What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today I want to talk to you all about the ab-wheel rollout.
More specifically, how to nail it every, single time.
If you don’t, this exercise does not belong in your ab training routine, for two reasons.
At best, you're looking at a major waste of time.
At worst, you're looking at an exercise that can actually cause damage to your lower back,
but if you do get it right it's a great exercise that belongs in your training routine.
So here's what you want to do: you want to focus on three separate areas.
One is the setup.
The second part is the execution.
The third part is pulling the wheel back to you.
Those are the three areas.
Obviously, every exercise is made up of those three components, but in this case people
tend to screw up in those three areas.
So we want to cover all of them.
So when you're getting setup for the exercise the first thing you want to do is focus on
the position of your back, and your hips.
The key here is that you don’t want to follow some advice when people tell you to flatten
everything out into one straight line.
What you're doing here is, you're immediately taking this exercise and making it solely
one thing.
That is – at least as far as the abs are concerned – that is an anti-extension move.
While that is a tremendous component of this exercise it's not the only one.
So when you get into this position here, and then you roll out – which is what people
advise you to do – they're basically letting the lats do all the work.
While this could be a great lat builder, especially if you don’t have weighted options at home,
that's not the focus of the move.
We're not doing straight arm pushdowns here, to build our lats.
What we're trying to do is develop the strength in our core.
We know that one of the functions of the core is to flex the spine, but it doesn't mean
that we have to get an over-flexion of the lumber spine.
So watch what I'll do instead.
I'll do more of a cat and camel here, where I'm pulling up, tucking the upper abs up,
into my chest.
That's the feeling I want to have.
And I'm not rounding out the lower back excessively here.
All I've done is bring it more to a neutral position from an anterior tilt.
So now when I'm in this position I want to keep it there.
So now we go right into the second part, and that is the rollout.
The rollout, what we're focusing on here is to go out, only as far as you can handle because
the main goal here, now, is to maintain that tightened core, and prevent a quick, fast,
overextension of the spine, because that's when we start to do damage to the lumbar spine.
So when we go out, we go out only as far as we can handle.
Beginners might only go out as far as I'm showing you here.
Whereas the more advanced, you can go all the way out.
As a matter of fact, you can even hold it for a short period of time when you're out
there, and then come back.
So you go out as far as you can handle, but the key point is to make sure that at no point
do your abs give out, and your low back cave in.
you want to keep that nice, and tight throughout.
So now here's the key for me.
When you're coming back in, what is initiating the pulling?
If you're letting your hips do the work you're ruining all the good work you established
to this point.
That's what a lot of people do.
When people say "I'll do hundreds of ab rollouts."
Not if you're doing them right.
If you go out and your first move is to pull your hips back so you're getting a lot of
hip flexion to drive the wheel back in then you're not doing it right.
As a matter of fact, you've kind of taken away almost half the exercise.
The same thing as if you just dropped the weights down on a curl and never lifted them.
What you want to do here is never let the hips lead the way.
Make the wheel and the hips move together.
Now you can test yourself, and there's a great way to make sure you're doing this right.
Watch here what I do.
I back myself up against a bench, and I start by having my butt in contact with the bench
as I sit back.
Then I roll out.
Now, if my butt makes any contact with the bench on the way back in I didn't do that
rep correctly.
I let my hips dominate, and I let it lead the way.
We already know that hip flexors are over dominant in a lot of ab movements here.
This would be another example of that if we allowed it to happen.
So instead, now I want to get away from the bench.
What you're focusing on here is, I get all the way out there, then I initiate the contraction
in the abs, and I pull back in with the wheel, and the hips moving together in sync.
You'll see here when I get to the top my butt is no further back than it was when I started.
That is a properly executed ab-wheel rollout.
That's what you should be focused on every, single time.
Guys, it rolls over to all our ab training.
It's not just trying to crank out reps.
I think this is where this gets bastardized more than anywhere else in our training, it's
focused on hundreds of reps of ab training.
No.
Focus on quality reps and forget counting how many you're doing.
The key is to make sure all your reps count, and that is when you're going to be training
your abs effectively, and more safely.
If you're looking for a program that puts the science back in strength, and makes sure
that you get, not just your ab training right, but that every, single thing you do; then
head to ATHLEANX.com right now and get one of our ATHLEANX training programs.
In the meantime, if you've found this video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
Let me know what else you want me to cover here, and I'll do my best to do that for you
in the days, and weeks ahead.
Remember guys, we're trying to do something good for your body.
The last thing you want to do is something that hurts you.
As long as you're doing this right I promise you, you'll get great results for using this
wheel, right here.
All right, guys.
Talk to you soon.