Make your waist smaller with these tips
Following the recent warning that 57 per cent of women's waists are too big, we have the top training tips for a trimmer tummy.
We all want a waist that we can cinch in with a belt and show off in a bikini and with these useful tips we can get there.
A smaller waist is not just about looking good, it also impacts upon your health. A larger waist puts you at risk of infertility, breast, womb and ovarian cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
Chris Jones, Head of Physiolohy at Nuffield Health, who carried out the research, advises that you should check your waist size every few weeks to make sure you are lowering it.
Top training tips for a trimmer tummy
Nuffield Health’s team of personal trainers recommend these forms of exercise to help get and maintain a healthy waist measurement:
· Keep it general. The temptation might be to focus on your abdominals – unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. The ideal work out for losing inches of your waist will hit as many different areas of the body as possible.
· Work large muscle groups in combination. Compound exercises work as many muscles as possible meaning they burn more calories than isolated movements.
· Circuit training. This type of varied training keeps things interesting, making it easier for you to stick to your fitness plan. You can choose as many different stations and varieties of exercise as you can handle. The more muscle mass we have, the more calories we burn when we train. Because circuit training combines resistance (muscle-building) training with cardio, it maximises the benefits of your work out.
· Interval training. This style of training generally consists of an ‘on/off’ intensity cycle repeated several times. So you might do two to three minutes of high intensity work on the treadmill (or rowing machine, cross trainer or bike), followed by two to three minutes of ‘recovery’ where you do the same activity but at a lower pace. For example if you were running you would slow to a light jog or fast walk. Then you keep continuing this whole cycle. As with circuits, this keeps your workout varied, meaning you’re more likely to keep it up. It also allows your body to keep burning calories long after you’ve finished.