Cool new video for you to check out – it’s a ‘Crunchless’ ab circuit that’ll take you about five minutes to do –
See, it turns out that Crunches are just okay for working your abs. Although a wicked Crunch circuit can give you a great ab burn (and that’s why I still include ’em in some of my workouts), Crunches simply aren’t very functional.
According to Stuart McGil, one of the world’s leading back and spine health experts, in every day life, “the abdominals are braces.” When doing any kind of athletic movement, “the spine is in a neutral posture, not flexed, and the abdominal muscles are contracted to brace the spine.”
Which means the best way — for both your back and your beach body — to work your midsection is to do movements that challenge the muscles to perform the way they’re designed and expected to work in real life, not to train muscles in isolation.
The Plank to Push Up and Wood Chop exercises in the video below provide a couple of great examples; they are very functional movements that force you to use your abs strongly as stabilizers – but also require that you use a bunch of other muscle groups at the same time and in a more ‘real world’ movement pattern:
That’s it for this week! Keep training hard and talk soon!
Forest
P.S. We’re putting together some really cool deals for you with several businesses we’ve partnered with in the local area. We’ve got a chiropractor and esthetician in on the program, as well several other local retail stores (with more in the works). The best part is that these deals are exclusive for Forest Vance Training, Inc. clients. The value of the entire package is going to be several hundred dollars in total. We’re just finishing up the details and should have the program ready to roll out next week – so stay tuned!
Liking your crunch music!
Thanks Virginia – I'm surprised that you're the only one that noticed 🙂
: )…