How to Do Crunches

Tips for Smarter Ab Training

Do you need tips on how to do crunches? 

Here are Two BIG reasons you need to improve your ab crunch technique.

1. Poor form can get you hurt. If you have pain while sitting or disc issues in your back, then poor crunch technique could cause serious injury. 

And hammering away with thousands of ab crunches every day isn’t the smartest way to train either. Crunches shorten the rectus abdominis, depressing the rib cage pulling you into a more kyphotic position. This messes up your posture creating problems at the neck, upper back, and shoulders. 

2. Poor form wastes your time. You don’t want to spend all those grueling hours working out really hard in the gym and not get results, right? Technique is extremely important, especially when it comes to ab training.  Ignoring your technique won’t get you the shredded six pack you’ve always wanted. You need good form to get those abs trained properly and muscles functioning correctly. 

Learn to exercise the abs correctly, mastering the following crunch technique.

How to Do Crunches

1.Lie down on the floor on your back. Bend your knees and place your arms across your chest or behind your neck for support. 

2.Brace your abs. Before you start to crunch, brace your abs as if you were about to be punched in the stomach. The reason to do this “bracing” is to activate all 3 layers of the abdominal wall. Your ab muscles work as a team to provide support and stability. Bracing will automatically activate the muscles most needed for spine support. This will help you avoid overrecruiting the wrong muscles and underrecruiting the right ones.

3. Perform the crunch by using your abs to bring your elbows to your knees. Do not pull with your arms and don’t try using momentum to do the crunch. The focus isn’t on how many crunches you can do, the focus is on performing each crunch with proper form.

4. Remember to exhale on the way up, then inhale on the way back down. 

Important Tips for How to Do Crunches

It’s important to understand that crunches are not an entire ab program. In fact, it’s more common for crunches to be only a small part of your ab training workout. 

You don’t want to make the mistake of overtraining with ab crunches. The abdominal crunch is only one exercise and it’s NOT the ONLY exercise you should focus on when it comes to six pack abs. 

For most people, the “No Pain, No Gain” attitude doesn’t work.

Ignoring pain and just trying to get through the workout isn’t SMART. 

To workout smart you need to understand the importance of body posture and how your workouts affect your body alignment.

Generally, you could say that for every 100 crunches you do, you need to also do 100 back extensions. 

Working opposing muscle groups helps keep muscles in balance.  

If you enjoyed these tips and would like to keep it close to you at any time, just save this pin to your Pinterest Ab Training Board.


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