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Maximize Your Wedding Workout
Think you can melt fat from a trouble spot with a targeted exercise? Think again.

Spot reduction is one of the biggest fitness fairy tales out there.

Performing countless arm curls is not the best way to remove extra jiggle and create amazing arms to show off on your wedding day. Also, doing hundreds of crunches may strengthen your abdomen, but if you’re taking in more calories than you’re burning off, washboard abs will be covered in a layer of insulating fat!

Rather than choosing exercises that target individual muscles (like arm curls for biceps), you should perform movements that work many muscles at once.

A second tip for getting the most out of your time at the gym is to visualize your muscles as you exercise. For example, if you can picture how your deep abdominal muscles wrap around your waist like a girdle, it’s easier to work the entire muscle when you’re doing core work.

Next, improve your technique. Performing an exercise is one thing; doing it right is altogether different. Take an old-school ab exercise: the sit-up. You may be surprised to learn that this gym-class staple primarily works the muscles that cross in front of your hips. Unless you deliberately squeeze your midsection throughout the entire set, you’ll miss out on the belly-firming benefits.

There’s one in every gym … you know, the guy doing arm curls with too much weight. He’s arching his back, grunting, and jerking the bar back and forth like some uncoordinated, painful dance routine. Worse yet, he’s using just about every muscle except the ones he’s trying to work. The lesson? Maintain control. Perform every exercise deliberately.

Lastly, appreciate why some exercises are better than others. Traditional “body-sculpting” movements (again, like arm curls) that are performed in an isolated manner and involve only a handful of muscles, won’t give you a fit and defined physique. In short, the best exercises are the ones that recruit many muscles, and, as a result, involve lots of coordinated movement. A great example? Squats.

Need some help putting these tips into practice? Check out WeddingShape right here.