Your abdominal muscles work together with other body segments as part of a movement system. They do not function in isolation or in just one plane of motion. When training your abdominals, start with the exercises that uses primarily your internal muscles groups before progressing to the external muscle groups. Then progress to total body exercises that trains your core to stabilize and move your body. This is one of several methods that will help you with injury prevention, improve total body strength, and maximize fat-burning potential.
Internal Training
Internal abdominal exercises focuses on your ability to maintain your balance, stability, and posture while moving your outer extremities. Physical therapist Gray Cook, founder of Functional Movement Systems, recommends doing the chop and lift exercises with a cable column machine, resistance band, or a rubber tubing.
The chop is a downward movement across the body from a high position to low position. The lift is an upward movement across the body from a low position to a high position. These two can be done in various positions, such as kneeling on one or two legs, or standing with your legs apart or one foot in front of the other.
The kneeling positions does not allow you to compensate the movement with your legs and hips, which force your abdominals and spine to stabilize the body to produce the chop and lift movements. Kneeling on one leg exaggerates the imbalances of your left and right sides of your core. If one side of the chop and lift movement is more challenging than the other, work on one or two extra sets on that side.
External Training
Developing a strong internal unit will produce smoother and stronger movements for the outer abdominal muscles. The external unit works with the internal unit together to move and stabilize the body, such as golf swings, climbing up and down the stairs, and bending and twisting the body.
Besides the traditional ab exercises, like sit-ups, crunches and their variations, do more dynamic exercises, such as medicine ball rotations which works the internal and external muscles in a standing position.
For the overhead chop, stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and point your feet forward. Hold the medicine ball above head. Exhale and swing the ball down between your legs. You may do a half squat or a full squat.
For the horizontal rotation, stand in the same position as the previous exercise and hold the ball in front of your chest. Turn to your right as far as you can and pivot your left hip and leg. Then turn all the way to your left and pivot the opposite leg and hip. Maintain a tall posture as you rotate.
Integration
According to Paul Chek, founder of the CHEK Institute in San Diego, integrated training of the entire body will produce great strength, mobility and power to your body rather than isolated training. Once you are proficient with the basics of internal and external abdominal training, use various movement patterns develop your body. Such movements include pushing, pulling, squatting, lunging, turning and jumping.
Some sample exercises include the standing cable push, standing cable row, bodyweight squats, multi-planar lunges, and medicine ball rotations.
References
- "Athletic Body in Balance"; Gray Cook; 2003
- "Introduction to the Chop and Lift"; Gray Cook; 2006
- "The Outer Unit"; Paul Chek; 2006
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