Tailored Summer Workouts for Your Unique Body Shape

Engaging in fitness activities is an excellent way to improve oneself. With a plethora of educational resources available, pursuing fitness has become simple and accessible. However, despite the abundance of exercises you could potentially master, it’s crucial not to overlook your body’s unique characteristics and blindly chase after ‘ideal’ forms.

Understanding Your Body Shape

There are four primary types of female body shapes: rectangle, hourglass, pear, and heart. When choosing a fitness regimen, it’s essential to consider your body type and know which exercises will best help you balance your body and tone the necessary muscles. We’ve gathered some useful tips tailored to your body shape. All these fitness areas are familiar to you, and you can practice them both indoors and outdoors to enjoy not only your workouts but also the summer.

Rectangle Body Shape – Pilates

If your shoulders, hips, and waist are roughly the same width, and your body visually resembles a rectangle, Pilates is the best choice for you. This doesn’t mean you’re overweight or shapeless; it simply indicates that your abdominal, hip, and core muscles lack the definition that would give you those desirable curves. To achieve your ideal shape, Pilates is a practical option. Here’s why:

Builds Endurance: Pilates helps develop endurance and strengthens your core muscles.
Improves Posture: By increasing muscle tone, Pilates can help you achieve a regal posture, improve your gait, and enhance flexibility.
Reduces Stress: Additionally, Pilates is excellent for stress relief and alleviating chronic pain.

Hourglass Body Shape – Running

An hourglass figure might seem like the dream body type for many women. However, women with this body shape often face challenges with their hips and bust. To smooth the transition from your curvier areas to the slimmer parts and shed extra pounds from your buttocks and thighs, consider taking up running. Running is a versatile exercise that helps balance all the muscles in your body. You can target your glutes and inner thighs by running uphill. To work on both your lower and upper body, try sprinting—running fast over short distances. This will help you engage your abdominal and chest muscles. If your goal is simply to stay in shape, you can mix basic cardio workouts with strength training to increase intensity and accelerate fat burning.

Pear Body Shape – Kickboxing

If your hips and buttocks are significantly wider than your shoulders, you have a pear-shaped body. People with wider hips tend to develop flexibility more quickly than those with narrower hips. To increase mobility in your hip area, burn extra calories, and tone your upper body, try kickboxing. In this case, squats, lunges, and kicks will come easily to you, restoring tone to your hip muscles. Since you’ll be actively using your arms, your shoulders and biceps will develop attractive definition and appear visually larger, helping you balance your body proportions.

Heart Body Shape – Yoga

A heart-shaped body is characterized by broad shoulders and a defined waist, with very narrow hips. To address this, you should focus on your legs and hips. Therefore, exercises where you support your body weight are ideal. Yoga offers a variety of such exercises. Here, you can avoid putting stress on your arms to prevent adding bulk and instead focus on the lower part of your body. Additionally, yoga helps develop flexibility and reduce stress. Once you’ve achieved your primary goal of strengthening your lower body muscles, you’ll need to balance your workouts by incorporating upper body exercises. To strengthen your back and chest muscles, exercises like the plank, push-ups, and the ‘downward-facing dog’ pose are suitable. By gradually transitioning from exercises that develop the upper body to those that work the lower body, you’ll strengthen your entire figure.