What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today I want to give you a beginner workout for abs.
Now, the key is that this is not your only workout.
I just made a video not long ago when I talked about one of the biggest mistakes you can
make when you’re trying to lose weight.
It’s to think that an ‘ab only’ approach is going to get you there.
We know you need to have your nutrition in check in order to do that.
However, if for a beginner you can commit to a five-minute workout – or a six minute
workout like this one is going to be here, to at least get you going, to start to build
that momentum – then it’s a good thing.
But realize you want to make sure you’re transitioning to something greater.
That you’re starting to work your entire body and not just focusing on the abs.
With that being said, there are some key differences between this beginner ab workout and some
others that you may have seen because we want to make sure we’re training the right way
to hit the right functions of the abs, not leaving anything out.
So, this will do exactly that.
I’ve got a stopwatch here that we’re going to do everything to.
So, it makes it very simple to track.
So, I’m going to get down here.
The very first thing you want to do is something we call a halo.
The reason why halos are good is that you’re working your lower abs.
So, any movement where we take the pelvis and curl it back, up toward the head is going
to be initiated with a contraction down from the bottom portion of the abs.
So, we want to make sure we start with that because that tends to be the weakest.
So, we pick our legs up, and when we’re in this position here, now we’re going to
lift and draw a circle.
So, I’m trying to draw circles into the ceiling just like that.
So, I lift, I’m drawing a circle, all the way down, and around just like this.
This is the circle.
Now after 30 seconds I’m going to start reversing direction.
So now I’m going to lift and draw circles in the opposite direction.
30 clockwise and 30 counterclockwise.
Then what you want to do is start getting your obliques involved now.
So, you still want to stay bottom-up because you’re most fresh at this point in the workout,
but you get the obliques involved by creating some rotation because they run down at an
angle.
So, what we do here is, now we’re going to curl our pelvis off the ground and as we
do, twist the butt in one direction.
Curl and twist the butt.
Just like that.
So, I’m literally lifting my pelvis from here to here.
Off the ground, lift, twist, and down.
So, no hanging exercises.
Hanging exercises tend to be a lot more difficult.
We’re going straight for the somewhat simpler versions here, but still not negating the
principles that I want you to follow here when it comes to training your abs.
Great.
Now the next thing is what we call a midrange movement.
Where we want to train the abs in both directions.
Meaning, stability from the top down, and the bottom up.
That’s where you’re working on that entire midrange.
This is where plank become a good option.
However, if you’ve seen me talk about planks before I’m not a big fan of them.
Why?
Because they’re just not that challenging.
They’re not dynamic.
They’re too static.
We can make them a stability exercise, but still have them become more dynamic by adding
movement in.
We can do that with a pendulum plank reach out.
So, we get down in this position here and what we do is by making a pendulum with the
lower legs.
So, I step out, here, and back, and step out, and back.
Out and back.
That’s the bottom portion.
But what we do is add the arms in, too.
So, I step out, back, out, back.
Arm out, and back.
When I go into this reach position with the arm you can see I’ve decreased my stability
on the floor.
I’ve taken where I’ve had four limbs down, four points of contact, and made it temporarily
three, and even when I put the hand back down, this elongated arm out here has increased
the work that the abs have to do.
So, I come back in.
So, step out, step out, arm out, arm out.
Step out, step out, arm out, arm out.
And I keep that going for one minute.
Each of these exercises so far has been done for one minute.
Now, we still want to have that rotation, but this time from the top down.
So, what we can do there is an exercise we call the chainsaw.
So, you’ve probably seen scissors before.
You lift your torso off the ground, engage the abs, get in this position here, and you
just flutter your legs back and forth.
For a chainsaw we want to make it more dynamic, so more motion.
So, what we do is, we come down, we lift, engage, up, and then what we’re doing is
rotating our legs and our feet, trying to keep our torso pointing straight ahead, but
all of our lower body rotating.
Scissor, scissor, scissor, scissor, over there.
Come up here a little bit more.
So, scissor it and rotate it.
You go one minute of these.
Now, you rest as needed between these exercises.
Depending upon how much of a beginner you are, you might need a little more rest.
If you can keep cranking through them, that would be ideal.
The less rest time you spend between ab exercises, the better the overall effect.
Finally, we do a sit-up-rollup.
This is a very important point here.
We end with our top down movement.
Going from the top toward the bottom.
Why?
Because we’re strongest in that direction.
We have more strength in any top down movement.
We’re going to need it because at this point in the workout we’re fatigued.
However, you’ve probably seen a lot of people anchor their feet under something to do a
sit-up.
When they do, by hooking their feet and pulling up, they’re engaging their hip flexors,
which has a detrimental effect on the lower back.
Especially over time as you accumulate more and more reps.
So, what you do is, you find that same surface and instead, you hook your feet beyond.
So now when the feet are beyond, and you pull back, you’re activating the hamstrings which
are on the opposite side of the hip flexors, which can help to decrease the hip flexor
activity, therefore decreasing the pulling on the low back.
It’s a completely opposite effect, but the abs still have the same opportunity to be
worked.
So, with my feet anchored beyond that point, what I do is keep my arms up here and I curl
up.
When I’m at the top – a very important key here – you paint yourself back down.
I just covered this in a lower ab weakness video.
You want to be able to pain yourself down.
Same thing on the way up.
You want to unpeel yourself off the ground, one segment at a time.
Here, and then on your way back down you engage in a roll down one piece at a time.
Roll off one piece at a time, paint yourself back down one vertebra at a time.
By engaging, by getting into this flexed trunk you’re engaging the abs already.
You’re disengaging the hip flexors, you’re protecting your back, there are no detrimental
effects to exercises like this with a sit-up, or ab workouts in general.
You complete this here for one minute.
So, you see that five exercises for one minute a piece, the idea is if you’re beyond a
rank beginner, you can do this two times and it will give you about a 10 minute workout.
If you are a beginner, start here.
Like I said before, I don’t care where you’re at in terms of rank beginner and this getting
you on the ground and actually doing something.
That’s great.
But use it as an impetus to do more.
Ab training alone is not going to get you the results you want.
Pair it up with good nutrition, pair it up with some good total body training; now you’re
really going to start seeing the results of your hard work.
Guys, I hope you’ve found the video helpful.
If you’re looking for more workouts, we have lots of advanced training in our ATHLEANX
videos as well.
Make sure you check them out.
If you’re looking for one of those programs you can find them over at ATHLEANX.com.
We do have programs scalable to all levels of ability.
If you’ve found the video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up below.
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All right, guys.
See you soon.