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- Archive-name: abdominal-training
- Last-modified: January 24 1995
- Version: 0.11f
- URL: ftp://ftp.cs.uq.oz.au/pub/USENET-FAQ/abdominal-training.html
- Maintainer: Tim Mansfield <timbomb@cs.uq.oz.au>
-
-
- THE ABDOMINAL TRAINING FAQ
-
- The Abdominal Training Frequently Asked Questions list (FAQ) is
- intended as an introduction to the basic principles of training the abdominal
- area, sometimes known as the belly or the abs. The creation of this FAQ was
- motivated by frequent questions on the topic in the newsgroup misc.fitness.
-
- This is version 0.11f, Last modified Tue Jan 24 1995
-
- Table Of Contents
-
- I. INTRODUCTION AND CAVEATS
- II. QUESTIONS
- QUESTION 1: How do I get abs like giant ravioli?
- QUESTION 2: Should I do lots of situps to reduce fat around
- my middle?
- QUESTION 3: How do I reduce the fat covering my middle?
- QUESTION 4: How do I exercise the abs?
- QUESTION 5: What's wrong with situps?
- QUESTION 6: What are good ab exercises?
- QUESTION 7: Is there a specific order I should do exercises
- in?
- QUESTION 8: How do I structure an ab routine?
- QUESTION 9: How often should I train abs?
- QUESTION 10: Should I do side bends to reduce my love
- handles?
- QUESTION 11: Gee, but shouldn't I balance my abs with my
- spinal erectors?
- QUESTION 12: Are there any special abdominal exercises
- during pregnancy?
- 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 about abdominal training
- 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.
-
- This FAQ is under constant monthly revision. If you are reading a version
- which has a Last-Modified date which shows it to be more than a month old
- then you should try to get a more up-to-date copy. New versions of the
- FAQ are posted every month to misc.fitness and misc.answers.
-
- A hypertext WWW version is available for World Wide Web browsers like
- Mosaic using the URL:
- ftp://ftp.cs.uq.oz.au/pub/USENET-FAQ/abdominal-training.html. For the
- moment this server only allows access from 2000-0800 AEST, but that will
- change Real Soon Now.
-
- The text version is also available via anonymous ftp from the following
- sites:
-
- rtfm.mit.edu /pub/usenet/misc.fitness/The_Abdominal_Training_FAQ
- archie.au /usenet/FAQs/misc.fitness/The_Abdominal_Training_FAQ
-
- Folks who cannot access ftp or the Web can get the FAQ from the Weights
- Mailing List archive server by sending mail to
- weights-back-issues@fa.disney.com with the command "abs" in the body.
-
- Finally, if nothing else works, requests for the FAQ may be sent to the FAQ
- maintainer: Tim Mansfield <timbomb@cs.uq.oz.au>.
-
- II. QUESTIONS
-
- QUESTION 1: How do I get abs like giant ravioli?
-
- Getting visible abdominal muscles or "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 your lower back (see Question 5).
-
- QUESTION 3: How do I reduce the fat covering my middle?
-
- The answer comes in two parts: diet and 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. But note that the longer you exercise, the more prone you
- are to injury since your muscles also begin to weaken. Two things which
- help prevent injury are:
-
- a good warmup
- 5-10 minutes of light exercise to warm your muscles, try to break a
- sweat
- stretching
- cautious 20-30 sec stretches for every muscle (for an excellent source
- of information on the topic, see the Stretching FAQ).
-
- For more information on exercise in general consult the misc.fitness FAQ.
-
- QUESTION 4: 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 must be rounded, not arched.
-
- QUESTION 5: What's wrong with situps?
-
- Traditional situps 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, situps primarily engage the psoas meaning that they're
- inefficient and grind 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 situps), so for most of the situp the
- psoas are doing most of the work and the abs are just stabilising.
-
- 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.
-
- 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.
-
- There may be a way to do situps safely and thus exercise your psoas muscles.
- If anyone knows what it is, please let the FAQ maintainer know.
-
- QUESTION 6: What are good ab exercises?
