Flat, six-pack abs are hard enough to achieve when you are young. As a woman in your 60s, who has had a few kids, it might feel impossible! You may even be saying, “Core? What core?!”

Benefits of a Strong Core

A strong core will not only help you look and feel good about yourself, but it also helps improve your posture, confidence, and balance, prevents injury, and even protects your inner organs. A strong core becomes a powerhouse of muscles that protect and power your body through each day.

Moreover, building muscle mass and decreasing the fat around your midsection can reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. 

The Real Helper

Because it feels so hard to achieve that dream core and abs, many women are tempted by quick fixes or cleanses.

Yet the real superpower to slowing down the aging process and building your muscles is a mix of good, old-fashioned exercise and a healthy diet that fuels your body, such as lean protein, veggies, and complex carbs – skip the added sugars. 

Let’s Begin Properly

Strength training keeps the body younger, stronger, and more functional as the years go by. When you feel like you’ve lost your abdominal muscles, it can be hard to understand how to engage them properly again.

The old standby is to jump right into crunches or sit-ups – isn’t that the best way to build up your core? But crunches and sit-ups can actually be dangerous for your spine as you age, causing too much pressure with repetitive flexion.

Jumping right into crunches and sit-ups without reminding your body how to properly activate the core can backtrack your results. But there is a great way to fire your core muscles so you can see results right away.

What Types of Exercises Help the Most?

Building a strong core can be broken down into three types of exercises. Just as babies learn first to crawl then walk then run, you can use the same principle when it comes to building up your core muscles.

First Step Is Stability

Starting with basic stability exercises, you can build stability in your muscles which will help to allow the deep core muscles to activate properly and work towards building a strong core and flat abs.

Examples of stability exercises are bridges, the bird dog exercise and even planks. Focus on technique and breathing with these exercises. It’s important to ensure you are firing the correct muscles, so you don’t create imbalances along the way.

Try to hold the exercises for a full exhale and breathe in on the return. Using breathing with your core exercises ensures safety and allows the abdominals to properly engage. 

Time for Strengthening Exercises

Once you feel comfortable activating the muscles correctly, and your technique is good, it’s time to progress to strengthening exercises to build more muscle so you can have a strong, lean, and powerful core.

When performing strength training exercises, keep breathing, focus on technique, and aim for 8–12 repetitions and 2–3 sets of each exercise. Examples of strengthening exercises are mountain climbers, progressions of planks like adding a shoulder tap, and variations on crunches like the reverse crunch.

Add in Some Power

When you are feeling confident in your technique to engage your core muscles, and have added in strengthening exercises, you can then add some power to the mix! Power exercises add a bit of speed or more force to your motions.

These exercises help with your balance, reaction time, and even have shown more carryover into strength with your daily life. As always, proper form is key. An example of a power exercise is the woodchop exercise. This exercise gets your whole body engaged and working to build the core you are looking for.

Aubrey offers many resources on how to restore your core via workouts built for each stage of the process. You can download her free Restore Your Core guide or access the Restore Your Core course.

What is the current state of your core? Have you tried doing anything to strengthen your core muscles? What were the results? Have you given up because it was taking too long to accomplish what you wanted? Please share your thoughts and experiences and let’s have a conversation!

Melissa Gorga’s Unicorn Pool Float On Instagram

Real Housewives of New Jersey Instagram Decor

Melissa Gorga’s giant inflatable unicorn pool float is so on trend as far as pool floats are concerned. The white unicorn floatation has a bright rainbow colored mane and tail, complete with little white stars and of course, a gold horn.

It seems everyone who’s anyone rocking their summer bodies are doing so on a unicorn float for the past few years. Melissa’s rockin’ extra hard on the Jersey Shore in a stunning one-piece, black and white stripe suit and boss babe worthy shades. Meanwhile, I’m over here rockin’ a quarantine body. And by that I mean, not suitable for any summer activities. You’d think I’d be inspired by our favorite Shore babe’s summertime body, but meh. I’ve decided I’m going to postpone any version of a summer body to 2021. So for now, I’ll just live vicariously through Melissa and her unicorn pool float.

