subject: Ab Workouts - Reveal Your Abdominal Muscles With Proper Sit-Up and Crunch Techniques [print this page] Ab Workouts - Reveal Your Abdominal Muscles With Proper Sit-Up and Crunch Techniques
There are many exercises that can be used as ab workouts to tone your abdominal muscles and strengthen your inner-core muscle groups. The ab workouts that I will focus on here are the most basic type, but if executed and controlled properly, they can be more effective than you think. These are sit-ups and crunches.
Sit-ups and crunches are the most commonly used exercises to tone the abdominal muscle group. There are many variants of these that can be used to tone the different parts of the abdominals; upper, lower and obliques. But first, lets go over the basics.
Basic Position:
Your back flat against the floor with your knees bent at approx 90 degree angle and feet on the ground.
Place your hands across your chest, or either side of your head (not behind your head).
For a sit-up: pull your body up, between 30-45 degrees off the ground, whilst keeping your bottom and legs on the ground. Then lower back down again.
For a crunch: whilst laid down, place your feet closer to your bottom (within reaching distance). With the crunch movement your back is going to be more curved as you curl your body inwards. Crunch in as far as you can and tap your ankles with your hands, before extending back again into start position.
Tip:
Whilst doing crunches, as you contract in, try and go as far inwards as you can (as if you were actually trying to crunch your abs!) If done properly, these are really good ab workouts for targeting the hard to reach lower abdominals.
