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Dance your way to flatter abs
The stars think nothing of showing off their toned tums in figure hugging outfits. Think Beyonce, Kylie and Pink - all very different shapes but they have one thing in common: they've banished the tummy bulge
More often than not, women wanting to shape up look to their abdominal muscles as a priority area to work on. Unfortunately, they're one of the most difficult body parts to tone. Stars like Shakira use dance moves to tone their abs rather than doing the traditional ab-crunching sit-ups. As well as helping you to shape up, dancing also improves your balance, co-ordination and flexibility.
Anna Snook, director of the Degrees of Fitness Exercise Physiology company, says: 'Dancing is a wonderful and fun cardiovascular workout and, depending on the style of dance, can burn anything up to 400-500 calories per hour. This is a rough estimate as it is highly dependent upon intensity, dance type and the participant'.
Muscles work together in pairs so you need to strengthen both muscles to prevent an imbalance. Anna advises against focusing too much on one area as it can put too much pressure on the joints. The abdominal muscles are at the front of your back, which means you also need to strengthen the muscles at the rear of your back.
Whereas crunches mainly strengthen the upper abdomen, dancing tones the whole of the abdomen with lots of twisting movements around the waist. For increased strength and strength endurance, Anna suggests combining core stability training such as crunches with dancing, as dancing alone is unlikely to give you a 'six-pack'.
Dance is a good all-round workout, but it requires great flexibility and some hyper mobility of the joints and when joints are flexible they tend to be weaker, so too much flexibility is actually a weakness.
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