The Internet pays little attention to what exactly a girl who wants to improve her shape should do in the gym. There is especially little information for beginner girls just planning to start visiting the gym. Now we will fill this moment by dividing the exercises into “correct” - helping to create an ideal figure, and “incorrect” - weakly effective.
After reading this material, you will understand why it is worth doing certain exercises, which will help you save a lot of time and bring better results. It is often awkward for beginners to ask a trainer or more experienced visitors about the purpose of each simulator and the exercises for which it is created.
And this needs to be done, because in order to properly deal with possible problem areas or simply proportionally improve your shape, you need to use the right equipment.
Any representative of the fair sex wants to attract the attention of men, and a beautiful athletic figure will help to do this. Be sure to study the features of the training process for girls in this article.
Gym training for girls: where to start
Set a goal. Any person should be aware of why he is starting to train and what result he wants to achieve. It is recommended to take measurements before your first workout. Watching the reflection in the mirror, you may not notice external changes, but numbers and centimeters will become the necessary indicators.
The axiom on which gym training should be based is: do no harm. Before classes, it is important to learn to listen and understand the body: what disorders exist in the functioning of the cardiovascular system, respiratory system, etc. Remember about your characteristics or previous injuries to the musculoskeletal system. All this is important to know when working with heavy weights, so that sports do not make yourself worse.
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What to do if you have persistent pelvic pain and incontinence
If you continue to have problems with pelvic pain or incontinence, contact your healthcare provider for a referral to one of MSK's physical therapists, a pelvic health specialist. This specialist will be able to understand the causes of pain or problems in the pelvic floor. You can also ask for a referral if you need help or guidance with vaginal dilator therapy or if you have difficulty doing Kegel exercises.
MSK physical therapists provide services at the following locations:
Sillerman Center for Rehabilitation 515 Madison Avenue (entrance on 53rd Street between Park and Madison Avenues) 4th Floor New York, NY 10022
The Sillerman Recovery Center can be reached at 646-888-1900.
to come back to the beginning
Gym training program
The training program is compiled by answering the questions: how ready am I for the loads, how often will they be, what size and what direction. If you use personal training, creating a training program is the job of your trainer, and this is where it is best to start. A professional instructor will warn you against possible mistakes and will work proactively: you will get into the right shape faster.
If you attend group programs or work out on your own, use the “from general to specific” principle: first choose programs in which the load is distributed throughout the body. Choose basic exercises that are easy to perform. Quantity - from one to three workouts per week with an interval of 2-3 days, depending on how quickly the body recovers.
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You can endure four daily workouts without muscle pain. This does not mean that the other systems (endocrine, nervous, cardiovascular) were also restored. Give your body the opportunity to fully recover, train with breaks of one or two days.
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Features of the female body
Before going to the gym, every girl should understand the main differences in the male and female body, as well as the peculiarities of the influence of physical activity.
Low testosterone levels
Compared to the male body, women have significantly lower testosterone levels. Namely, he is responsible for building muscles, so it is extremely difficult for a girl to achieve male muscle volume. Even if you constantly use free weights, it will be difficult to get closer to male parameters. Therefore, there is no need to be afraid of decent weights; a girl cannot achieve masculinization under normal conditions.
More fat mass
The figure of the fair sex “by default” has 7-10 percent more body fat when compared with male figures. This entails the need to increase the volume of cardio training. Supersets and circuit training have a good effect on girls, quickly eliminating excess fat deposits and giving them spectacular shapes.
High estrogen levels
Compared to men, women have more estrogen in their bodies. This is what leads to the appearance of extra pounds. Anaerobic exercise aimed at increasing muscle mass can support metabolism in the female body and prevent the figure from “blurring.”
Higher endurance
Women are tougher than men and have a low pain threshold. To put it simply, girls whine less and are better able to tolerate pain. This means that long-term training tires the fair sex less than a man.
Physiological features
Critical days or disrupted menstruation can negatively affect training. During these periods, the girl usually rolls back a little in the progress of her training.
This is exactly what every girl who plans to visit the gym should take into account. Now, in order to determine the direction of further discussion, you need to understand the reasons why girls often want to get into the gym. There are the most common reasons that most girls will confirm:
- elastic and strong buttocks,
- toned arms (often skin underneath),
- shaped breasts,
- slim stomach.
