Incorporating new exercises into your workout routine can help to prevent both your mind and muscles from falling into a rut. However, the way in which you go about it can lead to workout success or failure. Becoming too aggressive with a new move, such as an abdominal exercise, can cause you to overuse your stomach, lower back and pelvic muscles. Break in the exercise slowly for lasting success.
Step 1
Start with one or two sets and see how your muscles react. Abdominal exercises, like reverse crunches, planks or bicycle crunches, can pack a punch. But keep it short the first time you do a new ab exercise and evaluate how it has affected your muscles over the next day or two.
Step 2
Rest for 48 hours before repeating the exercise again. It can take 24 to 48 hours before you feel the affects of delayed onset muscle soreness, which are microscopic tears in your muscles caused from working out. Repeating the exercise too soon can cause the microscopic tears to turn into larger tears.
Step 3
Notice if you feel any pain in your lower back in the days following the ab exercise for the first time. Executing abdominal exercises with improper form can strain your lower back, which over time can lead to painful strains. If you feel any discomfort in your lower back consult with a fitness trainer, who can evaluate your form and make suggestions.
Step 4
Increase the frequency and resistance of the ab exercise steadily. Start with performing the move two days per week and then increasing to three days the following week. Raise your resistance in the same measured manner, if appropriate for the particular exercise. For example, if you are holding a weight plate against your chest for resistance while doing the basic crunch, start with 5 lbs. and raise the weight to 8 lbs. in the next week and, if you feel confident, increase it to 10 lbs. in the week or two following.
Step 5
Continue to cross train with other abdominal exercises to prevent overuse of the particular targeted muscles and to make sure that you are working all of the muscles in your core. Cross training also allows you to hit your muscles from different directions, which can help build strength.
Step 6
Allow time to see results rather than falling into a pattern of overtraining. Becoming overly ambitious with a new exercise can be detrimental to your muscles and may actually cause them to become weaker rather than stronger.
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