Front, side, reverse, hands or forearms, knees or toes—whichever way you choose to plank, this simple, stationary position is an essential exercise in your weekly fitness routine. When performed correctly, planking strengthens all the muscles that run up and down your spine, which helps you to stand, rotate, bend and lift with ease. And let’s…
Squatting is a foundational movement that most of us perform every single day. All over the world, people are squatting while doing everything from household chores to sitting down in a chair. Even so, the squat can pose a challenge to many people. Starting with various squatting patterns and progressing to more challenging moves can…
The word “core” is thrown around so often in today’s movement classes, it’s almost lost all meaning. The core doesn’t mean just your abdominals or the front of the body. It means the entire trunk, front and back, including the hips. The goal in this series of exercises is to help train and create core…
If building a lot of muscle mass is among your clients’ fitness goals, the deadlift should be one of your go-to exercises. This power move helps train numerous major muscles, including the hamstrings, glutes, lower-back and trapezius muscles. This exercise can be modified so seasoned body builders, beginning exercisers and everyone in between can perform…
Strong, toned, powerful legs build a solid foundation for the body. While squats and deadlifts can be used to start a client’s foundation, lunges can add the perfect finishing touches to his or her quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes and calves. Here are several lunge variations that can be used to add more dynamic and agility-based exercises…
If you had to choose just one exercise to help clients improve strength, power and core stability all in one move, you’d probably choose the squat. That’s why many consider the squat to be the king of all exercise moves. In addition to working the quadriceps, a proper squat recruits muscle fibers from the hamstrings…
It’s safe to crunch again. Not too long ago, a good number of well-meaning, but misguided people stirred up enough fear around crunches that many people were scared to do them and were encouraged to do planks instead—and now the new world record for a static plank that is more than eight hours. That’s not…