This week, we are excited to kick off a two-week challenge designed to tone and strengthen your center and bolster your center of gravity. We’ve got the top 5 reasons to focus on your abs and booty during yoga…hint––not just for how you look in a bathing suit! Now, we aren’t saying we don’t love looking our best, but we want to remind you these benefits change how you feel, not just how you look.
Ready to get motivated? Here are the top 5 benefits to working out your abs and booty!
1. A Healthy Spine: Strong, toned abdominals will help maintain a healthy back. Often, lower back pain comes from weak abdominals and who has time for that? Many of these classes focus on toning not just your abdominals, but your back muscles too. The muscles of your trunk comprise your core and keeping them in shape will help you protect your spine. By performing specific, targeted work to strengthen your center, you can avoid pain and injury.
2. More Muscle Equals increased Metabolic Rate: Spending time building a strong, balanced booty will help you burn more calories 24/7. The glutes are the largest muscle group in our body and are comprised of the gluteus maximus, the gluteus medius, and gluteus minimus. When they are toned and strong, we benefit with an increased metabolic rate, which means we burn more calories at rest, i.e. when you are sitting on that booty!
3. Hip and Joint Stability: Powerful gluteal muscles aid in pelvic stability and help ensure your functional daily activities like walking, standing, and sitting aren’t causing physical imbalances. When your glutes fire properly, they are ensuring you are moving with proper alignment and safeguard your hip, knee, and ankle joints. A weak booty can cause other muscles to take over and create imbalances and injury. Sometimes we focus so much on hip openers to the detriment of strength––we need both stability and mobility. A strong core and booty will help you with optimal balance and excellent posture.
4. Self-Confidence: Our third chakra, the Manipura or Navel Center, is located in our belly and is the seat of our inner fire and ego. Stoke your inner fire! When you are walking tall and feeling physically strong, your inner strength is bolstered too. Remember, everything is connected. Yes, looking your best is great, but feeling your best creates a self-assured persona from the inside out.
5. Improved Digestion: In addition to toning your muscles and stabilizing your joints, working your core and booty aid in maintaining healthy digestion. When you jump into this challenge, you’ll be twisting and forward folding and contracting and engaging the muscles of your trunk and lower body. This activity helps stimulate your digestive organs and keep you feeling light and buoyant. Seventy-five percent of our immune system is located in the gut and by keeping your digestion flowing, you help ward off disease.
We’ve deliberately selected each one of these practices to keep you motivated, interested, and invested in creating change in your body, mind, and heart over the next two weeks. No matter what level of fitness you are today, you’ll feel stronger, leaner, and more confident in just two weeks. We love this collection so much, we’ll be pressing play along with you! Let’s do this!
It's not to late to join the challenge! Get your abs and booty and entire body into the best shape of your life, by signing up for the challenge now!