The Life Plan (32 page)

Benefits:
This exercise will work the abdominals.

To start:
Ensure that you have a steady surface to hold on to (a bench or rail, for example). Lie down with your back on an exercise ball. The ball should be around the middle of the back.

Reach overhead to grasp your steady surface, then keep your legs bent at a 90-degree angle.

Rotate your hips and pelvis forward until your knees touch your chest.

Slowly lower your legs to starting position. Complete 20 to 25 per set.

NOTE:
Stop immediately if you feel pain in your lower back.

Benefits:
Core-strengthening exercise.

To start:
Begin with feet shoulder width apart. Grasp a single cable handle with both hands.

Rotate the trunk of your body away from the cable pulley.

Rotate until the hip, knee, and ankle are all extended.

Return to starting position with feet shoulder width apart.

Begin with 10 repetitions for both sides.

Benefits:
Exercise will improve core strength.

To start:
Assume a modified pushup position, on your forearms and toes. Your body will form a straight line from your shoulders to your ankles. Pull your abs in but don’t stick out your butt.

Extend your right arm straight in front of you until your arm is completely straight.

Lift your left leg off the floor about 5 inches. Hold for 20 seconds.

Return to original position and repeat with left arm and right leg.

Benefits:
Exercise will improve core strength.

To start:
Begin by placing both hands on an exercise ball in a pushup position.

While keeping hands on the ball, extend arms to a locked-elbow position. Draw abdominals in and bring one knee in toward the exercise ball.

When your knees and hips are flexed at a 90-degree angle, rotate your knee underneath your body by twisting your torso.

Return to starting position. Repeat 10 on each side per set.

You can continue to improve your flexibility by extending the duration of each stretch, the intensity of the stretch, the velocity of the movement, and the frequency with which you perform the movements.

Once you have corrected any posture deviations you might have—and you’re able to take each joint through its full range of motion—you can start incorporating some active flexibility into your training program. We don’t just move along a straight path. We twist, turn, cut corners, bend over, and pick things up. Therefore, it’s important to include exercises that extend your joints through their full range of motion and in all planes of motion—such as Pilates, walking lunges with rotation, pushups with rotation, and martial arts.

Benefits:
This exercise will stretch the glute muscles and warm up your entire body.

To start:
Stand erect with feet together.

Take one step with your left leg while grabbing your right knee up in front of you, pulling it as high as you can while extending the rest of your body. Think about staying tall.

Repeat on the other side. Keep traveling forward with each stretch until you’ve done 10 reps with each leg.

Benefits:
This exercise will stretch the quadriceps and warm up your entire body.

To start:
Stand erect with feet together.

Take one step forward with your left leg while bending the right knee back and grabbing the right ankle until a stretch is felt in the front of the right leg.

Hold stretch for 3 to 5 seconds and release.

Repeat on other side until you have completed 10 repetitions on each side.

Benefits:
This exercise will stretch your thighs, hips, and buttocks.

To start:
Stand alongside a wall. Place one hand on the wall.

Draw your navel inward.

Swing your right leg forward, with control, while your left arm touches your right leg.

Swing leg backward. Keep midsection tight.

Repeat on left leg.

Complete 10 repetitions on each leg.

I had been working on my flexibility for over a year before I made significant progress. One day, when I was struggling with my stretching exercises at the gym, I happened to see someone working out on a strange-looking apparatus. I learned that it was called a Pilates Reformer, and it was specifically designed to stretch the body in ways I never dreamed possible.

The Pilates machine and floor exercise technique were developed by trainer/gymnast Joseph Pilates in 1926. His principles of exercise centered on postural muscles, which result in better balance, support, flexibility, longer/leaner muscles, and agility. This method of conditioning was initially called Contrology. Over the course of his career, he developed more than 600 exercises for various pieces of apparatus he invented. His equipment is designed to condition the entire body, using positions and movements that duplicate functional activities, which help improve body alignment and posture by improving balance, strength, flexibility, and coordination. Pilates targets stiff muscles and joints while enhancing core strength at the same time.

Today, Pilates is one of the fastest-growing exercise methods in the world. The exercises emphasize an awareness of proper breathing and the right spinal/pelvic alignment. His workouts are performed either on a mat using your body as the weight or on other resistance-based equipment such as the Pilates Reformer (a sliding platform), Pilates Chair (used for sculpting/toning legs, arms, buttocks, and thighs), Pilates Cadillac (a large unit with trapeze, horizontal bar), and many others.