Figure Athlete - 11 Strategies to Reshape Your Body

11 Strategies to Reshape Your Body
by Jen Heath

Getting "the look" involves so much more than quick trips to the gym and fixing the right plate for dinner. How you look is all about the shape of your body. Everything from how you train to how you live determines if you're sultry or just plain salty.

If I told you that there are hundreds of little things you can do to reshape your body, wouldn't you want to know them? The weird thing is that a lot of people just want a list of exercises; they aren't interested in the little adjustments they could make to ratchet up their workouts. But these are the things that make the difference between someone who's just plodding along and someone who's reinvented herself.

You need to think of your training as an ever-changing canvas. So instead of leaving your look in the hands of the airbrush guy, use these techniques to distinguish yourself.

If you want to turn heads in the gym with the weights you're pulling off, as well as stay injury free, then you need to use whole body bracing. This is something Pavel Tsatsouline preaches emphatically.

Here's a quick trick that'll allow you to tap into your superhero strength. First, squeeze someone's hand. Now, tense your whole body and squeeze their hand again. Notice the difference. Pretty powerful, eh?

Not only is this good for intimidating handshakes, it'll also put some extra umph into your sets. Start off by preparing to do a set of biceps curls. Tighten up your glutes and abs while keeping the rest of your body just as tight. Commence with the curling, and at the end, really squeeze your glutes and abs while digging your heels into the floor. You should be able to eke out a couple of extra reps.

This simple strength training technique can make all the difference in your gains. Start bracing your entire body on all of your movements and you'll surprise yourself what you can accomplish.

Trying to engage the antagonist muscles on the negative phase of a movement will really help your strength, stability, and long-term joint health.

When you're squatting or lunging, "pull" yourself down into the squat with your hip flexors. You'll immediately notice your glutes kick it up a notch. When you perform a bench press, "pull" the bar down to the bottom by engaging your lats.

By doing this on every movement, you'll feel tighter, more stable, and be better able to contract the working muscle groups.

You'd be surprised at how much glute and hamstring development is influenced by your posture and muscle activation in daily life.

To get more out of your glutes, try these simple ideas:

1. While you walk throughout the day, consciously engage your glutes at each heel strike and as you roll off the ball of your foot.

2. Stretch your hip flexors.

3. Lie on your stomach with your legs extended and one hand on your glutes. Lift one leg off the floor and note the contraction. Next, squeeze your abs and do the same thing. You should notice your glutes are awake and firing. Thus, contracting the abdominals when you squat, lunge, or perform hip extension movements is part of a nice derriere.

The key to fully engaging your posterior chain on any deadlift variation, such as stiff-legged or Romanian deadlifts, is to keep your back flat and "dig" your heels in. Imagine that your heels are about to dig a hole in the ground. You'd shove down and back, right? That's how it ought to feel.

But they should be!

The majority of hamstring problems can be rectified by performing as much hamstring work as quad work. Perform one set of leg curls or stiff-legged deadlifts for each set of lunges and squats. Additionally, stretch your quads regularly.

Most of us are inherently quad-dominant. When we train our lower bodies, we develop (tighten) our quads and become even more quad-dominant. This isn't limited to just lifting weights either, as most cardiovascular exercise is very quad-dominant, too. Pretty much the only activity that isn't is sprinting at max velocity. The result is that tight quads are an epidemic. Loosening the quads can increase activation of the hamstrings and glutes.

If you're the type who has disproportionately underdeveloped hamstrings, it's time to address your pelvic tilt. Look sideways in a mirror. Do the top of your hips tilt forward to the extent that your butt sticks out a little? Or do your hips tilt so that your butt is flatter than a pancake? If your hips tilt back, you probably have a posterior pelvic tilt and your hamstrings don't fire much in any activity.

To improve your posture, avoid standing with your hips swayed forward and strengthen your hip flexors. To do so, while sitting down with your back supported, raise one leg up above parallel and hold it for 20 seconds. Work up to performing the hold with a 25-pound weight on your knee for two to three sets, three days a week.

Just as you can increase glute activation by activating your abs, you can increase abdominal activation by flexing your fanny. Whenever you do trunk flexion movements like crunches or rotation movements like woodchops, actively contract your glutes first and you'll notice a dramatic difference.

When doing dumbbell biceps curls, try an offset grip. Hold the dumbbells with a hammer grip with your arms hanging at your sides, placing your hands towards the front of the dumbbells. Now curl them up, twisting your wrist into a supinated position.

You'll feel more stress on the short head of the biceps. Try this on incline curls, too.

To get more lat stimulation when doing pull-downs and pull-ups, wrap your thumbs over the bar and try pulling more from your pinky andring fingers and less from your index and middle fingers.

The main difference between an overhand and underhand grip is the former involves more of your mid-back and brachialis, while the latter involves more biceps and less mid-back.

When performing side laterals for your delts, lean slightly forward and lift your pinky fingers higher than your index fingers at the top.

To really blast the lateral head, do Telle laterals where you perform them one arm at a time while leaning sideways on an incline bench.

For squats, hack squats, leg presses, and lunges, the closer your stance and the more your knees go toward (or over) your toes, the more you work your lower quads. The wider your stance and the further you sit back, the more you work your upper quads along with your glutes and hams. To zero in on the vastus medialis, or the "teardrop" muscle, use a close stance and angle your toes out at 45 degrees.

To get a feel for targeting various parts of your quad on different movements, use the proprioceptive method. Get in a lunge position and place one hand on whichever part of the quad you want to hit. Now, do bodyweight lunges and note how variations in your stance width and style of performance influence the perceived recruitment.

One word of caution: Never do any type of squat with your toes pointing in, as the stress on the knees is too great.

If you struggle with your calves, try the following standing or donkey calf raise variation. Keep your knees straight and concentrate on a slow three-second negative, a three-second pause at the bottom, and explode in a fast push upward, making an effort to rise up on your big toes.

Perform 15 to 30 reps in this manner (or as many as you can), then continue the set by bending your knees a bit and performing more reps. When you can no longer move without cramping, lower your heels to the bottom and hold that intense stretch for ten seconds.

Flex your triceps and take a moment to admire them. Note how you have one head that sticks out on the side (the lateral head) and one longer head that pops out on the bottom (the long head).

While you're posing, is one more pronounced than the other? Wish you could balance things out? Well, the position of your elbows on various exercises influences recruitment between the heads.

Performing exercises with your elbows tucked in toward your sides, like dips and push-downs, develops more of the lateral triceps head. Exercises where your elbows are in front, like skullcrushers, decline close-grip bench presses, and overhead variations, target more of the long head.

If you have an imbalance, pick your exercises accordingly and hone in on that head.

Take into account all of these simple, but invaluable, training tactics to overhaul your routine. Remember, it's the little things that create amazing workouts. And amazing workouts create amazing bodies.

Jen Heath is an ACSM certified personal trainer, professional natural bodybuilder, and mother of four children. She runs a successful online coaching business, through which she helps women alter the course of their lives, and achieve the lean, muscular physiques they desire. You can also find her at FatLossPros.net.

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