Bodyflex: what it is, technique and basic exercises of the system * Crossfit

Bodyflex is the most successful attempt to sell ordinary women the idea of doing exercises every day. This is a hybrid of yogic breathing "nauli", the simplest stretch marks and static poses. The purpose of the lesson is to lose weight exclusively in problem areas and to rejuvenate the face.

Gymnastics was invented by the American housewife Greer Childers. In Russia, the media fitness instructor Marina Korpan is engaged in the promotion of the method. Any exercise is better than lying on the couch, but can bodyweight workout really help you lose 6 sizes without dieting, get rid of wrinkles and folds, and boost your metabolism?

How did bodyflex appear and who is its creator?

The history of the emergence of gymnastics can be found in the book by Greer Childers. And see the author herself on Youtube. Greer has a website, however, in English. She was the wife of a doctor and suffered greatly from idleness. More precisely, from the hard life of an American housewife. She didn’t get enough sleep, overeat, felt disgusting and recovered up to size 16 clothes. For you to understand, the Russian 46 size is 8.

What only the poor fellow did not do, except for rational nutrition and strength training. Greer went to aerobics, but her legs only became thicker, and her stomach, if it did decrease, it was very small. She ate only vegetables and did not eat at all, but then she broke off the diet. By the way, Childers' favorite dish is shawarma, that is, burritos, which explains a lot.

The husband left, and the joy of life went with him. And if not for a trip to some esoteric guru and training in breathing exercises "at the price of a Cadillac", Greer would have remained in a dress from "Omar Tent", as she herself calls outfits for the full.

After a while, the breathing practitioner Childers lost weight. And then I created a 15-minute morning complex, included exercises only for problem areas and the face, and followed the knurled info-business scheme. First - seminars in US cities. Then - a book about weight loss, which became a bestseller. Next - "Jimbar". This is not a very handy resistance band for static exercises at home. After - sales of videotapes and books. And finally, everything is the same, but through the site.

Bodyflex is when a person first exhales sharply, then draws in the stomach due to the vacuum and takes some kind of static pose. After standing this way for 8 slow counts, he can inhale and perform the next rep.

The gymnastics itself looks even stranger than the Russian insanity from Instagram - a vacuum. But it sells great.

True, Marina Korpan, an instructor of group programs and the creator of a whole school of breathing exercises, writes that if you continue to eat buns, no body flex will help. But he continues to teach him.

The main idea of bodyflex

The official idea is simple - oxygen burns fat in problem areas. Supposedly holding the breath creates its deficit in the working muscle, then it is abruptly "pumped" into the problem area and begins to burn.

In addition, static exercise, according to Greer, is many times more effective than aerobics:

They do not lead to muscle hypertrophy, which means that the legs and arms will not grow in volume.
Static does not load the joints and ligaments, and it can be done with sore knees and back.
They are a metabolic activator that causes the body to burn calories faster at rest.

All this is great, but the process of fatty acid oxidation is not that simple. Our body cannot "start" with fat burning if there are simpler energy sources, for example, liver and muscle glycogen. Or maybe, but if the liver and muscles are empty and the body is deficient in energy. Normally, the human body stores about 400 g of glycogen. This amount is obtained by adding two average daily rations of a woman with a normal diet. That is, switching the body to burning fat is not so easy.

The second point is that you need to activate certain receptors of adipose tissue in order for the fat burning process to start. And they start to work only if the person is in a calorie deficit.

15 minutes of charging in the morning will burn about 50-100 kcal, and this is only if the weight is large. All body flex exercises are of regional impact and low intensity. Hardly anyone will be able to exceed these numbers with them.

What does bodyflex for weight loss do? Teaches you to suck in your stomach and trains the transverse abdominal muscle. It is thanks to this that saggy abdomens are drawn in and the waist is reduced. In this case, fat is not burned without a diet. And as for the rest of the paraphernalia, it can only tone the muscles a little if a person has not done anything before.

Exercise should be done every day on an empty stomach. The point here is to make it easier to suck in your stomach while holding your breath.

The role of oxygen and carbon dioxide in breathing

Biology textbooks do not write about the fact that oxygen burns fat during breathing. The role of oxygen in the body is to participate in oxidation on the mitochondria of cells (in relation to fats). But fatty acids still have to go to these mitochondria. They will only be there if the hormonal response is typical of a calorie deficit.

Carbon dioxide is nothing more than a metabolic product that is obtained as a result of cellular respiration and is released into the environment. If you hold your breath, oxygen will not be "absorbed in a larger volume."

By contracting a muscle or stretching it, a person accelerates blood circulation in the work area. Blood with oxygen rushes there. This theoretically speeds up local metabolism. But there is no scientific evidence as to how much.

Greer wrote that 6,000 calories can be burned in an hour. Then, according to the requirements of the US FDA, this statement was removed from books and speeches as scientifically unproven. Although the author of the technique refers to the research of the University of California in his book, they say, scientists approve of body flex. But there is no evidence that it changes local metabolism and causes fat burning in problem areas.... It just works like regular gymnastics to increase muscle tone and prevent physical inactivity.

Bodyflex technique

Below is a set of exercises for beginners.

Before starting the lesson, you need to learn to breathe:

Take a stance: feet shoulder-width apart, relax your stomach and face, rest your hands on your hips and bend slightly at the hip joints.
Exhale slowly all the air from your lungs.
Inhale sharply.
Also exhale quickly, making a "popping" groin sound.
Pull your stomach in and count to 8 silently.
Push the abdominal wall forward and inhale.

