Getting great Abs
Our expert Lucy Wyndham-Read discusses the importance of being active, and suggests some simple exercises we can do anywhere to help us get into better shape as the holiday season approaches.
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Transcript
Presenter - Ok, Justin Walker's been in touch with us, his message is "I'm 25", and yes this is a pretty common one for this time of year I reckon – "25 and would like great abs for the beach. What do you suggest?" Reps, best exercise etc? What do you reckon?
Lucy - Best exercise – well one of the best exercises recently from a survey they did over in America is one that they call the bicycle, and that's when you lie on the floor and you take your opposite elbow to knee
Presenter - That always looks tricky to me that one
Lucy - It is quite tricky and actually men find that a little bit harder, the coordination sometimes but it's a really clever exercise because basically what it does is we've got several muscles, abdominal muscles, so to create that really amazing kind of flat tummy, you need to work the long one that's at the front ok which is created when we do a sort of crunch we use that muscle, and then we have the obliques which is anything that is a rotational movement, and then the most important one is the one where we were exercising by pulling the navel to the spine, so he needs to have an exercise that combines all those in one, and that is literally lying on the floor just taking opposite elbow to knee
Presenter - It's a bit like rubbing the tummy and patting the head isn't it?
Lucy - It is and you know it's great, and do it so you do 10 of them really fast and then 5 super slow, and any abdominal exercise he's doing I would say always remember to keep the belly button tight to the spine, because a lot of people just focus on say like doing 200 sit ups and they lose the quality of the exercise, so I say really just focus on keeping them fairly slow and don't aim on doing too many but just make sure that you can really feel it working, and just consistently keep those abdominals pulled in tight
Presenter - Ok, so a final question from me really on the whole exercise thing, should you spend hundreds and hundreds of pounds to join the gym if you've never done it before, should you start off like you've just suggested to do it at home or in the office?
Lucy - I think do it at home, I really do because I think people – you're likely to stick to it, I really do and I think there is so much you can do with your own body resistance, like as we said in the park, you know doing a press-up against a tree, tricep dips off a bench and you know what you can't beat being outdoors, even in the winter, you know rain's good for your skin, it makes you feel healthier, it's good to get the fresh air and it's more realistic, we're at home so if we exercise, if we do it from home then we're more likely to stick to it
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