HeartButt Week 4 - Surge Your Heart Butt Exercises

Make Your Heart Butt Exercises Even More Effective

In the Heart Butt Challenge, we’re all about maximizing our efforts to get the most efficient booty-shaping results. Would you like to make your Heart Butt exercises even more effective? I know I’d like to make every rep count to the MAX! That’s why I’m going to introduce you to the concept I call surging, and teach you how to apply it to your Heart Butt exercises - and really, any exercises you do!

Surging is a really cool concept, and there are a couple ways you can look at it. You can go the science route of the neurokinetic connection, getting as many nerve endings in one area involved as possible, or you can think of putting energy and focus into the muscle you’re using. We’re moving out of the realm of blasé repetitions and into the realm of intentional exercise. I started talking about this back in the day training professional athletes (check out my ICE training for free!), and over the last year, I’ve really gotten into meditation and visualization. It’s amazing that when I use these techniques with breath and surging, the exercise becomes twice as hard! HELLO, making good use of time and effort!

First, a word on the breath. For the purpose of surging, we’re breathing in through the stomach, to the ribs, front, back and sides, and then to the chest and neck. If you’re a shallow breather, put your hands on your belly and when you inhale try to expand your hands and then bring it up to the lungs.

Ready? Let’s surge!

You can do this standing or sitting. Take a deep breath in, feel the energy come up from the space around our legs and into your lower belly, and then with the exhale contract the abs. Let’s take this to the next level. Inhale and pull in energy, and on the exhale squeeze the pelvic floor and transverse abs as hard as you can.

That’s your basic surge - getting the pelvic floor and the transverse abdominis activated with your breath. We can add another dimension with visualization. This time visualize your core musculature, the muscles on top and the muscles underneath. Breathe in, and as you surge on the exhale visualize the abdominals drawing in and toward the spine as you pull the pelvic floor up. See those muscle fibers working with all their might! Hold that and relax everything else in your body.

Did that take a lot of focus and maybe even make you shake? GOOD! The more you practice, the more you’ll build the connection to these muscles and be able to control them.

Now let’s apply this to the Heart Butt exercises - you should follow this pattern with every single rep! Do your 8-10 repetitions of the exercise, and then on the last rep we will hold for an extra surge. Sucking in air through the stomach and full rib extension, then as you exhale, surge the pelvic floor and abs while visualizing the glute muscles, and send every amount of energy you can to that glute to squeeze it as hard as possible.

Were you able to do as many reps and sets of the exercises when you focus on surging, or did your muscles fatigue faster?

You can apply this technique to all exercises you do, such as bicep curls. We’re building the mind-body connection, and you can turn on some calming music to make this a moving meditation.

Watch the full week 4 live feed here.