Day 13:Active Recovery

While you want to work out the soreness and lactic acid that have built up in your system from your training, you also want to make sure that you’re working your abs muscles as effectively as possible.

The key to quality abs work is to hold your entire core tight throughout the entire set. For instance, with hanging leg raises you should pull your knees into your midsection and emphasize a deep contraction in your six-pack. But then you do not want to just drop your legs. Continue to hold your midsection tight and slowly lower your legs, really feeling that stretch in your abs (especially the lower portion).

Don’t allow your midsection to relax between reps. One way to avoid this with hanging leg raises is to stop with your straight legs out in front of you just a bit (with a slight bend at your waist). This will prevent you from swaying or swinging, and it will also keep you from using momentum to begin your next rep. This will really force you to use your abs to get the most from every rep. This is a challenging move, and I’ve placed it on today’s workout because I really want you to focus on your abs on a day when you aren’t spent from weight-training moves.

Kneeling cable crunches are a basic move, but too many people don’t perform them correctly. To perform this move you should get on your knees in front of a cable apparatus with your upper body at about a 30- to 45-degree angle above your hips. Throughout the whole set you want to hold your core tight, and you also want to keep your hips directly above your knees so that your upper legs are perpendicular to the ground.

Curl your upper body down, bringing your elbows in toward your knees rather than to the ground. Do not allow your hips to drift back to leverage the weight lower. A lot of people use too much weight, which transfers the load from your abs to your hips flexors. If you really want to challenge yourself with this move, I recommend that you use a lighter weight and really force a contraction into your abs. Then hold your abs tight as you slowly release the weight, emphasizing the stretch in your core.

CYDNEY SAYS: Use your Pre-Kaged on an as-needed basis for today’s workout. If you can perform today’s active recovery workout without this boost, that’s fine. Make sure to take your Clean Burn to keep supporting fat burning, and get in your fermented BCAAs and Glutamine to support recovery as you head towards your next weight workout in two days.

Clean burn

CLEAN BURN® You’ll also take Clean Burn just before whole-food meals to help support fat burning. Clean Burn contains a powerful combination of ingredients that work to attack fat loss through multiple physiological processes. These include mobilizing fat from storage, boosting metabolism, and increasing thermogenesis. Ingredients include green tea extract, capsicum fruit, Gymnema sylvestre extract, and chromium complex. For best results, you should take 3 doses of 2 capsules every day while following my nutrition program to help maximize fat loss while maintaining lean muscle. CYDNEY SAYS: Be as rigorous with your weight-loss supplements as you are with your training and nutrition. They all work together to help you get the most from your 8-week Fat-loss Figure Trainer.