Why
Is This Exercise So Effective?
This exercise is one of the most
powerful low-equipment exercises you can do. It uses the weight
of your entire lower body and places it directly on the abdominals.
How To Do It:
For this exercise, you will
need a pole or other solid vertical surface. Even a door frame
or solid table leg will work. For this demo, I will use a
pole as the example. Lie on your back and brace one shoulder
against the pole. Grasp the back side of the pole with both
hands about 18 inches up and grip it hard.
To get into the start position,
raise your legs up off the floor and slightly bend at your
knees and hips. Lock them into this position - your lower
back should be flat on the floor at this point or very close
to it.
For this exercise, you are going
to doing a similar movement to a crunch. The major difference
here is that instead of you raising your shoulders to bring
your rib cage closer to your pelvis (the anatomical description
for the way the crunch is performed), you're going to be locking
down your shoulders and bringing your pelvis closer to your
rib cage. Why is this effective? What weighs more, your shoulder
girdle or your entire lower body? THAT'S why it's more effective.
Let's start the movement. Pull
FORWARD and DOWN hard with your arms. Since your upper body
is locked down and your lower body isn't, this will raise
your entire lower body off the floor. This should NOT be viewed
like a leg raise. Visualize like you're trying to pull the
pole down and forward. Since the pole won't move, your lower
body comes up. The pivot point for this exercise is your upper
back/bottom of rib cage area, not the hips like in regular
leg raises. As you bring the lower body up, exhale through
pursed lips.
Bring the legs all the way up
as high as you can, squeezing the abs hard. Now lower VERY
slowly, fighting gravity on your legs all the way. Stop the
lowering phase just before your lower back touches the floor.
Be sure you don't let lower back go flat on floor between
reps as this will keep the most tension on. Reverse the direction
by pulling on the pole again and bring the lower body back
up.
This exercise hits the abs from
a very different direction and with very different tension.
It's something you will most likely never have felt before!
Switch which shoulder is braced against the pole on your next
set.
Common
Errors:
1. Doing
the exercise as a leg raise
As mentioned above, this is NOT
a leg raise! This exercise is not for the lower abs. Visualize
that you're still doing a crunching movement with your upper
body. Since your upper body is locked down, your lower body
must raise up, pivoting from your midback area.
2. Letting
the lower back touch the floor between reps
For maximum results, keep the
lower back off the floor in between reps unless you absolutely
must rest. When you set your lower back down, the tension will
come off the abs.
3. Going
too fast
This is a very deliberate exercise
and you must focus in order to feel it working properly. If
you're whipping your legs up and down, you won't feel it properly
in the abs.
Tricks:
1. Adjusting
the difficulty
The difficulty of this exercise
can be adjusted in several ways. You can adjust the difficulty
by moving your hands closer down to your shoulders, making the
exercise harder. The higher you place your hands on the pole
(as long as your elbows aren't straight), the easier the exercise
will be as your abs will have greater leverage.
You can also adjust the amount
of resistance that your abs must workout against by changing
how much your knees and hips are bent. If you bring your knees
up towards your chest, there is not as much resistance further
out from the body and the exercise will be easier. The straighter
your legs and hips, the harder the exercise will be. If you're
adventurous, you can even try this exercise with ankle weights
on.
2. Doing
negative training
If you'd like to see how painful
negative training is on the abdominals, use the bent-leg body
position on the way up then at the top, straighten your legs
and lower yourself down. This is best done towards the end of
your ab workout.
3. One-handed
grip
To send more tension through only
one side of the abs, you can also try gripping the pole with
only one hand (same side or opposite side, experiment with which
you prefer) and doing the exercise. With a one-handed grip,
one side of the abdominal wall will receive a lot more of the
work. Be sure you've got strong abs before trying this one.
4. Using
a towel to anchor yourself
You can loop a towel around a
pole or solid object and grab onto the ends. This allows for
more versatility in where and how to do the exercise. All you
need is something solid that you can get the towel around and
you're all set. You can also hold both ends of the towel with
one hand in order to do one arm Inverse Crunches. This setup
also makes it very easy to switch hands between reps.
5. Side
Inverse Crunches
This exercise can also be adapted
to work the side abs. Lay on your left side with your right
arm gripping the pole (towel is actually easier to grip for
this one) with your left arm flat on ground for balance (it
can also be used to help move the lower body). Don't lay it
directly out to the side but angled towards feet. The exercise
is performed in exactly the same manner, pulling down on the
pole in order to raise the lower body up. Don't touch your hip
to the ground between reps and crunch up sideways.
6. Inverse
Bench Crunches
If you're VERY strong in the abs,
you can also try this exercise with your upper body on a bench
so almost your entire body is suspended in the air (held up
only by abdominal tension) as you do them. This should be done
only by advanced trainers and even then only after you're very
comfortable with the original exercise. Set a flat bench perpendicular
to the pole, pressed up against the pole. Set your upper back
on the bench and brace your shoulder on the bench as you do
on the floor version. Your feet will be on the ground to start.
Pull hard on the pole to develop tension in the abs then raise
your lower body to the start position. Do the exercise exactly
the same from there.
