Abs Tone Up Workout

Fitness Instructor Estelle Matthews guides us through a simple routine to tone the abdominal area which can easily be followed at home.

Estelle Matthews: Hi there, I am Estelle Matthews, welcome to my ten minute exercise program. Today we are going to be focusing on abdominals and that means targeting exercises around the stomach area, which most of us will really be keen on doing especially if you've given birth or you haven't exercise for sometime, but do remember, even though we are sitting on the floor and some of these may look fairly relaxed, do seek medical advice before you do some of these exercises and make sure that you are building up gradually. Okay, so first of all, just relax the hands over the knees, do check that your shoulders are kind of chilling out rather than tense up here, relax them, and just lift the weight onto the toes. That therefore makes the legs work a little bit along with the abdominals. It's a contraction if you've been through childbirth recently you will recognize that word but this is nothing like the real thing, this is contracting the abdomen and pushing the lower back all the way down. Now, you'll feel not only the abdominals working but right around the inner thighs, the lower back and the bottom is involved. So, there is a lot happening in this one small exercise. The idea is not to loose any height so we are not collapsing down, let's give it a go on a beat. So one, two, three, here we go. We are down and back and lift and up. This becomes a lot easier as you get more fluid and more used to isolate in this area, push two. As you get started, the legs do start shake a little bit and that will soon ease off and again, push back. Now it's a great position also to involve the sideband of the abdominals or obliques and they are quite hard to target after you had a baby, so let's gives this a little alternative treatment here, you actually reach forward. Now you've probably seen dancers do this, that's why they have a fantastic stomach muscles. As a contract takes a while to work into this one but you are just literally shifting one shoulder forward and then the other one goes forward and you should never do this fast. Four, pull under and it's easy to find yourself holding your breath during this exercise, breath control here is vital, it's easy regular breathing. You might find it quite useful to breathe out on the way back and breathe in on the way forward but breathing is totally up to you, I can't tell you when, just feel through the exercise. Good, okay now taking one leg back. If this position isn't comfortable when you first start out then you can just bring it in a little bit or keep one leg across but let's try this position, feeling a stretch along here and this is parallel to the body. Okay, one hand by the knee, you reach out a little bit and take a stretch forward. Try to draw a semicircle on the carpet or along the flooring. Okay and come back again, that's the start of this exercise. Now you can build up to this, so a more advanced position is pulling right up leaning on the front hand and the other arm comes up by the air and you keep hold of that stretch. You feel it stretching right way through the abs, all the way through into the bottom, into those gluteus maximus and you come all the way back. Now when I say don't speed up too much, you can actually take this slightly fast to say you get a good swing holding up, two, three, four and over, two, three, four and hold, two, three, four and push, two, three, four and hold. Good, again, one, two, three, four and low, and one, two, three, four and lift. Once more, sweep forward and lift and back, last time, and hold it. Now of course we have to do that on the other side but in between the exercise, pummel the legs out on the floor. Now just to say that if you have a yoga mat or a towel, it's quite useful to use this during this whole session of exercises. We've got a carpet today, there is no need. So, try putting the other foot forward remembering that the leg stays parallel with the body. One hand down and then you can draw a line in front of you, semicircle, off we go, good and just you kind of little breathe. So to start with when you are first getting into this exercise, that's all you need to do in this workout. As you progress, you can take the full sweep all the way up and round, hold this, good and again front you go. Keep going and down and push and hold, bring that arm up, stretch it, look into hand and again and round, hold it there, that's it. Look into the palm of the hand, feel the stretch right away through the stomach, that looks great. Good, legs back together, pummel in between, they deserve it. While turning into this position, we are going to lie down on our backs, this is how we can work the abdominals in a more concentrated way, so we are going to roll down the spine, making sure that every part of the vertebrae touches the carpet or the mat on the way down, so hands by the sides. If you need to lift one knee into the chest on the way down, that's fine. Okay, feet, nicely close to the body. When you are first starting out, make sure that the lower back is pushing down into the floor. If you take your feet too far down, you'll find the back arches and we don't want that, especially when you are trying to build up those abdominal muscles. Hands behind the head, that's the neck support, it's not so that you can wrench your head forward, take this very carefully, it's just a straight crunch, it's called a crunch, an abdominal crunch. You lift up for two and down, for two. Now although it's very tempting to do these at speed, effective abdominal exercises are slow and main, and back, two and up, two and two. It's really surprising how quickly your abdominals build up even if you able to just do this exercise everyday, doing 20 reps, you'd have a very firm stomach. Okay, now little bit more tricky this one. You stay up, this is not kind of pounding forward, just a little pulse, you push forward. If you've just got into this immediately after having a baby, you do need to take this very carefully, this one is -- as you build up and you get stronger, you won't manage more than 8-12 reps here, and then come down. In between each abdominal exercise, you should relax the back, bring the knees into the chest, squeeze, be nice to that back, massage it, good, and place the feet down on the floor. Just taking one other exercise in this position where we reach towards the heel. Now this is a variation because it works on the obliques, the side of those abdominals. You reach down and you reach down, so aiming towards the heels, you won't necessarily get there, good. The beauty of this one is that you don't need to keep up to a particular beat. If you want to do it as slow as this, that would work very effectively. Hold down and you can build up these reps but don't do them too quickly, okay, knees into the chest. At the end of that little abdominal section, take one foot on the floor and stretch out the hamstring, bending the knee and stretching out. Once again, now don't lock that leg in the position. As you stretch out towards the ceiling, that should just feel a good pull in the hamstring and you mustn't lock the leg. Let's try from the other side, bring the knee into the chest to start with, one hand by the hamstring, the other on the calf and you stretch out and release again, knee in and lift up and in. Well done, lie there with the knees into the chest for a good 30 seconds. Actually over that ten minutes, you had a thorough abdominal workout and we've incorporated some stretches in that routine as well.