How To Get Longer And Leaner Muscles

If you aren’t a dancer, but you envy a dancer’s long lean muscles and toned body, then you need to read further. Dancers practice concentrated movements that sculpt those deep muscles to create long and toned muscles. Here are a couple of exercises that you can try for yourself, so you too can start looking and feeling like a dancer.

Yoga and Pilates are dance infused programs that focus on all of a woman’s problem areas. Dancers exercise by working the muscles and then stretching them out again in order to get a long lean look without the bulk.

A dancers workout will focus mainly on isometric exercises. These are exercises that work against the weight of the body. The movements are small and held to develop strength and condition the muscles. These types of exercises work your overall fitness and improve your endurance and balance. Speed and agility is developed further with isometric training.

These exercises won’t look like much, but they will work some of those deep muscles and if done correctly will deliver great results. You will need a bar or chair for support.

1. Stand feet slightly turned out facing a bar or chair with both hands holding for support. Point your toe behind you to five o’clock. Slowly lift the leg up and down by 2.5 cm for thirty seconds. Next repeat smaller and faster for another thirty seconds. Now imagine tracing a R5 coin with your big toe. The smaller the movements, the better. Next reverse the circles and then repeat the entire thing with your left leg pointing to 7 o’clock.

2. Still standing next to your support, turn sideways and hold on with one hand. Lift your right leg up as high as you can in front of you while keeping the abs held and the left knee slightly bent. Slowly lift and lower your raised leg by 2.5 cm at a height comfortable to you. Once again repeat this a bit faster and then trace your toe around an imaginary R5 piece clockwise and then again anti clockwise. Repeat on the other leg.

3. Place your forearms on the support and rest your head on your forearms. Lift your right leg up behind you with the foot flexed and the knee bent at 90 degrees. Press the raised leg up and down by 2.5 cm for thirty seconds. Now do the same exercises faster, then switch over to the other leg.

4. Again using your chair for balance, place your feet in a narrow V and rise. Keeping your heels together and off the floor bend your knees so they resemble a diamond. Keeping your tail bone looking down at the floor, bend and stretch by 2,5 cm for thirty seconds and then repeat this faster for another thirty seconds. You can then do the same exercise with your feet turned outwards hip distance apart and keeping your heels on the ground. Be sure to keep your knees aligned over your toes for both these bending exercises.

Mastering the above simple exercises will get you off to a good start in the quest to get a dancers body.

What is Exercise and its Role in Weight Loss?

When you ask the question “what is exercise and its relationship to weight loss”, you probably expect the answer to involve complicated fitness programmes and trips to the gym. However, exercise consists of any form of physical activity and you can become surprisingly fit by doing everyday things like housework and walking.

As you know, weight is lost when the number of calories taken into the body in the form of food and drink is less than the number expended. Your body burns a certain amount of calories just to keep going, that is, performing basic functions such as breathing, circulating your blood and digesting your food. Anything on top of that could be considered exercise. However, you aren’t going to lose weight if you eat a lot more than you need and the only exercise you get is moving from the couch to the kitchen, even if you do a little housework along the way.

So, what you really need to know, is the way in which you can increase physical activity, which suits you best and enables you to increase your fitness levels and achieve your weight loss goals.

If you aren’t in the habit of taking regular exercise, you should start gradually. Go and have a check up with your doctor to make sure that you understand your current fitness levels. This is particularly important if you are very overweight or have a medical condition. Your doctor will need to monitor your progress and this will also give you some real results which will motivate you to continue.

The next step is to look at your daily routine and decide where you can increase your activity levels. Start with small steps – they add up and will get you started easily. If you work or go out to do shopping, take your kids to school or after-school activities, how to you get there? Chances are you either travel by car or use public transport. How about walking instead? And if you can’t walk all the way, walk part of it and get the bus for the rest. If it’s impossible to do this because it’s too far, you travel by car and there is no alternative, you need to find some ways in which to get yourself walking. If you have to use the car, you must live in a fairly remote area and this means you should have some countryside around you, and that’s a good place to start walking. If not, you should make a point of driving somewhere where you can walk. Do that once or twice a week and you’ll find it’s a good way to refresh your mind as well as your body.

Another alternative is to exercise at home, but this doesn’t mean you have to invest in a home gym. Do you enjoy dancing? Put on your favourite CD or music DVD and dance for half an hour or even 10 minutes, if that’s all the time you can afford. If you have a family you can get your kids involved too.

Another possibility is to buy an exercise DVD or borrow one from a library. You may want to check out a few before deciding which is best for you. There is a huge range of options, for example exercises based on pilates, kickboxing, dance or yoga. So go to the bookshop and browse – you’ll find plenty of information on different types of exercise, with recommendations for your age and fitness level. So do some background research before making a choice.