Bodyism’s James Duigan developed these three exercises to be done anywhere anytime – and filmed them exclusively for TheCarousel.com. If you’re looking for an exercise to use almost every muscle in your body and burn fat fast, then The Wood Chop is for you. Your abdominals will get a through workout from doing The Plank – and, as an added bonus, your posture will benefit too. The Tummy Vacuum engages your brain and muscles to work together to really get your tummy switched on. This is an ideal exercise to kick off your workout.
JAMES Hi there my name is James Duigan founder of Bodyism and author of the Clean and Lean Diet books. Welcome to our exclusive series of films for The Carousel. This week we are going to show you three simple exercises to help give you a flat tummy. The wood chop is one of my favourite exercises; this is what we call big bang exercises. The more muscles you use the more fat you burn and this is a fantastic way of doing it and using pretty much every muscle in your body.
Set your feet just wider than hip width apart, draw your belly button in and maintain a perfect posture throughout the entire movement, what you don’t want to do is bend your back.
Sink down into a squat and then come and twist around. Aim for 15 reps each direction; if you can’t manage 15 that’s fine, start with 5 or wherever you’re comfortable.
The plank in my opinion is the king of abdominal exercises. It’s a fantastic way of training your body for a flat tummy. What you need to remember here is to maintain perfect posture even though you are lying horizontally. Another key point is to have your palms facing up as this will help improve your posture.
The plank is a timed exercise not a rep exercise so start with 10 seconds and the gold standard is a minute. That’s enough to really get a result in your abdominals and to switch them on but the second you feel this in your back please stop, it means you’re not working your abdominals anymore and you could hurt yourself.
The tummy vacuum is a great way of connecting your brain to your tummy muscles which is more often than not what gets in the way of a flat tummy and what that means simply is that it’s teaching you to use your tummy muscles properly.
We use this at the start of our workouts to make sure that the tummy is switched on and keeping your back safe. Start on all fours and relax your stomach, letting it really go. Then what I want you to do is engage your tummy and draw your belly button in towards your spine as you arch your back like a cat. Repeat these 10 times to get the most out of the exercise.
Today I’ve shown you 3 simple exercises that you can do anywhere any time for a perfect flat tummy.
Good to hear you are starting to exercise after reading this. Let us know how it’s going.