Until next time,

Chelsie

Click Here To Shop Melissa’s Unicorn Pool Float

Click Here To Shop Melissa’s Black and White One-Piece Swimsuit

(Melissa got hers at Envy by MG but it is no longer on their site)

Click Here To See Melissa’s Sold Out Sunglasses

Photo: @MelissaGorga

Originally posted at: Melissa Gorga’s Unicorn Pool Float

Have you thought about what you want to do with the rest of your life? Do you ask yourself, “What’s next?” or, “What’s left?” It can be a challenge to think about what you want to do. However, answering the question of “what’s next” is critically important for success.

See the World with the Eyes Of a Beginner

As we age, we tend to stay with the familiar. We gravitate toward comfort. The truth is, the more you stay with the familiar, the smaller your world becomes – which makes for a greater chance of becoming isolated, depressed and anxious.

For example, if you wanted to try out a new art class, but your inner conversation goes like this: “Everyone will be better than me. I won’t be good at it because I have never done this before. Everyone will know more than me.”

If you’re really self-conscious, that train of thought will bring you to the ultimate excuse – of course, that “no one will like me.”

You talked yourself out of it before you ever sign up. Whenever you compare yourself to another, you can’t help but come out the short end of the stick, right?

If you’re not ready to jump into something new, you can tip toe in by imagining the new experience through the eyes of a child. Children are full of wonder. Their imaginations run wild. They experience their world whole-heartedly. It is magical.

You would never tell a child all the messages you tell yourself, so why not try compassion and love to help yourself become the beginner? You still have that ability. You just need to wipe off the dust, become the child, and let your imagination out to play.

Focus Your Awareness with Intention

Remember that where your awareness goes, your intention and focus follow. When you have no focus, one day runs into another, and life becomes a blur. So take some time to identify your intentions for your physical, emotional and spiritual health.

Make an inventory on what has had meaning for you in the past, and evaluate what is meaningful now. Keep a journal of what you discover, and review it often because you are changing and evolving.

It is important to keep all possibilities on the table. Remember, you’re reconnecting to yourself in a new way. There is no right or wrong.

Slow Down, Be Still and Listen Deeply

Our culture urges us to always be “busy.” We run our lives at a fast pace. The more you run, the less you connect to anything meaningful in the world.

Instead of succumbing to what culture teaches you, let yourself sit in nature, still your body. Start noticing what your senses tell you.

As you take it all in, notice what stillness feels like in your body. The more comfortable you get feeling stillness, the more you hear the whispers of your soul. That is the voice of your inner wisdom speaking to you, holding you in safety and love.

Life and its meaning are always easier when we take the time and effort to meet ourselves in this way. Then you become empowered to meet everyday as a new adventure. What a great way to experience each day for the rest of your life!

What big goals do you have for the next phase of your life? Are there any hobbies you’d like to explore? What is your favorite spot in nature where you can calmly sit down and find peace? Please join the conversation below!

Caroline Stanbury’s White Cutout Dress on Instastories

Caroline Stanbury Instagram Fashion 2020

Considering there’s barely any shows on right now and our favourite Bravolebs haven’t really been posting on the ‘Gram like they used to (besides the trusty old faithfuls: Braunwyn Windam-Burke, Kameron Westcott, Tracy Tutor and Paige DeSorbo obvs), we’re just grateful that we can always rely on ex-Bravoleb Caroline Stanbury to keep us in business with her daily (and we mean daily) OOTD’s like today’s white cutout dress. Now if only she could please look into returning to show business, that would be really great (although our wallets may beg to differ).

Fashionably,

Faryn

Click Here to Shop Her Cult Gaia Dress

Click Here For Additional Stock

And Here For Even More Stock

Click Here to See Her Sold Out Prada Hat

Photo & Info: @CarolineStanbury

Originally posted at: Caroline Stanbury’s White Cutout Dress