Today, you’re going to discover the six-pack abs approved abdominal exercise substitution list AND 1 exercise you should never do.
Please print this exercise substitution list out and email it to your friends. Heck, you could even post it at your gym.
HERE WE GO – starting with the 1 exercise NEVER to do…
Now yesterday I told you about how I saw a trainer put his client through a BACK-DESTROYING exercise, and here’s what it was:
The exercise was weighted Stability Ball Crunches – but there were not normal crunches on the ball that you see people do. No way.
You see, not only did the client do a full-on sit-up motion, but she kept going – violently – into a total body flexion movement that ended with her almost putting her head between her knees.
But doing any type of spinal flexion can be harmful to your low back because this will compress the disks in your spine.
In fact, Dr. Stuart McGill, the world’s expert on low-back injuries and abdominal training, said in a recent New York Times article, “…no sit-ups, they place devastating loads on the disks.”
The disks in your spine are the same disks that get herniated in low back injury. And moves like sit-ups essentially CRUSH the disks between the bones in your spine, causing terrible pain and nerve damage.
So STOP doing crunches and sit-ups!
Fortunately, you can still get six-pack abs and a flat, sexy stomach by using back-friendly ab exercises instead.
So let’s review a huge list of abdominal exercise substitutions:
1) Replace crunches with:
Planks, mountain climbers, and stability ball jackknives
2) Replace cross-crunches (i.e. twisting or 롤대리 oblique crunches) with:
Side planks and cross-body mountain climbers
3) Replace sit-ups with:
Stability ball jackknives, stability ball planks, stability ball pikes, stability ball rollouts, and hanging knee raises
Now let’s take a look at how we can make some of these back-friendly ab exercises even harder for your abs:
1) How to increase the difficulty of the Plank
First of all, before you move on from the plank, you have to master it.
Dr. McGill says that we should all be able to do a plank for 2 minutes straight.
Now I’ll be honest, I let myself go on this exercise last summer, and not surprisingly, it was probably one of the reasons I had back pain.
At one point, I was only able to do a strict plank for 75 seconds, but I’ve worked my way back up over 135 seconds, and now my back pain is gone.
You can also do pushup-planks, as those will help prepare you for pushups if you are a beginner.
Eventually you will graduate to the Stability Ball Plank, which is 30% harder for your abs than regular planks.
2) Harder versions of the Side Plank
Advanced versions include the Side Plank with Leg Raise and Side Plank with DB Lateral Raise (allowing you to train your shoulders at the same time). Dr. McGill adds that we should be able to do aside plank for 90 seconds straight.
3) Mountain Climbers substitutions
You can use the Spiderman Climb exercise as a replacement, and this is excellent for lower-body and hip mobility.
A harder version of mountain climbers is the Cross-Body Mountain Climber, and you can also do mountain climbers with your hands on the ball or with your hands on the floor and feet on the ball.
One of my favorite advanced versions is the “Hands on the Floor, Feet on the Ball Cross-body Mountain Climber” or even the “EXTREME X-Body Mountain Climber”.