Tiffany Pristelski: Sit-Up Circuit: Can You Finish This Ab Workout?

[the_fake_webmaster]

As I condition my body daily in the gym, I find myself speaking probably when I shouldn't. I find it frustrating that people do so many crunches and abdomen exercises inappropriately. Learn how to practice proper form with my sit-up ab circuit!

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[sequitur]

These are great, and certainly there is not shortage of bad form to be seen in the gym, not just with abs. My personal pick for the best ab excercise that is almost never done right is the rope crunch. I often see people doing hip flexors with a sit up like move or failing to understand the the stretch portion and balance. Typically it takes practice to get this.

The key is that when you kneel down you need to have a 90 degree bend in your knees and hips. The weight on the stack must be adequate to help you balance. You need to try to keep your knees and hips stationary through each rep and this is the hard part. Start with your back arched as far as it can go, shoulders up. This stretches the muscle sheaths allowing them to hold more blood. Crunch to contract and do an iso-tension hold at the top. 12-15 reps of this with perfect form is very demanding but it is the only exercise I know that incorporates full range of motion and a stretch. I typically follow with weighted crunches, continuous tension, to failure at 20-30 reps.

This is definitely not a basic conditioning exercise. This, along with weighted crunches, are for people who want to build pronounced hypertrophy and definition in the abs. Even when my body fat was as high as 15% some definition of the upper heads was visible. An excellent isolation of the top two heads can be done using a short bar behind the head gripped palms up.

Remember when doing intense abs for growth to give your muscles the same rest you would any other body part. If you want a muscle to grow you need to let it recover.