There are some excellent personal
fitness exercises that you can do either in the gym,
or at home when you got a few minutes. Ab workouts
and exercises are probably the most frequent fitness
infomercials you see on TV - Ab rocker, Ab-tronic,
Ab doer, and torso track just to name a few. As dumb
as it may sound, everybody wants a nice mid-section.
But then, wanting and doing are two totally different
things, how many people actually go out and do the
fitness exercises to get the shape they want?
When it comes to personal fitness
exercises, it's never easy to start a training program
and stick to it. This is especially true for those
who 'want' to get in shape and look good, and even
for some hardcore bodybuilders at times. You've probably
heard this a million times: "you gotta stick
to it!" It's that simple.
Every year by about March, April,
people in the gym start saying "time to get cut
for summer" or "gotta start work on getting
my six-pack for summer." It's no easy task to
get those ab peaks and valleys carved into your mid-section.
So get doing those crunches and leg raise exercises
to get the abs you want!
Actually, not really. Contrary to
popular belief, crunches and leg raises are far from
efficient abdominal exercises. If you think about
it, your range of motion is very much limited to at
most a 90 degree range: from you lying flat at 0 degrees,
and at the top of the movement, your upper body is
vertical at 90 degrees. The flat surface forces you
to stop short of the full motion, robbing you off
of the back range motion of your abdominals.
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You need to perform the full range
of motion to effectively develop the rectus abdominis,
which is the long muscle of your mid-section that
runs from your rib cage to the pelvis. This muscle
pulls your rib cage toward your pelvis.
For the effective range of motion,
you need to start the ab crunch with about a 30 degrees
arch in you back. You first stretch your ab muscles,
and then contract your abs against resistance, performing
the full motion range. This ab fitness exercise is
so much more effective than crunches. Doing ab crunches,
start with your back slightly arched, this first stretches
your abs, and then contracts the abdominals against
resistance.
When people do leg raises, most of them do it with momentum
and never add the hip roll at the end of the movement.
They end up working the hip flexor muscles more than
the abs. This ab exercise targets the lower section
of your abdominals. Do this exercise on an incline
surface. Start with your body lying flat on the incline
surface, keeping your legs straight, lift them up
and try to kick above your head. Do not swing your
legs up, or you'll be using momentum. At the end of
the movement, with your legs all the way up, add in
a hip roll - try to lift your butt slightly of the
bench. This adds in the last little bit of squeeze
to your abs.
Having a six-pack isn't enough for
a great mid-section. You'll need to work on your external
obliques. This group of muscles may seem peripheral
to your abdominals, but they actually take up more
area than the rectus abdominis. An excellent personal
fitness exercise for the obliques are ab twists. Like
the crunch, just add a twist to it. Sitting with your
back flat against the Ab
Doer, grab hold of the handles, contract
your ab muscles and crunch. As your body bends forward,
twist your upper torso at the same time. Pull until
your shoulder is directly over your groin area. You
can either alternate side to side each rep, or alternate
sets side to side. Exercise tip: at the bottom of
a rep, give your obliques a squeeze and hold it for
2 seconds, then release and perform the next rep.
One of the best new personal fitness
exercise equipment developed for working your abs
is probably the Ab
Slider. This piece of exercise equipment
is a huge improvement over the Torso Track. Nowadays,
there's probably a dozen variations of the Ab Slide
machine such as the Ab Force, Torso Toner, Bally Torso
Tightner, Fitness Quest Tone Wheel, and too many more.
The Ab Slide targets and works your entire abdominal
section in one movement.
Grab the Ab Slide handles, and place
some sort of cushion under your knees for padding.
Kneeling down, lean forward slightly so that while
grabbing on the handles, your arms are perpendicular
with the floor. Then slowly push the Ab Slide forward.
For beginners, don't push out too far, or you will
have a difficult time bring yourself back. For more
advanced users, push the Ab Slide out as far as you
feel comfortable. As you do more of this exercise,
you will be able to push the Ab Slide out far enough
that you are almost flat facing the ground. Tip: make
sure you are not using your arms to push and pull
the Ab slide, but lock them and use your abdominals
to do the work.
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