direction (along with the hip) so I had to concentrate to keep the correct alignment

Keep in mind that other people don’t seem to have this hip weirdness that I have. Of course, I haven’t talked to anyone about it so I really wouldn’t know how normal it is. I’ve never seen other people’s hips pop out to the side (not out of the socket, just out to the side) when doing hip circles during warm-up though.

This next move would be good for beginners. It’s not difficult but you’re working both legs at once.

This isn’t something I would normally stick in my workout, but it can modified a number of ways to add in other muscle groups such as a crunch when the legs are apart. In fact, I quite enjoy the V-Crunch and have done it often enough in the past. I always hold some kind of weight when performing it though.

Although I added in one workout already, I really liked this next one too and didn’t want to pass it up for later. I’m guessing the Pilates Froggers are the same as in the previous workout from Blogilates.

(SIDE NOTE: Back on Pointe has bunches of awesome workouts too. It’s a great blog!)

On a side note, the writing side of my life is reaching a critical stage and it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to concentrate on my blogs so I’m cutting back on my posting to once a week instead of twice. Of course, with two blogs this still ends up equaling two posts a week but 2 is easier than 4.

Expect new posts every Sunday. Hopefully having an entire week to prepare them will mean the quality will be higher. This is a temporary change and will last until I’m done with my manuscript. Check out my writing blog – Kathryn St. John-Shin’s Writing World – for more information on that.

What part of your body do you most want to work on?

Focusing on Certain Muscle Groups and Stretching

I’ve recently been asked for some advice on working with specific body parts.

• Butt
• Inner thighs
• Hamstrings (back of thigh)

Normally I would not advise anyone to work one set of muscles because then those muscles will get strong while others that are just as important will not thereby causing imbalances.

When you have a muscle that’s strong but the ones next to it are weak, the stronger one tends to pull the weaker and cause pain and injury. Obviously this is not good.

So why would I go along with her in working these specific areas? Because she has already seen her chiropractor and he has told her that these areas need work in order to fix some of her existing physical problems.

Will I ignore her other leg muscles while focusing on these weaker ones? No, definitely not.

The next several posts will focus on finding ways to work these areas of her body.

Right now I’m going to stick with stretching. It’s amazing how helpful stretching can be when you’re building muscle and trying to alleviate muscle pain. Sometimes it fixes everything.

Here are my favorites for stretching my hamstrings, inner thighs, and quads (front thighs). The 2^nd and 4^th are awesome hip flexor stretches too. That last move takes a bit of flexibility so be careful.

If you have a chair then you can try these stretches.

Don’t force your muscles to stretch farther than they want to. It doesn’t matter if you’re not all that flexible. Stretch as far as is comfortable preferably on a daily basis – healthy flexibility will develop as you progress. You don’t need to be able to touch your toes in order to stretch your hamstrings. In fact, there are plenty of people who can get a great hamstring stretch with bent knees!

Happy Stretching!

What are you favorite lower body stretches?

*DISCLAIMER: I’m not responsible for any injuries that occur while trying things found on my blog. Always consult your doctor before trying new exercises and always listen to your body. If you feel pain, stop. Injuries should not be taken lightly and are no fun to live through.*