Abdominal exercises

Abdominal exercises are exercises designed for strengthening muscles, tendons and ligaments of the abdomen. Abdominal exercises, along with back exercises, are essential for maintaining the body's trunk. A well-maintained trunk or core (abdominal and back muscles that surround the spine) is one of the best ways to maintain good posture as we age and one of the best defense's against common back injuries that cause back pain.

Abdominal exercises can be categorized into four sections: Upper Abdominals, Lower Abdominals, Love Handles and Lower Back.

Abdominal exercise guidelines

Building and maintaining a healthy core is best done as part of the daily routine and/or integrated into an ongoing exercise program. To be effective, it is often recommended that abdominal and back exercises be performed about four times per week, with each session lasting roughly 10-20 minutes. Since proper form is so important when doing ab and back exercises, it may be beneficial to work with someone trained in exercise, e.g., a fitness trainer, physical therapist, etc [1].

Types of abdominal exercises

There are literally thousands of different exercises for the abdominal muscles. One famous system of abdominal exercise is Pilates, and other exercise programs like yoga and Tai Chi have movements that focus on strengthening the ab muscles. The three most common and well known exercises are:

• Sit-ups

• Crunches

• Reverse Crunches

• Standing

Standing-Breathing Abdominal Toning Exercise [2] The importance of strengthening your abdominal muscles is: The stomach muscles support the low back just as the ribs support the upper back; the obvious difference being that you have to tell them to "tighten up!" So, First, Before you get IN/OUT of your car; go UP/DOWN stairs; LIFTING anything or anybody (you know, the little people) you can avoid an injury or minimize an injury to the low back just by tightening your stomach muscles!!

1. Start by standing up. 2. Lightly tighten you stomach muscles. (A.) Suck in Your Gut ...Or... (B.) Firm up Your Stomach by Pushing Down, Try Them Both.) 3. Hold them lightly tighten. 4. Then take slow, deep breaths, in and then slowly ALL to way out, all the while holding your stomach muscles tight.

After 7 or 8 breaths you will feel the oblique abdominal muscles begin to be recruited, then the lower and upper abdominal’s being slowly synched tighter ALL without any more effort than the initial light muscle tension. You can do this toning exercise Anywhere !

The Advantage to this is that the Traditional Sit-Up or "Crunch" may aggravate Your Low Back, This Exercise Will Strengthen Your Low Back Without the Likelihood of Causing Pain. (used by permission from DrBackman.com Chiropractic)

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A note about crunches: it's more important to raise the chest rather than just the head or neck, and crunching too far forward starts to work the leg muscles (not the stomach muscles).

It has been found that for a six-pack, these exercises are helpful; however, other factors such as diet and cardiovascular exercises are also necessary.

Misconceptions about fat and the performance of abdominal exercises

It is a common misconception that one can do these exercises to "tone" one's stomach, and especially that one can "spot reduce" fat from the stomach through these exercises. This is almost entirely false. Fat is burned in response to low blood-glucose (blood sugar) levels, and the receptors for blood-glucose are in the brain; thus, the fact that a particular region is consuming a lot of energy will not cause the fat from that region to be burned at a rate any greater than if the energy-consuming region were elsewhere in the body, since the energy deficit will only be detected in the brain rather than locally to the source of the energy deficit.