Hey, what's going on guys?
I'm Scott from muscularstrength.com and in today's video I'm going to show you
how to take your ab training to the next level when training at home and you have
limited equipment. But before we STAHHTED
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So this video came about this video topic because as you know,
I'm doing my nuclei overload training for biceps and I've grown at least a
eighth of an inch so far.
You guys can probably tell, anyways, that video's coming,
the end result once I'm done with it. But in doing the 100 reps a day,
I'm basically doing 10 sets of 10 repetitions and I'm resting like 20 to 30
seconds max in between my sets. And instead of just kind of standing around,
I thought, well,
maybe I can do some nuclear overload training for my abs as well.
As you guys know,
it's okay to train your abs every single day doing things like floor crunches
because your midsection can handle that abuse. And to be honest with you,
I actually feel much tighter in my midsection after doing it.
Even when I just kind of stand and flex or even when not flexing,
I'm noticing more lines and I'm noticing these lines are starting to come back
in super tight as well.
So I started off obviously just doing floor crunches,
and this is probably what most of you guys do too. You know, you go home,
you're like, I want to do some crunches, guys.
Like I'll even do floor crunches in between,
like waiting periods when I'm playing call of duty and waiting for the next
match to start. But, uh, for crunch obviously what proper form,
it looks like this, you're down in the bottom position, you come up,
go to your knees. This is the set up all the way down, all the way up.
Now what starts to happen is if you don't have great flexibility or core strength
or if you're starting to get tired just from doing a lot of repetitions,
most people tend to start to use a bit of momentum to get themselves to the top
part of the movement, right? So the very, very,
very first thing that you can do is find a place to secure your feet in order to
maximize the efficiency of the movement without add even adding any kind of
weight or any other tips right now to make the exercise more intense.
And so if you can find a couch or something that place your feet underneath or
you can even put a weight or something on your toes,
if you can lock yourself in place,
you need to hit your butt much closer to your heels.
And then as you perform your repetitions,
you'll be able to utilize kind of pulling on the rack to pull yourself up.
And then when you guys do the exercise, believe it or not,
you're supposed to come down like this and let the lower part of your back touch
the ground first and then the rest of your back.
And then your shoulders are supposed to touch the ground.
And as soon as your shoulders touch the ground,
that's your cue to come back up the same exact way.
So lower back hits the ground first all the way back like this.
Go into a spinal extension and then go back into flexion like this.
And that's how you perform a rep. and now when I start to get tired,
all I'm going to have to do is kind of pull through my toes a bit more and then
I can flex my core and focus on maintaining proper form.
Now the second thing you can do is to increase the intensity of the spinal
extension that you get at the bottom of the repetition.
And you can do that using a pillow.
And now I actually have some older videos and I told Ricki about them and he's
like, what the hell are you talking about? They were called Ab pillow extreme.
I even sold pillow cases that said ab pillow extreme on it. I really did.
I still got it somewhere. But anyways, um,
I have a bunch of workouts that you can literally at home take your pillow,
take your pillow and use to help increase the amount of spinal extension you're
getting and every single repetition. Um,
now I would still recommend you guys keep your feet locked in, obviously, right?
But basically you can take the pillow and you can put it behind your back so
that in the bottom position it's going to help elevate you to get more spinal
extension. Also,
for those of you where your back hurt when you're doing crunches,
the fluffy pillow can kind of help alleviate some of that pain.
But what you guys can do is place that pillow underneath to force yourself into
spinal extension to make the crunch more effective on every single repetition.
And what you can also do is if that's too easy,
you can get a thicker pillow or you can even fold the one you have in half like
this and then go all the way down and you guys can see a big difference here and
then all the way up. And that's gonna increase the intensity of the exercise.
Now for those of you who maybe don't want to get your pillows super nasty,
you can pick up an Ab mat and then essentially does the same thing.
So this is from IronBull strength actually going to put a link to these 25
bucks. They're super cheap,
but I'm pretty sure I have a promo code so I'll stick that in.
But if you notice on the pad in the front,
it's a bit higher than it is in the back right here.
So if you've never done this before,
you can use the lower elevation in the front and pin that to your back.
And as you get stronger then you can kind of flip it around and use the thicker
elevation here to make the exercise more intense.
And the third way to make AB crunches at home more intense is the start adding
some weight. But what I don't want you guys to do is rush to the heavyweight.
Believe it or not,
it's going to be a lot harder to get intense reps with this than it is with
this. And let me explain. Now, most people,
when they want to do a weighted crunch,
they just assume that more weight is better and to a degree they're correct.
The problem though,
when doing a crunch is if you're getting yourself into position.
So at this point we're applying weight,
so that means we're already going into extreme spinal extension to maximize the
crunch in every single repetition.
Most people grab a plate like this and hold it on their chest and then start
doing crunches. Now what happens is from here to here,
it might feel pretty heavy, but then as soon as you get to about here,
it's like the weight doesn't even really do anything and you can try to offset
that by holding it above your head like this and then coming up like that.
But then what you're going to notice is if you're doing high repetitions,
like 20 to 30 reps, your arms are going to start to fatigue.
And then it's going to kind of impede your ability to do multiple sets of high
repetitions with crunches.
Now if you take a two and a half or five pound plate and you place it behind
your head like this and then start performing crunches,
you're gonna notice right away that you're maintaining a higher level of tension
on your abs throughout the entire repetition,
even when you get to the top. And then as you start to go back down,
and because we're holding the weight behind our head,
even though it's five pounds,
it's going to feel just as heavy as the 25 in front because of leverage, right?
You guys know all about leverage and how it works,
holding it behind your head is going to feel way harder and more difficult than
holding that same weight right here on your chest because it's closer to your
center of gravity.
So this is the third and final way to make your AB training at home more
intense. And it's a combination of all three tips, lock in your feet,
get some elevation on your back to increase your spinal extension and then toss
some weight behind your head. It's that easy guys.
And if you enjoy this quick tip to help make your home training more effective,
let me know by tapping that like button and commenting below.
And as always more good stuff coming soon. See guys,
I wasn't kidding guys, AB pillow,
extreme workouts over here.
You've got to check them out. Seriously.
They're like 15 maybe 20 minute live workouts where I literally take a pillow and
I show you how to utilize it to destroy your abs.
And the thought process behind those when they were first created was if you
were traveling at a hotel and you didn't want to leave your hotel room,
if you wanted to train your core,
just take one of their pillows and get to work. So make sure you check that out.
And as always, download my app, muscular strength.
It's the easiest and best way you can support me while still gaining access to
my fitness programs and my custom meal planners. So check it out.
I'll see you there.