Exercising is one of those words that either makes people happy or makes people cringe.

Personally, I’ve know several of each type and I’ve even been each type myself.

Exercising is hard. Hard to get up and do, hard to find the motivation to do, hard to find the time to do and even scary to get into.

However, it’s really not all that bad if you start out slow and work your way up.

I started working out daily when I was at a young age. From soccer season to basketball season to indoor soccer and then to summer ball.

Going through practices everyday for three hours a day was just a familiar cycle that I learned to love and hate.

The key to exercising is to be motivated. You have to want it, you have to have the drive to push yourself past your limits because it’s the only way you’re going to get better. Take it from me, working hard gives amazing results.

However you have to start somewhere, so why not talk about getting abs.

There’s a lot of exercises you can do that give you abs.

Sit ups (crunches), bicycle crunches, side plank, cross body climbers, the regular plank, mountain climbers, leg lifts, and down-dog to plank.

These are a lot of terms, but they are are pretty simply exercises that if you regularly do, will guide you to abs.

All of these exercises will help you burn some extra calories and lose your belly fat, which will eventually lead to abs if you stick with it!

There are other exercises you can start off with as well, such as running, cycling, zumba and even lifting. Whichever one interests you the most!

Although I wish I could say that by doing simple workouts you’ll always get abs, a lot of it has to do with what you eat.

Eating the right foods and sticking to healthy proportions is one of the biggest factors that could help lead you to a leaner, in-shape body. Protein intake is very important.

Lightly prepared chicken is a good energy booster, but your vegetable intake should be higher than your meat intake.

Fruits are also a great substitute for fattening treats that people often turn to.

Overall, a good place to start when trying to get in shape is finding a workout that fits you, pushing yourself and evolving your food intake to match your exercise routine.

And remember, exercising really isn’t that bad when the end result is wo rewarding. So find the motivation and hit-up the gym; the visit will be well worth it.

Caroline Perry can be contacted at cperry@kscequinox.com