What's up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
Today I'm going to show you how to make sure that you're nailing each and every one of
your Lower Ab exercises so that you can get the most out of them.
You see the Lower Abs are definitely the most difficult to train and why?
It's because that they're naturally weighted.
If you think of the exercises that you do when you're training your Lower Abs, you're
naturally weighted.
You're lifting the lower body, you're doing bottom up movements which always involve lifting
the weight of your own legs.
Now weighted Ab exercises are great for adding additional fitness to your Abs.
You've probably seen guys that have a nice flat stomach but flat stomachs are for women.
We want to have Ripped 6 Pack Abs and in order to do that you have to make sure that you're
overloading those muscles.
The principles still apply here and Lower Ab exercises will definitely do that.
Now with that being said, what is one of the best way to train your Lower Abs?
It's with a Hanging Leg Raise, some variation of a Hanging Leg movement.
We have lots of Hanging Leg movements that we incorporate into ATHLEANX and even if you
can't do those,
you can do modified versions, like a Captains Chair.
But there's a problem with that.
There's 4 things that people do wrong when they do these exercises and I want to show
you today, how we can fix it.
First and foremost, when you approach a bar to do a Hanging Leg Raise, try this.
Switch your hands around.
Don't use an overhand grip, grip underhand.
Your biceps are naturally strong and should be able to contribute to your ability to hold
onto the bar.
A lot of people complain that they don't have enough grip strength to stay on the bar long
enough to fatigue their Abs.
If you go underhand, you're going to have that added strength of the Biceps to help
you do that.
You're going to find that you can do a lot more reps just by making this one little tweak.
The next thing you have to make sure you do is to stabilize your body.
You can't be doing what I'm showing you here.
This is straight garbage.
Now we've seen it in a lot of different gyms and actually it's become a lot more popular
lately.
It's garbage.
You're not actually using your Abs very much at all.
Matter of fact you're just using momentum to swing your legs around.
The more you swing, the less your Abs are moving.
The stiller that you remain, the more your Abs are working.
So you want to stabilize and make sure that, even if you have to reset between every single
rep, do it,
take the extra split second to make sure you're doing every single rep out of the stable position.
Next big key I want you to focus on, is what is your body doing once you initiate the exercise.
See if you imagine yourself as a sheet of paper, you should be rolling that sheet of
paper up, not folding it.
You can see here the difference.
Here I'm actually folding my body, I'm literally folding by just using my Hip Flexors and that's
the problem.
The Hip Flexors will dominate this movement.
And even the people that do this will say, yeah but Jeff, I still feel this in my Abs
when I do that.
Yeah, because your Abs are working isometrically to stabilize your Pelvis as your Femurs rise
up,
but that doesn't mean that they are doing all that they can do.
And this is where I think that we have the big problem.
We have the big problem because you're not actually overloading your Abs in the shortest
amount of time possible.
It will take you much longer to fatigue an Ab isometrically than it would to actually
fatigue it throughout it's natural movement pattern.
So let's get it to work and get it to work fully and do that by what showing what I'm
doing here, roll like a piece of paper.
Curl your body up.
Get your legs and you're whole body curling up in one motion.
Which leads me to our 4th point.
Show your ass.
That's right if someone's standing in front of you and they're watching you do this,
they better be able to see your ass on every single rep.
If they're just looking at the top of your knees, you're not doing it right.
You want to make sure that you're getting your Pelvis into a posterior tilt and you
can guarantee that by showing your ass, like I said, to whoever is watching in front of
you.
Lower Ab exercises are the most effective because yes, they're the hardest.
And you never see a guy walking around with a great set of Lower Abs that has no Upper
Abs.
So if you have very limited time, let's start working on some of these harder Ab movements.
And again, I've showed you the Captain's Chair, if you have to start there, start there.
But even there, you're still going to demonstrate the same principles here, they always apply.
If you're looking for a complete program that shows you all the exercises to get the most
out of your Ab work but at the same time, the meals to help you show them,
then head to ATHLEANX.COM right now and get our ATHLEANX Training System.
In the meantime if you found this video helpful, leave your thumbs up and comments below.
This is Washboard Wednesdays, whatever else that it is that you want to see, tell me,
Ab related, and I'll cover it in a future Wednesday video.
Alright we'll be back here again real soon.