Usenet 1994 October/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicoctober1994disk1.iso/answers/abdominal-training

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From: [e-mail] (Tim Mansfield)
Newsgroups: misc.fitness,misc.answers,news.answers
Subject: Abdominal Training FAQ
Followup-To: misc.fitness
Date: 20 Dec 1993 00:00:41 -0500
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Summary: Information about Training The Midsection (Monthly Posting)
Keywords: abs, abdominals, situps, love handles
X-Last-Updated: 1993/12/20
Organisation: University Of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
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Archive-name: abdominal-training
Last-modified: Dec 20 1993
Version: 0.2

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                   THE ABS FAQ

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This FAQ is intended as an introduction to the basic principles of training
the abdominal area, sometimes known as the belly. The creation of this FAQ was
motivated by frequent questions on the topic in the newsgroup misc.fitness.

I. INTRODUCTION AND CAVEATS

II. QUESTIONS
  QUESTION 1: I want abs like giant ravioli, what do I do?
  QUESTION 2: If I want to reduce my spare tire/love handle/fat around my
    middle, should I do lots of situps?
  QUESTION 3: So, how do I reduce the fat covering my middle?
  QUESTION 4: I've always done situps, what's wrong with them?
  QUESTION 5: So what are good ab exercises?
  QUESTION 6: Is there a specific order I should do these in?
  QUESTION 7: How do I structure a routine?
  QUESTION 8: How often should I train abs?
  QUESTION 9: I have pudgy love handles, should I do side bends to make
    them smaller?
  QUESTION 10: Gee, I heard that you have to balance your abs with your spinal
    erectors, how does that work?

III. REFERENCES

IV. CONTRIBUTIONS OR COMMENTS

V. CONTRIBUTORS

I. INTRODUCTION AND CAVEATS

The information in this FAQ is based on

- Health For Life's _Legendary Abs_ booklet
- endless threads re: abs
        - in misc.fitness and
        - on the weights mailing list
- and sundry other sources.

See the references list at the end for how to get hold of these things
for yourself.

II. QUESTIONS

QUESTION 1: How do I get abs like giant ravioli?

    Getting visible abs depends on reducing the amount of fat covering the
abs, see Question 3. Getting hard, lumpy abs depends on developing the
underlying muscles, for details, read on...

QUESTION 2: Should I do lots of situps to reduce fat around my middle?


        No.  Exercising the area from which you want to lose fat is called
"spot reduction".  Spot reduction is now believed to be a myth.  Research
shows that fat is lost all over your body, not just in the area that you
work.  Situps are also bad for for your lower back (see Question 4).

QUESTION 3: How do I reduce the fat covering my middle?

    The answer comes in two parts 1) diet and 2) aerobic exercise.

DIET
This is controversial, but most people agree that eating very little
fat and lots of complex carbs (like rice, pasta and potatoes) helps
ensure that you don't add additional fat. Then you have to work at
using the fat you already have stored which involves...

EXERCISE
Again a bit controversial, but it's widely agreed that regular,
moderate, aerobic exercise 3-4 times per week works best to burn fat that's
already stored.

"Moderate" because intense exercise burns glycogen not fat, so keep
the intensity at about the level where you are beginning to puff a
little.

"Aerobic" means (very vaguely) the kind of exercise that requires you to
inhale more. Some suggest that building more muscle through weight
training helps as well, since muscle burns fat just by being there and
moving your body about; so some weight training couldn't hurt and will
probably help.

Many misc.fitness people agree that exercise periods of more than 20 minutes
work best.

QUESTION 4: What's wrong with situps?

    Two things: they're inefficient and they grind vertebrae in
your lower back.

They're inefficient because a muscle (muscles?) called the psoas
which runs from the lower back, around to the front of the thigh does
a very similar job to the abs: it pulls the torso towards the legs.
It works best when the legs are close to straight (as they are when
doing situps), so for most of the situp the psoas is doing much of the
work and the abs are just helping.

