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:

lying leg raises

reverse crunches

vertical lying leg thrusts

hanging knee raises

hanging leg raises

For the upper abs:

ab crunches

1/4 crunches

cross-knee crunches

pull down crunches

Lower Ab Exercises

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.

Upper Ab Exercises

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 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 your lower back more than about three times a week.

Don't exercise it if it's still sore from the previous workout.