What's Up?

Sit-UPS, Push-UPS, and Pull-UPS--that's what's up! Sounds old-fashioned and boring, huh? Never fear--I don't think these will fall into your 4-letter word category anymore.

These exercises have been around for years, and for good reason. They are effective and they require little or no equipment. You can do them anywhere. Sit-ups are a great developer of ab and hip flexor strength. We'll be using an Abmat, which to me is like a little sit-up miracle.

Push-ups, while difficult to perform, have great benefits. Serious health and fitness enthusiasts believe it to be the most effective exercise for increasing overall body fitness.Pushups offer the advantages of stretching, weight lifting, as well as cardio vascular exercise all in one exercise. Apart from increasing upper body strength, a push up workout program also develops abdominal and hip stability. This leads to a more balanced upper and lower body as well as good shoulder, trunk and hip movements. (www.megafitnesscenter.com)

That brings me to pull-ups. Pull-ups force you to lift your own body-weight. They are the best strength training exercises you can do for upper-body strength. Unfortunately they are hard. Very hard. And, unfortunately for us at the FCC exercise class, we do not have access to a pull-up bar. I believe pull-ups to be so beneficial that I am going to try to come up with a solution to our lack-of-pull-up-bar problem. We'll see.

I can't wait until Monday when you too will get excited about What's UP!