The Best Ab Exercises- The Crunch

Back in the day, the way our old-school gym teacher would teach us to train our abs was to stick our feet under something heavy, lie back, put our hands behind our heads, and do sit ups until we wanted to die. While those gym teachers meant well, the best ab exercises out there don’t have anything to do with sit ups. In fact, ab training has come a really, really long way.

What’s wrong with a sit-up? Well, for starters, it doesn’t just work your abs. The sit-up actually strongly exercises the hip flexor muscles, which have nothing to do with the abs. This has to do with the fact that when you do a sit-up, you lock your feet under something with your knees bent. The idea is to create an anchor, but because you’ve anchored your feet, you end up pulling your torso toward your thighs like a plank of wood, which is what the hip flexor muscles do.

The front abdominal muscles don’t do this action. In fact, the best way to describe the action of the rectus abdominus, or six pack abs in the front, is to “curl” the upper body into a C shape. Picture flapping your entire hand like a hinged door versus curling the finger up into a fist. This is the difference in action of these muscles.

So, how do we do it right, so that we focus on getting a nice solid set of six pack abs, and don’t just exercise our hip flexors by accident? One way to do it is to do crunches instead of sit-ups. This focuses your efforts on the rectus abdominus muscles.

All right, so here’s the best way to perform the ab crunch exercise. Lie on your back on the floor, but don’t anchor your feet underneath anything. Instead, lift your legs up in the air and let your knees bend so that your legs are at a ninety degree angle. This will take the hip flexors out of the equation and allow you to zero in on the front abs.

Now that you have your legs in the air, cross your arms in front of your chest with your hand on the opposite shoulder. Don’t put your hands behind your head like the old gym coaches used to teach… this will only put stress on your neck when you get tired and start to pull on your head to help yourself get some momentum and get those last few repetitions in.

This is the proper starting position for this exercise. To actually perform the crunch, lift your shoulders up off of the ground and curl your body forward towards your knees. Again, the sensation you want to get is a curling C shape- it’s a surprisingly small movement. When you do it right, you’ll definitely know it; your ab muscles will clench and soon enough start to burn with intensity.

The best thing about this ab exercise is that you don’t need a gym or any equipment to do it; just a stretch of floor and the will to actually do it. But, if you want to take things up a notch, you can always perform the crunch on an exercise ball. This adds an extra element of instability to the exercise, making it more difficult and also engaging some of the oblique (side) ab muscles as well as you maintain your position on the ball.

Hands down, the crunch, whether on the exercise ball or done on your own, is one of the best ab exercises out there, so be sure to add it in to your workout routine if you want a great set of six pack abs.

By: Healthy Andy

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