The Neglected Stomach Muscles
As a cyclist, you probably have nicely toned thighs, calves, glutes, and, to some extent, arms…but how about that gut? When I was younger, one thing I didn’t suffer from was a pouchy stomach. I liked to say mine was concave! But with age and my primary exercise being bicycling, that has changed. With my wrist break in February, the pouchy became more pouchy, as even the exercises off the bike I had been able to do were full of push-ups, or lifting a bar or hand weights. During Covid I discovered a few non-gym options, and one of them was a free streaming website called Fitness Blender. It was started in 2009 by Kelli and Daniel Segars whose goal was “to make health and fitness attainable, affordable, and approachable.” ✎
Personally, I don’t have a lot of patience for doing exercises, so I do their 10-minute ab workouts. They have a ton of them going back to 2012, so you don’t get bored doing the same one. There are about 10 exercises that last 50 seconds each with a 10-second break in between. I’ve made it a goal to do this every day for the last month, and I’m starting to feel results. I either view it on my iPad or mirror it on the TV. Doing these ab workouts every day and the Les Mills Body Pump workouts (which IS a paid subscription) on alternate days is helping me feel stronger.
Fitness Blender has numerous workouts for the whole body, not just abs, and they have paid subscriptions for a tailored-to-you routine, but free is a very good price.
Cindy Bernert-Coppola, Webmaster