After all, variety is the spice of life! The more exercises you know, the easier you’ll find it to vary your fitness routine and keep yourself interested in exercising every day.
Flutter kicks are a great exercise to add near the end of a workout. They’ll build your abs and legs, and help your endurance.
The great thing is that they can burn as many calories as running for 15 minutes, yet they’ll take you just a fraction of that time!
Keep reading and learn more about the benefits of flutter kicks — and how to do them correctly.
Flutter Kicks: A Step-By-Step Guide
The flutter kick involves lying on your back and kicking your legs up and down in a scissor-like movement.
The aim is to work your lower abdominal muscles. They are also great for strengthening your hip flexors, and your middle and upper abs, quads, and glutes will benefit as well. This is a great exercise to help build your abs.
But if you do them near the end of your exercise routine, you’ll also find they are good at increasing your endurance.
The great thing about flutter kicks is that you burn between 20 and 120 calories in one session. That may not sound a lot, but it’s as many as you’ll burn running for 15 minutes at a medium pace!
How To Do Flutter Kicks
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- Lie down on an exercise mat with your legs together and extended in front of you.
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- Put your arms straight by your sides with the palms facing upwards.
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- Focus on tightening your abs as you lift both feet off the ground and start moving your legs up and down like scissors.
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- When the left is up, the right should be down but not touching the ground, and vice versa.
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- Do 15-20 reps each set and do a total of three sets.
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- Rest for 10 seconds between sets.
The key to working your abs and burning those calories is moving your legs up and down as fast as possible. But, the movement must remain fluid, and you maintain focus on your abs for the entire process.
You can also make this part of your HIIT training and do the flutter kicks for 30-60 seconds before taking a 30-second break and repeating.
Want to do flutter kicks properly? Avoid these common mistakes!
Benefits Of Flutter Kicks
Cardio Burn
The rapid movement of your legs will increase your heart rate. Anything that dramatically increases your heart rate counts as a cardio burn.
When performing cardio, your blood vessels expand and allow more oxygen and nutrients to be delivered to your muscles. This helps you work out for longer, harder, and burn more fat.
Toning Lower Body
As mentioned, this exercise targets the lower part of your body. As a result, you’ll have stronger legs, which are better capable of handling other exercise routines. You’ll also get a much better-looking lower half of your body!
Burns Fat
To burn fat, you need to be consuming fewer calories than your body needs to function. You can work out your exact maintenance calories here.
Regulating your food intake will help to lower your calorie count, but exercise will burn even more calories. In short, flutter kicks will help you to burn more fat.
Builds Abs
Everyone would love to have perfect abs, perhaps even a six-pack. Flutter kicks can help you to achieve these abs!
Of course, you need to burn off all the fat over your abs before you can see the beauty of your new six-pack. But flutter kicks are a great way to get there.
Better Posture
Because your back is flat on the ground and your legs are in the air, you’ll actually be improving your posture every time you do your flutter kicks. Make sure you keep your back flat, and your shoulders rolled back as you do the flutter kicks, and you’ll correct any poor posture due to slouching.
Of course, if you don’t pay attention to the detail of this exercise, your flutter kicks won’t help to improve your posture. Detail is everything!
Build Stronger Legs
You’re pumping your legs up and down in the air; it shouldn't be surprising that your legs will become stronger. In fact, this is one of the exercises swimmers do to help improve their speed and endurance in the water.
Of course, you need to build your strength slowly. Every time you do your flutter kicks, you will be creating tiny tears in your muscles. Allowing them to rest will ensure they grow stronger and bigger.
When you’re ready, you can even strap weights to your legs to make it more challenging!
Improves Flexibility
Flutter kicks help your muscles both burn fat and relax. This should help you to become more flexible.
You may not think this is something that is important to you, but you’ll appreciate the additional range of movement that occurs over time.
An important part of this is that lifting your legs a little actually stretches your lower back. This can help to reduce your back pain as you become more flexible and stronger.
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*Please know that weight loss results and health changes/improvements vary from individual to individual; you may not achieve similar results. Always consult with your doctor before making health decisions. This is not medical advice – simply very well-researched info on flutter kicks.
