From rifkin@cco.caltech.edu Mon Feb 21 03:55:21 1994 To: adam@vlsi.cs.caltech.edu Subject: abs faq X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #7 (NOV) >Path: nntp-server.caltech.edu!news.claremont.edu!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.moneng.mei.com!hookup!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv >From: timbomb@cs.uq.oz.au (Tim Mansfield) >Newsgroups: misc.fitness,misc.answers,news.answers >Subject: Abdominal Training FAQ >Supersedes: >Followup-To: misc.fitness >Date: 18 Feb 1994 15:11:58 GMT >Organization: none >Lines: 319 >Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu >Expires: 3 Apr 1994 15:11:15 GMT >Message-ID: >Reply-To: timbomb@cs.uq.oz.au (Tim Mansfield) >NNTP-Posting-Host: bloom-picayune.mit.edu >Summary: Information about Training The Midsection (Monthly Posting) >Keywords: abs, abdominals, situps, love handles >X-Last-Updated: 1994/02/09 >Organisation: University Of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia >Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU >Xref: nntp-server.caltech.edu misc.fitness:29755 misc.answers:424 news.answers:18026 Archive-name: abdominal-training Last-modified: Feb 9 1994 Version: 0.5 THE ABDOMINAL TRAINING FAQ This FAQ is intended as an introduction to the basic principles of training the abdominal area, sometimes known as the belly or the abs. The creation of this FAQ was motivated by frequent questions on the topic in the newsgroup misc.fitness. The FAQ is posted every month to misc.fitness and misc.answers. It is also available via anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu in /pub/usenet/misc.fitness/Abdominal_Training_FAQ. Those preferring to use the World Wide Web or Mosaic can use the URL -- http://clix.aarnet.edu.au/hypertext/faq/usenet/abdominal-training/faq.html Table Of Contents I. INTRODUCTION AND CAVEATS II. QUESTIONS QUESTION 1: How do I get abs like giant ravioli? QUESTION 2: Should I do lots of situps to reduce fat around my middle? QUESTION 3: How do I reduce the fat covering my middle? QUESTION 4: What's wrong with situps? QUESTION 5: What are good ab exercises? QUESTION 6: Is there a specific order I should do exercises in? QUESTION 7: How do I structure a routine? QUESTION 8: How often should I train abs? QUESTION 9: Should I do side bends to reduce my love handles? QUESTION 10: Gee, but shouldn't I balance my abs with my spinal erectors? III. REFERENCES IV. CONTRIBUTIONS OR COMMENTS V. CONTRIBUTORS I. INTRODUCTION AND CAVEATS The information in this FAQ is based on Health For Life's _Legendary Abs_ booklet endless threads about abdominal training in misc.fitness and on the weights mailing list and sundry other sources. See the references list at the end for how to get hold of these things for yourself. II. QUESTIONS QUESTION 1: How do I get abs like giant ravioli? Getting visible abdominal muscles or "abs" depends on reducing the amount of fat covering the abs, see Question 3. Getting hard, lumpy abs depends on developing the underlying muscles, for details, read on... QUESTION 2: Should I do lots of situps to reduce fat around my middle? No. Exercising the area from which you want to lose fat is called "spot reduction". Spot reduction is now believed to be a myth. Research shows that fat is lost all over your body, not just in the area that you work. Situps are also bad for your lower back (see Question 4). QUESTION 3: How do I reduce the fat covering my middle? The answer comes in two parts: diet and aerobic exercise. DIET This is controversial, but most people agree that eating very little fat and lots of complex carbs (like rice, pasta and potatoes) helps ensure that you don't add additional fat. Then you have to work at using the fat you already have stored which involves... EXERCISE Again a bit controversial, but it's widely agreed that regular, moderate, aerobic exercise 3-4 times per week works best to burn fat that's already stored. "Moderate" because intense exercise burns glycogen not fat, so keep the intensity at about the level where you are beginning to puff a little. "Aerobic" means (very vaguely) the kind of exercise that requires you to inhale more. Some suggest that building more muscle through weight training helps as well, since muscle burns fat just by being there and moving your body about; so some weight training couldn't hurt and will probably help. Many misc.fitness people agree that exercise periods of more than 20 minutes work best. QUESTION 4: What's wrong with situps? Two things: they're inefficient and they grind vertebrae in your lower back. They're inefficient because a muscle (muscles?) called the psoas which runs from the lower back, around to the front of the thigh does a very similar job to the abs: it pulls the torso towards the legs. It works best when the legs are close to straight (as they are when doing situps), so for most of the situp the psoas is doing much of the work and the abs are just helping. Getting the psoas muscle out of the way involves putting the thighs at a right angle to the torso. Situps also grind vertebrae in your lower back. This is because to work the abs effectively you are trying to make the lower back round, but tension in the psaos encourages the lower back to arch. The result is the infamous "disc pepper grinder" effect that helps give you chronic lower back pain in later life. QUESTION 5: What are good ab exercises? For the lower abs, in order of difficulty: 15cm lying leg raises vertical lying leg thrusts hanging knee raises hanging leg raises For the upper abs: ab crunches 1/4 crunches cross-knee crunches pulldown crunches 15cm Lying Leg Raises Lie on your back with you hands, palms down under your buttocks. Raise your legs about 30cm off the floor and hold them there. Now trying to use just your lower abs, raise your legs by another 15cm. Do this by tilting the pelvis instead of lifting the legs with the psoas. If you're big or have long legs or both, you should probably avoid this exercise. For people with legs that are too heavy for their lower abs strength, this exercise pulls the lower back into an arch which is bad (and painful). See Question 4. Vertical Lying Leg Thrusts Lie on your back and put your legs in the air vertically over your pelvis and you arms at your sides