How To Do Crunches For Great Looking Abs
If you want to have great abs you need to lose stomach fat through eating a proper diet and exercise to strengthen and tone your abdominal muscles. One of the best forms of exercises for the abs is ab crunches or abdominal crunches.
Stomach crunches are considered to be safer than sit ups as far as preventing lower back injuries. Also the abdominal crunch is deemed by many to be more effective for strengthening the abdominal muscles. The main difference between the two is that with crunches you don’t raise your lower back off of the ground. Instead you raise your shoulders while at the same time you are contracting your abdominal muscles.
How To Do A Crunch
It’s very important when doing crunches exercise that you use the proper form in order to avoid injury. To do a basic crunch exercise lie down on an exercise mat on your back and bring your feet as close to your hips as you can while keeping your shoulders apart. Put your hands behind your neck. Be sure that you don’t exert force on your neck, but just rest your hands lightly on your neck. Another variation is to fold your arms across your chest. The next step is to raise your head and shoulder blades up off of the floor while inhaling and sucking your stomach in. Hold for a few seconds before lowering back to the ground. While lifting you should be inhaling and exhaling as you get back into the starting position.
To vary your workout or to make it more intense, you can use different types of crunches. In addition to the ab crunch there are also bicycle crunches, oblique crunches, reverse crunches, side crunches and cable crunches among others. Bicycle crunches entail alternating your elbows and knees which results in a leg motion that mimics pedaling a bicycle. With oblique crunches you alternate the movement of your shoulders to the opposite leg. So you would move your left shoulder blade toward your right knee. To perform cable crunches you kneel upright and pull down using a cable machine. Crunches can also be performed with an exercise ball or in conjunction with weights. A weight can be held behind the head or on the chest to make the exercise more strenuous.
It is very important when doing crunches that you perform the exercise properly. Do 10-15 repetitions per set. If you do these on a consistent in combination with other exercises and a healthy diet you can have great looking abs.
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