Exercises for the face and neck

"Ugly grimace"

Stand in a stance in which you learned to breathe, and while holding your breath, push your chin up so that your neck tightens. Perform 3 to 5 repetitions, while holding the breath, there should be a feeling of tension in the neck. This movement should, according to the author, remove wrinkles from the neck and relieve cervical osteochondrosis.

"A lion"

And now you can straighten up or even sit down if you can hold your breath while sitting. Pull the lips forward with a tube and stick out the tongue. It is necessary to stand with such a face for 8 counts of delay and repeat the exercise 3-5 times.

Exercises for chest, waist, buttocks, legs

"Diamond"

The only exercise for arms and chest in the entire Greer complex. You need to sit on your heels on the mat, bending your knees, and squeeze your hands in front of your chest, spreading your elbows to the sides. It is necessary to squeeze "finger to finger", forming a semblance of a diamond in front of you. You need to push hard, all 8 accounts. Reps - 5.

Pulling the leg back

The exercise is familiar to everyone from school, but here you need to do it statically. We get on all fours, take a straight leg back, contract the gluteal muscles, raise the leg up and stand. You need to feel a burning sensation in the muscle and perform a static pose 3 times on each side.

Exercise for the abdomen

Side stretch

Stand straight, step with your right foot into a side lunge, turn your toe to the side, bend your knee, take your thigh so that it falls parallel to the floor, lean on it with your hand, and raise your opposite hand across the side, leaning towards your thigh. The other leg remains straight. Stretching is done 3 times on each side.

Abdominal Press

This is a normal, straight, static twist. From a prone position, a breath is held, the abdomen contracts and holds on for 8 counts. The goal is to simultaneously draw in your stomach and contract your abs.

"Scissors"

From a supine position while holding the breath, ordinary scissor-swinging legs are performed. The lower back is pressed to the floor, if the lordosis is too large, hands are placed under the buttocks.

All abdominal exercises are done for 3 repetitions.

Exercises for the hips

"Boat"

You need to sit on your buttocks, spread your straight legs to the sides and bend over between them, performing the usual stretching of the inner thigh while holding your breath.

"Seiko"

We get on all fours, take the bent leg to the side. As conceived by Greer, so you can burn "breeches", fat on the lateral thigh. In fact, a very small muscle is working here, which abducts the thigh, and partially the buttocks.

"Pretzel"

This is a sitting stretch: one leg is bent at the knee and placed on the heel at knee level with the other, the opposite hand rests on the knee, the body turns from the raised leg.

All hip exercises are done for 3 reps on each side.

The complex can be performed on all parts of the body every day, or you can choose only exercises for the face and your problem areas.

For whom is this gymnastics suitable?

Bodyflex, as a way to lose weight for the whole body, has experienced ups and downs. Now he has come to Instagram. Gymnastics is designed for young mothers who have recovered during pregnancy - there is no time for full-fledged workouts, and so is the skill to practice. There is a lot of movement during the day, but the stomach after childbirth still does not look very good, and it is not possible to lose weight.

What is special about bodyflex for overweight beginners? I believe in myself and the first results with simple gymnastics. It is not suitable for athletic girls. Although the instructor Katya Buida says that she lost weight like this once, she gave up, they say, the metabolism was so accelerated that nothing remained of Katya.

Bodyflex gymnastics is not designed for those who have good physical fitness. Both Marina Korpan and Greer Childers speak about this directly. Marina teaches her kind of gymnastics, diluting the exercises discussed above with movements from callanetics and Pilates.

Is it possible to lose weight by 6 sizes using bodyflex? Yes, if a person is in a calorie deficit and eats rationally. By the way, Greer offers her followers a diet of 1200-1600 kcal in a typical American style. Burritos are there too, only in a low-calorie pita without yeast and with chicken breast instead of fried beef.

However, it should be borne in mind that much more effective (in terms of an alternative to body flex, and not a diet) would be a trip to a fitness club, where you should combine strength and aerobic training.

Contraindications

Gymnastics cannot be done:

With diastasis of the rectus abdominis muscle.
Immediately after childbirth - before the expiration of 6 weeks after natural childbirth and 12 after cesarean.
During pregnancy.
In the presence of epilepsy and cardiovascular disease.
Hypertensive patients during exacerbation of the disease.
If there is a risk of retinal detachment.

Important about gymnastics

Bodyflex forced many to somehow take care of themselves. It was he who opened “nauli” to women, that is, the yogic vacuum, and the opportunities that open up if you know how to properly draw in your belly. He saved a lot of people from the aerobics craze. Now girls massively migrated to gyms, but only 5-6 years ago they went to 2-3 aerobic classes a day and hardly ate if they wanted to lose weight. Eating disorders, ligament and joint injuries were earned from such "useful" activities.

In the same time, gymnastics doesn't work the way Greer says... What does this change for body flex lovers? Nothing, they continue to study. This workout is not a local fat loss exercise. Women who begin to engage in themselves lose weight only if they connect to a diet and are able to stick to it long enough to see the result.

Bodyflex is not able to build round buttocks, will not make the waist thin if it is naturally wide, and will not help improve posture. This gymnastics is a minimum of movement for those who do not want to exercise at all and who are satisfied with just a little weight loss as a result.

Exercise should be done every morning on an empty stomach. Korpan recommends not eating for an hour afterward to "improve fat burning." This will only work if the overall daily calorie deficit is maintained.

In Russia, the system has another clone - gymnastics "AeroShape". It is designed for three sessions and is a collection of yoga poses performed while holding the breath. This gymnastics is more convenient to do for those for whom morning workout is torture.

Bodyflex is an introduction to weight loss with exercise, not a replacement for traditional cardio and strength training. You will still have to come to them if progress stops and the girl wants to improve her figure.