The Crunchless Abdominal Workout

When training your abdominals you want to do tons and tons of crunches and bicycle crunches, right? I mean you should probably do about 1,000 a day (in your office, Will Ferrell Anchorman-style) Okay I digress…

Crunches are a thing of the past when it comes to abdominal training. Years of research by Dr. Stuart McGill (an incredible researcher when it comes to the ins and outs of the spine) tells us that during a traditional crunch the spine is loaded with 340kg of compressive force. Imagine what happens after 3 sets of 50 crunches. Certainly you’re not going to feel the pain now, but what about in 10 years.

The abdominal region’s main job is to stabilize and help produce force and power. You don’t get either of those things while lying on your back performing a weight-less crunch.

So I’m telling you what NOT to do but what exactly should you be DOING?

I know that most of you don’t care about stabilization and force production, you are just thinking, how can I make my abs look good? While to the good news is that the actual core training that you should be engaging in will help those abs look just fine.

You must burn fat in order to actually see the muscles in that area, so you should be performing full body movements as a main-stay of your workout. These exercises engage all muscles of the core (hip flexors, hamstrings, low back, obliques, abdominals) and also kick up the calorie burn in order to shed some extra belly fat.

When it comes to core training you want to focus on planks, bridging and extensions.

Here is a sample workout that will challenge your core and your full body:

Side Planks- 3 sets of 12 each side

1-Arm Reach Planks- 3 sets of 6 each side

Renegade Row Planks (a Durbrow Performance favorite) 3 sets of 8 each side with 8-15 lbs (you can always begin this from your knees similar to a push up)

Here are some other great exercises that you need to be doing as they’ll challenge your core and everything else.

Kettle bell Swings
Some type of squat or dead lift
Push Ups
Tube Rotations (low or high)

Here’s a quick video outlining the 3 plank exercises I spoke about in the beginning. Do this at the beginning of your workout to fire up your core and get you ready to burn some serious fat!