Secondly, don’t be afraid to skip or swap an exercise if it doesn’t work for your body.
#Butterfly kicks exercise how to
Of course, nothing really changed aesthetically - as I’ve mentioned before, defined abdominal muscles depend on a low body fat percentage (here’s how to calculate your body fat percentage), so no amount of dead bugs or sit-ups will make your ab muscles pop. Six hundred flutter kicks taught me that they are a great exercise to do as part of my running or training warm-up, as they really force me to brace my core but also engaged my quads and lower body. Lessons learned from this challenge? Firstly, if you hate an exercise, modify it and think about your form. Instead, I swapped them out for toe taps. After ten reps of flutter kicks, I abandoned this challenge, as they hurt, and even with my legs raised higher, I decided the pressure on my back was too much. After sitting down for seven hours on a long-haul flight and carrying a heavy backpack around the city, my sciatica flared up big time, and I had shooting pain in my hip. Days five and sixĭays five and six followed the same pattern - fitting the flutter kicks in around my schedule, but I found I didn’t dread them in the same way I had at the beginning of the week. For the sake of good content (thank me later) I unrolled the exercise mat left in the room (next to Lululemon’s Mirror, which I was pleasantly surprised by) and did two sets of 50 flutter kicks, slightly faster than I had on previous days, but I was desperate to sleep. On day four, I traveled to New York and realized, slightly jet lagged, I hadn’t done my butterfly kicks before I collapsed into bed. I didn’t feel the butterfly kicks worked my abs as hard as the dead bugs did, but they definitely targeted my lower abdominal muscles. During my dead bug challenge, I realized that doing ab exercises before I set off for my run helped me engage my core muscles more as I ran, forcing me to think about keeping my torso upright, in turn helping me run with better form. On day two and three, I repeated this, using the flutter kicks as part of my pre-run warm up. Due to my back issues, I raised my legs to a 45-degree angle for the exercise, rather than hovering them a few inches off the ground.
On day one, I started with five sets of 20 butterfly kicks. That said, never one to shy away from a challenge, I used this as an opportunity to really think about my form during the exercise, by slowing the movement down and focusing on pressing my lower back into the floor. Flutter kicks and scissor kicks aren’t the most lower-back friendly ab exercise, so I often swap them out when I see them on my workout plan. This might be down to the fact I suffer from sciatica, so I have to be mindful of putting my lower back under too much strain during ab workouts. Give me dead bugs, crunches, or planks any day of the week. I’ll start this article by stating that pre my 100-reps-per-day challenge, I’ve never been a fan of this ab exercise. I added flutter kicks to my daily ab workout - here’s what happened Day one To make the exercise harder, raise your head and neck off the floor as well.Keep your core engaged for the entire exercise ( here’s what that means and why it matters). Raise your left leg up, then your right, as if you are kicking your legs during backstroke.Place both your hands underneath your glutes, with your palms pressed into the mat, and raise your feet a few inches off the ground.Lie on your back with your lower back pressed into the mat - don’t allow your lower back to peel off the mat at any point during this exercise.
Let's start by taking a look at how to do a flutter kick:
0 kommentar(er)
