Great Ab Circuit (Video) 07-26-10

I was looking at some of my favorite exercises and noticed that all of them really work the abs so I decided to put them all together to make a nice little 2 minute circuit.

The exercises that you're going to do in this circuit are a Side Plank - Forearms, Plank - Forearms, and a Pushup.

You're going to start by doing a Side Plank on your forearm on your right side and you're going to hold that position for 30 seconds. Then without dropping your knees or using your left hand to help with the movement by setting it on the ground, you're going to roll over clockwise into a Plank on your forearms and toes. You're going to hold that Plank for 30 seconds.

Then again, making sure not to drop your knees to the ground or push off from your right hand, roll clockwise again into the Side Plank on your forearms on your left side and you're going to hold that position for another 30 seconds.

Once that 30 seconds is over, roll counter clockwise (without dropping to your knees) and get into the top of the pushup position. Then do 10 pushups.

Then you can rest. Rest 60 seconds, and do that circuit 3 more times.

The important point is to not use your free arm on the side plank or your knees in any of the positions to make the transition from one movement to the next. The transition should be made with your core.

Here's a video explanation of it:



Exercise Descriptions:

Side Plank – Forearms

1. Lie on the floor on your right side.
2. Support your bodyweight with the outside of your right foot (with your left foot lying on top of the right foot) and your right elbow with your lower arm pointed straight ahead and your palm on the floor.
3. Keep your body in a straight line so that your body hovers over the floor from your foot up to your right forearm.
4. Keep your back straight and your hips up and your head looking forward, making sure that your neck is in line with your spine. Hold your abs tight. Contract them as if someone was about to punch you in the stomach, but breathe normally.
5. Hold this position for the recommended amount of time and then switch to the left side.

Plank – Forearms

1. Lie on your stomach on the floor.
2. Raise your body in a straight line and rest your bodyweight on your forearms and toes so that your body hovers over the floor.
3. Keep your back straight and your hips up but not so high that your butt is sticking in the air. Hold (brace) your abs tight. Breathe normally.
4. Hold this position for the recommended amount of time.

Pushups

1. Get at the top of a pushup position by resting on your hands and the tips of your toes. Your arms should be shoulder width apart. Make sure to keep your body in a straight line from your shoulders to your feet and to not sag or raise your hips.
2. Lower yourself down until your nose is only a few inches from the ground and make sure that your hips do not sag. Also as you are lowering, pull your shoulder blades together as far as they will go and make sure that your neck stays in line with your spine.
3. Pause for a second, then brace your abs and keep your body in a straight line from feet to shoulders as you push through your chest, shoulders, and triceps until you get to the top of the position. Repeat for the recommended number of repetitions or time.

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So You Think You're Feeling Healthy

For the most part, if you ask most people whether they are subjectively “feeling healthy” most of the time, they’re going to say “Yes” regardless of whether they eat unhealthy or healthy, whether they exercise or not exercise, whether they smoke or not smoke.

That’s really kind of a strange way the body works. If you take on unhealthy habits, your body doesn’t immediately fight back and make you FEEL like there is anything wrong. Over time it slowly clogs the arteries, decays your lungs from smoking, increases your heart rate, blood pressure, cholesterol, fasting glucose levels, and not to mention, your waistline.

But through all of that, you continue to think that if all of those bad habits were so bad, then why aren’t I “feeling unhealthy?” So you just continue on with your bad habits and push aside all the warnings the “experts” have about the risks of those bad habits as nonsense in the real world.



I bring this up because I came across an story about an obese woman Marci Williams, who went to the doctor for a physical, with no known “health problems” (because I’m assuming she felt “fine”), and within two weeks she was taking medication for high-blood pressure, started taking insulin because she was diagnosed as diabetic, and her cholesterol levels were off the charts and had to start taking cholesterol lowering medication.

She states that:

"My resting pulse was in the 120-something range," she recalled. "That's a racing pulse for most people, and that was my resting pulse."

She ended up going to a cardiologist and this is rather long quote but I truly love the fact that the doctor didn’t mince any words with her:

"I just knew the minute he walked in this wasn't going to be a very good appointment," she said. "He said, 'You know, you are not going to live to see 50 if you don't lose this weight.' He made it very clear to me that all these things that were happening to me were symptoms of obesity, rather than stand-alone illnesses. His advice to me was [that] we can treat all of these symptoms, but the only way to cure this is to lose the weight." [my emphasis]

The first thing she did was to get an angioplasty to open up those arteries a bit.

