FITNESS TIPS! Work hard, Work Smart. #Health&Fitness

Abs

• Do crunches/sit-ups work? Yes, but only for upper abs. Be wary about the process of moving your body up during crunches/sit-ups - make sure your body comes up straight and you are not using one side of your abs to lift your body more than the other. This will result in uneven abs. Also, abs only show when your body is lean enough and this is where diet comes into play. Eating clean and healthy prevents your tummy from bloating or becoming a paunch with all the fats from the bad foods consumed. Working your abs will build your abs underneath the fat layer and then make your tummy appear bigger. So please, to achieve abs, make sure you are lean enough before going hardcore on ab exercises.

• To target lower abs, do flutter kicks, scissors, leg raises. Flutter kicks are my favourite in this case. However, lower abs are harder to build than upper abs so don't give up. At the gym, I also like doing leg raises on the captain chair. If you are just staring out, do knee raises on the captain chair and slowly progress to straight leg raises from there.

• For general core work, pilates and yoga are fantastic. I am personally not a big fan of pilates but I have heard so many positive feedback about how useful it is for your core. I do hot yoga regularly. I try to hit my yoga place once a week for a one hour hot yoga session. Yoga helps with improving flexibility and core strengthening and the heat flushes out toxins from the body and makes the session more intense and challenging. I would not recommend trying yoga exercises at home by following instructional videos on YouTube or wherever. Avoid injuries by attending yoga classes so a professional can guide you and keep you in check, especially if you are a beginner. To work your core in the comforts of your own home, do planks! Planks do not give you abs, but they strengthen your core so you can do more lower abs and upper abs exercises to get your 6-pack/8-pack. Planks can be tricky to perform correctly so do your homework beforehand. Remember not to let your hips and butt sink down or raise up overtly, and to spread your body weight evenly on your toes, core, elbows. The more you practice, the longer you will be able to hold your planks.

Arms (Triceps / Biceps)

• Triceps are the back part of your arms that gets flabby when one does not tone them. For tricep exercises at the gym, I like doing tricep pulls on the cable machine, tricep kickbacks with dumbbell, tricep extensions with dumbbell. I also use the tricep machine to isolate the muscles. At home, I do bodyweight dips. Working out triceps can make your arms look bigger so don't go too crazy on the heavy weights. I suggest doing higher reps with lighter weights to tone but not build gigantic muscles. By lighter, I do not mean super light, but a substantial weight that you can do 30 reps with and feel sore after.

• To train biceps at the gym, I do bicep pulls on the cable machine, bicep curls with dumbbells and barbell, hammer curls with dumbbells, bicep machine to isolate the muscles. Bicep curls and hammer curls target different parts of the biceps so be sure to do both. I recommend doing lower reps with heavier weights to build muscles but if you are starting out and want to train your strength and tolerance level before challenging yourself with heavier weights, do as many reps as you can with lighter weights until failure.

Shoulders / Delts

• Bigger shoulders and wider hips give the illusion of a smaller waist. To get broader shoulders, do lateral side raises with dumbbells. Make sure your arms are lifted straight up each time but your elbows are not locked. Use a weight where you can comfortably raise your arms straight. Using too-heavy weights for this exercise defeats the purpose because you want to target your shoulders and not have to compensate lifting the too-heavy weights with other muscles.

• To work the front shoulders, do lateral front raises with dumbbells. The same rules above apply for this exercise as well, except that you are raising the dumbbells in front of you.

• To get balanced, rounded shoulders and avoid forward-rotating shoulders that can make you look like you are slouching or hunchbacked, it is CRUCIAL to work the delts. I typically work my delts via cable external rotations & cable internal rotations on the cable machine. You can also do bent over lateral side raises with dumbbells but for ladies, this exercise may work your chest too much and shrink your boobs. 

Upper Back / Lower Back

• Upper back is essential for pull-ups. I like upright rowing on the cable row machine. I try not to do too much though because I am afraid this exercise may shrink the boobs. Straight arm lat pulldowns on the cable machine is another good upper back workout.

• It is important to strengthen your lower back to avoid being injury-prone during exercises. I work my lower back during yoga sessions but one at-home, easy-to-do exercise is superman.

Legs (Quads / Hamstrings / Calves)

• For quads, I like using the leg extension machine to isolate the quad muscles. To build quads, I opt for heavier weights and lower reps or do until failure. Doing half reps on the leg extension machine work the inner quads and doing full reps (raising legs completely straight but not locking knees) work the outer quads. In case you want to solely work outer quads, try not to go too heavy on the weight so you do not end up compensating with your inner quads' strength.

• I work my hamstrings on the leg press machine. When doing this exercise, remember not to lock your knees. Feet placement will also affect whether you are working more of your hamstrings or glutes - placing your feet closer together works glutes more whereas placing feet further (shoulder-width distance) works the hamstrings. I like to go as heavy as I can for this exercise and perform until failure.

• It takes me a great deal to build my calf muscles and I started out with super skinny legs. I began building calf strength with a tiptoe calf exercise - Basically, I hold a dumbbell on each hand and stand on tiptoes for as long a period of time as I can until failure and I do as many reps as possible until my calves are sore. From there on, I progressed to machine exercises that isolate my calf muscles. I use the prone curl and leg curl machines. As with my quads and hamstrings exercises, I go as heavy as possible and perform till failure.

• Notice that with leg exercises, I like working out until failure. For me, it takes a lot more work to build leg muscles so I like to go as heavy as I can.

