Effective Ab Workouts

When starting a new workout for abs in the hopes of doing loads and loads of crunches, leg lifts, and whatever else they're suggesting these days, the exercises they sell us to help can end up hurting us. For a full explanation of the 6 pack abs mentality and nutritional aspects of getting that elusive 6 pack, check out these two hubs:

http://hubpages.com/hub/6-Pack-Abs-A-Change-for-the-Better For your mind.  I have not read one hub I like on abs exercises, and I read through a lot.  Almost all of them give us a lot of misinformation and appear just to be a paraphrasing of some muscle magazine articles.

Most sites selling you their amazing ab workout will advertise "Just 15 minutes a day!" or "With these 8 exercises you can melt away belly fat and get those hard to reach lower abs!"

Caution:

• Abdominal muscles do not hypertrophy (get bigger) nearly as much  as our other muscles.
• Doing exercises specifically at our mid section is not the reason why we lose fat (or don't) around or mid section.
• Regardless of the exercise, our bodies store fat in the same places. We reduce fat most effectively from cardiovascular exercise, resistance training, and burning more calories than you eat.
  
• Degree of difficulty on some of these exercise can cause long term postural problems for beginners or those getting back in shape.
  

Check point 1: No support with the arms. Correct this by putting your arms at your sides, hands by your hips, palms facing down.

Check point 2: Arched lower back, anterior pelvic tilt. Weak abs will not be able to hold the weight of our legs nor will our internal stabilizers be able to maintain postural alignment. Repeating this can cause anterior pelvic tilts when you're walking around (your butt sticks out like a chicken), low back pain, tight hip flexors from doing most of the work, and no progress in core strength.

Suggestion: Avoid this exercise altogether. Even if our core can stabilize our legs, we do most of the work in this movement with our hip flexors. Our transverse abdominals (that V shape at the bottom of our torso) and abdominal wall do not activate enough to justify this movement pattern.

Those of us who can do this often begin to cheat or remain unaware that we compensate for this movement with our hip flexors, tension in our backs both upper and lower, and often activate sympathetic tension in our upper trapezius (some of us tighten our necks unknowingly during strenuous activities).

For some reason crunches never felt right for me. Raising my head gently and extending my cervical vertebrae never gave my body much reason to squeeze my abs. Even laying flat I would try to do this traditionally, squeezing my abdominal muscles to create a tiny movement, barely raise my neck by flexing the living daylights out of my abs - and nothing.

Plus the positioning seems odd. Another one I do not recommend. It works well for some people, and if you're completely honest with yourself when you do this, and you genuinely feel a challenge without compensating the movement using other muscle groups, no reason to stop doing what works.

It never worked for me.

Checkpoint 1: Sometimes I see people moving their legs in and their heads up at the same time like a clam closing up. Too much cervical flexion and hip flexor work. I attempted the movement by focusing all my energy on using my core to create the movement, but I still felt a lot of strain just holding the starting position. Going for a complete movement like that would require that I cheat and recruit muscle groups that would create an imbalance if I continued the movement over a long period of time.

Checkpoint 2: In the NASM handbook, they recommend holding onto a bench or something to stabilize. My thoughts: don't do it at all. Too much hip flexor involvement and when we hold something behind our head, we might contract our lats to generate a kinetic flow that initiates the movement with momentum.

Checkpoint 3: Lower back arching. Problems already apparent. Abs puff out, no stabilizer improvement, and it will make us walk like a chicken sticking its butt out if our body adapts to this movement pattern.

Suggestion: Place your arms flat, palms facing the floor by your hips for stability. For those of you who can do this without compensating or using muscles irregularly, it's not a problem. I do not recommend it nor do I use it.

Checkpoint 1: When beginning, be aware that our core stabilizers may be too weak or unaccustomed to holding this position.

Checkpoint 2: Lower back arching from weak stabilizers. Be aware of it. A mirror helps to guide while teaching your body what the correct form feels like.

Checkpoint 3: Thoracic curving. Bowing our upper back out then creasing our cervical spine in exaggerates the natural S in our spine and can lead to poor posture if we condition our body to stabilize itself in this way.

Suggestion: I recommend this exercise. Pull your belly button in towards your spine, pretend someone stood in front of you pulling a string attached to the top of your head which forced you to straighten out your thoracic and cervical spine.

To increase difficulty, alternate bringing one knee up to your chest at a time - slowly. This way you can feel any compensations that would sacrifice form.

Or, rest your elbows on a stability ball instead.

To reduce difficulty, put your hands on a bench instead of the floor.

Duration: Hold it until you lose form. Never go beyond any point where you lose form. 3 to 5 sets, but stop if you lose form.

Checkpoint 1: Upper and lower back lay flat against the floor.  Imagine your vertebrae as a string of pearls.  Lower yourself down feeling each segment touch the floor.

Checkpoint 2: Our lower back will naturally arch.  Completely relax your shoulders, back, and legs. Flatten your back by squeezing in your belly button and hardening your abdominal wall.

Movement: Raise one leg at a time.  If done correctly, it will feel challenging to keep your back flat agains the floor using only your core.  Hip flexors will initiate the movement but allow your transverse abdominals (the V at the bottom of your abs), and the rest of your abdominal wall to stabilize and complete the movement.

Raise the leg to a count of 2-3 seconds, whichever feels more comfortable.  Go slower if it's your first time and you're correcting stability issues.

Do as many as you can until your abs are to weak to control the movement.  For me that's around 20 repetitions.  3 sets.  Decrease repetitions in later sets if you feel your form slipping.  Once the body adapts performing more repetitions will come naturally.

Remember, not just ab exercises create definition. Full body workouts with cardivascular and resistance training focusing on movement and form surpass these miracle 15 minute ab workouts. I will feel my abs working during squats, bench press, pull ups, curls - in just about every exercise when prioritizing form over everything else.

Last but not least, remember testosterone, genetics, nutrition, and age play a role in how our bodies develop.

If you have any questions about what other movements look like, or want to see extended descriptions of these exercises with different pictures, I'll take a picture at work and reply as soon as I can.

But if you're skeptical about incorporating simple abdominal exercises into a total body workout, note that I'm not like everyone else making these hubs who Googles some model's image to "prove" that their plan works. I took this snapshot 3 minutes ago: