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How do I exercise the abs?
The abs are designed to perform one main task, to
shorten the distance between your sternum, or breastbone,
and your pelvis. The only way to do this is to bend your
spine in the lower back region.
In short, any exercise which makes you move your
sternum toward your pelvis or your pelvis toward your
sternum is good. To do this safely, the lower back should
be slightly rounded, not arched.
In general when exercising the abs, try to maintain
the natural arch of you lower back. The lower back will
round slightly as you perform the exercises. Don't fret
about pressing your back into the ground.
What's wrong with sit-ups?
Traditional sit-ups emphasize sitting up rather than
merely pulling your sternum down to meet your pelvis. The
action of the psoas muscles, which run from the lower
back around to the front of the thighs, is to pull the
thighs closer to the torso. This action is the major
component in sitting up. Because of this, sit-ups
primarily engage the psoas making them inefficient at
exercising your abs. More importantly, they also grind
the vertebrae in your lower back.
They're inefficient because the psoas work best when
the legs are close to straight (as they are when doing sit-ups), so for most of the
sit-up the psoas are doing
most of the work and the abs are just stabilizing.
Putting the thighs at a right angle to the torso to
begin with means that the psoas can't pull it any further,
so all of the stress is placed on the abs.
Sit-ups also grind vertebrae in your lower back. This
is because to work the abs effectively you are trying to
make the lower back round, but tension in the psoas
encourages the lower back move into an exaggerated arch.
The result is the infamous "disc pepper grinder"
effect that helps give you chronic lower back pain in
later life.
What are good ab exercises?
We've divided the exercises into upper and lower ab
exercises. Note that there aren't two separate muscles
that you can truly isolate, so all the exercises stress
the whole abdominal wall. However there are "clusters"
of muscle separated by connective tissue (these make up
the "washboard" or the "six-pack").
You can focus on the upper clusters by moving just the
torso and the lower clusters by moving the pelvis.
For the lower abs, in increasing order of difficulty:
For the upper abs:
Lying Leg Raises
Lie on your back with your hands, palms down under
your buttocks. Raise your legs about 30cm (12") off
the floor and hold them there. Now trying to use just
your lower abs, raise your legs by another 15cm (6").
Do this by tilting the pelvis instead of lifting the legs
with the psoas. Make sure your knees are slightly bent.
If you're big or have long legs or both, you should
probably avoid this exercise. For people with legs that
are too heavy for their lower abs strength, this exercise
pulls the lower back into an exaggerated arch which is
bad (and painful). If you have this problem you can
either try bending your knees slightly and making sure
you keep your lower back fairly flat, or just try another
exercise.
Reverse Crunch
This exercise can be done on the ground or on an
incline sit-up board. All you need is something behind
your head to hold. If you use the incline board, use it
with your feet lower than your head.
Lying on your back, hold a weight or a chair leg (if
lying on the floor) or the foot bar (if using the sit-up
board). Keep the knees slightly bent.
Pull your pelvis and legs up so that your knees are
above your chest and then return to beginning position.
This exercise is very similar to a hanging knee raise,
but a little less intense.
Vertical Lying Leg Thrusts
Initial position:
- Lie on your back.
- Put your fists under your buttocks to form a
cradle.
- Raise your legs in the air 20-30cm (10-12")
off the ground, knees slightly bent.
- If you feel any strain on your lower back, bend
your knees a little more.
- Raise your head and shoulders off the ground
slightly if you can to help keep the abs stressed.
The exercise itself has four phases:
- Raise your legs until your feet are above your
pelvis; focus on contracting the abs.
- Thrust your heels to the ceiling, breathe out,
keep contracting the abs raising the pelvis out
of the cradle of your fists.
- Lower out of the thrust back to your fists,
leaving your feet above your pelvis.
- Lower your legs back to the initial position.
Hanging Knee Raises
You need a chin-up bar or something you can hang from
for this. Grab the bar with both hands with a grip a bit
wider than your shoulders, cross your ankles and bring
your knees up to your chest (or as close as you can get).
Your pelvis should rock slightly forward. Pause at the
top of the movement for a second and then slowly lower
your knees by relaxing your abs. Don't lower your legs
all the way. Repeat the movement using just your abs to
raise your knees.
Make sure that you don't start swinging. You want your
abs to do the work, not momentum. It's important that you
don't move your legs too far or your psoas muscle will be
doing a lot of work and possibly causing back problems as
in a sit-up.
Make sure your pelvis moves, your lower back stays
neutral or slightly rounded, not arched, and that your
abs are doing the work, not your hips.
Ab Crunches
Lying on your back, put your knees up in the air so
that your thighs are at a right angle to your torso, with
your knees bent. If you like you can rest your feet on
something, like a chair. Put your hands either behind
your head or gently touching the sides of your head.
Now, slowly raise your shoulders off the ground and
try to touch your breastbone to your pelvis, breathing
out as you go. If you succeed in touching your breastbone
to your pelvis, see a doctor immediately.
Although the actual movement will be very small (your
upper torso should move through less than 30 degrees) you
should try to go as high as possible. Only your spine
should bend, your hips should not move. If the hips move,
you are exercising the psoas.
Do these fairly slowly to avoid using momentum to help.
You can increase the difficulty of the exercise by
extending your hands out behind your head instead of
keeping them at the side. Make sure you don't jerk your
hands forward to help with the crunch, keep them still.
1/4 Crunches
Same as an ab crunch except that you raise your
shoulder up, instead of pulling them toward your pelvis.
You can do these quickly, in fact it's hard to do them
any other way.
Cross-Knee Crunches
Like ab crunches, take the lying, bent-knee position,
but this time crunch diagonally so that you try to touch
each shoulder to the opposite hip alternately. At the top
position, one shoulder and one hip should be off the
ground.
Pull down Crunches
Drape a towel or rope around the bar of a pull down
machine so that you pull the weight using it instead of
the bar. Kneel facing the machine and grab hold of the
towel and put your hands against your forehead. Kneel far
enough away from the machine so that the cable comes down
at a slight angle.
The exercise is the same movement as an ab crunch, but
using the weight instead of gravity. The emphasis is
still on crunching the abs, pulling the sternum (breastbone)
towards the pelvis and making sure you exhale all your
air at each contraction.
Is there a specific order I should do
exercises in?
You should exercise the lower abs before the upper abs
and do any twisting upper ab movements before straight
upper ab ones. Twisting exercises work the obliques as
well as the upper abs.
How do I structure an ab routine?
- Try to do sets in the 15-30 rep range.
- Follow the order above
- Pick easy exercises to start with and when you
can happily do about 2 sets in a row of an
exercise, try harder ones.
- Only rest when you absolutely must, so take a
short (10-15sec) rest between two sets of the
same exercise, but none between lower and upper
abs.
- Try to take about 1 second for each rep, except
for ab crunches which you do slower (2 secs/rep)
for a better contraction and 1/4 crunches which
you should do fast (2 reps/sec) because you're
hardly moving.
How often should I train abs?
Some experts recommend doing abs at every workout.
Others recommend doing them however often you do anything
else in other words treating them as you would any other
body part.
Since most people want good abdominal tone more than
freaky abdominal size, it probably makes sense to
exercise the abs with lower intensity and more frequently,
rather than with high intensity and less frequently.
Shouldn't I balance my abs with my
spinal erectors?
Thanks for asking. If you develop your ab strength
without similarly developing your spinal erectors (the
muscles that straighten your lower back), you will end up
with strange and possibly damaging posture.
Hyperextensions are a good lower back exercise. Dead lifts, both straight and bent-legged give the lower
back a lot of exercise, so if you do them you don't need
to add anything else. Make sure you get someone to show
you how to do them properly and keep your lower back
arched through the whole movement.
Hyperextensions
Hyperextensions are best done on a hyperextension
bench, but can be done on a bed or ordinary bench with
something (or someone) holding down your ankles.
Lie face down, with your hands touching the sides of
your head and your body draped over the edge of the bench.
Make sure your hips are supported so your pelvis can't
move. Slowly raise your torso to the horizontal position,
but no higher.
Keep your head, shoulders and upper back arched
through the whole movement.
Try to do a couple of sets of around 12 reps after
each ab routine or after each back routine. Don't
exercise the lower back more than about three times a
week. Don't exercise the lower back if it's still sore from the
previous workout.
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