Sustain Your Abdominal Crunch Exercise

Many of us have done the abdominal exercise the “Sit Up”. (I think they required them once upon a time in elementary school gym class.) The “Sit Up” then evolved into the ” Abdominal Crunch”. In the last decade, millions of dollars have been spent on all sorts of fancy “Ab Trainers” to exploit this “sitting up” movement.  However – I would like to propose an exercise you can do (almost) anywhere – a Sustained Abdominal Crunch, that can tone your abdominals and strengthen your Core.

The abdominals don’t work like the biceps (big upper arm muscle responsible for “The Curl”), going dynamically up and back, up and back, in what we call concentric and eccentric contractions – unless you are doing “Sit-Ups”.  Abs actually behave in a more “Static” manner, “holding” a sustained contraction, essentially “Isometrically”. They have a tone, which they hold. It is for this reason that “The Plank” exercise has grown in popularity – it’s a “Static/Isometric Contraction” exercise.

In a previous post we spoke about how “The Plank” can be hard on folks who have low back pain. Let’s try this one. Begin a “Crunch” set of exercises, do about 5 or 10, and then “hold” your crunch (early in the move) for a count of at least 15. You might feel yourself starting to tremble. Tremble? Wow, it’s working. There is less struggling, and more benefit. You can even try it on a PT Exercise Ball.  Don’t overdo it on your first day though, because you may have training pain in the morning. If you have difficulties with this, and even if you don’t, call me and let’s set up an appointment to review it.  We have those PT Balls for you in stock as well.