Harry Pointon’s FREEAb Building Workout Program
Don’t crunch your life away!
If your eager to experience back pain and worsen your quality of life then crunches are perfect, but for building abs they suck.
Can you imagine a gladiator or warrior from the past wasting time doing crunches. No because they are a waste of time.
Jabbing a spear through someone as hard as you can or fighting for your life is going cause more positive effects to abdominal development than 1000 crunches ever will.
I don’t recommend jabbing spears through people or looking for fights but they are more intelligent ways to train your body and get a great set of abdominals as a by product.
Doing compound exercises is one of the best ways to build your abs, but I am not going to touch on that during this article instead I am going to take you through some moves that when used alongside lifting weights can really start to enhance your abdominal definition without causing negative effects to posture which could have negative effects on your respiration and digestion.
Exercise 1 – The Dumbbell Windmill
Please be aware that this could be a dangerous exercise if form is not mastered first. Start with light weights or even no weights at first until you have learnt the correct form.
The exercise involves you holding a weight above your head while you aim to touch the floor with your free hand, the abdominals are used to stabilise your body during the movement. Ensure you do this in a large empty area in case you need to drop the weight at any point.
To perform the exercise.
- Clean a Dumbbell up on to your shoulder ensuring you maintain a straight back.
- Press the Dumbbell above your head
- Make sure you can easily stabilise the weight above your head, if you cant the weight Is too heavy and you need to strengthen your shoulder stabilisers through additional shoulder Dumbbell work.
- Keep looking at the Dumbbell and pushing the weight towards the ceiling, maintain a straight spine, put a little bend into your knees and start to slide your free arm down the side of the same side leg getting as near to the floor as you can maintaing a tight core (mid section of the body basically contract as hard as you can)
- Stand Back up again maintaing tension in the mid section and repeat for a total of 5 reps.
Exercise 2 – Cable Wood-chop
This exercise is for targeting the obliques, I would do this one on an infrequent basis to avoid bulking too much on the sides of the stomach.
To perform the exercise.
- Place both hands onto a single hand cable attachment set slightly above head hight, Straighten your arms and walk away from the machine to lift the plates off the stack so there is no rest during this exercise.
- Keep your arms straight and and pull the arms across the body keeping your posture still and contracted, at the end of the movement squeeze the side of the stomach and then return to the beginning repeat for 10 reps.
Exercise 3 – Wheel Rollout
While doing this exercise continuously contract your abdominals you do not want your hips to sink down putting the pressure on your lower back.
To perform the exercise.
Start by kneeling down with your hands on the roller. Contract your shoulder blades together and brace your abdominals. Slowly slide the roller away from you keeping your abdominals braced and your shoulder blades squeezed together. Once you get to the bottom position, Pull back up keeping your arms straight and your abs contracted then repeat until you can no longer maintain good form.
Exercise 4 – Stability ball Push-ups
This is effectively a press-up with your feet elevated on a swiss ball. For this exercise to be effective maintaing a braced posture where the body maintains a straight is essential.
To perform the exercise.
- Get into a press-up position with the feet on the ball.
- Squeeze all of your muscles as hard as you can and ensure you can hold your self there with no movement.
- Slowly lower yourself into the press-up ensuing you maintain perfect posture all the way down keeping your body stable and then push back up again keeping the body stable. Basically stop the ball from compromising your perfect press-up position while doing press-ups.
Exercise 5 – Slow Moving Mountain Climber
Doing the mountain climber fast can be great for cardiovascular fitness but for it to be an effective abdominal exercise it must be done slow and controlled maintaing perfect posture.
To perform the exercise.
Start in a braced press-up position, slowly take one knee as near to the same side elbow as you can thinking about contracting the abdominals, slowly take the leg back and repeat on the other side. Keep repeating for as long as you can maintain good form.
You can also take the knee to the opposite side elbow for a new challenge.
Exercise 6 – Sprints
Have you ever seen a sprinter without abs?
Enough said add them in after your abs workout.