Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/Dr. Doyle/Abdominal Training.faq

Internet Message Format | 1994-10-09 | 22KB

Path: bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv
From: [e-mail] (Tim Mansfield)
Newsgroups: misc.fitness,misc.answers,news.answers
Subject: The Abdominal Training FAQ
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Followup-To: misc.fitness
Date: 23 Sep 1994 19:24:54 GMT
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Reply-To: [e-mail] (Tim Mansfield)
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Summary: Information about Training The Midsection (Monthly Posting)
Keywords: abs, abdominals, situps, love handles
X-Last-Updated: 1994/08/25
Organisation: University Of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Originator: [e-mail]
Xref: bloom-beacon.mit.edu misc.fitness:29711 misc.answers:923 news.answers:26174

Archive-name: abdominal-training
Last-modified: August 24 1994
Version: 0.11b
Maintainer: Tim Mansfield <[e-mail]>


THE ABDOMINAL TRAINING FAQ

The Abdominal Training 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.

New versions of the FAQ is posted every month to misc.fitness and
misc.answers. It is also available via anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu in
/pub/usenet/misc.fitness/Abdominal_Training_FAQ. Those preferring to
read a hypertext version via a World Wide Web browser like Mosaic can use
the URL --
ftp://ftp.cs.uq.oz.au/pub/USENET-FAQ/abdominal-training.html. Finally,
requests for the FAQ may be sent to the FAQ maintainer: Tim Mansfield
<[e-mail]>.

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 a 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 from one of the archive
sites listed in the opening.

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 a 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 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 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.

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
[phone] (U.S.)
[phone] (International)
[phone] (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:
[e-mail]
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 <[e-mail]>

The entire FAQ is copyright 1994 by Tim Mansfield, except for the section
on exercise during pregnancy which is copyright 1994 by 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 material for this FAQ:

   Tim Mansfield <[e-mail]>
   Nigel Ward <[e-mail]>
   Kevin Digweed <[e-mail]>
   Steve Cariglia <[e-mail]>
   Michael Sullivan <[e-mail]>
   David Will <[e-mail]>
   John Blaska <[e-mail]>
   Patrick Wai <[e-mail]>
   Keith R Smith <[e-mail]>
   Colleen Porter <[e-mail]>
   Ben Mook <[e-mail]>