Flat stomach: the 3 most effective dynamic cladding exercises

Refine your waist, shape your abs, keep a flat stomach, tone your buttocks, improve your sports performance, strengthen your back and prevent pain... The benefits of dynamic sheathing are numerous. Discover the best exercises to do at home.

What makes sheathing work? Dynamic or static, which cladding to choose? Is it good to do sheathing every day? What are the best exercises to do to have a flat stomach? Cyril Olmo, sports coach at Keepcool, answers all the questions you may have about dynamic sheathing.

Dynamic or static sheathing, what's the difference?

Dynamic sheathing is a variant of static sheathing. These two types of sheathing are interesting, but the static is ideal for beginners. While in static sheathing, we will maintain a position without moving, in dynamic sheathing, we will add movements in several ways (shifting a support, lifting a hand or a foot, doing rotations, etc.) in order to create disturbances during the effort, to make the exercise more difficult and thus increase the work on the targeted areas.

What makes sheathing work? The muscles used

Thanks to the dynamic sheathing you will be able to work many muscular areas of the body, and especially the abdominal strap (the rectus abdominis, the obliques, the transverse).

These moving exercises, which can be done at home or at the gym, also offer interesting work for the entire posterior chain (the lumbar part and the glutes, in particular). Strengthening these muscles will help protect this area and prevent chronic back pain.

Sheathing program: what are the benefits?

If the sessions composed of dynamic sheathing make it possible to draw a nice silhouette and to maintain the tone of the body by soliciting the deep muscles, these exercises (provided they are carried out correctly) have other virtues:

They strengthen the stabilizing muscles and reduce the risk of injury in the long term.

They help rebalance the body in terms of posture

They improve resistance, whether muscular and articular, in athletes, and optimize performance in other sports practices.

They make it possible to improve comfort in a functional way in everyday life: when carrying groceries or heavy loads, climbing stairs, etc.

The mountain climber, the most complete dynamic sheathing exercise

The mountain climber exercise is a variation of the famous plank sheathing. It allows both to work the cardiovascular system, tone the arms, and effectively strengthen the deep muscles of the abdominal strap, and especially the transverse and oblique. Very complete, this exercise is great for slimming your waist, shaping your abs and burning fat.

Start in a plank position, hands shoulder-width apart, arms straight, legs straight, resting on tiptoes.

Make sure your head, back, and legs are aligned, and that your abs and glutes are engaged.

Then alternately bring the left and right knees up to chest level.

The good advice of the sports coach: remember to align your hands well under your shoulders (neither too forward nor too back), and to suck the navel well, to tighten the buttocks to keep a stable position at the level of the pelvis. When you bring the knee to the chest, you have less support and it is important not to compensate for this imbalance with the pelvis!

The dynamic side plank: the sheathing exercise to effectively strengthen the abs and back

This exercise is another way to perform the plank exercise dynamically. It will allow you to work the obliques, the transverse, the lateral muscles at the level of the abs, and also allows you to target the love handles.

Start in a plank position, then roll onto your side, resting on your right elbow, feet together (or left foot on the ground in front of your right foot for more stability).

The glutes raised, you must form a line with your head, bust and legs.

Extend your left hand towards the ceiling, then slide it under the right side of your body, so as to create a rotation at the level of the bust.

Come back, arm stretched towards the ceiling, then recreate the rotation…

Switch sides

Good advice from the sports coach: during the dynamic plank, remember to check that you always have the right alignments at the level of the joints: the elbow on the ground must be in line with the shoulder.

The dynamic bridge: the exercise to tone the abs and glutes

The dynamic bridge exercise works the abdominals and strengthens the glutes. It is also a good way to improve posture by toning the back muscles.

Lie on your back, bend your legs and place your feet flat on the floor.

On an exhale, lift your glutes towards the ceiling, so that your knees, hips and shoulders are aligned.

On the exhale, lower your glutes back to the floor, controlling the descent.

To increase the level of difficulty of the exercise, you can extend one leg to be off balance on one foot (remember to do the same on the other foot in this case.).

Good advice from the sports coach: on the way up, you can increase the intensity of the exercise by maintaining the contraction for 2 to 3 seconds with the pelvis upwards before coming down.

Dynamic sheathing: mistakes to avoid during sessions

Before embarking on dynamic sheathing exercises, Cyril Olmo recommends to be comfortable first with the basics of static sheathing, and to start if possible accompanied by a sports coach to learn the right placements, optimize results and avoid the risk of injury.

Then, once you have integrated and performed the static exercises correctly, you can go further by integrating dynamic cladding exercises into your sessions. But again, go at your own pace: gradually remove the supports (remove the foot rather than the hand to start, because the articular structure of the shoulder is more fragile).

Frequent mistakes to avoid in dynamic sheathing:

Wanting to go too fast to get results quickly. Be careful, because if you want to increase the difficulty too quickly, you can hurt yourself...

Seek to compensate for the imbalance of the pelvis. Try during the exercise to always be well concentrated at the level of your pelvis, to avoid having a rotation, it should neither tilt to the right nor to the left.

Set yourself overly ambitious goals. Everyone has their own pace, and if you are a beginner, it is better to devote two short sessions per week during which you will perform each exercise correctly, than daily sessions "quickly done well", where the movements will not be well done and the results will not be optimized. !

Is it good to do sheathing every day?

People who are used to doing muscle strengthening, and who have mastered these exercises, can do them every day if they wish, and dynamic sheathing can easily be integrated into daily life (as a warm-up before a session sport, during a specific session, or to end a workout, for example).

"If you really want to progress and get results on your figure, regularity is important. Once you've mastered the exercises, you can do them every day for 5 to 8 minutes," recommends the sports coach.