Then she started watching what she ate, and had a goal of exercising 30 minutes a day, although in the beginning, that became too much for her and she had to break that up into 10 minute workouts a few times a day.

I think this is a great idea of breaking up the workout into very short little sessions all day and I mentioned that I’m in the process of testing this right now with pushups.

She lost some weight, and the doctor gave her the okay to do some more strenuous exercise, so she joined a gym.

As she continued to drop weight:

...she also shed symptoms. She stopped having to take insulin. Her blood pressure came under control. Her cholesterol improved.

When this all started, Marci weighed around 332 pounds (at 5’ 3”) and her weight now is between 135 and 140 pounds.

I talked about this in a post about a client that I have in my class that was always overweight but then had a heart attack and that really woke him up. He had always ate unhealthy foods, didn’t exercise, but didn’t “feel unhealthy” so he just thought he was mortal to any problems.

But as both him and Marci Williams found out, at some point, these habits will catch up to you and the consequences will hit you like a brick. Thankfully both of them were freaked out enough to make some changes.

I know with my client, and I’m assuming with Ms. Williams, is that now that they are actually following better eating habits, exercising, and watching their weight, that even though they “felt healthy” for most of their lives with their bad habits, they now realize how unhealthy they felt now that they TRULY know what “feeling healthy” feels like.

Which I think is my overall point: don’t assume that just because you don’t feel “unhealthy” (especially if you have bad eating habits, don’t work out, and are overweight) that everything is “okay.” Go to the doctor, get blood work done, ask your doctor for a blunt opinion, and make some changes and see what it feels like to really “feel healthy.”

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A Smiling Doberman (Video)

A slight break from fitness talk to talk about my dog, Scarlett the Doberman, and how she cracks me up on a daily basis. No matter what kind of mood I'm in, she can just do something so innocent to put a smile on my face.

And I think that's why pets are important. They can really help you stay healthy, both mentally and emotionally.

One of Scarlett the Doberman's craziest antics is that she actually smiles. That's right, she smiles. I have to act like a fool sometimes to get a good one out of her (as you'll see when watching the video) but it's well worth it to see that smile show up on her face.

One morning I walked back up to my room after doing some work downstairs for awhile and decided to grab my camera to see if I could get her to smile, and she didn't disappoint.

I'll keep the camera handy to try and catch other ones in the future as well.



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200 Pushups in 5 Minutes

The other day I talked about Starting a Fat Loss Program and I used pushups as an example of a great exercise that uses a lot of muscle that when done, will lead to your body need more calories for the recovery process, thus burning more fat after the workout is over.

That got me thinking about pushups some more and how I really like doing them. I still think the pullup is my favorite but, the pushup comes in at a close second.

So I decided when I woke up yesterday, that I wanted to get 200 pushups done in 5 minutes.



There's a catch though. I wasn't going to just get on the floor and muscle out 200 pushups in one session. I was going to do them a little bit at a time over the entire day.



By my calculations, it takes me about 15 seconds to do 10 pushups.

So if I were to do 20 sets of 10 pushups throughout the day, that would mean I was spending just a total of 5 minutes a day doing pushups.

If you assume that you are awake 16 hours in a day, that would mean you would have to do 12.5 pushups an hour to reach 200 pushups.

So I woke up in the morning, jumped out of bed, got down on the floor, and did 10 pushups.

Got ready for the day, and after my shower, did another 10 pushups.

Throughout the entire day, I just stayed cognizant that my goal was to do 200 pushups for the day, and when the desire hit me, no matter where I was, I would drop down and do 10 pushups (I was in a parking lot and dropped and did 10 right in front of my car....Got a few crazy looks for that...).

I drink a lot of water during the day and found a nice routine in that when I had to use the bathroom, I would drop on the floor and do 10 pushups first. Considering I probably have to use the bathroom every 45 minutes or so, that means over the course of 3 hours I would have done 40 pushups.

By the time I got to my last set of 10 pushups at the end of the night, my form and intensity were exactly the same as when I did my first set of 10 in the morning. I felt great. Didn't feel depleted at all.

Woke up this morning and have a tad bit of muscle soreness in my chest, but feel a really great pump in my arms, shoulders, and especially my lats.

I was doing pushups on my toes. But that doesn't mean this won't work with other variations of it. You could do them against the wall, or on an incline, and on your knees.

One suggestion though: If you've never done a pushup before, or you only do them from time to time, don't try and hit 200 over the course of one day at first. Work your way up to it. Try shooting for 50 first. Then if that feels okay, the next time you do it, try and shoot for 75 or even a hundred throughout the day.

The larger point of trying to do 200 pushups spread out throughout the day is to show that short workouts can do wonders for you. I talk a lot about doing a 30 minute workout and how I think that if designed correctly, can be even more effective than a 60 minute workout. But even doing short little burst of an exercise (such as 15 seconds), can still be beneficial. This shows that there truly is NO EXCUSE for saying you don't have time to do a workout. Spread the workout over the course of the day if finding a block of 30 minutes isn't going to work for you.

I'm going to continue doing 200 pushups, 3 days a week for the next couple of weeks and see how it goes (and if you're going to do this, I would recommend only doing it 3 days a week to start). I'll let you know how my progress is going in a few weeks.

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Exercise for Beginners at Home (Video) - 07/20/10

Need to build your way up to bodyweight squats? Here's a progression of exercises that you can follow with the Lying Hip Extension.

Start with 3 sets of 30 seconds of the Lying Hip Extension 3 days a week. Once that gets to easy, move up to the Lying Hip Extension with Legs on a Chair, then to the 1-Legged Lying Hip Extension, then to the Elevated 1-Legged Lying Hip Extension.

Check out the video and then there are written descriptions of each of the exercises below:



Lying Hip Extension

1. Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor.

2. Brace your abs, and contract your butt muscles as if you were squeezing something between your cheeks
.
3. Lift your hips up by contracting your butt muscles. Don't use your lower back. You should form a straight line from your shoulders to your knees (meaning, the only thing that should be supporting you are your feet and your shoulders).

4. Pause when you reach the top position and keep your abs braced and squeeze the butt muscles.

5. Slowly lower yourself down to the starting position and repeat for the recommended number of repetitions or time.

Lying Hip Extension on Chair

1. Lie on your back with your heels on a chair and your knees bent 90 degrees.

2. Brace your abs, and contract your butt muscles as if you were squeezing something between your cheeks.

3. Bridge your hips up by contracting your butt muscles. Don't use your lower back.

4. Hold your hips elevated for 1 second. Keep your abs braced and squeeze the butt muscles.

5. Slowly lower your hips down to the starting position.

6. Slowly lower yourself down to the starting position and repeat for the recommended number of repetitions or time.

One Legged Lying Hip Extension

1. Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor.

2. Extend your non-dominant leg out straight so that it's just hovering above the ground.

3. Brace your abs, and contract your butt muscles as if you were squeezing something between your cheeks.

4. Bring yourself up by contracting your butt muscles and pushing down on the foot of your dominant leg. Don't use your lower back or the momentum of your leg.

5. Pause when you reach the top position and keep your abs braced and squeeze the butt muscles. Your body should be in line from your shoulders to your knee. The only parts that should be supporting you are your shoulders and your foot on your dominant leg.

6. Slowly lower yourself down to the starting position and repeat for the recommended number of repetitions or time.

7. Once you've completed all the repetitions or time with one leg elevated, complete all the repetitions or time using the other leg.

One Legged Lying Hip Extension on Chair

1. Lie on your back with your knees bent and your non-dominant foot on on the edge of a chair and your dominant leg slightly elevated and straight out from you.

2. Brace your abs, and contract your butt muscles as if you were squeezing something between your cheeks.

3. Bring yourself up by contracting your butt muscles and pushing down on the foot of your dominant leg. Don't use your lower back or the momentum of your leg.

4. Pause when you reach the top position and keep your abs braced and squeeze the butt muscles. Your body should be in line from your shoulders to your knee. The only parts that should be supporting you are your shoulders and your foot on your dominant leg.

5. Slowly lower yourself down to the starting position and repeat for the recommended number of repetitions or time.

6. Once you've completed all the repetitions or time with one leg elevated, complete all the repetitions or time using the other leg.

Check out other great movements for fat loss with the 30 Minute Workout.

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Starting a Fat Loss Program

If you were to decide to build a new house, how would you start building it once you had all the materials, permits, workers, etc.? Would you start building the roof first? That wouldn’t make sense. What about having the window company deliver all the windows in your house first? That’s probably not a good idea either.

Chance are, you’re going to start with the foundation first. But even before that, you’re going to have to have a plan.

The same goes when starting a fat loss program.

You’ve sat down and decided what diet or what kind of eating you’re going to do. You’ve got meals planned for each day of the week.

Now it comes time to put together an exercise plan, and this is where people tend to get lost on what kind of exercise routine is best for fat loss.

People think that they need to buy that fancy (and expensive) exercise equipment from that man or woman that was in great shape on that infomercial you saw on television last night.



But really, you don’t need to do that.

One of the best workouts for fat loss, is using nothing more than the weight of your body by using the biggest, and strongest muscles that you have.

When you use the largest muscles in your body during the workout, this means that those muscles are going to need quite a bit more calories in order to recover than if you had done a workout where you just focused on the smaller muscles.

I’ll use the pushup as example. During a pushup, the main muscles that you are using are your chest, triceps, shoulders, and forearms, as well as activating your core in order to stabilize your entire body.

Compare that to a bicep curl. A bicep curl is basically isolating your bicep and forearm muscles to lift the weight and using your shoulders and core to stabilize your body.

Aren’t you using quite a bit more muscle in the pushup than you are in the bicep curl?

Meaning, doesn’t it make sense that with all the muscle that you’re using in the pushup, that it’s going to mean that your body needs to burn more calories after the workout to repair those muscles from the pushups then it would take to repair the smaller amount of muscle you used in the bicep curl?

Which is why more and more studies are showing and confirming that when workouts revolve around full body movements such as pushups, squats, pullups, lunges, and the hundreds of variations of those, the body continues to burn calories in order to recover from that workout for up to 24-36 hours. Burning more calories equals, more fat loss.

But if you’re just staring off, are overweight, and never worked out in your life and think there’s no way you can do pushups, what can you do?



Let’s take the pushup again. You can first start off by doing the pushup against the wall.

Over time, these are going to get easier, so you have the change it so that it’s more challenging on your muscles to make sure that you continue to increase strength and to cause your body to continue to burn more calories after the workout which will lead to more fat loss. So you can modify the wall pushups by doing pushups against an incline like a chair or a table.





When that gets easier, pick a lower object to the do incline pushups on, such as a step.















Then you can modify it to doing them on your knees.


















Then modify them to do them on your toes.

















Then when you really get good at them, prop your legs up on something and do them on a decline.

















With just a simple movement like a pushup, you can see that you can start off with a simple modification to it to make it challenging for you, and then you progress over time.

Don’t forget that point about progression: In order to continue to see results, you have to challenge your muscles when a movement becomes to easy because if you don’t, your body will adapt, and you’ll see a plateau in strength gains, as well as in the amount of calories that you are burning after the workout.

Note though, that these are exercises that you can do to ENHANCE the fat loss you’re going to see. If you don’t get your diet in line, quite frankly, you’re not going to see much fat loss. As the saying going in the personal training industry “You can’t out exercise a bad diet.”

Variations of pushups, squats, lunges, and if you’re up to it, pullups, are just some simple examples of exercises that you can start off with in a fat loss program that you can do without spending thousands of dollars on exercise equipment that you’ll use a few times and then turn into a clothes hanger.

Simple (yet challenging) workouts that you can do right in your own home in thirty minutes a few times a week that can get you closer and closer to not only your goal weight, but also make you a more healthy looking and healthy feeling person with each passing day.


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Bodybuilder Burpees (Video) 07-13-10

Today I've gotta quick video for you on a 4-minute power workout you do with Bodybuilder Burpees that is in my current July 2010 30 Minute Workout.

Check out the video below:



o You’re going to do 20 seconds of Bodybuilder Burpees, and then you’re going to rest for 10 seconds.

o After that 10 seconds is up, you go right back to doing Bodybuilder Burpees for another 20 seconds.

o Continue doing 20 seconds of Bodybuilder Burpees and 10 seconds of rest until you have done the Bodybuilder Burpees sets 8 times (which would equal 4 minutes).

o Make sure you’re putting a lot of intensity and speed into the Bodybuilder Burpees (but at the same time, making sure you keep perfect form).

Bodybuilder Burpees description:

1. Get into the top of the pushup position resting only on your hands and tops of your toes.

2. Push your legs out apart from each other while keeping your legs straight.

3. Bring your legs back together so that you are at the top of the pushup once more, thrust your legs into your body, and then jump straight up.

4. When you come back down, squat down, and thrust your legs back so that you are back to the top of the pushup position.

Check out other great movements for fat loss with the 30 Minute Workout.

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Changing Your Image of Your Image

This is a great article that I think gets to the heart of why millions of people go on a diet and exercise program, lose some weight, and then fall off just after a couple of weeks.

What author Tom Venuto comes up with is pretty similar to something I had come up with a numbers of years ago.

Basically, we put ourselves into a “box.” We tell ourselves “I am _______” and then we keep ourselves in that “box.” Why do we do that? Is it because our “box” is comfortable and we’re afraid to veer outside of it? More times than not, ya, that’s probably the answer.



And unfortunately, that’s why people continue to go on diets and exercise plans, only to fall back into their own ways after a short period of time. People think that all they have to do is change their eating, get on an exercise plan, and turning fat to lean will show up in no time.

But, unfortunately, THOSE are the easy parts. The mental part is the hard part. You have to WANT to change your self-image. You have to WANT to step outside that “box.” Don’t create a new “box,” just get outside your current “box” and do what you want to do and look the way you want to look. Once you change your self-image, then the eating and exercise plan you put yourself on will do the rest.

The article goes into steps you can take to change your self-image. Follow it. It may seem rather strange to be doing what he states but, trust me, if you follow his easy steps, you’ll reach your fitness goals (as well as any other self-image changing goal that you’ve set for yourself).

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Whole Body Scans

I came across a comparison of whole body scans of two women: One woman weighs 250 pounds and the other woman weighs 120 pounds.

WARNING: If you get queasy easily, you may want to click on the back button before scrolling down further.




One of the first things that I noticed was the amount of muscle on the 250-pound woman. If you think about it though, it makes sense. Weighing that much means that you need more strength to be able to lift your legs (move your body), lift your arms, etc.

But along with that, you can see that parts of the larger woman are clearly asymmetrical. Look at her shoulders. Granted, it could be the way that she was being scanned but, take that along with her upper legs, lower legs, and arms, and all of those parts are shaped differently on the left side compared to the right side.

Compare that to the 120-pound woman who is pretty symmetrical all around.

I know it sounds strange that I noticed the symmetrical differences first when comparing these two women since the most obvious difference is the incredible amount of body fat on the 250-pound woman compared to the 120-pound woman.

What I think this really shows is how fat doesn’t have a set way that it is added to the body. It doesn’t even out on the left side and right side. It just basically adds itself to wherever it wants to go. That then has an effect on the muscle growing around the bones asymmetrically since you could have more body fat to carry around on one side or area than the other.

Look at the bones in the 250-pound woman. Much larger than the 120-pound woman which again makes sense because the more mass you have the stronger the bones have to be in order to support the weight. But because of the asymmetrical shape of the body, some of the bones are contoured differently on one side and the other (and notice how the ankles bow inward on the 250-pound woman, which is a product of that extra weight and is more than likely going to cause some major walking problems for this person at some point).

When taking all of that into account and then looking at the 120-pound woman, everything looks very symmetrical and even on pretty much all parts of the body. What little body fat there is, is not too disproportionate on the left and right sides, the muscles are symmetrical, and the bones look very stable and symmetrical as well (I know I’m using the word symmetrical a lot today but I think that’s the best word to use to describe these pictures).

Overall, when you look at the 120-pound woman and the 250-pound woman, you just see a much healthier person. The heart, liver, internal organs, and even the brain just look much healthy and hate to say “pleasing to the eye” then the overall body scan of the 250-pound woman.

Does this mean that every woman should strive to be 120 pounds? No and I don’t think that’s realistic. But, I think it’s safe to say that if you got your weight into a “normal” range for your sex and height, you’d be pretty well off with the insides of your body looking healthy rather than unhealthy.

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Healthy Diet for a Child

We all seem to notice day after day when walking down the street that the waistlines of kids are getting bigger and bigger. Kids today get into the habit of having well, bad habits…. particularly bad eating habits.

What can we do: 1) for kids that are not overweight or obese yet, stop them from becoming so and 2) get kids that are overweight and obese from changing course?

I think there are some very simple things that you can do to start changing and molding good eating habits in your kids, and as a bonus, in yourself as well.

First, parents, your kids are going to follow your lead. If you are eating junk, they are going to eat junk. If you eat healthy, they are going to eat healthy. So you HAVE to lead by example.

You can take things in small steps though.

1. Go through all the cupboards in you house and throw out all the junk food.

2. Throw out all your regular soda.

3. If you and your family are eating fast food on a weekly basis, stop.



Those are the first steps. If you can eliminate those three items, you're going to see some vast improvements in your waistline as well as your children's.

If you take all of those out, then at this point I don't even care about portion sizes of the other food you are eating.

I don't care if your kids have an extra helping of pasta, or mashed potatoes, or another piece of chicken or another homemade hamburger, etc. We'll worry about portion size later. All I'm concerned about at this point is getting rid of the junk from your diet.

Will the kids complain? Sure.

I noticed something about my dog awhile back. I've had her on some special medication for a little bit of time and the vet told me that her appetite would increase while being on the medication.

Prior to putting her on the meds, she ate her food, but was always picky. I would have to spice it up with some cheese or something and then she'd eat it.

But when I had her on these meds, it doesn't matter. I put that food in her bowl with nothing added and she ate it like she hadn’t eaten in a week.

Moral of the story is, your kids might complain about eating food without all that "junk food flavor" in it and may even pout and say they aren't going to eat at all if it's not going to be "junk food." But at some point, they're going to get hungry, and they'll eat what you give them.

Now this doesn't mean you can't give your kids junk food ever again. You just need to make sure when you do, that it truly is a treat. Maybe after a week of not consuming any of the junk, you take a family for a walk or bike ride (stressing walk or bike ride, not drive) to a local ice cream place for that treat. But that's it. It's only a treat to be used very sparingly.

Start out with those three changes and don't worry about the rest for now. If you start with those three, then you've created a nice solid foundation for other improvements later on.

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Squats and Knees

There's always been a few myths out there about squats and lunges and how they affect the knees that I think would be a good idea to go over.

Myth Number 1: Squats and Lunges are bad for the knees

Assuming you have healthy knees (meaning, the doctor hasn't told you not to do squats or lunges), they aren't bad for your knees. In fact, they could actually help build up the bone mineral density of the bone in the knee and surrounding leg bones to make them stronger and thus, decrease your chances of osteoporosis as you age. They’ll also build up the muscle in both your upper and lower legs with the same benefit of building up the strength of the knee joint.

Myth Number 2: In a squat, you shouldn't let your upper leg go below the point of being parallel to the ground.

One word: babies. Meaning, take a look at babies after they start to walk. They stand there, stick an object in their mouth, throw it on the ground, and squat down to pick it up. Look at how they squat. Their butt in that diaper is nearly grazing the ground. They then pick the object up, stick it back in their mouth, throw it back on the ground, squat down again, and the cycle continues for 3-4 hours.

Babies are natural squatters and if squatting below parallel was harmful, we'd have millions of kids growing up in knee braces.



Another point to make on this myth is that if you go below parallel, you're actually going to be recruiting more from your glutes (butt muscles). So if you're hoping to shape that butt, keep doing squats.

Once last thought on this is that studies have shown that there is more force being applied to your knees when your legs are at parallel than at any other position. The amount of force on the knee significantly DECREASES when you go below parallel.

Myth Number 3: You shouldn't let your knees go past the front of your toes while squatting or when doing a lunge.

First, again, go back to the babies. Watch their knees and you'll see that they naturally go forward and past the front of their toes when the squat down.

The biggest problem I see with this myth is that if you are watching where your knees are going, you could be causing bigger problems in other areas: your lower back.

In a squat, your lower back should be in a neutral and flat position. You should keep your eyes looking slightly downward at a 45-degree angle. You don't want your lower back to round. If you're paying attention to your knees, meaning, you're looking down at your knees, your lower back immediately goes into a rounding position. Not good.

In a lunge, you want your upper body to be straight up and down. Don't lean forward. And I'll give you one guess as to what happens when you look down to see where your knees are in comparison to your toes. Yup, the upper body leans forward.

Bottom line, don't worry where your knees are compared to your toes when doing squats and lunges, just keep your eyes looking slightly downward at a 45-degree angle and your back flat on a squat, and upper body straight in a lunge.

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