For approximately these reasons, most often a girl strives to take up fitness in order to give her figure a better shape. This means that exercises and simulators need to be chosen exactly those that will have the maximum impact on the specified zones, or rather, influence exactly the factor that can correct the problem. There is a list of the best exercises, and there are exercises that are not recommended for use in your program.
Workouts for weight loss
More often than not, girls choose weight loss workouts that don’t exist. Any activity is aimed at developing certain qualities, skills and benefits for the body. Losing weight is the process of getting rid of accumulated fat reserves that the body put aside because the amount of energy consumed was higher than its needs. Your task is to balance the request and response, and then go into deficit.
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Tell your healthcare provider if you have:
- difficulties in identifying the pelvic floor muscles;
- pain when doing Kegel exercises;
- difficulty doing Kegel exercises;
- concerns about bowel, bladder or sexual function;
- pain in the pelvic area;
- need to get help with vaginal dilator therapy;
- issues that require referral to a physical therapist who specializes in pelvic health.
to come back to the beginning
Butt workout
Tilt on one leg: bend your supporting leg at the knee, stand firmly on your foot. Raise your arms up, maintain a strong back, strong core muscles, bend at the hip joint, loading the back surface of the supporting leg. Perform 3 sets of 20 repetitions.
Extension of the pelvis to the ceiling: keep your palms in the direction of your gaze, one foot pressed to the floor, the other standing on the floor on the heel. The pelvis is level, between the palms and heels. As you exhale, extend your pelvis toward the ceiling, lift it until it is parallel to the floor, keeping your other leg suspended, the knee of the supporting leg should be exactly above the ankle. Perform 3 sets of 20 repetitions.
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Support and information regarding sexual health and intimacy
If you need more support or information about sexual health and intimacy, talk to your healthcare provider about the Female Sexual Medicine & Women's Health Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK). For more information or to make an appointment, call 646-888-5076.
Services through the Female Sexual Medicine & Women's Health Program are available at the following locations:
- Rockefeller Outpatient Pavilion 160 East 53rd Street New York, NY 10022
- Breast Center named after. Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center 300 East 66th Street, New York, NY 10065
to come back to the beginning
Arm workout
Chaturanga Dandasana: Stand in a plank position with your arms straight, hands directly under your shoulder joints. Shift your body weight slightly forward, pull your elbows back, touching your body. Lower your entire body to the floor, simultaneously touching the surface with your chest and pelvis. Perform 3 sets of 20 repetitions.
Reverse surface push-ups: With your back close to the surface, place your palms at shoulder distance. The pelvis and back are as close to the edge of the surface as possible. Stretch your legs forward and lower your pelvis as close to the floor as possible, moving your elbows back. Perform 3 sets of 20 repetitions.
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A set of Kegel exercises for women at home
A popular Kegel exercise technique for women
The technique developed by Arnold Kegel is one of the most famous in this area and sets the foundation for all other programs for building pelvic floor muscle training in women, including our IntimCoach technique. Unlike simple Kegel exercises, our method uses a number of simulators that train muscles much more effectively, which allows you to achieve results much faster.
Arnold Kegel is a scientist and gynecologist of the mid-20th century who became famous for his invention of a machine that has feedback, thereby allowing the strength of the pelvic floor muscles to be measured. This simulator is called the Perineometer or Kegel Perineometer.
Kegel exercises for women are recommended to be used to strengthen the tone of the pelvic floor muscles. This need arises because these muscles weaken and stretch with age or under the influence of certain factors, because in everyday life these muscle tissues hardly work. This is important, since the main function of the pelvic muscles is to support the pelvic organs, and weakened muscles often cannot cope with this function, which ultimately can lead to negative consequences in the form of diseases and problems in intimate life.
Kegel exercises are recommended for women, as well as men, as a method of treatment and prevention of diseases. They can be very useful for incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse, uterine prolapse, after childbirth, and also for hemorrhoids. Especially suitable for girls who are preparing for pregnancy and want the birth to be successful. With the help of exercises, you can learn to achieve maximum relaxation of the muscles that control the process of pushing the baby out during labor. They can also easily help restore tissue stretching. Kegel exercises will play into the hands of those who want to increase orgasm and sexual desire, and will also help heighten sexual sensations in their partner. They are the key to long-term sexual health and resist aging of the body.