Getting the psoas muscle out of the way involves putting the thighs at
a right angle to the torso.

Situps 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 psaos encourages the lower back to arch.  The result is the infamous
"disc pepper grinder" effect that helps give you chronic lower back pain in
later life.

QUESTION 5: What are good ab exercises?

    For the lower abs, in order of difficulty:

        15cm lying leg raises
        vertical lying leg thrusts
        hanging knee ups
        hanging leg raises

    For the upper abs:

        ab crunches
        1/4 crunches
        cross-knee crunches
        pulldown crunches


15cm Lying Leg Raises

Lie on your back with you hands, palms down under your buttocks.
Raise your legs about 30cm off the floor and hold them there. Now
trying to use just your lower abs, raise your legs by another 15cm. Do
this by tilting the pelvis instead of lifting the legs with the
psoas.

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 arch which is bad (and
painful). See Question 4.

Vertical Lying Leg Thrusts

Lie on your back and put your legs in the air vertically over your
pelvis. Now, just using the lower abs raise your pelvis off the ground.
If you have difficulty straightening your legs, that's OK, but make
sure you're doing the work with your abs, not by thrusting with your
legs.

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 legs.

Make sure that you don't start swinging. You want your abs to do the
work, not momentum.

Hanging Leg Raises

Just like knee raises except you keep your legs straight. This
requires good hamstring and lower back flexibility, see the Stretching
FAQ (stretching) for details.

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 you 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.

Do these fairly slowly to avoid using momentum to help.

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.

Pulldown Ab Crunches

Drape a towel or rope around the bar of a pulldown 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 making sure you
exhale all your air at each contraction.

QUESTION 6: Is there a specific order I should do exercises in?

    According to the Health For Life people, 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.

QUESTION 7: How do I structure a routine?

    - Try to do sets in the 15-30 rep range.
    - Follow the two golden rules in Question 6.
    - Pick easy exercises to start with and when you can happily do
      about 2 sets in a row of an exercise, try picking 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 should always do slow (2 secs/rep) and
      1/4 crunches which you should do fast (2 reps/sec).

QUESTION 8: How often should I train abs?

    Three to four times a week.

QUESTION 9: Should I do side bends to reduce my love handles?

    Nope. Love handles (the pads of fat above the hip bone at the
side of the waist) are fat and only shrink with a low fat diet and
general aerobic exercise (see Question 3). You can't just remove the fat from
that area on its own.

As well as that, side bends build the obliques under the fat and will
make your love handles look bigger. Direct oblique exercises are
generally considered a bad idea for that reason, but if your
aesthetics for the human body include big, meaty obliques, then go
right ahead.

QUESTION 10: Gee, I heard that you have to balance your abs with your spinal
erectors, how does that work?

    Thanks for asking. If your 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.

A fairly good lower back exercise is hyperextensions, which are best
done on a hyper extension 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, your
body draped over the edge of the bench and with your hips 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 af around 12 reps after each ab routine or
after each back routine. Don't eaxercise them more than about three
times a week.

If you already do deadlifts that's probably exercise enough.


III. REFERENCES

Legendary Abs and Legendary Abs II
Health for Life
8033 Sunset Blvd.
Suite 483
Los Angeles, CA  90046
[phone]   (U.S.)
[phone] (International)
[phone] (Fax)


The Weights Mailing List
to subscribe, send mail to Michael Sullivan at:

                [e-mail]

IV. CONTRIBUTIONS OR COMMENTS

If you disagree with anything from this FAQ either from personal experience,
or because you've read or learnt otherwise or if you have any tips, information
or exercises to add, please send them to the FAQ maintainer:

Tim Mansfield <[e-mail]>

V. CONTRIBUTORS

The following people contributed either material or comments ---

Tim Mansfield <[e-mail]>
Nigel Ward <[e-mail]>
Kevin Digweed <[e-mail]>
Steve Cariglia <[e-mail]>
Michael Sullivan <[e-mail]>