Starting to Feel It

Let me start off by saying I'm only feeling it, not exactly seeing it yet. My lower mid-section is a little bit firmer I must admit though, I've been mixing it up a bit. I haven't been doing just leg raises... I started doing a couple other exercises like bicycle kicks and leg tucks. It's nice for me because I get bored easily and these offer the variety my boredom requires when only doing 1 exercise. It's also better to do a multitude of activities instead of just the same one over and over.

I've been trying to get more sleep as well. My standard  of 5-6 hours isn't cutting it. I need to get more to keep my energy levels up so really focus on this stuff.

Target Mission: The Lower Abs

As I've been reading and researching, it would seem that some muscles are more difficult to target than others. Apparently this is especially true for the lower abdominals. Crunches don't do it, sit-ups, don't do it, so what can be done in regard to lower ab exercises to target these elusive muscles?

I found one of the best exercises (mainly because you can do it anywhere and don't need any gym equipment) is the simple leg raise. Lay on the ground with your body straight, bring the legs up, lower them back down without letting them hit the ground, easy as that.

Here's a video demonstration:



There are other exercises I would like to try but am not yet strong enough to do them. I am going to stick with these for the time being while focusing on my cardio and nutrition a bit more.

A little self-education

Having taken the initial steps on my adventure to increase my physical strength, I wanted to gain knowledge in the way of performing exercises with proper lifting technique. I rolled out to my local library to see what I could dig up. I had forgotten how musty libraries smell… but anyway… I couldn’t really find what I needed. I need videos to go with the pictures from the books. I felt this would be the best approach to take since I am just in the learning phase and not looking to pull something. After a bit of web searching, I discovered the following:

http://www.exercisetv.tv

http://www.chunkfitness.com

http://www.bodyrock.tv

For me, the best place was Chunk Fitness. The level of detail they delve into is incomparable to the other sites. Sure, the girl on bodyrock is nice to look at but I can only take so much blabber followed by huffing and puffing. The people at chunk really did it right by explaining the exercises in such great detail yet they still keep it simple with the videos. Not to mention, they list the muscles used during each exercise so that really helps me understand exactly what I’m doing. Bravo.