on the floor. Now, just using the abs raise your pelvis off the ground. If you have difficulty straightening your legs, that's OK, but make sure you're doing the work with your abs, not using the momentum of thrusting with your legs. Try pointing your toes at the top of the movement. Hanging Knee Raises You need a chin-up bar or something you can hang from for this. Grab the bar with both hands with a grip a bit wider than your shoulders, cross your ankles and bring your knees up to your chest (or as close as you can get). Your pelvis should rock slightly forward. Pause at the top of the movement for a second and then slowly lower your knees by relaxing your abs. Don't lower your legs all the way. Repeat the movement using just your abs to raise your knees. Make sure that you don't start swinging. You want your abs to do the work, not momentum. It's important that you don't move your legs too far or your psoas muscle will be doing a lot of work and possibly causing back problems as in a situp. Make sure your pelvis moves and that your abs are doing the work, not your hips. Hanging Leg Raises Just like knee raises except you keep your legs straight. This requires good hamstring and lower back flexibility, see the Stretching FAQ for details. Although Legendary Abs recommends these, other sources warn that they have all the same back problems as conventional situps. This makes sense since like situps, the legs are kept straight and the hips move. For safety you should probably stick to leg thrusts and knee raises. Ab Crunches Lying on your back, put your knees up in the air so that your thighs are at a right angle to your torso, with your knees bent. If you like you can rest your feet on something, like a chair. Put you hands either behind your head or gently touching the sides of your head. Now, slowly raise your shoulders off the ground and try to touch your breastbone to your pelvis, breathing out as you go. If you succeed in touching your breastbone to your pelvis, see a doctor immediately. Do these fairly slowly to avoid using momentum to help. 1/4 Crunches Same as an ab crunch except that you raise your shoulder up, instead of pulling them toward your pelvis. You can do these quickly, in fact it's hard to do them any other way. Cross-Knee Crunches Like ab crunches, take the lying, bent-knee position, but this time crunch diagonally so that you try to touch each shoulder to the opposite hip alternately. At the top position, one shoulder and one hip should be off the ground. Pulldown Crunches Drape a towel or rope around the bar of a pulldown machine so that you pull the weight using it instead of the bar. Kneel facing the machine and grab hold of the towel and put your hands against your forehead. Kneel far enough away from the machine so that the cable comes down at a slight angle. The exercise is the same movement as an ab crunch, but using the weight instead of gravity. The emphasis is still on crunching the abs, pulling the sternum (breastbone) towards the pelvis making sure you exhale all your air at each contraction. QUESTION 6: Is there a specific order I should do exercises in? According to the Health For Life people, you should exercise the lower abs before the upper abs and do any twisting upper ab movements before straight upper ab ones. Twisting exercises work the obliques as well as the upper abs. QUESTION 7: How do I structure a routine? Try to do sets in the 15-30 rep range. Follow the two golden rules in Question 6. Pick easy exercises to start with and when you can happily do about 2 sets in a row of an exercise, try picking harder ones. Only rest when you absolutely must, so take a short (10-15sec) rest between two sets of the same exercise, but none between lower and upper abs. Try to take about 1 second for each rep, except for ab crunches which you should always do slow (2 secs/rep) and 1/4 crunches which you should do fast (2 reps/sec). QUESTION 8: How often should I train abs? Three to four times a week. QUESTION 9: Should I do side bends to reduce my love handles? Nope. Love handles (the pads of fat above the hip bone at the side of the waist) are fat and only shrink with a low fat diet and general aerobic exercise (see Question 3). You can't just remove the fat from that area on its own. As well as that, side bends build the obliques under the fat and will make your love handles look bigger. Direct oblique exercises are generally considered a bad idea for that reason, but if your aesthetics for the human body include big, meaty obliques, then go right ahead. QUESTION 10: Gee, but shouldn't I balance my abs with my spinal erectors? Thanks for asking. If your develop your ab strength without similarly developing your spinal erectors (the muscles that straighten your lower back), you will end up with strange and possibly damaging posture. A fairly good lower back exercise is hyperextensions, which are best done on a hyper extension bench, but can be done on a bed or ordinary bench with something (or someone) holding down your ankles. Lie face down, with your hands touching the sides of your head, your body draped over the edge of the bench and with your hips supported so your pelvis can't move. Slowly raise your torso to the horizontal position, but no higher. Keep your head, shoulders and upper back arched through the whole movement. Try to do a couple of sets af around 12 reps after each ab routine or after each back routine. Don't exercise them more than about three times a week. If you already do deadlifts that's probably exercise enough. III. REFERENCES Legendary Abs and Legendary Abs II are available from: Health for Life 8033 Sunset Blvd. Suite 483 Los Angeles, CA 90046 (800)874-5339 (U.S.) +1 310 306 0777 (International) +1 310 305 7672 (Fax) To subscribe to the Weights Mailing List, send mail to Michael Sullivan at: weights-request@fa.disney.com IV. CONTRIBUTIONS OR COMMENTS If you disagree with anything from this FAQ either from personal experience, or because you've read or learnt otherwise or if you have any tips, information or exercises to add, please send them to the FAQ maintainer: Tim Mansfield V. CONTRIBUTORS The following people contributed either material or comments: Tim Mansfield Nigel Ward Kevin Digweed Steve Cariglia Michael Sullivan David Will