Believe it or not, this simple yoga pose has major benefits for your body. Something that’s easy to do, yet good for you?…..that’s something we can all be on board with.
To do a leg drain, also known in yoga as viparita karani (inverted action), simply find a wall, lay on your back and rest your legs straight up against the wall. You can use a folded blanket or towel under your lower back to take strain off of your lower back area. Stay in the position as long as is comfortable to you.
Lymph and other fluids flow away from the legs and into the lower belly. It provides a gentle stretch to the calves, back and neck. According to the Yoga Journal, the pose also gives blood circulation a gentle boost toward the upper body and head, which creates re-balancing after standing for a long time.
This move is ultra-relaxing to the central nervous system and completely clears your mind, calms the body, and improves your flexibility. It’s a perfect move to get your day started, or after a long day or work.
If you want to literally carve an inch (or more!) off of each side of your waist, the Woodchop move will be your new best friend. The Woodchop, as demonstrated in the video below, targets all of your abdominal muscles. With slow, controlled movement, the woodchop is one of the most effective abdominal moves of all time. Not only does the Woodchop target abdominal muscles, but it also works the glutes, hamstrings, calves, arms, shoulders, and tops it off with a good cardio burn. In short, it’s a total body move that burns fat, sculpts muscles, and turns you into the brick house you’ve always wanted to be.
If you have access to sand, kick off your shoes and go walking in it. Walking in sand is a great way to exfoliate the skin on your feet, making them baby soft (use a great moisturizer afterwards). Walking in sand also helps strengthen your ankles and calves, making you super-sexy from the knees down. What’s not to love about that?
Did you know that simple old-school hand-stands like these are super-beneficial for you?
Hand-stands are fantastic to strengthen your arms, shoulders, and wrists. Once you get comfortable with hand-stands, you can go further into the move by bending your elbows and attempting to lower your forehead to the floor.
It also helps stretch the abdomen and improves one’s concentration, coordination and balance.
Through focused effort, it helps calm down the brain thereby helping relieve stress and tension and mild depression through the meditative effort involved.
When you feel like you have midday “fuzzy-brain”, where you’ve been over-stimulated and cannot focus, try doing a hand-stand to alleviate stress and get blood flowing to your brain again. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a gymnast to attempt a hand-stand. Use a wall to put your feet against in the beginning. As time goes on, you can inch away from the wall. And as you do, you’ll be building your abdominal muscles (try it now…you’ll feel it instantly.)
When I’m feeling unfocused and overloaded with stress, I simply do a hand-stand for a minute or two to regroup and get my mind flowing again. The stretch in the shoulders, back and arms feels so good. And talk about instant results…you feel it immediately.
Stretching is to exercise as dessert is to dinner. It’s the icing on the cake. It’s the feel-good part of both exercise and dinner. After a great workout, be sure you are stretching every muscle that you worked. This is one of the best stretches for the tricpes, the back part of your upper arm. Place arm up and behind your head, as shown below, and slightly push the elbow back with your other hand. Stretch and breathe into the movement. Take your time. Hold the stretch from 30 seconds to 1.5 minutes. When you feel like you can’t go any further, take a deep breath and stretch just an inch more. Toned tricpes look gorgeous in a cute summer dress or bikini. Lose the giggle and get your arms looking hot.
Want Jennifer Aniston’s body? Because you can have it. Did you know that? Okay, you can’t specifically have Jenn’s body, but you can have one that looks just like hers. Jennifer’s celeb fitness trainer, Mandy Ingber, dishes on how she trains Jennifer.
Tips from Mandy:
Start with cardio: Ingber suggests 30-60 minutes, three times a week. “Try running, cycling or even walking.”
Work thighs: “Temple pose is essentially a yoga squat. You plant your feet wide, then plie squat and hold for 30 seconds. Then plie deeply 8 times, followed by 8 quick shallow pulses. Repeat.”
Tone calves: “Lovely calves are underrated. Repeat this series slowly twice. Get on the balls of your feet, then lift and lower yourself 8 times followed by 8 quicker pulses.”
For more exercises, get Mandy’s DVD (and Jennifer Aniston’s workout), Yogalosophy.
According to SparkPeople.com’s Fitness Tracker, a 150-pound woman who walks briskly at a 15-minute mile pace (4 mph) will burn 5 calories per minute. To burn off a strawberry frosted yeast doughnut, you’d have to walk around the office (at this quick pace) for 48 minutes, which is just over 3 miles! Worth it? Only you can make the call. Do you have 48 minutes to spare today?
Professional yogis don’t use yoga mats just to keep their feet on a soft surface during yoga postures, they use yoga mats because they are incredibly beneficial to help you stretch further. Yoga mats, sometimes called sticky mats, are thick rubber-like surfaces, about 4 feet wide, designed to be under foot while you are doing yoga or Pilates workouts.
When you place your hands and feet on a yoga mat, they almost stick (and sink) into the soft mat, keeping your hands and feet securely firm, with no worry of slipping out of your posture. They are also fabulous for doing stretches, enabling you to stretch deep into your stretches with your feet and/or hands essentially glued to the mat. It truly makes a difference in your workouts.
Also great to stimulate the spine. How to: Lay on your back, hold your bent legs to your chest, wrapping your arms around your bent legs, and rock in a boat pose from head to feet. The thickness of the yoga mat keeps it comfortable for your spine. It will feel like a back massage!
Kiss the carpet goodbye, and try using a yoga mat during your next yoga/Pilates/stretching session. It increases your flexibility by 25% to even 50%. (Those aren’t scientific percentages…it’s just what I can feel in my own workouts.)
Bethenny Frankel has been looking fabulous…even pregnant. I can promise you, that’s not easy to achieve. The 39-year-old, who is having her first child late in life, says she has always been obsessed with her body image.
“Since I was 8, I was obsessed with every single diet ever because I came from a very toxic, dysfunctional household with a complete emphasis and obsession with food and being fat,” says Frankel.
“It was absurd and moronic to be an adult and to be worried about dieting.”
Bethenny says she wrote her best-selling diet book “Naturally Thin” last year and finished her second book, The Skinnygirl Dish, filmed and made her her first exercise DVD this year.
Frankel says she works out up to three times a week doing Pilates, yoga and/or running. But the compulsive exerciser says she has learned to embrace moderation in exercise, with better results.
“I’m 10 years older [now] but 10 to 15 lbs. lighter [than I was in my 20s],” she says. “I used to work out obsessively five to six times a week. Now, I work out maybe two or three times.”
In order to achieve a killer physique like Bethenny, you definitely have to incorporate healthy eating into your regimen. Check out her book, Naturally Thin, to take a peek at what she eats to keep looking fab (again, even pregnant!)
Factoid: If you don’t rest enough between hard cardio or strength workouts, you’ll stop making progress and may even lose some of the fitness you’ve gained. You’re also likely to burn out on exercise. Additionally, don’t marry your fitness routine. Nothing will bring your workouts to a screeching halt like a repetitious workout routine that offers no change up or fun.
Be sure to alternate shorter, tougher cardio workouts (for instance, 20 minutes) with longer, easier days (40-60 minutes). Don’t go all-out more than twice a week (how happy does that sentence make you?) Keep in mind that the more intensely you train, the more time your body needs to recover.
It’s a good idea to do a couple of tough workouts and take 1 day completely off each week. On the strength-training front, take at least 1 day off between sessions that work the same muscle group.
