Guest Post by Mike Fitch of GlobalBodyWeightTraining.com

The Three Best Ab Exercises from the Lower Body Up

I already know what you’re thinking, not another ab article, how many times can we repackage the same old crap?

Well I can guarantee that there will be no magazine cover promises like “six pack abs in six days,” but I will break down a couple moves that will give you maximum benefit from these amazingly multi-functional trunk muscles.

In this article I will refer to the abdominal muscles and the posterior spinal muscles as the “trunk” (I’ve kind of abandoned the word “core” after its misuse and abuse over the past few years).

For those of you who are locked in the never ending Jane Fonda crunch cycle, I challenge you to get up off of the floor. When have you ever snatched, climbed, flipped, pulled a car or bent a piece of metal while lying on your back? Well then there must be a better way to strengthen your trunk for all those exercises than lying on your back, right?

For those of you who are already doing all those things, I challenge you to spend some time specifically on trunk training. I’ve seen damn strong guys crumble due to a debilitating back injury that could have easily been avoided. Plus as we all know, stronger abs means stronger back, stronger abs and back mean stronger everything.

The key to understanding how to train the abdominal wall is first understanding the true function of the abdominal wall. In its simplest terms, the only concern of the abdominal muscles is to move, protect and stabilize the spine. All of the trunk muscles work together to allow the body to effectively generate and receive force. If we look at the function of the muscles then it gives us the chance to choose exercises more effectively.

Serious Abdominal Function going on right here…

So let’s look at the trunk and its duties per muscle group.

Rectus Abdominis

The ‘six pack!’ It may be one of the most sought after muscle groups in the human anatomy. Its pure visibility leads to an almost immediate assumption of fitness. But what does it do?

Well aside from protecting the body’s vital organs, it’s how it moves the spine that is most important. Stretching from the lower sternum to the pelvis, the RA flexes the spine (as in sitting up) but what gets less attention is its ability to decelerate spinal extension.

Internal and External Obliques

Multi-functional due to their design, the IO and EO play major roles in spinal movement. The spinal column itself is capable of three main movements: spinal flexion/extension, spinal rotation and lateral spinal flexion (side bending). The IO and EO happen to play a role in all of them (the Quadratus Lumborum also helps out in side bending).

Just like the Rectus, the obliques help decelerate opposing movements which is crucial in the way the body accepts outside forces and still maintains the integrity of the spine.

Erector Spinae

Running the entire length of the spine, the erectors are broken up into sub divisions. The erectors are primary extensors and stabilizers of the spine. So when you bend down to pick something up, gravity is pulling the upper body down while the erectors are controlling the decent. They then contract to extend the spine or stand back up straight.

On a deeper level, the Transversus Abdominis and multifidus play a vital part in the stabilization system of the spine.

So now we know that the four primary muscle groups of the trunk that we want to focus on are:

1. Rectus Abdominis
2. Internal Oblique
3. External Oblique
4. Erector Spinae

And we know that the three major movements of the spine are:

1. Flexion/extension
2. Spinal rotation
3. Lateral spinal flexion (side bending)

This gives us a logical blueprint to choose our exercises! The three exercises that I’m demonstrating in this article/video all start from what I call the “4 Pillars” stance, which is anytime the hands and feet are in contact with the floor, like in a push up.

Weather it’s animal movements or strength movements we can achieve excellent conditioning for the rotator cuff, hips and trunk musculature.

The other elements that make these exercises so effective are the speed and rhythm which allows us to utilize both functions of the trunk musculature, which again is force acceleration and force deceleration.

The final advantage to these movements is the fact that we are training the trunk by moving the lower body with a fixed upper, rather than the traditional fixed lower (like in a crunch or sit up). This makes its carry-over to performance far greater.

Mike Fitch is the creator of the Global Bodyweight Training system. You can get a taste of it by signing up on his site where you’ll receive a free video on 25 Pushup Variations for Total Chest Development. Also be sure to check out the World is Our Playground section to see bodyweight training and more in Miami, Costa Rica and many more locations around the world.

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Tags: abdominal workouts, bodyweight training, core workouts, global bodyweight training, hand balancing, hand stand

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 10th, 2011 at 12:52 pm and is filed under bodyweight training, core training workouts, core workouts for athletes, muscle building anatomy, muscle-building-workouts, strength training muscle building workouts, strength training workouts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.