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Perfect your crunch for a better abdominal workout!
Hi, I’m Samantha Clayton, fitness expert and former competitive sprinter. I’m working with Herbalife to help you achieve a healthy, active life.
I want to talk about how you can get more out of your ab workout by helping you to perfect your crunching technique. With today’s busy lifestyle many people have to rush through their workout, causing them to skimp out on good form, or they have never been shown how to effectively do a sit up or crunch to get maximum benefits.
Common mistakes I see with sit ups are when people try to rely on momentum to get them up and down. Or, worse, I sometimes see people pulling on their head and neck. It’s not surprising that the most common complaint I hear is that “doing sit ups and crunches hurt my neck” this can be because of poor technique.
My rule is that one correctly performed sit up is better than 10 bad ones, so slow down, take a deep breath and let me show you how to get more out of your ab routine.
• Have your knees bent, and the balls of your feet and heels placed flat on the ground.
• Place your hands on opposing shoulders, so that your arms are crossed over your chest, or placed gently behind your head.
• Tighten your abdominal muscles gently by drawing in your belly button to your spine.
• Keeping your heels and your toes flat on the ground, curl your back to lift your shoulders towards the ceiling (not towards your knees) using strictly your abdominal muscles.
• It is very important not to lift your entire back off the floor, as this can cause back strain. Instead try to focus on gently contracting the abdominal muscles for the entire movement. Pull up from the floor until you’re shoulder blades are off the floor and then lower.
• Keep your chest open and keep space between your chin and collar bone.
• Focus on a slow steady rhythm, pausing at the top then lowering slowly, pause and then repeat. Do as many as you can comfortably without breaking your form.
You can make ab crunches harder by lifting your feet off the ground. Be sure to lift one foot at a time and maintain contact with the ground and your lower back.
There are so many ways that you can adapt an exercise to meet your current fitness level as well as ways you can up the intensity. So, no excuses: take time to “work your core”
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Herbalife fitness expert, Samantha Clayton shares her advice on how to do the perfect ab crunch. Avoid common ab crunch & sit up mistakes with this clear & simple ab crunch advice from Herbalife: don’t strain your neck & remember focus on your core. A few perfect ab crunches can be more effective than more ab crunches with poor form, so learn to perfect your ab crunching technique in this video & take time to work your core ab muscles properly.
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