Flatten those abs!

The abdominals are made up of 4 separate muscles with different functions. The one we’re all familiar with is the rectus abdominus, commonly known as the 6-pack abs. Unfortunately these are over-emphasized in many traditional ab exercises and are the least effective for strengthening and stabilizing your core. In barre class, I’ve often said “don’t let the little alien pop out” meaning let the rectus abdominus take over your ab work. You know you’re relying on the rectus too much when the abdominals appear to “pop” or what I refer to as the little alien, as in the classic Sigourney Weaver movie, Alien. This abdominal muscle is the primary abdominal muscle that flexes your spine – it bends you forward.

Just underneath the rectus are the external obliques. These run diagonally down from your lower ribs attaching to your hips and rectus abdominus. They help you rotate or twist to the opposite side so the right side external obliques works as you rotate to the left.

Next deepest are the internal obliques. They lie underneath and run criss cross the external obiques. The internal obliques rotate or twist you to the same side so the right side internal obliques rotate you to the right.

The deepest and most difficult muscle to engage and keep engaged is the transverse abdominus. It wraps around you horizontally like a corset from front to back. This along with your internal obliques are important in low back stability. I’m always saying “breathe, breathe” in Pilates and Barre, and that is a sure-fire way to engage your transverse abdominus because it helps you forcefully exhale. As you inhale, your diaphragm extends down into your abdomen and as you exhale it lifts up toward your lungs to force the air out and the transverse helps push it up. Ab work is especially hard to breathe through because of the action of the diaphragm. When your transverse and obliques are tight, there’s no room for your diaphragm to expand downwards. The Pilates method of breathing into the sides and back of your lungs helps with good breath control.

All of the abdominals working together work as a hydraulic lift for your upper torso and spine to help improve your posture. While standing, keeping your attention on lifting your rib cage up off of your hips will help give you a length through the spine as you hold your abdominals in an isometric contraction. The look of flat abs rather than bulging starts with the engagement of the transverse abdominus. With a deeper exhale during the contraction, you’ll get a more flattened appearance and increased intensity. But of course, a flat abdominal area cannot be achieved without a healthy diet! You can have strong abs underneath a layer of fat.

Classes at Align Fitness are NEVER a competition. We are where we are. I often share my struggles with exercises so you can see even those of us doing it for years have our own issues to continually work on. That’s the excitement of Pilates and Pilates-based exercise – it should always evolve. As we become stronger, it does.

I’m a big believer that “flat abs” in terms of how you look in a tight black dress is a nice thought. Genetics, age, diet, your overall health and how much cardio exercise you do can all play a role in whether this can become a reality. Strengthening and flattening your abs while you exercise is more about the health of your back, flexibility of your spine, and how it makes you feel when you’re not exercising. Having a strong core makes you stand up taller and feel better about yourself – whether you have a 26-inch waist or not!

The ballet barre – the impact of gravity

Ballet barre schmallet barre, do I really need to stand at this dang ballet barre? I’m not in dance class!

In one word, YES!! The ballet barre is the key prop for the Align at the Barre class for many reasons. And while it’s not dance class, a stable support (not a pole) is critical in keeping perfect alignment. The most obvious reason for the barre is it allows you to keep your balance. With a light touch on the barre, as opposed to leaning or hanging on for dear life, you are challenging all of your lower body muscles to keep you upright for several minutes at a time causing your muscles to quiver from exhaustion because they never get a rest. Add to that, your postural muscles -spinal and abdominal muscles- are working to keep you vertical. It seems simple but it’s not. Ears over shoulders over hips- keep repeating that to yourself when you feel like you’re starting to lean sideways or forward!

Always have a feeling of lightness on your feet when you do any kind of leg work or seat work at the barre. No sinking into your hips or having a heavy rib cage allowed! The ballet barre reminds you to stay tall if you find yourself leaning too heavily on it. It’s a good test to every now and then practice letting go of the barre and discovering where you’re putting your weight. Too much on the right or left will cause you to feel like you’ll fall into the person next to you. When you let go to balance, your body weight acts as its own resistance to increase your strength and hold you upright so you don’t fall. When doing single leg work, you’ll feel your supporting hip working like crazy because it’s now holding ALL of your body weight. Think of lifting up and staying centered from your sole of your foot up to the crown of your head. This will help alleviate some of the intensity but not all of it. That supporting leg is working too! It’s the efficiency of Align at the Barre – everything works together.

The ballet barre provides a wonderful weight-bearing, non-impact exercise, like the kind exercise that’s gotten a lot of attention in the past few years called “functional fitness.” We all get up from the couch, pull open doors, walk, get out of bed, bend over to take laundry out of the dryer, and other daily activities too numerous to list. From the time we start warming up until we cool down in class, the feeling of lightness on your feet should follow you from one exercise to the next.

It also helps you to isolate particular muscles to really focus on toning and strengthening. The hip muscles, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus, are thin muscles that are important in back health and stability in walking, twisting, leaning and turning while standing. If you strain or tear either of these muscles, the recovery can be long! They are important to keep toned and strong -and the ballet barre helps you to isolate them! And who doesn’t love the pretzel? Under the barre, this is the ideal exercise to work the gluteus medius as well as the quadratus lumborum (ask and I’ll show you!) and lateral hamstring.

And talk about burning calories! During barre work, you continuously work your major calorie-burning muscles – your glutes, hamstrings, and quadriceps – to exhaustion, forcing your muscle fibers to stay engaged to hold you up against gravity. No wonder it burns so good!

Using the ballet barre gives you a firm  base from which you can push yourself into even deeper muscle engagement every time. Therefore … it never gets easy!

Welcome to Align Fitness’s Blog

Thank you for joining this Blog.  Each week, you’ll get tips, tricks, and thoughts to ponder on a variety of topics relating to Pilates, fitness, barre techniques, health and more. If you need some motivation or inspiration for your exercise program, you’ll find it here!  My hope in creating this blog is to learn from one another. We all know that we can hear a trainer say “keep your collar bones open” 150  times, then on the 151st time, she says, “imagine you’re a coat on a hangar and not a coat on a hook” and suddenly the light bulb goes on! It’s for the sharing of those inspirational light bulb moments that this blog was created! Enjoy!