A Personal Trainer Tells Us the 8 Things We Really Need to Lose the Weight
Let's get this done, once and for all.
Every spring there’s so much emphasis on achieving your ultimate beach body—we all collectively put in a few more hours than normal at the gym, hoping (praying!) that we’ll be bikini ready by Memorial Day. But then summer rolls around and with it comes BBQs and beers and whole lot of lounging…and we’re back at square one.
Here’s an idea: What if, instead of scrambling to hit a seasonal goal, we strived for steady improvement in strength and fitness? What if we actually lost weight—and kept it off? To help us get there, we chatted with personal trainers Katie Siano and Lauren Leonard, who run FitFabMoms, a women-focused fitness training business in New Jersey that helps all women—whether they’re prenatal, postpartum, pre- or post-menopausal—achieve physical wellness. “Women tend to have aesthetic goals, but they don’t realize how their bodies are so misaligned,” Leonard explained to us. “We work with them individually to correct everything from rounded shoulders to strengthening their pelvic floors—and then we help them achieve the mental and physical results we all want so badly.”
Below, Siano and Leonard give us some insight into the tricks of their trade, the items they use in their classes and one-on-one sessions every day, and that they say we can use at home to achieve our own goals. “These are our must-have, swear-by tools,” says Siano. “Yes, you’ll find them marketed a thousand different ways if you search them online, but we promise that each one can provide real results.”
FOR EVERYTHING
TRX Training Strap: Suspension Trainer Basic Kit + Door Anchor
WHY IT WORKS: “Essentially this strap forces you to use your body weight and gravity to improve strength and balance. It engages your entire body, targeting your major muscle movers including your core, glutes, back and shoulders.”
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FOR YOUR CORE
J Fit Soft Wall Ball
WHY IT WORKS: “Whether you’re using this ball for woodchops, oblique tosses or med ball slams, it will hugely increase your core strength and stability. Core-strengthening exercises are something we love to emphasize because they are really the foundation of total body wellness.”
Gliding Discs for Carpet
WHY IT WORKS: “Gliding discs provide an unstable progression to any basic exercise. For example, if you’ve mastered a standard lunge, and then begin to use a gliding disc, you’re adding instability, thus making the exercise more challenging and forcing you to engage your whole body. You’re working harder because of this, which makes for a better a workout and will greatly improve your core strength.”
FOR YOUR BACK
Perform Better Exercise Mini Band
WHY IT WORKS: “Our favorite exercises with these bands are lat pull downs and face pulls, which greatly improve shoulder joint wellness. We see so many women struggling with rounded shoulders and to correct that, this is our go-to product.”
BUY FROM: Amazon, $14.95-$26.95 for a set of 10
FOR YOUR LEGS
Bosu Balance Trainer
WHY IT WORKS: “Great for new moms! We love doing hip bridges on the Bosu because it engages your glutes and hamstrings, which are so underused in women. After you have a baby, your pelvic floor needs to be strengthed and the Bosu is one of your best options to turn. It’s also really good for an older generation, too, who want to work on balance or who are rehabbing from joint injuries.”
FOR YOUR ARMS
Perform Better Exercise Superband
WHY IT WORKS: “We love these bands because they are a low-impact way of implementing strength training into your routine. In addition to being so versatile, the bands are great for targeting arms, specifically the shoulders, biceps and triceps. You can do tricep extensions, bicep curls—the are so many options!—and the result is just plain, ol’ strength. Despite having a low impact on the muscle, using these bands is still extemely challenging (and effective!) because it’s all about resistance. We recommend ½” Black, ½” Red and ¼” Orange. The best part is they’re so transportable, you can take them on vacation with you!”
BUY FROM: Amazon, $9.95-$27.95 for a set of 12
FOR A FULL-BODY WORKOUT
Benran Jump Adjustable Speed Jump Rope
WHY IT WORKS: “We love the jump rope because it’s a transportable conditioning tool you can bring anywhere and it improves coordination and cardiovascular strength. Great for warm ups, or used in interval training, the jump rope is perfect for elevating your heart rate in between sets. Depending on your level of endurance, we recommend 60 seconds on, 30 seconds off. The intervals will of course change with your level of fitness. That said, this isn’t low impact and shouldn’t be used if you have knee issues. (If you do, we recommend toe taps on the medicine ball to achieve the same level of cardio.)
FOR STRETCHING
AmazonBasics High-Density Round Foam Roller
WHY IT WORKS: “Foam rolling is amazing because it targets tense and overworked muscles—we liken it to giving yourself a deep-tissue massage. No, it’s not traditional stretching, but rather a preventative and corrective form of dynamic stretching. Before, after and during workouts muscles are overused and become tense, so foam rolling really helps address that."
