by Cori Lefkowith | Mar 6, 2015 | Blog, Bodyweight, Core, Exercises
If you want to develop a stronger core, you don’t need any fancy equipment or even any weight other than your own bodyweight.
You also shouldn’t waste your time doing a million crunches every day. While crunches can be useful occasionally and do have a time and a place, they aren’t the best or the most efficient exercises to help you strengthen and tone your core.
Below are 10 Bodyweight Crunchless Core Exercises you should include in your workouts if you want to truly strengthen your core. These moves will work everything from your shoulders to your knees, down your frontside and your backside.
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by Cori Lefkowith | Feb 19, 2015 | Blog, Bodyweight, Exercises, Pain Relief, Stretches
To keep your body healthy and strong, you need to correct the imbalances caused by sitting all day at a desk and performing repetitive movements.
To correct these imbalances and truly help prevent and alleviate injuries, you can’t just simply go and workout. You can’t just simply lift weight and expect to get stronger.
Because even if you have seemingly perfect form, you may not be activating and using the correct muscles to lift the weight – and this could lead to injury instead of you getting stronger and fitter.
In order to make sure you are using the correct muscles when you lift, you must implement all four training elements – foam rolling, stretching, activation and strength training – in your workout routine.
You can’t simply skip to strength training and expect your body to work correctly and remain injury-free.
Before you start your workout and your strength training routine, you must first start to work on restoring your flexibility and joint mobility by foam rolling tight areas. When you foam roll, you help release knots so that muscles can become loose and ready to work.
By starting your workout program with foam rolling, you can start restoring muscles to their proper length-tension relationships. When muscles are at their proper length tension relationship, they can contract properly allowing us to lift more weight and engage the correct muscles to do the work.
Also, by loosening up knots, you can help improve your joint mobility. When a muscle is tight and shortened, it can change how your joint operates. It can limit your range of motion around a joint, leading to improper movement patterns and compensations
But foam rolling alone won’t restore your flexibility and joint mobility.
Once you’ve foam rolled to start getting the tight, overactive muscles loose, you then need to stretch to help elongate shortened muscles.
Below are 35 Stretches that stretch everything from your feet to your neck and wrists. These moves will help you improve your flexibility and mobility so that you can move better and feel better.
And then once you’ve stretched out using a few of these moves, make sure to get those underactive muscles working with some activation exercises before you move onto your strength training!
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by Cori Lefkowith | Feb 13, 2015 | Blog, Bodyweight, Core, Exercises, featured, Foam Rolling, Pain Relief
Low back and hip pain are common problems especially for anyone with a desk job. However, some foam rolling (or a back massage) and stretching of your low back won’t be enough to really relieve your pain.
Because sometimes where you feel the pain, isn’t the place causing the problem, especially when it comes to low back pain.
Often to relieve your low back and hip pain, you need to focus on foam rolling, stretching, activating and strengthening your entire core.
Because overly tight muscles in your core (such as your hips and lats) and underactive muscles in your core (such as your glutes and deep intrinsic core stabilizers) can all be contributing to your hip and back pain.
Follow our 4 Step Program below to Relieve Your Low Back and Hip Pain.
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by Cori Lefkowith | Feb 11, 2015 | Blog, Bodyweight, Core, Exercises
Crawling – it seems like such an easy movement, but not only does it take more coordination than we realize but it is also a great full-body workout.
Crawling exercises are important to include in your workout routine because they are functional bodyweight exercises that can improve your core strength, coordination, and even your mobility.
Plus crawling is an amazing cardio workout that you can do anywhere.
Here are 21 Crawling Exercises to strengthen your entire body while getting your heart rate up. These crawling exercises are great for everyone from the beginner to the advanced exerciser and can be regressed and progressed as necessary. Using a combination of these moves in your workouts, will help you get in a great cardio workout while working your body in every plane of motion.
Even though babies can do it, crawling is far from easy and is sure to challenge your entire core!
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by Cori Lefkowith | Jan 1, 2015 | Blog, Bodyweight, Exercises, Pain Relief, Stretches
Many of us have poor posture and suffer from minor aches and pains just because we sit at a desk hunched over a computer for 9 hours a day.
That is why every single day we need to do the OPPOSITE and stretch out and open up our body after sitting in flexion all day.
However, most of us are also busy and the last thing on our mind is spending time stretching and opening up after sitting all day.
That is why the World’s Greatest Stretch is such a great exercise for us to do. With just 1 move and less than 5 minutes, we can open up all of the areas that become tight from sitting hunched over at our desks.
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by Cori Lefkowith | Dec 15, 2014 | Blog, Bodyweight, Exercises
Working out should be about more than lifting weights and doing some cardio to lose weight and stay in shape. Working out should also improve your mind-body connection to help you move and feel better in every day life.
By improving your mind-body connection, you will be able to more quickly recruit the correct muscles to do work aka lift weights or run. This will help you prevent and alleviate pain and injury as well as react more quickly and be more coordinated.
How then do you improve your mind-body connection when working out?
For one, you make sure you have good form with movements and concentrate on the correct muscles working. (Yes, actually think about whether or not the muscles are working, especially when first doing a movement to make sure they are actually engaging. Don’t just go through the motions.)
Two, you should also include movements that cause you have to work in new and different ways at a quick pace.
And one of the best ways to make you move in every direction quickly to improve your coordination and mind-body connection is with Agility Ladder Drills.
The Agility Ladder is often used with athletes to improve their footwork and agility. But athletes aren’t the only ones that should be using it.
The people that may actually benefit most from Agility Ladder Drills are actually non-athletes looking to improve their mind-body connection and coordination.
However, in order to get the most out of the drills, you can’t simply go through as fast as possible and do the drills haphazardly. You must focus on getting the movements down perfectly and then do them as fast as possible.
By learning the new drills and doing them correctly as fast as possible, you will improve your mind-body connection and therefore also improve your coordination.
Check out the Agility Ladder Drills in the video below for some great variations. Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced exerciser, you can benefit from these drills!
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