What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today I'm going to show you some things I want you to stop doing when you're training
your abs.
As a matter of fact, this is one of them.
If you're looking at this saying, "I don’t even know what's wrong with that", then that's
even more of a reason you're going to want to stay tuned here and watch what I'm going
to show you.
Now, these kinds of mistakes are being made across every single gym, every day.
I guarantee you're going to see people doing these things.
The good thing is, after you watch this video you won't be one of them.
As a matter of fact, you're going to become the disseminator of the good information so
you can help out a friend.
Let's get to saving your ass right now.
We're going to start with the first thing you need to stop.
All right, the first thing you're going to want to make sure you're not doing is speeding
through your reps.
Guys, I'm sure you've seen people do repetitions like this in the gym all the time.
Some people would say that they have to do them this fast to prevent their body from
swinging during, let's say, a hanging leg raise.
That's not true.
The thing is, they're putting all the effort everywhere, but on their abs.
All I care about is high quality repetitions.
If you accumulate more high-quality repetitions, then the number of repetitions you do will
not matter.
When it comes to your abs you want to make sure that the focus is coming from and deriving
from the area that you're trying to train.
So, when you see me doing a hanging leg raise it doesn’t look like this.
It looks more like this.
This is what we're trying to make the abs do the work.
As I come up slow, I'm really focused on curling the pelvis under, flexing the trunk, making
the abs do the work.
I can take it down to the floor as well in more of a beginner exercise.
We could still screw these up.
Guys pump their way through these like they're going out of style.
I don’t care how fast you go, I only care about accumulating one good rep at a time.
I promise, if you're start to do the same thing your results will be significantly better.
This next one up is one that might have tripped a few of you up in the beginning of the video.
That is: do you know what's wrong with this exercise?
It's a crunch.
I don’t hate the crunch.
There's a purpose for doing the crunch.
If you do it deliberately and slowly, yeah, you're going to get better results from it.
But there's something else wrong with this.
There's an abbreviated range of motion.
This is not a full range of motion repetition.
For some reason, when it comes to ab training, we fall in love with cutting short the repetition
distance.
You can go back to the hanging leg raise.
Go back and look.
What do people normally do?
They just pump their legs in that mid-range.
They don’t take it through that full range of motion.
So, get your legs all the way down.
Go through that full trunk curl.
Just like I'm doing here.
Do the same thing when you're doing your crunches on the ground.
Go all the way to the ground.
Let the abs actually extend, or at least get to neutral with your back on the floor.
Don’t just stay up in that crunch position.
There is so little range of motion as it is with the crunch.
When you take half of it away, you're really minimizing the type of results you can see
from your training.
So, do me a favor, guys.
Start to elongate and be more conscious of the full range of motion on all ab exercises
and I promise, you're going to see better results.
This next one is one that I've covered on the channel before, but it bears repeating
because it's very important.
Especially to the type of look you'll see from your abdominals if you do this wrong.
That is screwing up your breathing.
We're not just rushing through repetitions and abbreviating them to get them done as
quickly as possible.
We're probably also holding our breath or breathing entirely backward.
You see, when you do an ab exercise like this floor crunch you don’t want to do what I'm
doing here.
You don’t want to be breathing out and sticking out your belly at the same time.
You do want to exhale as you come up into a repetition.
We know that.
But as you exhale you should be trying to bring your belly down and in.
You do that by activating the muscle called the transverse abdominus.
Guys, we know it's the muscle that runs around our waist this way and acts to cinch down.
Sort of like the stomach-vacuum idea.
Pulling it down and flat.
As you engage in doing a repetition you want to feel as if you can bring your stomach down
and flat while you breathe out.
So, while it's flattening.
You don’t want to breathe out and blow out at the same time.
And blow like that.
A lot of guys will do that.
All that's doing is teaching poor muscular control in the abdominal area.
So, you don’t want that.
You want to make sure in every, single repetition of every exercise you're doing, when you breathe,
aim to get that cinching down or tightening effect of the transverse as you exhale.
I promise you, again, not only will you have a better execution of the exercise, but a
better look and end result of all the repetitions you're accumulating.
This next one gets really under my skin because I hear it far too often.
A lot of people who are trying to train their abs will do so but skip their obliques because
they've heard that training their obliques is going to make them blocky.
Guys, please stop doing that.
As a matter of fact, if you do one thing, make sure you do train your obliques.
I've shown you this demonstration before.
Your obliques, when covered with fat, will tend to look blocky.
But when your obliques, at a lower body fat level, are revealed they do an incredible
job at tapering the entire waistline down, giving you that v-cut look that a lot of guys
will talk about wanting.
So, the idea is this: you've got to start training your obliques.
More importantly, you've got to be very conscious of how you activate them.
It goes back to the original point in this video.
That's being aware of how you're performing every, single repetition you do.
Don’t just swing around thinking "Okay, I'm twisting, so I'm getting my obliques."
Don’t just do these bicycle crunches and think you're getting your obliques because
people tell you they're good because you're twisting.
Be more conscious of what you do.
If you do something more advanced like this, remember, it's not about speed and just trying
to execute this rotation from the obliques.
They're initiating it.
You can literally see them starting this movement every, single time I go from right to left,
and right to left.
I want you guys to become more aware of that.
But overall, big picture, I don’t care what oblique exercises you're doing.
Make sure you're doing them.
I promise you guys, the end result is going to be much better if you do.
Last, but not least, when it comes to what you're doing for your abs, and what you shouldn't
be doing, one thing I always want you to remember is to include at least a little bit of calf
work and some jaw work.
That's right.
Some calf work.
You see, the next time you're thinking about pulling off into a McDonald's parking lot
you want to slam your damn foot down on the gas pedal, activate those calves, and drive
past as fast as you possibly can.
The next time you think about eating something you know you shouldn't, you want to do three
steps to keep your damn mouth shut so you don’t.
Guys, nutrition is that critical.
I promise you.
The results of your hard work will never be seen unless you commit to eating better behind
the plate and what you put in your mouth.
It's very, very critical and I can't underscore that enough.
So when you think about the type of ab exercises, or even all the tips I've just shown you here,
and what you're supposed to do; they'll become infinitely more effective if you can commit
to the thing that I know is the most challenging.
That is becoming more aware of what you eat.
Guys, it doesn’t have to be impossible.
You can literally eat things you like and I'm encouraging you to do that because there's
no way you're going to stick to this long term if you don’t find a plan that allows
you to eat the way you like.
As a matter of fact, we have plans like that all over at ATHLEANX.com, included in all
our programs.
I make it simple, I make it realistic, I make it something you can actually follow.
Not just for a few days, but you can follow it for life.
Guys, the same way I eat now for years, and years, and years to stay at the body fat levels
I do, without any suffering and without any deprivation.
It wont last long term.
All those are over at ATHLEANX.com.
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All right, guys.
I'll see you again soon.