Natalie Jill demonstrates five bodyweight ab exercises you can do anywhere, with modifications for different fitness levels. She finishes with a suggested workout routine to string them together.
Hi, guys. Natalie, Jill here. Welcome back to Happy, Healthy and Fit. Today I'm doing five ab exercises that you can do anywhere using your own body weight. And stay tuned till the very end, because I'm going to show you how to put this together as a whole workout for your day. First, I'm going to demo each exercise and explain it better to you and why you should get these into your ab routine. The first exercise I'm going to show you is plank variations. I'm going to show you a few ways to do it, and you're going to pick the one that is most challenging for you for the workout, and I'm going to tie together for you at the end. So what you want to do is grab a mat or a floor with some padding or some carpeting, have some water nearby so you can practice these with me first. You ready? Starting in a plank position on the ground, you want to start on your forearms first. Bring it up to your toes here. Now, a lot of times when people do plank, they tend to cave in here. But what I want you to do is clench those glutes and really squeez those abs and that core. And this is your starting position. And when you do this correctly, it should feel good on your back, and you should not feel this in your shoulders. You should not feel any kind of pain anywhere. It should feel very good and challenging just on those abs. So if it's hurting anywhere, pay attention that you're not down here and just hold it up from here. Now, if this is challenging for you, you can tap a knee down and practice holding. Otherwise, you're going to start here. And if this is too easy, I want you to hold a leg up here and make this a little bit more challenging. Hold it up here. Try these with me now so you can kind of figure out your starting place. And what's going to be the plank one for you? Second exercise I'm going to show you is a side plank variation. So on your side, the standard one would be here. Lifting up, squeezing that core. If this is too challenging, you'll put a knee down, holding it here. Most of you will be here. If this is too easy, you're going to lift a leg up and an arm up, and this is your side plank. So pick your starting point. Whether you're here, you're here, or you are here, either one. The next exercise I'm going to show you that we're going to put into this workout is a low V hold, turning over. We're going to Take it all the way down to the ground here. And we're just going to lift those legs slightly up and then your body slightly up. So real low V right here, holding it there. This is too challenging. You can lay all the way down right here. You want to feel it right here in those abs right there. Now the key on this one is you want to make sure that lower back here is pressed into the ground. If you don't do that, you will feel that in your lower back and you don't want to. So pressing it into the ground, just holding it here, that's your low V hold. The next one is a flutter kick. So taking it up to your forearms, you're going to lift your legs up here and it's just a light flutter kick right here, just this. And if this is too easy, you'll take it all the way down and hovering it right here into that flutter, still keeping that lower back in to the ground. You trying it? Do you feel it? This one you should feel pretty early. The final exercise that we're going to put into this workout is a shimmy move. So laying all the way on your back, toes fingertips pointed forward, you're going to lift up slightly and we're just going to shimmy it side to side just like this. Lower back, pressing the ground, shimmying it into those abs. Okay, so are you ready to put it all together? I've got a 10 minute workout for you. So you want to make note of where you were with each of those five exercises. Because what we're going to do is do each of those exercises for one minute through and then when we're done, we're going to repeat it. Each exercise one minute through and then we'll repeat the whole thing. So on some of the exercises, like the side plank for instance, there's going to be two sides. You would divide that minute in half. You'll do 30 seconds on one side and then 30 seconds on the other side. Now, this workout could be a little longer than 10 minutes for you, depending on where you take rest. But I don't want you to beat yourself up. I want you to make it challenging for you. But take rests and as you need to, let me know if you'll try it. Tell me how you're feeling it. I bet you'll be pleasantly surprised on how you'll really work your abs with these moves. Now, if you want to get my brand new ab DVD where I've got lots of creative body weight ab workouts like this and more, you can find that@nataliejillfitness.com DVD SAM.
