<div class="block">We&#39;re focusing on the transverse plan in this &#39;beWell&#39; segment. It&#39;s an area that separates the upper and lower halves of the body. Movements that target this area hit several muscles including the obliques, glutes and core region. </div>

beWell

Be Well: Focusing on Your Body's Transverse Plane 

It is time now for fitness in four and we are wrapping up this week of movement and I would venture a guess that this is probably the plane of movement that people neglect the most transverse plane. Yes, that's where you cross your midline. Some people cross the midline without even knowing they're doing it or not intentional. So we want to make sure that everyone understands that crossing the midline, not only engages your obliques, but also your glutes, your lower abdominals, upper abdominals, the whole body, you wanna be able to move in every direction we were made to move this 1, 3d, 3d baby. Ok. So the first one we're gonna do is let's just do a simple curtsy lunge, right? So we did the lateral lunges and the forward and back lunges. So now it's curtsy. So here we're just crossing the midline, we're hiding one knee behind the other. Again, we're taking the opposite arm across, working in opposition or contralateral with the upper body and lower body, keeping your chin up, chest high abs tight. And you should almost, I mean, kind of create a picture of like your knee so elegant and you're, and you're really doing like an actual curtsy. Right. To anybody else. I would curtsey do. Right. I would hurt to you. Oh, ok. See, right here. So, next up, let's pick up a set of weights. So if you don't have weights at home, you can take a set of water bottles or cans or anything you have. And we'll just do a simple clean and press for upper body. So we're gonna curl up and press and target with rotation, bringing it back down, center, curl it up and press and rotate. So here you'll feel it like a little push in the leg. That's what I wanted to talk about is how that's different than say a squat. So in a squat, you'd be coming down nice and deep here, you're just adding that little bit of momentum, a little bit of extra power behind your process. And you've got also a little bit of bicep there in the beginning by its shoulders. And of course, we're targeting those abs and obliques in that rotation. So as we do this work out, how many of each are we going to do? I would start with 8 to 10. OK. And then as you progress, you could either go heavier with your weights or your load and extend your time to something a little bit more like 12 to 15 reps. OK? Something like that. OK. So how much are we? We're also gonna target the abs with this move, we're gonna get some shoulders and the cardio so we can come down onto the floor and you can do this loaded on your hands. If you have any wrist issues, you can keep your weights so that your wrists are in a neutral position or do it on your knuckles, you'll look really tough. So this way that flip your ring inside into, onto your knuckles and we're just gonna take the knees across. So a basic mountain climber would be pulling your knee center. But to make it in transverse clean, you wanna take them across to the opposite elbow and I'm keeping this on my knuckles, you look so tough. And when we talk about alignment for this, you know, our shoulders, our wrists, you have great alignment. You wanna keep that those hips neutral down in line with the rest of your spine. So if you feel yourself almost going into like a downward dog who want to be right there and keeping your core nice and tight and your elbows are slightly bench and, and what about the timing of that? Do I want it to be that quick and get that cardio hit? That depends on your range of motion with your knees. How far you can go? Yeah. And how quickly you can move as a fitness level type of thing. So if you're just starting out, try it nice and slow, just take it across and actually doing it slower, you'll really be able to feel how it engages your oblique. And if somebody has some seat, yeah, if somebody has some upper body issues or they're not great about getting off the floor, you could do this right. You could do this and have that rotation. Have that twist, but do the whole thing stand. Right.