-
- 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
- pulldown crunches
-
- 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 arch which is bad (and
- painful). For reasons why it's bad, see Question 5. If you have this
- problem you can either try bending your knees slightly and making sure you
- keep your lower back flat, or just try another exercise.
-
- Reverse Crunch
-
- This exercise can be done on the ground or on an incline situp 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 situp 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
-
- Lie on your back and put your legs in the air vertically over your pelvis and
- your hands at your sides on the floor. Now, just using the 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 using the
- momentum of thrusting with your legs. Try pointing your toes at the top of
- the movement.
-
- The exercise itself has four phases:
-
- 1. Contract your abs to raise your pelvis and legs so that your feet are
- pointing at the sky.
- 2. Thrust upward with your pelvis, pushing your feet skywards.
- 3. Lower out of the thrust, leaving your feet pointing up.
- 4. Lower your pelvis and legs back to the starting position.
-
- Legendary Abs II recommends these as safer than Lying Leg Raises.
-
- 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 situp. Make sure your pelvis moves, your lower back stays roudned,
- not arched, and that your abs are doing the work, not your hips.
-
- 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 for details.
-
- Although Legendary Abs recommends these, The American Council on
- Exercise's Aerobics Instructor book warns that they have the same back
- problems as conventional situps. This makes sense since, like situps, the legs
- are kept straight and the hips move. For safety you should probably stick to
- leg thrusts and knee raises.
-
- If you do them, make sure your lower back stays rounded.
-
- There is an isometric variant done by gymnasts called the "L-Support",
- which basically consists of taking the leg raise position with the legs held
- straight at a level just above the hips. The position is held for 10 seconds.
- When you can complete this easily, try a higher position. The same cautions
- about back position still hold.
-
- 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 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 7: Is there a specific order I should do exercises in?
-
- According to Legendary Abs, 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 8: How do I structure an ab routine?
-
- According to the guidelines in Legendary Abs:
-
- Try to do sets in the 15-30 rep range.
- Follow the ordering rules in Question 7.
- 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.
-
- QUESTION 9: How often should I train abs?
-
- Some writers 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. Health For Life's Legendary Abs
- recommends three or four times a week.
-
- 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.
-
- QUESTION 10: 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. Legendary Abs claims that side bends develop the oblique muscles
- under the fat and therefore make the fat more prominent, but some people
- feel that the obliques simply can't get big enough to be noticeable. If
- anyone feels they can offer an authoritative answer on this question,
- please contribute.
-
- QUESTION 11: Gee, but shouldn't I balance my abs with my spinal
- erectors?
-
- 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.
-
- Hyperextensions are a fairly good lower back exercise. Deadlifts, 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. For more details consult the misc.fitness FAQ which
- contains extensive descriptions of both sorts of deadlifts and lots more
- besides.
-
- One other exercise is a gymnast's basic strength move called a ``back lever''
- which among many other things strengthens your spinal erectors.
-
- 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 af 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.
-
- The Back Lever
-
- The back lever is a gymnastic strength move, it requires a lot of upper body
- strength and basic gymnastic conditioning before you even attempt it.
-
- This exercise is dangerous for many people, use caution!
-
- The exercise can be done on still rings, the high bar or a chin bar set a
- fair way from the ceiling. You hang upside down with an underhand grip. If
- you're using a bar, the bar has to be behind you so try hanging with the
- bar in front of you and walk you legs through.
-
- When you have the position, lower yourself, pivoting at your shoulders until
- your body is parallel to the ground (or as close as you can safely get) belly
- facing downwards and hold the position for several seconds. When you can't
- hold it anymore bring your self back up to vertical.
-
- Take care as you have to be able to get out of any situation you get into, so
- don't go too low on the first try and make sure you only do it over a crash
- mat or with a couple of helpers to catch you if you have to let go.
-
- If you're confused about the description, the HTML version of this FAQ
- available via the World Wide Web, contains pictures which will be below if
- you're using a graphical browser like Mosaic.
-
-
-
- Many thanks go to Keith Smith for patiently explaining the back lever to
- me.
-
- QUESTION 12: Are there any special abdominal exercises during
- pregnancy?
-
- Yes there are. The following brief summary is from Colleen Porter.
