Get Easy Health Digest™ in your inbox and don’t miss a thing when you subscribe today. Plus, get the free bonus report, Mother Nature’s Tips, Tricks and Remedies for Cholesterol, Blood Pressure & Blood Sugar as my way of saying welcome to the community!
How to ‘curtsy’ for total body sculpting
There are many ways to exercise, tone the body and improve cardiovascular health. Some are boring, some are challenging…
Well, with a little out of the box thinking you can make your workouts much more fun. And in today’s video, Tema from Potentia Personal Training, is going to show you how to do a curtsy exercise with an overhead press.
This is a compound movement exercise that works multi muscle groups at one time, cutting your workout time down substantially. Also, it’s a super fun and different way to work your butt, legs, shoulders and arms at the same time. Let’s get started!
Curtsy exercise with an overhead press
The curtsy is an old-timey gesture women and girls used to greet people, by kind of bowing by bending one knee in front of another.
Actually, this movement is great for the quads and especially good for working the glutes. And the overhead press works the deltoids, upper back and shoulders. That’s why it’s called a compound exercise.
How to do it
To do this curtsy exercise you will start standing, arms bend at elbows, hands in a fist by your shoulders.
To curtsy, move your left leg back and behind the right leg, then lower yourself down. Do this by bending your knees. Bend them enough that you are working the legs, but not so much that you can’t see your toes past your front knee.
Now stand back up the starting position, raise both arms up in a pressing motion.
Then repeat the curtsy exercise on the other side. Here, the right foot will move back and behind the left.
Caution: You want to feel all the weight in your butt muscle and thighs… and not in your knees. If you feel it in your knees, this means you are leaning forward too much. Simply adjust upward or back a bit until the weight is off the knees.
If you have no trouble doing 10 reps of this exercise, then go ahead a grab a set of hand weights and try it again. This adds weights to the arms and shoulders in the press movement. It also adds body weight to the curtsy exercise for increased leg endurance and strength.
Tip: Squeeze your glutes (butt muscles) each time you stand at center and raise the weights or your hands. This will help stabilize your body and reduce any chance of injury to your back.
Try for a set of 10, and to make it easy to count just follow the overhead presses.