The Best Abdominal Exercises You've Never Heard Of 5 Exercise Sample eBook This sample version "The Best Abdominal Exercises You've Never Heard Of" contains 5 exercises. Be sure to give all of these exercises a try to get an idea of just how powerful these exercises really are! And remember, this is just a small sample of the full 77 you'll get in the main book! If you have any questions about any of these exercises, please let me know! ([email protected]). Nick Nilsson Author of "The Best Abdominal Exercises You've Never Heard Of" The Exercises Cross-Bench Crunches Cable Gripping Trunk Twists The Ab Ripper Pinchy Sit-Ups Swiss Ball Roll-Ups Please Note: Any exercise program contains an element of risk. Be aware that the exercises in the book are not familiar to you and, even though every attempt has been made to ensure safe instruction, how and if you decide to execute the exercises is ultimately your responsibility. The information found in this program does not constitute medical advice and should not be taken as such. Consult your physician before taking part in any exercise program. By reading the information in this book you hereby agree to the Terms and Conditions of use. All Material in this book Copyright 2009 BetterU, Inc. © The Best Abdominal Exercises You've Never Heard Of http://www.thebestexercises.com Cross-Bench Stretched Crunches Why Is This Exercise So Effective? This exercise is perfect for hitting the other half of the range of motion that floor crunches miss. This is the range where your spine is flexed backwards and your abdominals are in a stretched position. Traditional crunches that are done with your back flat on the floor don't allow for maximum spinal flexion, thereby limiting the useful range of motion of the exercise. How To Do It: l A flat bench is used for this exercise. l Your body will be perpendicular to the bench during the movement. l Lie down across the bench with your lower back completely supported and your feet on the ground. Your upper body will be hanging over the edge from the mid-back up. l Hold your arms so that your elbows are pointing forward over your face and your hands are near the top of your head. l Arch down backwards (don't go too far - just get a good stretch) then crunch back up. l You can hold weight in your hands once you get stronger but be careful with your back - make sure it is always supported. l With any stretched crunch, don't cradle your hands behind your head. Your neck flexibility will then limit how much stretch you can put on your abs. Hold your hands over your head at arm's length for the best stretch. Common Errors: 1. Stretching too far Do not stretch so far back down or you will risk injury to your back. If you can see the floor directly behind you, you have gone too far. Only do this exercise if your lower back is not injured or sensitive. The stretch position can be hard on the back if it is in a weakened state. 2. Going too fast This exercise should be done slowly and deliberately. Done at a slow pace, it is quite safe for the back. Done quickly and using excessive momentum, it can be very dangerous to the back. 3. Improper position on the bench The placement of your body on the bench is critical to the safety and effectiveness of this exercise. Your lower back from the area just above your waistband to your midback should be supported on the bench. l Placing your upper back on the bench will limit your stretch and decrease the tension on your abs, but it will make the exercise easier on your lower back. l Placing your glutes on the bench will send too much of your upper body over the edge of the bench, putting pressure on your lower back and throwing off your balance. This imbalance may cause you to tip over backwards. Tricks: 1. The Swiss Ball Crunch If you have access to a Swiss Ball you can do stretched crunches on that instead of a bench. l The execution is the same but it is much easier on your lower back and has the added bonus of making you stabilize yourself during the movement. l Don't anchor your feet when you do this exercise as that will decrease the valuable instability and activate the hip flexors. l You can roll the ball back for a bigger stretch, forward to make it easier, or to the sides to work the obliques. Practice rolling around a little while crunching to get a feel for how ball movement affects abdominal involvement. An excellent variation of the Swiss Ball Crunch is the Small Ball Crunch. This is done using a much smaller, inflatable ball, e.g. around 16 to 24 inches in diameter. The smaller ball increases the instability of the exercise, forces your abs to support more of your bodyweight and increases the amount of stretch placed on the abs. Most children's toy stores or sporting goods stores have small, inflatable balls. Look for one that has thick rubber as you will be resting much of your bodyweight on it. Test it in the store before you bring it home. 2. How to add resistance The simplest way to add resistance is to hold a weight plate or a dumbell. Hold the weight either close behind your head with your arms bent (harder) or on your chest (easier). Holding the weights this way will minimize shoulder and lower back stress. You may wish to have someone hand you the weight but you will normally not be using so much weight that you'll need someone to hand it to you. Using a low pulley cable can be even better for adding resistance because you will get tension as you are moving horizontally, not just vertically. Set your bench up so that your head is pointing to the low pulley then reach back and grasp it. Start very light when first using the cable. There is more tension at the fully contracted position with cables. Because of this, continue the movement all the way up until your upper body is almost vertical. l Use a bar, rope, two handles, or grip on the sides of a single handle. l Get a good stretch and suck in your gut. At the stretch position, take a deep breath to expand your rib cage. Drop your hips down then crunch up and over the bench. l At the top, only your lower back should be in contact with the bench and you will look like you're nearly in a sitting position (though you'll be squatting). Squeeze hard at the top then breathe in and out a few times while squeezing to really get a burn going. A good way to spot yourself on this variation is a technique I call Body Ratcheting. l When you get to the sticking point, raise your legs off the ground like a leg raise, lock your arms and abs, then allow the momentum of your legs dropping to carry the weight to the next point. You can continue this all the way through the movement. The only limit here is how much your abs can take. l You can also change the force curve of this exercise by moving the bench further away or closer to the stack. 3. Self-spotting l You can spot yourself by holding a weight plate or dumbell. l Hold the weight over head or in front of your chest during the stretch phase. l Holding the weight will make it harder at the stretch but it will allow you to give yourself forced reps as you come to the contraction. l Bring the weight overhead in a pullover movement and hold it in front of you as a counterbalance. This lets gravity help you crunch up. l Move the weight back overhead when you go back down to the stretch position. 