-
- Modifications for Pregnancy and Postpartum
-
- During pregnancy, abdominal exercises can help preserve muscle tone and
- take strain off the lower back. However, you might need to learn new
- routines, since most experts have counseled against lying on your back after
- the fourth month due to pressure on the vena cava, the blood vessel that
- returns blood from the lower body to the heart. The books "Pregnancy and
- Exercise" by Raul Artal and "Essential Exercises for the Childbearing Year"
- by Elizabeth Noble offer many suggestions for safely strengthening the
- abdominals during pregnancy. One exercise is the Rocking Back Arch: kneel
- on all fours and count to five as you rock back and forth, then return to the
- original position and arch your back. Repeat five times, several times a day.
-
- Postpartum moms should check their abdominal muscles for separation
- before starting any abdominal exercise program, because damage can be
- exacerbated by exercise if there is separation. Test this by pressing your
- fingers into the area by your belly button as you attempt to do an abdominal
- crunch. If you can put more than one or two fingers in between the muscles,
- they have separated and you will need to modify your crunches. Place your
- feet the same way, but cross your arms across the abdomen and squeezing the
- muscles together as you exhale and contract the abdominals, lifting only
- your head (not the shoulders). You may also use a length of material (such as
- old sheeting) wrapped around the abdomen and pulled across to achieve the
- same effect.
-
- III. REFERENCES
-
- Legendary Abs and Legendary Abs II are available from:
- Health for Life
- 8033 Sunset Blvd.
- Suite 483
- Los Angeles, CA 90046
- (800)874-5339 (U.S.)
- +1 310 306 0777 (International)
- +1 310 305 7672 (Fax)
-
- The Stretching FAQ is available in ascii, texinfo, postscript, dvi, and html
- formats via anonymous ftp from the host `cs.huji.ac.il'. Look under the
- directory `/pub/doc/faq/rec/martial.arts'. The file name matches the
- wildcard pattern `stretching.*'. The file suffix indicates the format. For
- WWW users, the URL is:
- http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/papers/rma/stretching_toc.html
-
- The misc.fitness FAQ is available via anonymous FTP from ftp.cray.com in
- the /pub/misc.fitness directory. It will also be posted monthly to
- misc.fitness and misc.answers, which makes it available from
- http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/FAQ-List.html.
-
- Aerobics Instructor (ISBN 096 180 16162) is available from:
- The American Council On Exercise
- San Diego (Address unknown, please contribute)
-
- To subscribe to the Weights Mailing List, send mail to Michael Sullivan at:
- weights-request@fa.disney.com
- You can also check out the archive of the mailing list at
- gopher://cyberdyne.ece.uiuc.edu/11/rec
-
- 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 or you notice any typos, please send
- them to the FAQ maintainer:
-
- Tim Mansfield <timbomb@cs.uq.oz.au>
-
- The entire FAQ is Copyright 1994 Tim Mansfield, except for the section on
- exercise during pregnancy which is Copyright 1994 Colleen Porter. Please
- notify the FAQ maintainer if you intend to distribute this FAQ by any
- means other than via USENET feed or from an Internet archive site.
-
- There are no problems with making copies for personal use or to share with
- friends, but please ask before you reprint it in a book or periodical or or
- dump it onto a CD-ROM or something.
-
-
- V. CONTRIBUTORS
-
- The following people contributed suggestions or material for this FAQ:
-
- Tim Mansfield <timbomb@cs.uq.oz.au>
- Nigel Ward <nigel@cs.uq.oz.au>
- Kevin Digweed <ked@mfltd.co.uk>
- Steve Cariglia <sjc@cyclops.haystack.edu>
- Michael Sullivan <sullivan@disney.com>
- David Will <DavidW@ccsdsmtp.columbiasc.NCR.COM>
- John Blaska <blas0003@gold.tc.umn.edu>
- Patrick Wai <pwai@mv.us.adobe.com>
- Keith R Smith <krw@cbnewsk.cb.att.com>
- Colleen Porter <SDP@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu>
- Ben Mook <c2mxmook@fre.fsu.umd.edu>
-
-