Bri­an Chin Le­ung

Con­trary to pop­u­lar be­lief, ab train­ing should not be con­fined to ly­ing in a hor­i­zon­tal po­si­tion on the floor. Your ab­dom­i­nals form part of your core.For the past ten years, some peo­ple have been talk­ing about spe­cif­ic core ex­er­cis­es; but the fact re­mains that many ex­pe­ri­enced fit­ness ex­perts will tell you, that most of the com­pound ex­er­cis­es per­formed with free weights, will ef­fec­tive­ly en­gage your core. These in­clude free squats, clean and jerk, dead­lift and bar­bell rows.It stands for rea­son that if your core is en­gaged in a com­pound ex­er­cise, as a unit, then your abs will al­so be en­gaged. In oth­er words, many re­sis­tance ex­er­cis­es (free weights) in­volv­ing com­pound move­ments will in fact strength­en your ab­dom­i­nal re­gion.Apart from your ab­dom­i­nals be­ing in­volved in most com­pound move­ments, your abs can al­so be specif­i­cal­ly worked through a va­ri­ety of dif­fer­ent an­gles and planes; but this must al­so be done in con­junc­tion with a prop­er nu­tri­tion­al and aer­o­bic pro­gramme that is de­signed to low­er over­all body fat; this will then en­hance your quest for that six-pack look. Let's first have a look at ab anato­my.

Ab anato­my

The four main ab­dom­i­nal mus­cles are:

• Rec­tus Ab­domi­nus-This is the mus­cle that gives you a six-pack ap­pear­ance.

• Trans­verse Ab­domi­nus-If you place your fin­gers on your abs and cough, the mus­cles you feel mov­ing are your trans­verse ab­domi­nus.

• Ex­ter­nal Obliques-These are po­si­tioned on each side of the rec­tus ab­domi­nus.

• In­ter­nal Obliques-These flank the rec­tus ab­domi­nus and are lo­cat­ed just in­side the hip bones.

Ad­vanced ab moves

The floor crunch (all vari­a­tions) has been tout­ed as the most ef­fec­tive ab ex­er­cise for the past 20 years; in my opin­ion it (the crunch) has its us­es, es­pe­cial­ly for peo­ple with low­er back is­sues, but it won't make my top three ab­dom­i­nals list. You can stay off from per­form­ing floor crunch­es for as long as three weeks and when you do re­sume, you will hard­ly ex­pe­ri­ence any sore­ness.If you stayed off from squat­ting for three weeks, your legs will feel sore. Like­wise, if you stayed off from hang­ing leg rais­es for three weeks, your abs will feel sore, and you will know they have been worked!

In my opin­ion, the best ad­vanced ab ex­er­cis­es are:

• Hang­ing leg and knee rais­es-When per­formed in a se­quence, where­by you move im­me­di­ate­ly from the hang­ing leg raise to the hang­ing knee raise, it sets your abs on fire. Re­mem­ber to avoid swing­ing for more iso­la­tion of your abs.

• In­vert­ed an­gled sit-ups-This can be per­formed by hook­ing your leg around an ex­tra long, well se­cured punch­ing bag; as Yuri demon­strates in the pic­ture. This move should not be at­tempt­ed with­out prop­er su­per­vi­sion, and you must be in top con­di­tion. Your legs must al­so be very strong, as they have to hold you in po­si­tion as you do the in­vert­ed sit-up.

• Sus­pend­ed side-bends-This ex­er­cise must al­so be per­formed with prop­er su­per­vi­sion; since half of your body will be off the bench, while your legs are se­cured by the weight of your train­er or train­ing part­ner. Keep train­ing.

Bri­an Chin Le­ung is ac­er­ti­fied per­son­al train­er