Hey, gang. I am so excited to share our first official workout for the Free Five Day Butts and Guts Challenge. The main thing behind this challenge is working our core, our butts, and our guts. Believe it or not, we use our core all the time. Think about it, every time you go to tie your shoe, you pick something up off the floor, you turn around to look at something, your core is engaged. When you sit in a chair. Even when you’re just standing still.
Now I’m going to throw a question out to each one of you watching right now. Is your core engaged? Ah, did you just pull it all in? 😉
Now the most important part is that even when your core is engaged that you’re still taking deep breaths. Now I’m a stickler for form so I might spend a little bit of extra time going over form. If you know the exercises, and you’re more advanced, feel free to just sort of skip on through to see what each of the exercises are, and then go ahead and do them.
Each day they will change, and there will be little add-ons as we go. But for our first day, we have four basic exercises. The first one is going to target our butts. So the first one is just the basic squat. The glutes are the largest muscle group in our bodies, so by utilizing them, you’re also burning the largest amount of calories.
So here we go!
Basic Squat
You’re going to start with your feet slightly wider than hip-width apart. You’re going to turn your toes out slightly. You’re going to lift up really tall, shoulder blades up, back, down, and away from your ears. Now there’s a lot of different ways of taking your hands. The most basic would be just crossing them here, and as you slowly start to go down, and slowly coming up. A more advanced version of the hands would be behind the head, opening up that chest. But that’s going to put a lot more pressure on the back, so that’s a more advanced move.
Now I’m going to turn to the side because the most important part of the squat move is the gluteal activation. So my feet, again, are a little bit wider than hip width apart. My toes are turned out slightly. My abs are engaged. My shoulder blades are back, down, and away from my ears.
You’re going to start by engaging the glutes, pushing them back down and away. Think of sitting on the toilet bowl, and then slowly squeezing your glutes on the way up. So you’re pressing down, and slowly coming up. The weight is in my heels. My toes I can literally wiggle, if not lift up as I engage.
Now a tendency in the squat is for the knees to go forward above the toes, and you don’t want that. Or your back starts to sway, and your hips, I’m going to see if I can do this, sort of go to one side or another. We’re always one side dominant, so really try to stay even as you go. So it’s 30 squats, all right. So again, knee issues. If you’re thinking, I can’t do those, just take your feet out wider. The wider the squat, the more it activates the glutes. The narrower the squat, the more the quads are going to be engaged. So honestly, you really want to go a little bit wider with your squats anyway. Now I’m going to go down to the ground, and the cameraman hopefully is going to follow me down for exercise number two.
The Bridge
So the second exercise for our butts is the bridge. Now you’re going to take your heels so that they’re right underneath your knees. You’re going to come on down, put your hands down by your sides, and you’re going to start to engage, again, your glutes, and you’re going to lift up. Notice my heels are being pressed into the ground. I’m going to activate or squeeze my glutes each time, and then slowly come on down. Now you might say, Jill, that’s really easy to do. Well, it is, especially if you’re not engaging your glutes, and you’re just going through the motions. But if you really activate your glutes, and try not to engage your hamstrings, that’s the key here. Most of us engage the backs of our thighs and not the buttocks. So you’re going to do 30 to 50 of those. If that’s too easy, you’re going to go to a one leg bridge, down and up. Take it down, straight up.
So you’ve got your squats, then you’re going into the bridge, which by the way, activates the core at the same time. Then we’re going to go to tap downs.
Tap Downs
You’re going to bring your knees up over your hips. You’re going to take your hands and either bring them alongside you or bring them alongside your ears here. All you’re going to do is start by alternating tapping down side to side heels. Now that’s going to start to engage the deep transverse abdominals way down deep in the abs. Now again, more advanced, you’re going to lift up a little bit higher. So notice now I’ve got double activation. I’ve got the deep abdominals, and the rectus abdominals engaged all at once, alternating tapping. Now if you do lift up your head you’re either going to take your chin all the way down to take the pressure or take it so like there’s a tennis ball right there to relax that neck again. Shoulder blades back down and away from those ears.
The Plank
Exercise number four is what we call plank. So you’re going to come on down into this position. Elbows are right underneath your shoulders. You’re going to squeeze your glutes, activate your abdominals by pulling your belly button up towards your spine. Now notice I started on my knees. So this is a little bit easier version. Now is that feels pretty good, you’re going to tuck those toes underneath, and lift up. But you don’t just hold here, you’re activating everything. You’re pushing your heels back away, so towards the back wall. You’ve got your glutes engaged. I try to tell people to almost press your inner thighs in towards one another so that you’re squeezing something in between your legs. Pull again, pulling that belly button up and in. You’re just sort of going to hang out here for a minute, and then slowly come on down.
So you’ve got four exercises!
If you have any questions please post them in the comments section so that I can answer them for you. Now, remember, it’s only four exercises. I don’t expect any excuses! 😉
xoxo
Jill Ciment | LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE 