[clewles81]

I am walking on the treadmill at home and I have slowly been increasing my speed and time. I am now up to 3.5 mph for 40 minutes everyday. I would like to include some toning exercises that I can do in the floor for my abs, legs, and butt. Does anyone have any ideas?

[chuckie]

I called Collagevideo and told them just what kind of exercise's i wanted to do & for what area of my body that i wanted to work on, the people are so helpful. That way your getting the type of work out & video you really want. This has saved me alot of time in having to send back video's i don't like. Just a thought.

[PhotoChick]

There's no such thing as toning! It's a myth invented by the fitness/advertising machine to calm fears of women who think they're going to "bulk" if they do weight and resistance exercises. What most women mean by "tone" is they want strong, fit muscles, but not a "weightlifter" look.

The good news there is that you cannot get that bulky weightlifter look unless you are specifically trying to do it - including extreme workouts, extreme diet changes, and often some form of medication (legal or otherwise).

Since you're working at home, what you probably want are more body resistance exercises, but do look into maybe picking up some weights and/or resistance bands to use at home as well.

To work on your lower body, I'd recommend:
lunges (all kinds - back, forward, walking, side-to-side, etc.)
squats
deadlifts (you can do this with 2 milk jugs filled with sand or water for additional weight)
all kinds of crunches (including ball crunches) will work your core (abs and back)
planks and pushups will also work your core and back as well as your upper body

I strongly recommend you look into the book New Rules of Lifting for Women, which is what I use. You can also try Body for Life which has similar information in it.

Good luck!

.

[mazza]

Lunges are awesome for your butt and legs.
With a swiss ball, you can do:
-hamstring curls
-countless core exercises like the aforementioned crunches etc.

Also, stuff like leg extensions, squats, hip abduction (Jane Fonda - style exercises) will also really get your gluteals, quads, hip flexors, calves, hammies etc all fired up and working.

The best sort of set/rep range for beginner strength trainers (pardon if I'm wrong, but from the tone of your post, it sounds like you are a beginner) is the endurance range.

I.e. 2 - 3 sets of 15 - 30 with light weights (or in this case, body weight).

[clewles81]

Thank you all for the advice!! And yes, I am very much a beginner! I have just been out of the exercise world for so long that I couldn't remember any of the basic floor exercises.