Beginners Exercise - Basic Exercises - 3 Exercises You MUST Master Plus a Bonus
Pushups - works chest, shoulders, back muscles (the 2nd biggest set of muscles on your body)
Place your hands on either side of your chest about 2 inches from the sides of your body and even with your shoulders. Press down through the palms of your hands and raise your chest up off the floor. If you can your back and legs should be straight and you should be on your toes. If you are not there yet you can drop to your knees. Your first goal is to get to 10 if you are doing 10 on your knees then the next step would be to start working on a full pushup if you can only do 1 then do the remaining 9 on your knees. Keep working until you can do 10 regular pushups. This is what it should look like:
Crunch - works your upper abs
Sit-ups are good exercises but they can be hard on your back, especially for obese people. A crunch isolates your abdominal muscles and is a very effective work out. You want to keep crunches to a minimum (yes you read that right) you only need to work them once or twice a week. Lay on the ground with your arms across your chest, hands behind your head or arms raised over your head. Bend your knees and bring your feet about a foot away from your but. now raise your back up off the ground as high as you can driving your chest toward your knees. Do not go all the way up to your knees (that's a sit up). Hold that for 1 second and return. You are working toward 20 crunches. Once you get to 20 let me know and I will give you some variations that will build you a 6 pack (even if it is covered by years of gluttony). This is what it should look like:
Lunges - Works your Quadriceps and Hamstrings, and your calves and even your glutes (i.e. the biggest muscles in your body
Stand with your feet shoulder width apart. Hold your hands at your sides, on your hips, or out in front of you (I hold min in front of me chest level close to my chest as I have crappy balance). Step forward as far as you can with out falling keeping the general spacing between your feet. Keep the opposite foot planted and rock forward onto your toes of that foot pushing the knee of that leg down toward the floor. You will feel lots of stretching and at first some pain. You are shooting for 20 of these. This is what they should look like:
Bonus Exercise - Walkup Hip Thrust - Works Your Glutes, Calves, Quads
This is a modified exercise Iearned this morning. What we did was called Glider Leg Curls where we put our heals on a floor glider and pulled back with our legs raising our hips up off the floor. I really liked this exercise and wanted to come up with a way for you to do these without special equipment. So here we go:
Lay on the floor with your hands on either side of your body, palms down and slightly away from your body. Using two or three steps start by walking your feet back toward your butt raising your hips up off the floor. Take baby steps. I think you should try to get this done in 3 steps. The idea is to spend more time in the raising process. As your hips are coming up off the floor push your hip toward the ceiling and squeeze your butt muscles (glutes) as you are doing that. End with your feet under your knees and your hips as high as you can push them. Hold for 3 seconds and walk back down. Do this 10 times. This is what it should look like at the peak:
