You'll get that six-pack you've always wanted in less time if you focus on the quality of your ab exercises more than the quantity. Performing abdominal workouts using the proper technique will not only help you maximize the benefits from your workouts, but help you avoid injuries. Understanding how muscle contractions work will help you create the best ab workouts.
Ab Workout Format
Whether you're doing body weight exercises such as sit-ups and crunches, using an ab wheel or kettlebell, or using any other piece of exercise equipment to create an ab workout, your exercise pattern should be the same. Start with a moderate intensity warm-up to get blood flowing to your core muscles. Jog in place to get your heart rate elevated and blood circulating. Reach up as high as you can, touch you knees, then toes, move your torso side to side or perform other movements that gently warm and stretch your muscles. After your workout, cool down with moderate muscle movements to clear blood and waste products from your muscles. Finish with a stretch.
Muscle Contractions
When doing ab exercises, make sure to use muscle on the way up and down, and pause in between each movement. Don't let gravity bring you down after an upward movement. This will create concentric, eccentric and isometric muscle contractions. You'll get the most benefit from eccentric muscle contractions, such as lowering yourself during a crunch or sit-up. Don't let yourself fall back down after you sit up -- slowly lower yourself using your core muscles. Introduce constant tension by not lowering yourself all the way after a crunch, sit-up or pull-up. If you keep your shoulders off the floor after lowering yourself from a sit-up or crunch, you'll keep tension in your ab muscles, creating isometric contractions.
Direction
To increase the benefit of your ab workouts, move side to side, not just forward and back. For example, in addition to doing crunches by moving up and down, reach across your body with one elbow toward the opposite knee. Lie on your side and raise your shoulders off the floor to work your obliques, located on the side of core. Use a medicine ball to do twists. Hold the ball at arms' length in front of you. Turn to the side using your core, then hold the ball. Return to the center, then move in the opposite direction. Change the technique by placing the ball on the floor, next to your hip each time. If you use an ab wheel, roll forward and backward, then add forward rolls veering to the left and right to work the obliques.
Compensatory Movements
You can work your abs using a variety of exercises. You can use an ab wheel, kettlebell, stability ball, medicine ball, weight machines or do body weight exercises such as sit-ups, crunches, hip raises, bicycle kicks or kipping pull-ups. With all of these exercises, it's important to use your core muscles to perform the movements to prevent back and neck strain. As you begin to tire during your workout, avoid using your hips and back to help you move up or down -- this could lead to a back injury. Don't pull yourself up with your hands if you have them behind your neck during sit-ups and crunches.
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