Sunday, February 8, 2009

Activate Your Abs

Charlie Mike Teammates -- I'm re-running a blog from last April about Ab Activation. Doctor Scott's blogs emphasized the importance of stabilizing the core and activating your abs -- it's the bedrock of all exercise and rehab programs.

1. Activate your Abs by standing tall and literally pull your navel to your spine - try it five times...then do it again, but now try to pull in your lower abs at the same time (Abs muscle between your bellybutton and pubic bone is the key abs muscle - it's called the Transversus Abdominis, and acts as an "abdominal belt" for your Core - it's THE most important Ab muscle - helps you get into a smaller pair pants, among other useful things).

2. Put Ab activation into everything you do - now that you know what it feels like to activate these abs (when you pull your navel to your spine you're activating all four sets of Abs) - apply it to doing your Perfect Pushups. I'm a BIG fan of multi-tasking your workout - that is working more muscle groups at the same - the benefits are awesome: multi-tasking workouts require more blood (improves cardiovascular system); requires more caloric uptake (burn more fat); and makes you think (stimulates central nervous system - i.e. release of hormones)...there’s absolutely NO REASON why you can't work your Abs while you do Perfect Pushups and for that matter Perfect Pullups!

3. Ab focused workouts - for those who enjoy working your Abs try the following workouts:

a. Mountain Climbers followed by Squat Thrusts - grab your Perfect Pushups, get in Pushup position with feet shoulder width apart, now use your lower abdominals to pull one knee up to your chest, then alternate as if you were in the starting blocks of a sprint race - but you're sprinting in place - up and back twice is one repetition - it's done to a four count cadence. Try for 10 reps - then go to 20 and grow from there...once you've hit 20 reps, to increase the intensity add Squat thrusts to the mix (same exercise as mountain climbers except now it's both legs at the same time) - do 10 reps of Squat thrusts adding by 10 reps of Mountain Climbers (everything is four count)!

b. If you have the Perfect Pullup - GET THE PERFECT PULLUP AB STRAP and follow the enclosed Ab Strap workouts - these are sure to help you build Rock Hard Abs!

CHARLIE MIKE -- ALDEN

1 comment:

Joe G. said...

There is a helpful graphic in the upper-right corner of the good doctor's Web site. Move your cursor over the words and the muscle groups light up on the picture of the human body (it's early, folks - I'm trying to describe something - Barbie understands this phenomenon).

If nothing else, we will forever be indebted to our leader for teaching us about the transverse abdominus. I didn't know any of this until recently, but if you look at Calzaretta's picture you see at least two sections of the entire human musculature are core. IT'S THE CORE!

Why do we have to get back pain before learning all of this?