The Cheerleader Fitness Plan by Lindsay Brin

Author:Lindsay Brin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

(Source: www.mayoclinic.com/health/interval-training/SM00110)

Compound Exercises

I’m all about efficiency and multitasking. I know you don’t have hours a day to work out. That’s why you’ll only be exercising for thirty minutes five times a week. How can you get results when you used to spend up to an hour or an hour and a half every day in the gym? It’s easy. Each exercise in my plan is a compound exercise. This means that instead of just targeting one of the major muscle groups, they target at least two and most often more of the major groups on your body. So by doing fewer exercises you can still target all of the areas of your body that need work.

Many of the exercises focus on what is known as your body’s core. While there have been a lot of fads in the diet industry, there have been an equal number of fads in the exercise world. One “fad” that won’t go away, because it is such a sound principle, is the focus on your core muscles as a true means to achieve fitness. Your core is essentially the center of your body—more specifically, your abdominal muscles. For years people who were serious about fitness spent a lot of time out on their limbs! They would train their legs and their arms. A lot of men, especially, would put such an emphasis on developing a strong (and large) chest and shoulder area. Well, for most people, those muscle groups are more about show and not about go. Sure, who doesn’t admire a well-developed and well-toned set of arms? Who doesn’t want to look good in a sleeveless dress with tight “guns” instead of sagging hammocks out there for everyone to see?

I have no problem with wanting to have that kind of fitness on your limbs. But that’s the icing on the cake and not the cake itself. Unless you really work on your core muscles, you will not be fit. In Pilates, a type of yoga that had been around for years before the concept of core training caught on, the core is also referred to as the “powerhouse.” The muscles of the hips, butt, stomach, and lower back truly are the muscles that power us through our day. They are among the largest and often the most neglected muscles.

Why neglected? Well, because we use them all the time to walk, to sit up, and to stand, they are engaged a lot of the time, so we don’t often think that they need to be strengthened or worked on. The truth is, because we use them so much, we do need to strengthen them and train them. That sounds kind of odd, but remember what I said earlier about the body being so naturally adaptable. It will try to do things as easily and effortlessly as possible. How many people do you know who get in an elevator or engage in a conversation in a hallway and immediately lean against a wall? Or who, standing

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