Margie Weiss: My name is Margie Weiss and this is Women's Fix-it Zone. The area that we're going to work now is called the hamstrings; it's the back of your leg. It's a big muscle group, so feel free to take your larger weight. You can always add more weight later. First do the exercise safely, decide if you can add some more weight. What we're going to do is put the weight between our feet at the instep, not at the ankle, but the instep. We're going to flip over onto the belly. Bellybutton is to the floor, you're going to put your elbows out, hands in, chin on your hands. Object here is core, it's not so much about the raising and the lowering of the legs, as about the core.
So, what you're going to want to do is press your belly to the floor, squeeze a penny in your gluteus and tighten your hamstrings, squeeze your inner thighs together. As your legs rise slowly and lower, the range of motion is not quite 90 degrees. You catch it just shy of 90 degrees, because when it's right straight up and down, there is not much work being done, it's just bone-on-bone. Controlling the motion up and down is critical. Now, how do you breathe? You breathe out as the weight comes up and you breathe in as it comes down. That way as you're breathing out, you're actually pressing your hips down for the floor. You don't want your rear end to come up in the air, because that changes the workout and it puts too much stress on the lower back.
So, as the legs rise, you're pressing your hips down for the floor. You can do these all the way up or you can pulse them near the floor, so you have little baby's presses, presses, presses. You're squeezing the glute the entire time. You're squeezing your inner thighs together the whole time. Now, if the weight gets too heavy, you can do the whole exercise without the weights at all. You just can drop them to the floor and continue to do that exercise. You're still getting stress in this entire area. Belly again, hollow and to the floor. As we finish the exercise and we slowly lower the weights to the floor, we would kick them out of the way as Lesley is going to do, so that we can stretch, because you generally want to stretch the hamstring right after you do the workout.
So, I'm going to show two ways to stretch. You can lie on your back with one leg bent and one leg towards your face, or you can sit up with one leg out to the side and lean forwards. The object here; back is flat, chin is out. Object here; legs fairly straight. If you are not super flexible, bottom leg is bent. If you are more flexible, bottom leg would be straight, but where you're stretching is back in here. Then you bend this one down, and then you repeat obviously with the other leg. On this exercise since you're doing both legs at the same time, you're going to stretch them both out.
So, you're going to switch the legs. Hamstrings tend to tighten up a little bit and that's why we like to stretch them out right after we do the hamstring workout. Amount of time you're going to do this? Maybe 20 seconds, when you get better maybe 30 seconds worth, maybe a minute. Remember, you can alternate doing singles, 2x2s or pulses. That's for your hamstrings.
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