To provide this support, maintain the normal lumbar (low back) arch and keep this position while placing the fingertips at the base of the skull behind your ears, elbows back. Allow your head to rest against the fingertips, and then focus on slowly lifting your body using the strength of the abdominal muscles. The head, neck and shoulders should move as one unit while keeping your spine in alignment.
You can do these types of strengthening exercises on the floor, or while sitting at your desk or kitchen chair. To exercise the abs while sitting, position yourself as described, and then slowly allow your body to move backward, as if trying to touch the back of your shoulders to the top of the chair. Be careful not to round the back. Stop when you reach the point where you can no longer maintain a slight arch in the low back, and then slowly rise to starting position. One to three sets to fatigue. (The term “fatigue” refers to the point during the set where with proper from, you are unable to do another repetition.)
To work the obliques (sides of the waist) rotate the body from side to side as you come up. One to three sets to fatigue.
Reps and speed of movement. Performing hundreds of crunches may sound impressive, but a closer look typically reveals that form, pace and other factors are being compromised. When you move too quickly through a repetition, you allow the muscles to be under tension for only a fraction of a second, detracting significantly from strength benefits. Instead of thinking about how many reps you can do, slow it down and focus on making each repetition as challenging as possible. Training the abdominals correctly requires a rest between sets of the same exercise, so you may want to rotate between different exercises, doing one set of each and then coming back to repeat. It's best to include exercises that target the upper, lower and sides of the waist.
Should abdominal exercises be performed before or after other exercises? There are two schools of thought. When fresh into a workout you have the greatest amount of time and energy, so training the abs first allows for greater intensity. However, the argument also can be made for training abdominals last for greatest benefit. The rationale here is that while you are working other muscle groups, your abdominal muscles are working indirectly anyway as they stabilize your body. If you do your abdominal workout at the beginning, these muscles are pre-fatigued and so may decrease your performance while doing the rest of your session.
Generally, most people don’t work the abs with true high intensity, so are unlikely to pre-fatigue these muscles enough to interfere with other exercises. In these cases, starting with ab work serves to warm up the muscles, which may potentially give you a better workout. My own personal preference is to do abdominal training completely separately from the rest of my routine.
Lastly, remember that if it seems to good too be true, it probably is. It is tempting to reach for weight-loss supplements or to buy an exercise gadget claiming to give you six-pack abs. Although so-called "fat burners," "carb blockers" and metabolism boosters may promise quick and easy results, the reality is that there are no shortcuts.
>Marjie Gilliam is an International Sports Sciences Master certified personal trainer and fitness consultant. She owns Custom Fitness Personal Training Services. Write to her in care of the Dayton Daily News, call her at (937) 878-9018 or send e-mail to marjie@ohtrainer.com. Her Web site is at www.ohtrainer.com.
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