Oct 13, 2010
Beginner to Advanced Ab and Core Exercises
Everyone wants to be in great shape and have rock hard abs and in addition to eating a healthy diet, the best way to get these abs is to do the right exercises. But some exercises are good for some people and some are not be as beneficial. It really all depends on your level of fitness when you start your exercise program. If you are just starting out, it probably isn’t a good idea to do some of the more difficult exercises, since instead of getting in better shape, you could end up hurting yourself. The best thing to do is to make sure that you are doing exercises that fall within your fitness level and as your fitness improves, you can change the exercises to more difficult ones.
One Exercise, Three Levels of Fitness
There are many exercises you can do that can be modified depending on your level of fitness. For instance, if you are going to use crunches to help tighten those abs, you can start out with the simplest version: Lie on the floor with your knees bent, feet on the floor; cross hands in front of chest or clasp behind head; lift your head and shoulders off the floor, contracting your abdominal muscles; slowly lower head back to floor; repeat.
Beginner: If you feel that you are a bit beyond the beginner version of the crunch, you can add a little bit of difficulty to it and do the crunches while seated on an exercise ball.
Intermediate: When you find the beginner version too easy, you can add one more element: using the exercise ball. Keep your feet flat on the floor with your knees bent and have your buttocks on the ball. You will contract your ab muscles even more doing the crunches this way.
Difficult: Instead of holding your hands behind your head, hold them straight (behind you) and hold onto a weight of some sort. As you do your crunch, bring your arms up, raising the weight over your head. As you crunch up, twist to one side, and then lower to the starting position. Repeat on the other side and then do a few reps on each side.
The crunch is just one of many exercises you can do to get those rock hard abs you’ve always wanted. If you are interested in learning more abdominal exercises for all levels of fitness, there are a number of great videos out there that you can use for your workouts.
Written by Rick James of http://www.ultimatefitnessgear.com”>www.UltimateFitnessGear.com>, your best source for the http://www.ultimatefitnessgear.com/insanity-with-shaun-t.html”>Insanity Workout online.
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