What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today I want to show you one thing to do before every one of your ab workouts.
Especially if you're someone who has a hard time either A) feeling your abs work when
you are doing your ab exercises; or B) you tend to feel it more in your low back because
you're relying too much on your hip flexors to do your exercises.
That's something we have to fix right now.
We do that with reciprocal inhibition.
Now this little, fancy word is just something that really means, if we can activate, or
contract a muscle that acts on the opposite side of a joint than the one that we don’t
want to work, then we can reciprocate it, or at least turn it down a little bit so the
other muscles can do the job.
That's what we're trying to do.
If your hip flexors are initiating too much of the movement when you're trying to crunch,
or do any other ab exercises that we'll show here, then what you want to do is try to get
them out of the equation so the abs could do more of the work.
The hamstrings are able to do that because of their function as hip extenders.
What we can do though, is also rely on the glutes, too because we know that they can
also extend the hip.
So what you do is take this foam roller, put it behind your ankles, and up against your
butt.
Then you squeeze your glutes together, and your hamstrings at the same time.
Everything should be squeezed up, and under.
When we do that now the hip flexors have to shut down a little bit.
When we have that done, now when we initiate an ab contraction it's happening more from
the abs instead of the hip flexors over dominating.
So you want to do a levitation crunch.
You squeeze here, keep that in place, and we just lift the shoulders up, off the ground.
Just like that.
Immediately you should feel a much stronger contraction in your abs because they're being
demanded to work harder.
We do 10 reps of that, then we come across our body, and same things.
Squeeze, come up, and twist just a little bit.
Up, and twist a little bit.
Here you go five on each direction.
So now you're up to 20 reps.
Finally, we do some kind of bottom-up movement here.
So we squeeze with the foam roller back, and then we initiate the lift.
Just like that.
Again, with the hamstrings actively engaged in the glutes, squeezing from underneath,
the hip flexors can't contribute as much to these lower ab movements as they tend to.
And this is where a lot of the low back pain comes from.
So we go 10 reps here.
So now, when it carries over to the full ab workout the one thing I want you to realize
is anytime you're going to do a lower ab movement where the bottom comes up here, then what
you want to do is make sure that the hip flexors are not doing that work.
You could do that by actually limiting the range of motion.
A lot of times what people will do is, they think that going all the way down is a great
idea because you're increasing the weight of the legs, increasing the moment arm, making
the exercise more difficult.
But what that's promoting is, that's making you move your hip flexors to get back up to
the point where your pelvis moves.
I have to go all hip flexor here to be able to get to the point where my pelvis can then
lift, and go through the movement.
What I'm saying is, 'don’t go down that low'.
Go down so the pelvis and legs move together, all the time.
When it gets down to the point where the pelvis no longer moves, then you're done with that
rep, and go back up again.
Here.
So I'm never in a position where the pelvis is stable, and that you're moving on it.
That would be hip flexor.
But if I can get the pelvis and the legs to move together then I'm doing it right.
You'll be able to do that a lot more likely now because you've allowed the hip flexors
to butt out, and get out of the equation.
I'm going to give you a bonus here, too.
What's the one thing you should do after every ab workout?
You really need to stretch them, guys.
People don’t stretch their abs nearly enough.
They are muscles.
They need to be stretched and again, if this is going to be a static stretch you do it
when you're done with your work.
Preferably, I like to do this at night, but certainly not before we do our training.
But a nice ab stretch is literally keeping the lower pelvis in contact with the ground,
and then just coming up for a stretch, and hanging out here, like that.
So there you go, guys!
One thing to do to start getting those abs to feel more of every ab workout you do by
activating them more properly, and getting those muscles that we don’t want to be contributing
out of it.
If you're looking for a program that puts the science back in strength – not just
on ab training, but in everything we do – head to ATHLEANX.com right now and get our ATHLEANX
training program.
In the meantime, if you've found this video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
Let me know what you want me to cover in a future video and I'll do my best to do that
for you in the days, and weeks ahead.
All right, guys.
See you soon.