JackedPack Blog - Epic Fitness & Nutrition Tips
Strengthen Your Core Without Spinal Flexion
By Evan Clark, NSCA-CPT
First of all, I would like to thank Al Gore for inventing the Internet. Seriously, he hooked up society big time. Hopefully by the time I’m forty I’ll be living like George Jetson. However, the downfall of Al Gore’s Al-Glorious invention is that for many people today, meatheads included, work requires sitting at a desk 40 hours a week.
While we all would love to be professional athletes, astronauts and fighter pilots, the average employee spends their workday sitting at a desk tippity-tapping away at the keyboard. While the modern age of personal computers and smart phones may benefit us all in some aspects, (Youtube being the greatest invention since the invention of the protein shaker), it certainly has not benefitted our posture or back health. For this reason, I cringe when I see hardworking men and women go from hunching at an office desk to hunching on a Swiss ball doing crunches at the gym.
The world of aesthetics driven exercise has many believing that crunches are the vessel to a respectable six-pack. While crunches are an excellent, efficient exercise, they are often performed incorrectly. By no means am I a crunches-hater, however, this is a large topic best saved for another day.
We want to encourage some abdominal exercise variation that not only target the abdominals, but the entire core (obliques, erector spinae, etc.). Therefore, because we do not want that washboard stomach to be complementing the Quasimodo posture, here are just a handful of terrific core exercises that help increase trunk stability and core strength without spinal flexion:
Plank/Side Plank
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I990Wbr1JE
Variations:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlSRm8k5Yxo
*Perform plank in push-up position rather than on forearms
*Perform with hands and/or feet on different surface.
*Feet up on bench
*Hands on medicine ball
*Feet or hands on a BOSU or Swiss ball
*Side planks – dip hip to floor and then return to original position for repetitions
*Perform plank with one foot or hand up
Cable Chops
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvvIjDOiVKc
Variations:
*Perform parallel, upward and downward
*Perform by throwing medicine balls instead of using cables
*Perform in kneeling position, no twisting, only moving arms
Deadbugs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5xbsA71v1A
Variations:
*Perform with both hands and feet at the same time
*Perform using a physioball or medicine ball in hands or passed back and forth from hands to feet.
Crab Pose
To perform the crab pose, start by sitting on the ground with knees bent and hands on the ground behind you. Your hand should be pointed back (shoulders externally rotated). Lift your butt off the ground keeping a big chest and straight back. Hold.
Variations:
*One foot/hand off of the ground
*Perform walking forward, sideways or backwards
Comments
Posted by Saharat on Nov 11, 2012
Breathing technique dunrig weight exercises or even abs training?For example, building the biceps, when we bend our elbows and lift lfit the weight up, we exhale and then inhale as we bring it back down eh? Are we suppose to do the exercise according to the breaths? Meaning, exhale and bring it up, and when we need to inhale we bring it down. In other words, each cycle of the weigth-lift is one cycle of breath? But I find that by doing this we are sorta straining ourselves from breathing normally and thus feeling tired/exerted at times cos we aren’t suppose to do it fast but rather slowly.Another example: crunches, as we crunch, we exhale then we are suppose to hold for 1 second before going back down and inhaling. But as we hold the crunch for 1 sec, I tend to hold my breath which then is suppose to be wrong. If I had breathed normally as I did the crunch and dunrig the hold I’d inhale and then on the way down I’d exhale which then ruins the technique. But if I hold a full breathe cycle dunrig the hold it’d be too exerting. It’s hard 2 sync them!The thing is, as we reach the pinnacle of our muscle contraction, if I attempt to breathe normally I would lose my power and momentum thus tiring me. Not only that anormal breath cycle would be longer than 1-2 secs and that’s quite long to hold especially at the maximum contraction.But if I breathe a cycle of breath per cycle of weight-lift/crunch, then it’d be ok but after a while it would seem like my breathing is not normal and strained.
Posted by Irina Vasilieva on Oct 20, 2012
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