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Situps/crunches
devoir
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Is there anything wrong with anchoring your feet while you perform situp/crunch abdominal exercises?
Are there other exercises that target the abdominals that I can mix it up with? I'm hitting the nearest gym 3-5 times a week and that's pretty well kitted out with (as far as I can tell) all the standard workout machines and bits and pieces. I've figured out how to work pretty much the entirety of my body pretty well, I'm just never quite feeling the 'burn' over the entire abdominal area consistently.
Are there other exercises that target the abdominals that I can mix it up with? I'm hitting the nearest gym 3-5 times a week and that's pretty well kitted out with (as far as I can tell) all the standard workout machines and bits and pieces. I've figured out how to work pretty much the entirety of my body pretty well, I'm just never quite feeling the 'burn' over the entire abdominal area consistently.
devoir on
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Do the plank:http://exercise.about.com/od/abs/ss/abexercises_10.htm
Also, if you're in Melbourne and you want to get seriously fit, come to Parkour classes, every Sunday in the CBD. First one you attend is free. http://www.parkour.asn.au/
We will work the SHIT out of you.
I'm 2 hours away.
...
Could I justify driving to Melbourne every Sunday just for parkour?
I could justify driving to Melbourne every Sunday just for parkour.
Hrm.
Care to give me a general rundown from a personal point of view? I'm checking out the site now.
Edit: Aha. You're the instructor.
If you're anchoring your feet, then basically you're removing work from the abs, same thing if you're using momentum.
Classes start with a warmup run, stretches, handstands, quadrupedal movement and learning how to breakfall roll. We then move on to concentrate on two different parkour techniques - it changes every lesson. This coming Sunday is wallruns and turn vaults. We wind down the two hour lesson with a really hardcore tag-team based strength and conditioning session with fast sets of pushups, crunches, squats, quadrupedal movement up and down stairs, wallclimbs, holding the plank, etc etc. You'll really hurt the day after.
Anyway, if you can make it send me a PM so I can make sure to halloo you when you turn up (although not this weekend: I have to skip teaching class to FLIP BURGERS NUUUUU)
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Anyhow, crunches can be annoying to do. Also, I don't think anyone has mentioned it, but try bicycle crunches.
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*flutter kicks x 40 (lie on your back and make a 'scissor motion' with your legs while pointing your toes)
*leg raises x 40 (lie on your back and lift your legs until your toes point toward the sky)
*crunches x 40 (with legs extended trying to touch your toes)
While at the dojo we do the same thing and add:
*leg hooks x 40
If you can find a friend you can do leg rippers (that's what we call them). Lie flat on your back and have a friend stand over your head. Grip his/her ankles and lift your legs to their chest. They'll push your legs away/ down forcefully and you resist. That's one rep. They should alternately push your legs away/ down to your left and right sides too.
When you can do the top three exercises in succession without resting, you'll be in great shape. =] And have abs of steel. If anyone can elaborate which stomach muscle groups these work, I'd be interested in knowing too.
There's a nice variation on the leg lift, when you lift your legs straight up, arms down along your sides, you then lift your lower back of the floor with them, leaving only your arms and the flat of your shoulders touching the ground. It's the antagonist of segmented reverse inclines, working the lower six instead of the top six.
The bottom pair are pretty tough to target, any ideas for those?
Basically it's a weight with a vertical pulley. You kneel on the ground, pull the handle down to about chest height, then 'curl' down using your abs.
I'll try all the exercises listed above. I basically want to have some sort of routine that I can do in the mornings and nights, in addition to all the gym stuff.
I'd love to know the answer to this as well... it seems like the normal advice (progressively greater resistance, roughly 8-12 reps in several sets, etc) seems to go out the window for abs.
* Planks and side-planks. For your inner core muscles. Try to hold the plank for 30 seconds, then 45, then 60, etc. Once you can hold it for 2 minutes, and do 2 sets of that, you're good.
* Swiss ball dumbbell crunches. Great for your outer ab muscles (also known as the 6-pack). If you're a beginner, ditch the dumbbell, but the swiss ball makes a huge difference (mountains of difference between a crunch done on the floor and on the swiss ball).
* Incline-bench weighted torso twists. This works out your obliques (the side-ab muscles). Basically, holding a weight, you sit on an incline bench, then lift your body half-way up, hold the pose, and twist your torso left and right. The faster the better.
Also, I'm hoping you are doing some kind of lower back exercise. Not working out all four sides of the core = very bad.
If so, what's a side-plank?
Goddammit, I need a personal trainer or a video camera.
There's a few ways to fool with those obliques - here's a sequence from Pilates:
Lie on your side. If you've got bony hips, put something under them. It won't make the exercise any easier, just a lot less painful. Extend your lower arm above your head, make sure your hips and knees are directly over each other, make sure you can see your toes. One straight line from head to toe. Now, clench your lower abs in a little bit, and make a little space between your ribs and the mat. Your spine should be straight, not caving in towards the ground. Your top arm can be in front of you to help with balance, or laying along the top of your body, fingers pointing at your toes. At this point you can:
Lift your top leg about a foot, hold for a breath, lift the lower leg to meet it, hold for a breath, lower. Rinse/repeat. You can also lift your upper body, kind of like a side crunch, but you need good balance. Use the lower arm to brace slightly, but not to support your weight.
Sit up a little on your lower elbow and lift your hips to come into a plank-like position, just on your side. You can do this from the knees or feet. Feet are harder. Hold for a few breaths and come down, but always keep that arch under your ribs, don't let your body cave towards the ground, or tip forward or back.
If you put your hand under your shoulder instead of your elbow, when you're up in the plank position, raise your top arm and hold it there, so you kind of look like a big wonky 'T'. You can also move that arm around and poke it through the gap between your body and the floor - kind of hard to describe, but the twisting motion is an additional useful movement.
Just remember to keep you elbow or hand directly beneath your shoulder, not out to the side on any axis.
It's not that the advice isn't true, it's that for aesthetics, you want to build a diffierent kind of muscle. Endurance muscle is tight and lean, most folk want that kind of look, not bulky abs. So you work the muscles to exhaustion, wait a while, then repeat at least twice a day.
Strength muscle for arms back and legs (almost everything except core) is done with high weight and low reps, so the muscle repairs itself bigger and bulkier. To get bulkier the muscle needs time to rest and recover.
edit: the other reason you want endurance muscle in your abs is because they are used in pretty much every other excercise. No matter what you're doing you almost always draw positioning strength from your core. Those bad boys need to be able to take a beating every day and keep on ticking. You are what you do.
Although the fact they are used in pretty much every other exercise means you really don't need to overdo assistance ab work to have great abs. Unless you are using machines where you are offloading the stabilization duties to the machine.
― Marcus Aurelius
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