Lie face down on the floor, and extend your arms over your head. Now lift your arms and legs into a back extension and contract all muscles in the back of your body. Make sure your head is facing down. Hold for 5-10 seconds.

Now bring your hands to chest height on the floor and raise your body up slowly in a triceps push-up, also known as a Chaturanga in yoga. When your arms are extended, add an abdominal crunch. Hold for 5-10 seconds.

Mind your breath and stay aligned with your tailbone tucked under and belly button pulled in towards your spine.

Repeat 10-15 times, and you will have a full-body, core-based exercise, strengthening and stabilizing your entire body.

Want the tools to develop life-long health habits?
Check out my e-book, Your Life Force: Training for Strength & Harmony.

Fall is here! It’s the season of dramatic color and chilly nights. In the colder and darker areas of the country, the decrease in sunlight signals our bodies that it’s time to hibernate. (California might not experience it to the same extent but trust me, we feel it here, too.) It can be difficult to find motivation, but slowing down is not necessarily an obstacle, just merely a bump in the road on our long and exciting journey to a healthier body and lifestyle.

A big part of living a healthy life is listening to what the body needs, and accepting the changes it goes through. Let’s invite some new movement to play with, to get the body going and the mind motivated again. Here are a few things that bring the fun into staying fit…

Hula hoops
Go back to the old days when you were hula hooping on the playground! Did you think that it was exercise? Hula hooping can be a fun cardio workout as well as core and abs all in one. It can burn up to 400 kcal per hour! It’s very important to stretch before and after, but other than that, it’s a safe and fun exercise. There are hoop DVDs, but the easiest thing is to go to the nearest Target, pick up a hula hoop, and get going!

TRX Suspension Training
These are traditional strength exercises performed while hanging suspended from the ceiling. Your core must be involved and you will be working out your entire body, as you use your own body weight as resistance. Of course, it is important to receive proper guidance to avoid risks. In my business of personal training, everyone seems to have a TRX Suspension Training strap available for anywhere and anytime training!

YOSPIN fusion
Mix 30 minutes of yoga with 30 minutes of spinning for an excellent body-mind workout. The cardio-intensive cycling followed by flexibility-increasing yoga helps stretch and condition muscles. Switching between the two activities can lead to injury, so a mindful stop and switch – waiting until the heart rate recovers before starting yoga – is imperative. If you don’t have spinning or yoga at your gym, go to a spinning class, download yoga to your MP3 player, and do your own thing!

Of course, you can also create your own fusions of your favorite exercise routines! Do you have any tips to trade? Any fun workouts like hula hoping that you would like to share? Please let us know!

Live Life Loud!

Want the tools to develop life-long health habits?
Check out my e-book, Your Life Force: Training for Strength & Harmony.

Images: AmandaLouise, Amazon.com, Fitness Anywhere, Gaiam Restorative Exercise for Relaxation Kit

In normal life, a strong core keeps our backs healthy and supported, as well as our shoulders and hip girdles working in symphony. If you have good core control, it can save you from injuries you might be susceptible to, such as being involved in a fall. In essence, good core control means good posture, strength, flexibility, and most of all, stability. In a similar way, you can use having a strong core as an analogy for building inner strength and energy for life.

You train your body and soul to pay attention to and appreciate YOU by building inner strength and energy. As you engage in the process of paying attention to the beauty of YOU, any lost motivation starts to build back up quickly. It’s the same thing we felt when we were kids playing and doing things we really liked. Feelings, actions and desires, which come from the innate individual you are, help to move you forward and make you excited!

Of course, it is not a one day or one week process. The beauty of this kind of journey is that the actual progress of feeling better, stronger, and more balanced motivates you to go further. When you train your Powerhouse to be stronger, you train your inner YOU to be stronger, as well.

Go to my 8 Minute Ball Workout and do the exercises a few times until you know them. Then try to do some of the moves while visualizing how the energy is created within. In the center of your core is a bright white light that warms your whole body and creates that uplifting feeling of joy. Move the “light energy” around in your body, send it through the room, and share it with people you love.

Good luck, let me know how it’s going, and Live Life Loud!

Image: Gaiam Total Body BalanceBall Kit

A: Hi L., Love handles are deposits of excess fat, and the best way to battle them is to do fat-burning cardio workouts (have you done my Reebok Bootcamp DVD yet?!) and slowly start excluding processed sugars, grains, and other unnecessary foods from your diet. If you have gone on many yo-yo diets, the love handles and other deposit pockets might be more pronounced and harder to get rid of. DON’T GIVE UP!!! The same goes for excess fat on the stomach but you can also do Pilates exercises for the core and abs! The Pilates Core Challenge DVD with Ana Caban is a good one.

Best,
Tanja

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A: Dear Heather, Thank you for your question! Congratulations on being a healthy mom!! For many, there is always a little stretchy skin that remains after having a baby but, that said, everyone is different when it comes to the elasticity of the skin.

I think strength training could be a great new thing for you to explore, and with that a lot of core and abdominal work based on Pilates. In this way you will strengthen the abdominal structures from the inside out, so to speak. Balance Ball ab work is great for that (click the video preview link for my 8 Minute Ball Workout). Also, Ana Caban has great Pilates DVDs through Gaiam!!

Of course, diet as you know is crucial here!! If you want tips on how to recharge and restructure, refer to my 10-Week Transformation here on the blog! It might help you on the way.

Best,
Tanja

Do you have a question? Don’t be shy – ask it here!