4. Feet up A very advanced variation of this movement entails keeping your feet off the ground for the duration of the movement. This should only be attempted by advanced trainers with both strong abdominal and lower back muscles. l Balance is the key issue in this variation and will require a lot of practice to get right. l You should place yourself slightly higher on the bench because your legs are no longer balancing on the ground. l This will vary according to your own personal weight distribution but a good rule of the thumb is that the front edge of the bench should be about 1 to 2 inches below your waistband. l As far as the movement goes, you should raise your legs up towards your chest slightly as you crunch your upper body up. l This will counterbalance your changing weight distribution. If you don't raise your legs, you will tip forward. l Keep your abs tight throughout the exercise and don't stretch back quite as far as with the feet-on-the-ground version. A little below horizontal is fine. l Above all, take this one slowly and be careful! 5. Feet up and holding weights - most advanced Once you've mastered the above variation, you're ready to add some resistance to the exercise. This is a very challenging variation of the exercise and will take your abdominal strength and balance to the limits. This movement does take practice and will require an idea of how much weight to use and where to position yourself on the bench. To give you a frame of reference, I've done this exercise very effectively using 20 lbs held between my feet and 35 lbs held on my chest. This weight ratio seems to balance the distances the weights are at from your pivot point in the middle quite effectively. If you were using a 5 lb dumbell between your feet, trying using a 10 lb dumbell on your chest. Now when you do the exercise, as above, do your crunch up and leg raise at same time, taking care not to let the dumbell slip from between your feet. Your abs will be screaming for mercy with all the movement itself as well as all the supporting and balancing required to even hold the weights in position. If you find the weights slipping or your abs failing, move the weight you're holding over your chest directly over your stomach rather than dropping the weight between your feet first. If you drop the weight between your feet first, you may fall backwards because of the extra weight on your chest - that's why you're better off moving that first. Cable Gripping Trunk Twists Why Is This Exercise So Effective? This trunk rotation exercise not only places the regular tension of the cable trunk rotation on the abs, but by gripping the cable partway through the exercise, it adds another element of tension to it, doubling its effectiveness. How To Do It: This is a variation of an exercise you may already be familiar with. The exercise this variation is based on is commonly known as a "Cable Torso Rotation." This variation takes this basic concept and adds a unique twist that literally doubles the effectiveness of the exercise. This movement is done on a cable machine. If you have access to a machine that has an adjustable height pulley, this is the best option. If not, it will also work on either a high or low pulley. The movement itself is exactly the same regardless of where you pull from. I will go into more detail about how to do the low and high pulley versions in the "Tricks" section below. Set the pulley to about bellybutton height (or use either the high or low pulley) and attach a single cable handle to it. Use a fairly light weight to start so that you get an idea of how the movement is performed and what resistance you'll need. Stand perpendicular to the pulley with your left side towards the pulley. Grasp the handle with your right hand and take a step to the right. Plant your feet a little wider than shoulder width apart and get ready to rotate. The movement itself is very similar to a baseball swing, making it a very effective sports-training movement not only for baseball but for any sport that requires a powerful transfer of force from lower body to upper body. At the start of the movement, your right arm will be held across your chest with your left arm at your side. Initiate the movement by rotating your torso to the right. Be sure to keep your elbow slightly bent and locked into position. If you allow the elbow to bend, you will turn the movement into a side row, lessening the effect on the obliques. Keep that arm stiff and fairly straight! When you start this rotation, begin bringing the cable around in front of your body by pulling on the cable handle with your right arm. Your right arm will come away from your body as you rotate, placing more torque on the obliques. Here comes the trick that doubles the workload on the abs... As you start to approach the midpoint of the rotation (though you can also do this more towards the beginning of the movement very effectively as well), grasp the CABLE about 6 inches from the cable clip with your left hand. Do not grasp the handle itself with the left hand - it's important that you wrap your left hand around the actual cable for this to work. Read on... In a normal cable rotation exercise, after you go past the halfway point of the rotation, the tension on the abs will start decreasing. The peak tension is at the halfway point. We're going to fix that! Once you've passed the halfway point of the rotation, continue pulling the handle with your right hand but now start PUSHING forward and away from your body on the cable itself with your left hand. As a visual, think of the string games that kids play such as the Cat's Cradle. What you're essentially doing is creating a new fulcrum for the tension of the cable to go through. Instead of losing some tension around the arc as you normally would, you now have direct tension on the abs again and in a different way than in the regular rotation exercise. This not only works the obliques on the pulling side with the pulling motion, it also works the obliques on the pushing side with a strong pushing motion. The effect on the abs with this double movement is tremendous! The next day you should have a very strong feeling of tightness (and possibly soreness) in the upper/side ab area. Common Errors: 1. Not pushing forward with the hand gripping on the cable itself It's CRITICAL with this exercise to push forward as you come around the midpoint of the exercise. This push is what adds the tension to the other side of the abs and makes this a more complete core movement. First, the one side pulls then the exercise smoothly transitions with the other side also pushing. 2. Not using enough weight If you find you're easily completing each rep without feeling a strong tightness in your abdominal area, you are most likely not using enough weight. This exercise should not be easy to perform.