Picking something positive to do and then doing it every day is a great way to keep track of a fitness routine. It takes the thinking out of it.
You simply do it every day - no excuses. Last year, I practised at least half an hour of yoga daily. As a result, I am feeling extremely limber.
Unfortunately, I mixed yoga with a heavy eating and drinking schedule. As a result, I am as flexible as an eel but also disturbingly fat.
An hour of exercise will get you sweating and feeling good, but if you follow that with an entire pizza, eight beers and half a tub of ice cream, you tend to go backwards healthwise.
The year before last was notable for the ‘No DO 22′ project, I didn’t cut my hair for 365 days. That one was easy. Before that was ‘Spud None 21′.
You can lose a lot of weight just by cutting chips, crisps, and mash out of your life. It is, unfortunately, a joyless and unsustainable way to live.
Potatoes are the most versatile and delicious vegetable on God’s green Earth, and I am back on them with a vengeance.
In 2019, I ran five kilometres daily for the whole year. Rain or shine, I was out there jogging. In retrospect, pounding the streets every day with compounding injuries was a terrible idea. I visited a Podiatrist recently; apparently, I have permanently messed up my ankles. That’s why ‘Hardcore 24′ isn’t going to be as hardcore as ‘Running 19′. This year’s fitness plan is safe, doable and sensible.
Your core is important to your health largely due to its size and location. Depending on how you define it, it constitutes up to a third of your body.
You have transverse abdominis, multifidus, internal and external obliques, erector spinae, the diaphragm and the pelvic floor muscles. There are lots of different exercises designed to target these areas. But the easiest way to achieve general core gains is the simple bed crunch.
This is how it works. As soon as your alarm goes off, get stuck in. Lie on your back with your knees slightly bent. Plant your feet firmly on the bed, about hip-width apart, fold your arms on your chest, tighten your abdominal muscles right up, and release. If you do this 20 times before you get up, you are already on your way to a more powerful you before you have even started your day.
A few weeks in, and you might up that to 30, 40, then 50 crunches. In a few months, you could be doing 100 a day, and a few months after that, 1000, which would be too many. You can’t be spending all morning in the sack.
Once you have gained some core strength, you might want to mix things up with a few planks. This is an exercise that really hammers your rectus abdominis.
A morning plank is best executed by jumping straight out of bed, getting down on the carpet and holding yourself off the ground with your toes and forearms. Keep your back and legs as straight as possible throughout out.
Hold in the plank position for 60 seconds. Then, repeat three times. When, after a few weeks, that becomes easy to do, simply increase the duration.
When that gets doable try side planks. Your middle will thank you for it.
Many Kiwis, such as myself, are running pathetic, weak, jelly-like centres. It’s leading to sore backs, injuries, poor balance, sloppy rigs and suboptimal performances in things we could be great at. It’s time to do something about it. I challenge all of us to start daily bed crunching. Do it now if you are in bed, tomorrow if you are already up.
2024 is ‘Hardcore 24′.
