Rotisserie Functional Core And ABS Workout
This isn’t a workout for making pretty 6-pack abs. The purpose of this workout is to workout the core muscles that can provide lower back stability to prevent injury in every day life as well as improve your sports performance. If you have a weak core, you need to strengthen it to help prevent lower back pain. This is also good preparation for exercises like squats and deadlifts because doing these with a weak core is just asking for injury.
There are two aspects to the core and they are equally important: strength and endurance. You need muscular endurance because that has been shown to help reduce lower back pain*.
So here’s the workout, you rotate around like a rotisserie making two complete revolutions during your workout:
SUPERMANS
There are two aspects to the core and they are equally important: strength and endurance. You need muscular endurance because that has been shown to help reduce lower back pain*.
So here’s the workout, you rotate around like a rotisserie making two complete revolutions during your workout:
SUPERMANS
- Lie face down on your stomach with arms and legs extended. Keep your neck in a neutral position.
- Keeping your arms and legs straight (but not locked) and torso stationary, simultaneously lift your arms and legs up toward the ceiling to form an elongated "u" shape with your body — back arches and arms and legs lift several inches off the floor.
- Hold for two to five seconds and lower back down to complete one.
PLANK WORKOUTS
Despite the fact that planks are just a static hold, they work some very important muscles. Both planks are best done on a padded carpet. Planks are great to do between sets of windshield wipers, bicycles, or crunches.
Left Plank: Start by putting your left hip on the floor and your left forearm. Stack your feet on top of one another with your right foot right on top of your left. Now lift up your hip till your body is perfectly straight. Hold this as long as you can.
Right Plank: Same as above but with opposite side.
Right Plank: Same as above but with opposite side.
CRUNCHES
The crunch is king, if you can only do one exercise, do crunches. Don’t worry about how many reps you do but focus on using perfect form. Crunches are best done on a carpeted floor. A sofa or bed is way too soft to let you workout properly and a tile or hardwood floor might be uncomfortable. Infomercial ab devices have nothing over crunches so dont buy something that will just gather dust in your closet. Form is extremely important on the crunch so I will spend a lot of time here explaining it.
Starting position: The knees are bent and the feet flat on the floor. The hands held lightly behind the head so they support most of your head weight. You neck and head should be totally relaxed. Push your shoulders down into the floor.
Ending position: Now slowly over a 2 second count bring your shoulders up toward the ceiling without moving your hands, elbows or head. It helps to stare at a spot on the ceiling and try and make your head move directly to that spot. No bending the neck, no nodding the head, no flapping the arms – the upper body is slowly levitated toward the ceiling. Dont bend at the hip, thats a sit-up, not a crunch. Go as far up as you can, some people can only go up 1″ and others can go up 6″ – just do what you can.
FRONT PLANK
Ending position: Now slowly over a 2 second count bring your shoulders up toward the ceiling without moving your hands, elbows or head. It helps to stare at a spot on the ceiling and try and make your head move directly to that spot. No bending the neck, no nodding the head, no flapping the arms – the upper body is slowly levitated toward the ceiling. Dont bend at the hip, thats a sit-up, not a crunch. Go as far up as you can, some people can only go up 1″ and others can go up 6″ – just do what you can.
FRONT PLANK
If you can do any of the above exercises more than 45 seconds then use added weight so to make it more difficult. If you think this workout is too easy for you then add a round of windshield wipers between rotations! Its really important to do this workout to music you love as its not inherently an interesting or exciting workout and there can be a tendency to cut it short out of boredom – don’t do this! Its very important that you work on your endurance make sure you have a good playlist before doing this workout.
So how often do you do this workout?
Because we are working on endurance as well as strength, this workout should be done every day or every other day. This is in contrast to the bodybuilding type ab workouts which are only done once or twice a week where you are trying to make the ab muscles bigger.
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