Working the abs

It was abs day at the AT&T Sports Center, at least for me.

I met with Krista, the master trainer at the AT&T this morning, and the abdominal muscles were the target. We’ve done a fair amount of work on the abs during our sessions, but typically the abdominal workouts are mixed in with everything else she has to offer.But today, the bulk of the session focused on the abdominal muscles. By the time I left the Sports Center about 90 minutes later, I could certainly feel it.

Most of the exercises looked to be fairly basic, but looks can be deceiving. I don’t want to relay the message that some of the exercises were impossible, far from that actually. They were just difficult.

To give you an idea, I started by lying back on the weight bench, using the bench press bar to lift my back off the bench, and then lifted my legs straight in the air until they were parallel with the wall across from me. After three sets, my abdominal muscles were certainly awake.

I continued by sitting forward on the bench, with my feet planted on the floor, leaning back as far as I could, without falling backward and knocking my head against the bench press bar that rested behind me. I then did small, crunch-like exercises, to hit another group of abdominal muscles.

Coordination and balance issues made some of the exercises a bit difficult. One exercises — the bicycle — calls for you sitting on the edge of the bench with feet on the floor, and lifting one knee up while twisting in one direction so your right elbow meets your left knee and vice versa. I felt fairly awkward during this exercise, struggling with balance, but I am sure it will improve with time.

During another exercise, I sat at the edge of the bench once again, this time holding a 10-pound circular weight. Holding the weight straight out in front of you, the exercise calls for you to drag the weight in a diagonal motion from you bottom right and high to the left. After that you rotate. This was much easier for me to do, but I still felt it in the abs.

Throughout this process, Krista has stressed the importance strengthening the abdominal and core region. This makes complete sense. This region —basically your butt to your chest — can carry a significant amount of your weight. Plus it’s directly related to posture.

I think this region can be overlooked by the average person eager to get stronger, especially by those who think they have zero chance of ever being able to sport that abdominal “six-pack.”

Early in this process, I figured out the abdominal region was actually one of the weaker, if not the weakest, areas in my body. I was sort of stunned. How can I carry around the massive gut for most of my life and figure out I have weak abs. Didn’t make sense to me. But that’s the case.

One nice thing about abdominal work, is you can get a lot accomplished in a very short amount of time. According to Krista, it’s best to try to incorporate a few abdominal exercises into your daily routine. A few simple exercises can even be done while your stretching. Many of these exercises can be done without a ton of equipment also. We do have the big inflatable training ball, and that works well.

Continued luck to all,

JB