Easy Exercise Tips for Your Stomach and Thighs

Many people exercise on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis, but fail to achieve the results that they're looking for, due to a lack of proper techniques and overworking the muscles. By taking your time, alternating muscle groups and adding variety to your daily workout, you'll start to look and feel better.

Warm Up

• It's extremely important to warm up your muscles before beginning any ab or thigh workout. Warming up will increase your heart rate, which is key to weight loss, and can also prevent an injury. Good ways to warm up include running in place, stretching and walking.

Maintain Good Form

• It's a misconception that while exercising, you must attempt to do as many repetitions as possible. Although it's good to repeat your exercise many times, quality produces more results than quantity. It's especially important to take your time completing ab workouts. Focus on technique. Always keep your abs tight, and really go through the motions of the exercise to tone your muscles well. When performing an ab exercise, replace sit-ups with crunches, or do the bicycle. Sit-ups are rarely completed properly, and can strain the neck and back.

  A crunch is performed by simply lying down with the knees bent, while slightly lifting the head towards the sky. A bicycle can be performed by lying flat on the floor, with your hands behind your head and legs extending straight in front of you. Lift one leg at a time to the elbow that's opposite the leg, and keep your leg at a 90 degree angle; repeat on the other leg. The bicycle works the upper and lower abs as well as the love handles.

Rest Your Muscles

• Don't overwork your abs or thighs, especially if you've used weights or exercise machines.

  It's good to exercise these muscles three to five times per week, but your muscles need to rest after the stress that they've endured. If you work out multiple days in a row, alternate muscle groups each day. Otherwise, you can damage your muscles, thus slowing your progress towards your goal. Switching up your routine will keep your workouts from becoming boring; your body can become accustomed to the same workout, and you might see your results plateau.

Always Cool Down

• You must cool down and stretch at the end of every workout to rebuild your muscles and catch your breath. Practice breathing exercises during your cool down, to bring your heart rate back to a steady level and to contract the muscles. An easy breathing exercise is counting from one to ten, and taking a big deep breath at the end of your count.