Currently, the Kegel technique is used and recommended by many doctors: urologists, obstetricians-gynecologists, chiropractors, and the exercises developed by the scientist are recommended for both women and men as a way to prevent and treat diseases associated with the genitourinary organs. The main purpose of Kegel exercises is to develop the strength of the pelvic muscles and increase blood circulation in the pelvic area. The result of using this technique will be the solution of gynecological problems and improved sensations during sexual intercourse. The use of exercise equipment during exercise will greatly enhance the effect, and accordingly, the result will be noticeable much earlier. This happens because using a machine essentially replaces exercise with strength training. Moreover, without exercise equipment, it is impossible to achieve the same results as with them, just as it is impossible to pump up muscles without exercise, just like using weights.
Where are the pelvic floor muscles located?
To use the exercises most effectively, you should follow a specific execution pattern.
First of all, you need to find out for yourself (feel) where exactly the pelvic floor muscles are. To do this, take a comfortable position, it is better to lie on your back, then place your finger in the vagina. Squeeze the muscles, but remember not to use the muscles of the abdomen, back and buttocks. When you feel that the muscle tissue around your finger is compressed and tense, it means that the attempt to identify the pelvic floor muscles has been successfully completed. There is another way to determine it: sit down on the toilet, and while urinating, try to interrupt the stream of urine by squeezing your muscles. If successful, then the actions were correct and you have identified the necessary muscles. Demonstration of the pelvic floor muscles in women using an example of a layout, please read this video before performing Kegel exercises.
Recommendations for performing exercises and how to do them correctly.
Before class, we recommend going to the toilet to empty your bladder. Exercises based on muscle compression are best performed in certain positions:
- Lying on your back, spread your legs slightly in different directions, bend your knees, while touching the floor with your heels. You can place one hand under your buttocks and the other on top of your stomach. The proposed position will allow you to better feel muscle contraction.
- Lying on your stomach, stretch your legs and spread them slightly. For convenience, you can put something soft under your butt, for example, use a small pillow.
- Lying on your stomach, bend one leg at the knee.
A set of Kegel exercises for women at home.
There are different options for exercises, but not all of them are correct, and knowing this is very important, because if you do it incorrectly you can even harm yourself.
- It is necessary to squeeze the muscles, as when trying to stop urination, wait 3 seconds. and relax. This is done by the bulbospongiosus muscle, also called the “vaginal ring.”
- It is necessary to squeeze the muscles in the anus area, wait again for 3 seconds, then relax the anus. This works the Levator ani muscle group, which is a large and strong muscle group. It creates the main strong compression (provided that it is sufficiently trained), this is the very framework that supports the internal organs.
- You need to tense and relax both muscles at the same time at a high pace for several minutes. This is an option for complex exercises.
- And the last option, which is often used in different sources, but, in fact, is NOT correct . It is suggested to push down a little, as if you want to go to the toilet or as during childbirth. Doing this is a big mistake that many women make when doing Kegel exercises. In this case, it is not the pelvic floor muscles that are trained, although this is what is commonly thought, but rather the control of one’s intra-abdominal pressure. You can read more about this skill in the article about our methodology. It is under no circumstances recommended to train it with weak pelvic floor muscles. Therefore, this exercise is an erroneous option that should never be done by unprepared women.
It is worth starting with a small number of muscle compressions, for example, doing each exercise 10-12 times in 4-5 stages. After 5-7 days, increase the number of classes by 4-5 times. When performing the exercises, you need to reach 30 executions in one stage. After a certain period of time, Kegel exercises will need to be done 150 times every day. By doing this volume, following the instructions, the muscles will be able to get stronger.
Carefully study the technique of performing these exercises. When exercising, it is not recommended to suck in your stomach and hold your breath.
There are also several variations for similar exercises. Each variation can be used separately for different muscles, and you can also work the bulbospongiosus muscle and levator ani simultaneously. Take a comfortable position and try to perform all the exercise options step by step.
- For 10-12 seconds you need to tense and then relax your muscles, followed by about 10 seconds of rest. After performing this exercise 3 times, take a break for 25-30 seconds. The next step is to clench and unclench your muscles for 5 seconds, followed by another 5 seconds of rest. This stage must be performed 9 times, rest and move on to the final step. They are required to squeeze the muscles and remain in this position for 25-30 seconds, after which they need to relax for the same 25-30 seconds. Perform 3-4 times.
- First you need to tense your muscles for 5 seconds, then rest for 5 seconds. Repeat this 10 times. Next, quickly tense and relax your muscles 10 times in 3 stages.
- This option simply involves squeezing and relaxing the muscles for 2 minutes, then increasing to 20 minutes. Don't forget to rest while doing this. It is worth doing 3-5 times a day.
