How To's Cont.

Crossover crunch

1. Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor.

2. Cross your right leg over your left leg so your right ankle is resting on your left knee.

3. Place your fingertips to the side of your head just behind your ears.

4. Contract your abdominal muscles as though you are doing a crunch

5. Slowly twist your torso and touch your left elbow to your right knee.

6. Exhale as you lift up

7. Slowly lower to the starting position

8. Inhale as you lower

Half curl

·Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor.

·Place your palms on your thighs

·Contract your abdominal muscles and curl up until your fingertips reach your knees.

·Breathe out as you curl up.

·Slowly lower to the start position.

·Breathe in as you lower.

·Tip: Don’t tuck your chin to your chest and keep your head up.

Vertical leg crunch

-Lie on the floor and extend the legs straight up with knees crossed.

-Place your hands behind the head for support, but avoid pulling on the neck.

-Contract the abs to lift the shoulder blades off the floor, as though reaching your chest towards your feet.

-Keep the legs in a fixed position and imagine bringing your belly button towards your spine at the top of the movement.

Plank

-Lie face down on mat resting on the forearms, palms flat on the floor.

-Push off the floor, raising up onto toes and resting on the elbows.

-Keep your back flat, in a straight line from head to heels.

-Tilt your pelvis and contract your abdominals to prevent your rear end from sticking up in the air or sagging in the middle.

How To's

How to Do the Basic Abdominal Crunch

·                     Lie on your back, bend your knees, placing your hands on the sides of your head.

·                     Contract your abs and flatten your lower back against the floor.

·                     Slowly lift your shoulder blades one or two inches off the floor.

·                     Exhale as you lift, keep your neck straight and chin up.

·                     Hold for a few seconds (don't hold your breath).

·                     Slowly lower while keeping your abs contracted

Right/left oblique

Lie on your back and cross the left foot over the right knee, hands behind your head.

·Keeping lower back pressed into the floor, lift your shoulder blades off the floor and then curl your upper body diagonally across your body towards your left knee.

-Contract your abs and obliques as hard as you can at the top of the movement.

·Resist on the way back down.

Bicycle                              

·Lie flat on the floor with your lower back pressed to the ground and contract your core muscles.

-With your hands gently holding your head, lift your knees to about a 45-degree angle.

·Slowly, at first, go through a bicycle pedal motion.

·Alternately touching your elbows to the opposite knees as you twist back and forth.

Reverse crunch

1.                   Lie on the floor and place hands on the floor or behind the head.

2.                   Bring the knees in towards the chest until they're bent to 90 degrees, with feet together or crossed.

3.                   Contract the abs to curl the hips off the floor, reaching the legs up towards the ceiling.

4.                   Lower and repeat for 1-3 sets of 12-16 reps.

5.                   It's a very small movement, so try to use your abs to lift your hips rather than swinging your legs and creating momentum.

Long arm crunch

1. Lie on a mat and extend the arms straight out behind the head with hands clasped, keeping the arms next to the ears.

2. Contract the abs and lift the shoulder blades off the floor.

3, Keep the arms straight and avoid straining the neck. If you feel neck pain, take one hand behind the head while keeping the other arm extended.

One Workout Down

Yesterday was the first day of what I would call my 30-day challenge.  I did my first ab workout at around noon before I ate lunch.  My workout only took a quick five minutes.  I used an application I found on my Android phone called "Daily Ab Workout Free," and you can choose the amount of time you would like to workout (5, 7.5, or 10 minutes).  I chose the shortest amount of time to begin, by choosing 5 minutes.  Each of these exercises are done 30 seconds long. The exercises you have to perform is basic crunches, right/left oblique crunches, bicycle crunch, reverse crunch, long arm crunch, crossover crunch, half curl, vertical leg crunch, and you finish with a thirty second plank.  I will post directions of how to do each exercise shortly.

A 30-day Experience

This blog will be a guide to my 30-day experience of an abdominal workout that will be performed every other day.  I would like to do this experiment to see what kind of results I can achieve after a short period of time, in hopes that it will motivate me to continue this workout.  The purpose of this research and experiment is for a class project, but also to try to motivate myself and keep me on task because I will have an audience tracking my progress.  In the end I plan to be well on my way to a flatter stomach before swimsuit season rolls around!