How To Do Abdominal Work At Home

If you are just starting out, the best way to safely get into training your abdominals (or abs as we will call them from now on) is the simple crunch.

The crunch is a simple yet often incorrectly done exercise. Here is how I teach my clients on the Fat To Fit Program to do them. Place your hands behind (support, but don’t pull) your head. I like to support my head by using the finger tips to cup the ears. It’s a light support but it keeps you from cranking your neck forward. From here, curl your upper torso forward. As you do this you want to keep your lower back in mind and push it into the floor. Bring your rib cage toward your pelvis until you feel a contraction in your abs. Holding your hands down by your hips is an easier version. Pause for the contraction and slowly return to the starting position. Exhale on the contraction – this breathing advice applies to all abdominal exercises.

Three sets of crunches for 20 reps a set is a nice place for a beginner to start. You can rest anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute depending on how hard of an effort that was for you. If that’s not a problem then superset each set of crunches with the next exercise called hip rolls. Superset is just a fancy personal trainer term for no rest. This means then that the first set of crunches is immediately followed by a brief 30 second rest to let the burn fizzle a bit. Do three sets of this combination.

To do hip rolls correctly you lie on the ground pushing down on the floor with your hands by your sides. Keep your feet off the floor and bent 90 degrees at the knee the whole time. You then raise your pelvis off the floor so the tail bone comes right up and squeeze the abs! You should now be rolled into a ball with your knees over your chest. At the top if you get really good, not only will your pelvis be off the floor but also a portion of your lower back.

Now if you have come this far and you have been watching your diet and doing your cardio, you are starting to see that six pack come out. The last step in the beginner ab routine is to add in some bridges or “planks” as the yoga folks like to call them. This is basically a pushup position but you don’t rest on your hands, you rest on your forearms and just hold it for 30-60 seconds. Don’t let your lower back sag! Keep a slightly inverted c posture like your trying to pull your hips toward your chin.

Now to combine all these fine ab exercises into an abdominal workout you can do at home and get a little sweat on.

Beginner home abdominal workout
Crunches x20
Hip rolls x20
Planks for a 30-60 second hold

Once you finish the circuit, you have two options. The first is to work through the three ab exercises non-stop and at the end take a 30-60 second break. The second option that is a real ab burner, is to go through the whole abdominal circuit three times with no rest at all!
So there you go. A way to start from the basic crunch and work your way into a pretty serious ab burning routine all from the comfort of your living room.

[tags]Abdominal workout, ab work at home, ab exercises[/tags]