To achieve excellent results, the exercises must be performed several times every day. It won’t take much time, but it will bear fruit. Turning to the instructions of Dr. Kegel himself, it becomes clear that the benefits of these exercises are high, but the maximum result is possible only with the help of a simulator. This is due to the fact that pelvic floor muscle trainers create additional stress, increasing muscle resistance. Thus, the speed and efficiency of achieving results increased. Kegel also talked about a psychological factor that also affects the result. Since there was visible feedback on the quality of the exercises, it influenced the women in a positive way. After all, having felt changes for the better, the woman will continue to exercise. In the course of research, it turned out that Dr. Kegel’s exercises without using a simulator were less effective, as Kegel himself said. The technique involved performing exercises under his guidance, since there was a possibility of a large number of errors occurring in the patients. In an attempt to spread the use of exercise machines in medicine, Kegel faced accusations that patients may become sexually aroused during treatment. That is why in the last century the simulator was no longer used so often.
Gynecologist Arnold Kegel did a great job and laid the foundation for a whole trend by inventing Kegel exercises and the world's first exercise machine, thereby making a huge contribution to the field of women's health. But science does not stand still, and the life’s work of this wonderful doctor is developing every year.
The IntimCoach training technique is tens of times more effective than regular Kegel exercises!
With the Tulip simulator you can reduce your training time to 10-15 minutes a day , increasing the speed of achieving results by 5-10 times . After achieving the desired results, all that remains is to maintain the achieved effect, and this takes much less time and effort. This is achieved by isolated load on the pelvic floor muscles during exercise with the simulator. The entire necessary set of various exercises is described in detail in our manual for self-study.
Whereas with the Kegel Trainer, which works on the principle of an expander, (and any of its analogues with an electronic or mechanical sensor), it is difficult for a woman to independently isolate the pelvic floor muscles, and the result is the effect of training the abs and intra-abdominal pressure, but not the intimate muscles. When exercising with such simulators, the supervision of a doctor or instructor is required to ensure that the woman squeezes her muscles correctly and does not push or strain her abs. With the Tulip Trainer, you can practice on your own, and at the same time be sure that the exercises are performed correctly and the results grow very quickly. The obvious effect of such training is noticeable in 95% of women after two weeks.
The principle of training with the Tulip simulator.
We recommend using the Classic Kegel Trainer in addition to the Tulip Trainer if you want to diversify your strength training and practice compression techniques for using them in sex in different positions.
How to test the strength of your pelvic floor muscles?
You can check the strength of the pelvic floor muscles yourself, at home, using a special text, and you can also familiarize yourself with the average indicators of the pelvic floor muscles here
HOW TO DETERMINE THE STRENGTH OF THE PELVIC FLOOR MUSCLES INDEPENDENTLY?
Leg workout
Classic Back Lunge: Take a wide step back with one leg, maintaining a 90-degree angle between the thigh and shin of the front leg and between the thigh and shin of the back leg, and then try to tilt the body at the hip joint slightly forward towards the front leg through hip flexion. Perform 3 sets of 20 repetitions.
Sprint start: front leg bent 90 degrees, knee level above ankle. The back leg is straight, move your arms diagonally like levers, while exhaling, push off powerfully with your back leg and jump to the ceiling. Land on a straight leg. Perform 3 sets of 20 repetitions.
The main thing in any business is to enjoy the process! Treat yourself and your body with walks around the sunny city and don’t forget to introduce sports into your life.
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3. “Feel your body”
The purpose of the exercise: to establish contact with the body, increase sensitivity in sex and gain self-confidence.
Execution time: from 2 minutes to infinity.
We do many things mechanically: pour coffee, brush our teeth, wash our hair. There is an advantage to this - by performing familiar tasks automatically, we save time. But there is also a huge minus: we stop feeling ourselves. This means that we cease to understand, for example, which touches are pleasant to us and which are not. And it would be great to get yourself back.
Get in the shower and try to get to know your body again. To do this, start touching yourself: not as usual, with precise mechanical movements, but with great attention to sensations. Wash your hair with extra care, massage your scalp, then slide your fingers down your neck to your collarbones and chest. This is your body and it needs attention and love.
Pay attention to those places that you avoided before: gently touch the lower abdomen and perineum, linger a little longer on the labia and anus. Try to understand whether these touches are pleasant for you or not. Your body knows what you need at this moment, you just need to listen to it.
