Ragdale Hall 10% discount offer

Article courtesy of Ragdale Hall

BEACH BUMS

The quickest route to refine your rear end

Whether for child-bearing purposes or just some cruel twist of nature, women tend to carry most body fat around the hips, particularly the buttocks. Fat cells in this area don’t want to give up so you’ve got to incorporate resistance work to shape the muscles and increase your metabolism to make you a fat-burning machine.’

Buttock Anatomy

Most strength exercises (lunges, squats, etc) predominantly target the gluteus maximus, the largest of all buttock muscles, which forms those substantial (sexy!) rounded globes sitting on top of your thighs. To build quickly, though, our workout also highlights those other, often-overlooked, muscles, the gluteus medius and minimus, which lie on either side of the sacrum (the segment of vertebral column closing the pelvic girdle).

Exercises

HIGH-STEP WALK LUNGE

Stand with feet shoulder-widthapart, hands on hips. Lift left knee up toward chest as high as possible without tucking your pelvis or dropping your torso. (You may need to lean back slightly to find your balance). Take a giant step forward onto left leg and slowly lower yourself into full lunge position. Don’t allow left knee to overshoot toes. Press hips down briefly, then stand up, bringing the right foot together with the left. Immediately take another giant step, this time bringing the right knee up to the chest. Alternating steps, continue walking forward until you’ve completed 12 repetitions on each leg. If short of room, take 2 steps forward, 2 steps back until the magic 24 is achieved. Slow down and add a weighted vest for maximum benefit.

PLYOMETRIC SQUAT

Squat down as low as you comfortably can, knees behind your toes. Bend arms and bring fists up to waist heightand then sink down even lower, contracting glutes. Spring up into the air landing back into the squat position. Roll through your feet toe-to-heel each time you land. If you are more advanced, try this move with your hands on top of your head.

SIDE SQUATS

Stand perpendicular to step, left foot on top of the bottom step, right foot on the ground. Bring hands to hips and turn toes out slightly. Squat briefly, then slowly come to a standing position, straightening the left leg and lifting right leg out to 6-8 inches, toes flexed. Find your balance and squeeze glutes hard on the standing leg. Return to side-squat position. Be sure to transfer weight to the left leg as you lift body up. To progress, rest a dumbbell on the lifting leg.

SINGLE LEG SQUAT

Stand with your back to a knee high step or bench, 4-5 feet in front of it. Hold dumbbells by side, pull shoulders back and down, abs tight. Extend left leg back and rest the top of the foot on the bench. Bend forward at the waist so that your back is as a slight angle to the floor, head in line with the spine. Lower until right thigh is parallel to the floor and knee is over ankle. Push up with your right foot to return to the starting position, straightening legs without locking knees.

Special Offer

Ragdale Hall is offering 10% off residential packages in Superior Rooms to visitors from laterlife.com in 2007 based on two sharing. This covers from two to five nights (excluding stays on Friday and Saturday night) at the Health Farm and include all meals, certain treatments and free use of all the Hall's facilities.  

To obtain this offer you must quote laterlife.com  when you book:

Ragdale Hall Health Hydro, Ragdale Village, Nr. Melton Mowbray. Leicestershire LE14 3PB
General Enquiries: 01664 434831, Fax: 01664 434587. www.ragdalehall.co.uk 
 

laterlife interest

The above article is part of the features section of laterlife.com called laterlife interest. laterlife interest contains a variety of articles of interest for visitors to laterlife.com written by a number of experienced and new journalists.

It includes both one off articles and also associated regular columns of a more specialist nature such as Healthwise, Talkback, Gardener's Diary, and a beauty section called Looking good in later life.

There's also 'It could be you' by Maggi Stamp laterlife's counsellor on human relationships. 

Also don't forget to take a look at our regular IT question and answer section called YoucandoIT by IT trainer and author Jackie Sherman.

To view the latest articles click on laterlife interest or to view indexes to previous articles click on laterlife interest index. To search for articles about a certain topic, use the site search feature at the top of the navigation.