strength Archives - Hope Zvara

Build a Better Booty and Backside

by hope | Dec 13, 2019 | Fitness Friday

It’s almost the New Year! Time to get up off that chair and get your booty moving again. No more excuses – it’s time to build a better booty!

You can feel the difference with just one quick move. Your New Year’s resolution to exercise more does not have to include extreme, super-quick jumpy moves or flailing body parts. The key to effective exercise is awareness. In order to cultivate awareness, one has to start to move and feel at the same time.

Are you an active person who loves to play? This is a great move to help improve activities like cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and many other activities that require real lower-body stability and strength. This move is both challenging and mindfully controlled; speed will not win here.

Getting Started

Brush up on your pelvic floor and deep-core awareness (pelvic-core). This zone is the key to all exercise and all movement.

To give you a very short tutorial: While working on a deep pelvic floor contraction and deep transversus (our deepest torso/core muscle), imagine you have to go to the bathroom and you’re holding it in. At the same time, coughing. Feel your entire core contract as you stay contracted in the pelvic floor.

Build a Better Booty and Backside

Start standing.

Clamp a mini exercise ball or weighted ball tightly between the calf hamstring on one side.

Keeping a neutral pelvis (front hip bones are parallel with the wall you are facing), slowly hinge into yourself.

Bend the knees slightly to sink down into a Chair Pose on one foot. Use a hand against a wall to keep your balance, if needed. Align the knees to meet, and face the hips and torso to square yourself forward. Try using your hands at the top of your pelvis to see if you are level or not.

Inhale in Chair Pose and as you exhale, contract your pelvic-core, raise the ball leg forward while lifting the opposite arm up. Be mindful when you lift the leg forward to go only as high as you can without collapsing your torso or tucking your tailbone forward.

As you exhale, work to feel the base leg’s gluteus maximus contract as well. It’s important that the pelvic floor contract first and then the glutes, or all you are doing is death-squeezing the gluteus maximus.

Focus on lifting directly upward through the crown of the head. With a lack of gluteus stability and pelvic floor and inner core support, you will notice that you want to lean back.

Inhale and return back to a one-legged Chair Pose, working to bring the legs parallel with each other and work to keep the floating foot flexed.

Continue to move mindfully and slowly. There is no need to speed through this movement. When you do, the core muscles can easily be overlooked.

Try using a mini ball to start: focus on stability first and then increase to a weighted ball of 2 to 8 pounds.

Repeat this series up to 10 times on each side and then go back to the weaker side and revisit it for another possible 10 rounds. Working a 2-to-1 ratio allows the weaker tissues and side to catch up to the more dominant side. You can find more exercises to work these areas as a member of my Mindful Movement Online Studio – only $9.99/month.

Good luck!

Looking for More Pose Breakdowns? Check Out These Articles!

How To Get The Most Out Of Plank Pose

Save Savasana: The Final Pose of Yoga is the Most Important

How to do Pigeon the Right Way

When Dancer Pose Doesn’t Dance: Unlocking the Front Body

4 Quick Effective Yoga Poses To Do While Flying

Trim Your Waistline – Outrageous Obliques

by hope | Nov 1, 2019 | Core Functional Fitness, Fitness Friday

As a fitness professional for over a decade, I have pretty much seen it all. Especially when it comes to core-based exercise. When you consider trying to bring some more attention to your midsection (and your obliques), a few things are important to consider:

Core work flat on your back is out!

Think about it, how do you spend your day? Upright! So doesn’t it make more sense to work with gravity in that manner?

Focus on feeling rather than doing.

Find guides that really help you tune into not only what you should be doing, but what you should and shouldn’t be feeling. If you need somewhere to start, consider my Mindful Movement Online Studio (just $9.99/month)

Work from the inside out.

No matter what you do, everything is core work. That being said, it all starts with a conscious pelvic-core (pelvic floor muscles plus deep core muscles) contraction.

We have a deep oblique — called the internal oblique — and an external oblique. These muscles overlap each other.

We need our obliques for many things: They offer support and stability for the back and hips. When developed properly, they improve spinal support, movement and function, as well as the relationship between the rib cage and pelvis. Strength to twist, bend sideways and rotate comes a great deal from our amazing obliques.

Here is one of my favorite tributes to our famous obliques:

Start in a kneeling position (be sure to pad your knees if necessary), and grab your weight (if using one).
Find neutral pelvis (your pubis bone and hip bones should run parallel with the wall you are facing).
Contract your pelvic-core muscles (think bathroom muscles and torso muscles, much like when you cough).
Steadily extend your right leg out to the side, turning your right foot parallel to your knee. Be sure to anchor your foot into the floor.
Holding your weight in front of your chest, draw your elbows wide and relax your shoulders.
Inhale, tip to the left as far as you can control, without folding in your left hip.
Exhale, feel your waist (obliques) carry you back up with control. You should not feel any downward pressure into your pelvic floor when you lift (remember to keep those muscles strong).
Repeat this process 10 times on each side. After you have repeated this on both sides, go back to your weaker side and complete the process again for a 2-to-1 ratio (weaker to stronger). If the weight creates too much tension work, do this exercise without added weight in front and instead hold opposite elbows with your forearms at chest height.