Be Well: Simple Ways to Build Lower Body Strength

<div class="block">Whitney Berger, WhitFit NYC, joined &#39;beWell&#39; to talk about ways to strengthen the lower body without using heavy weights or the typical squat.</div>

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OK. It's time now for fitness in four. I am so excited because I think a lot of times when people are, you know, trying to work the lower half of their body, they think I've got to do a lot of squads or lift heavy weights, but we can actually use our own body weight, be a little gentler. So I, I'm really excited to have you here to kind of talk about this. Um, with Fit NYC, you created this, you know, great Pilates inspired workout. So talk to me about what we're gonna do. So we're gonna start on our back, ok, right there. OK. Now this is gonna be good for pelvic floor as well. Right. Yes. So the pelvic floor is actually part of our core and working the pelvic floor is important for men and women. Ok. Um I feel like we're gonna sleep over. We feel like we're gonna share secrets guys. I love it. Um And we're gonna lift up into a bridge, right? Yeah. OK. We're gonna come and do a hip with glute bridge. So you're gonna bring your feet hip with par your ankles and knees are stacked. Toes and knees facing the same direction. So 12 o'clock and I'm gonna place our hands by our sides, shoulder blades into the mat, keeping your core and tight, squeezing those glutes now. And for a lot of people, this might just be a Yeah, you can feel all the energy running through the back part even maybe today for me, this is it. Right. But we're gonna elevate it. So we're gonna bring our heel on the mat and your toes off the mat. Ok. Great. And then we're gonna bring our left foot out, putting your toe, keeping our leg as straight as possible. Ok? And we're gonna pull it up using that Pilate breath in through the nose out through the teeth, keeping that core engaged. It actually activates all the layers of our abdominal wall, how you feel when and I, and I really do feel you feel it in your glue, you feel it in your hamstring and you really feel how hard your abs are working. Absolutely. Right. Even the upper, lower abs, his feet. Ok. So if we wanted to make this harder now that we need to drop our leg, right. Absolutely. Right. So we're gonna go inhale and exhale. Yes. Now, how long would I wanna do this for? Because this is intense. About 35 seconds. Ok. So that's it. That was 35 seconds, folks. That was it. The next one that we wanna do is, is wide legs. Bring your feet wide, it feels met with toes, slightly turned out again, making sure the knees and the toes are facing the same direction you want to protect your joints. Ok? I'm gonna exhale up, down and go. It's cleaning the glute. You get into the side of the glutes, the glute is immediate as well as the outer side. And again, pelvic floor shit. I was just gonna say, I feel like I'm having a baby. So this is great because it just changes that little bit of the angle which is going to work those muscles in a different way. We have one more that we wanna get to. So what are we gonna do? Butterfly? OK. Let's bring our soul and the feet together. OK? Got it stretches. It feel so good and it's so interesting because your legs are like all the way down and mine are all the way up just because I'm so tight. So this would be good just to hang out in anyway. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. And now what do we wanna do? We gonna move up? So by her side and take an inhale and exhale. I know. All right. So for everybody who wants to try this at home, it might seem obviously we have a little bit of the giggles because it feels a little silly, but honestly, you're gonna be working so many parts of that lower body really helping out that pelvic floor, which is especially important. As we age.