What's up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com.
Today, I have a 10-minute hold at work out for you based off of a recent appearance I made
on Kelly and Ryan, where I was asked to name the worst ab exercises. Well, you see guys,
the problem with these exercises is that they actually overwork your hip flexors. So, they're
giving you abs, they also give you back pain, too. I'm not going to do that to you. I'm going to
give you a step by step follow along workout that you can do. And I mean, everyone can do this
because all you need is a mat and a hardwood floor and some space in your apartment or your home,
and you won't be able to get this done. Remember, beginners, you can do this. You go for
as long as you can. Each of the exercises scripted for one minute, you go for as long as
you can. The entire set rest period. I'm going to explain with the next exercise is and how to
do it. You ready? Let's knock this one out.
The first five exercises are starting down
here on the mat. And the goal, again, is to get those hip flexors out of it and make your
abs do more of the work. And we start here for something called the Halo. And unlike that Lying
Leg Raise where you actually use too much of your legs to just simply lift your legs up and down,
we don't care about the legs as much as we care about the pelvis. Your goal is to simply get your
pelvis up off the mat, every single repetition. Now, your feet, they actually do the work. They're
creating clockwise circles for 30 seconds at the top and then counterclockwise circles for
the other 30 seconds of this minute.
Good job on that one, guys, the next one here
is a variation of a standard sit up. Instead of anchoring your feet under something which only
promotes the hip flexors to do the work to pull your body off the ground, we can do this
is called a Frog Crunch. You put your feet together and you press them together as
hard as you can. You should instantly feel your hamstrings light up. With your
hamstrings activated your hip flexors are going to take a little bit of a nap here
and make your abs do all the work.
Next, I'm going to shift the focus a little bit
now to the obliques. And to do that, we know we have to rotate, not just tap your hands back
and forth, like in a traditional Russian Twist, I mean, rotate. So, to take those hip lectures
out of this, guys, remember, keep your heels down. There's no need to have to lift them up
on this. Instead, focus on what really matters, and that is creating that rotation. And that's
going to come through pulling your elbow back, actually rowing it back to each side when
you twist it to each side. You'll feel the difference immediately and when you do,
you'll know you're doing it the right way.
Keeping the focus here on the obliques, we don't
ever have to do another dumbbell side bend. As a matter of fact, as I said, you don't need to
use any equipment to get a good ab workout as you're finding out. This one is called the Side
Plank Thread the Needle. That's what we're doing, is mimicking that side bend without having to
actually ever do that, because we build the lateral pillar strength from the bottom up. Lift
up, keep your arm up into the air. But then we add that third dimension by reaching through and
creating some rotation that our body in core has to control before 30 seconds on each side. You're
more than halfway home through this workout.
If you see my ab workouts you probably know I'm
not a big fan of the plank. Only because I think it's a little bit too remedial and again, it tends
to work the hip flexors more than it does the posterior chain or the muscles on the back side of
our body. But we can kill two birds with one stone here and this is what the Black Widow Knee Slide.
You simply drive one knee towards the elbow, pull up into a posterior tilt to really activate
the abs. And then don't forget that posterior chain, you kick that leg back and extend the
hip all the way up to the ceiling, come back down and alternate. Continue to perform this
for one minute or as long as you can hang in.
Now it's time to kick that mat out to the side and
put those socks on the hardwood floor or anything that your feet will slide on. Guys, this is how
we can work the bottom-up ab movements without having to lift the weight of our legs, like
in a hanging leg raise. To do this. instead of pulling your knees straight in, which is going
to promote more of that hip flexor dominance, you bring them out to the side. We call this the
Frog Circle. You can see the position of the legs looks a bit like a frog, but what it's really
doing is activating hip external rotators instead of hip flexors and still allowing you to pull from
the bottom up to really work those lower abs.
You're almost there, guys, one
left. This is the Sliding Ab Tuck. Once again using that slick
floor, do not bend your knees here, guys. All you're doing is lifting your pelvis
as high as you possibly can towards the ceiling by simply hinging at the waist. If you do this
right, you'll feel your abs driving the movement. And the only thing that can potentially cause
your knees to bend even a little bit is just the flexibility of your hamstrings. Don't
worry. We'll get to that in another video. The key is finish strong, keep those legs
straight, make your abs do the work.
So there you have it guys, your ab workout
that's quickly going to become one of your favorites because at the same time
is going to help you to get those abs, it's not going to ruin your back in the process.
Guys, if you're looking for programs where we break everything down step by step, including a
meal plan, that will help those ads of yours to show you can find them over at Athleanx.com.
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