Legs & Glutes

• SQUAT SQUAT SQUAT. Ass to grass! This comprehensive exercise works so many different muscles and most importantly, give you a big booty, so please do not skip it! There are multiple variations of squats that give you different results. Wide-stance squats work your legs more than glutes, whereas keeping your feet close together during squats work your glutes more. Ensure your knees do not shift past your toes, focus on placing your weight on your glutes and not your knees. Contract (i.e. squeeze) your butt each time after coming up from a squat to give it an additional boost. Go as low as you can; this will take some training but the lower you go, the more you work your glutes. Switch up your weights when it comes to squats - go heavy / low reps sometimes and go light / high reps other times, but do as many reps as you can every time. You can use barbell or dumbbells or just your body weight for squats. Free weight squats or smith machine? I personally only ever do free weight squats; I believe that works your core a little at the same time.

• Split squats are a pain to master but they work fantastically especially when you want to even out the size of your right and left glutes to make sure you have a perfectly even-sized butt. Simply do more reps of split squats on the side of the butt that is lacking in comparison to the other. When starting out, feel free to lightly touch/hold something for support but do not place weight on your item of support. Again, make sure your knees never move past your toe. Always keep your body upright and the weight should be on the glute with the front knee and not the glute with the supporting knee. To intensify, raise the heel of the front knee throughout the exercise. Complete your set on one leg before switching to the other for convenience sake.

• Lunges - stationary or walking? There are so many people out there who claim dynamic exercises are much better than stationary ones but each to their own. I do both - walking lunges at home and stationary lunges at the gym. Keep your knees behind your toes at strictly 90degree angle (very important to avoid injuring your knees!), and your back must be upright and not forward-leaning. Ensure that you stand up with strength from the leg that is in front and not kick off with the back leg so you are working the right muscles. In this case, I like to alternate legs be it for stationary or walking lunges. Posture is crucial so start out with just body weight first to perfect your form before adding weights to challenge yourself further.

• Deadlifts & Good Morning exercise work both legs and glutes but these are two moves that I do not do. Posture is key in working out, particularly for these two exercises, and I do not wish to sustain any injuries from strength training / weight lifting so I consciously avoid these two exercises. If you are absolutely aware of the right postures, feel free to go ahead with these two exercises! It is all about personal preference and own comfort level.

Glutes

• Donkey Kickbacks, Straight Leg Booty Raises and Hip Thrusts are some of the easy-to-do at-home exercises whereby all you require is a yoga mat for cushioning. For the first two exercises, be careful not to arch your lower back too much when raising the legs as this may lead to injuries. Focus on really contracting the glutes. For the first two exercise moves, you can even add ankle weights for extra resistance. For hip thrusts, you can try to raise your hips higher to intensify the workout by resting on your shoulder blades instead of upper back. Another method of increasing the challenge factor of hip thrusts is to balance on your heels instead of planting feet firmly on ground. More is more, so keep doing and over time you will see amazing results!

Other Exercises

• Very basic exercises that I like to do but were not mentioned above include push-ups and pull ups. Push-ups work core, triceps and shoulders - a great compound exercise. Ensure your hips and butt do not sink down and that your arms and shoulders are the parts that manoeuvre the lowering. Improper push-up stances can lead to imbalanced shoulders so please learn your posture. Pull ups work arm and upper back strength. 


• I did not mention chest exercises deliberately. Ladies, you do not wanna work your chest unless you wanna lose your boobs.

Cardio / HIIT

• Apart from strength training and weight lifting (i.e. all the aforementioned exercises), cardio or HIIT also work to sculpt a better-looking body. For those seeking to lose weight, please engage in strength training AND cardio. Cardio aids in losing weight and strength training builds muscles that boost metabolism - they function hand-in-hand positively. 

• Types of cardio: Running (outdoors or treadmill), jogging, brisk walking, stairmaster, spinning, cycling, swimming, kickboxing, zumba - basically any exercise that gets your heart pumping and adrenaline rushing. Just a tip for treadmill cardio bunnies, always make sure your treadmill is set on an incline of at least 1. There exists a backward pulling force on the treadmill that may make your butt flat if you always run on it so set your machine on incline to counter that. When walking on treadmill, set to a higher incline (up to 10) to really work those glutes WHILE still getting your cardio fix in. When on the stairmaster, push off with your heels and not your toes to work them glutes as well.

• My thoughts on fasted cardio: NO. Although you should never run on a full stomach, one still needs some food as fuel before exercising. I recommend a light snack before working out just for some energy, for instance, a handful of nuts and a banana.

• I have never done any form of HIIT myself but there are so many people who seem to really enjoy it. I can see how HIIT may triumph over old-school cardio but as earlier mentioned and I now re-emphasise, it is ultimately all about personal preference. If running makes you happier than HIIT, go for it! Google to find out more about HIIT (I am no expert on this subject) and you can determine for yourself if it is something you would enjoy.

• How often should you do cardio? That depends on your own fitness goals and time schedule. However, I would like to caution that your body gets used to the level of cardio that you engage in over time, so for effective results to continually show, you have to increase the intensity / amount of your cardio exercises. With that said, I urge that you engage in cardio once a week and turn to strength training thrice (you can tweak this to your liking).

• Weight loss is NOT my personal fitness goal and my body type loses weight super easily, as such I avoid doing cardio at all and focus wholly on strength training to build muscles. My "cardio" is singing to the radio in the car, LOL.

Mind-Muscle Connection 

• I first heard about this theory from Booty Queen IFBB Bikini Pro Competitor Amanda Latona. I totally concur. Mind-muscle connection is SO IMPORTANT - I cannot emphasise this enough. Train your mind to concentrate on the particular body part you are exercising and the results will be additionally phenomenal. Work hard but also work smart.