Ab Exercises That Don’t Cause Back Pain

Do yourself a favor and drop crunches, reverse crunches, situps, machine crunches and other spine-crushing movements out of your routine.

Not only will these movements weaken your spinal column, you very well may wind up with poor posture.

There may be some benefit to doing crunches for 3-6 months, but after that, it is time to move on and never look back.

Crunches Are Like Tequila Shots!

Both crunches and Tequila get the job done until you have a few bad experiences.

Seriously, crunches will give you decent looking abs, but there is a safer and superior approach to getting toned abs.

If you must do crunches, then limit it to maybe your first 3-6 months of training and then eliminate them from your workout (I’ll explain).

If you must do Tequila shots, then go to Cancun, Ibiza, Vegas, Bondi Beach, Leicester Square or wherever the party spot is in your country and get it out of your system… then switch over to beer and wine like a sensible adult.

Ab Isolation Movements Have A Short Life Span

According to Olympic Strength and Conditioning Coach, Charles Poliquin: If an athlete isolates their abs with crunches they will not see any improvements in their ab strength after 6-8 weeks.

“Some of these guys can claim all these poundages used in ab training, but it’s actually the psoas doing the work. If you truly isolate the abs, after six to eight weeks an athlete will plateau the rest of his life.”

The Two Main Functions of the Abdominal Muscles

I’ll keep this simple…

• Rectus Abdominus – flexes the spinal column forward 30 degrees. Any additional movement beyond 30 degrees is caused by the muscles that flex your hips
• Transversus Abdominus – stabilize the upper body and helps keep your posture.

Almost Everything You Do Works the Stabilizing Muscles

When you run these muscles engage to keep your shoulders above your hips.

Without these muscles, your upper body would tip over at some point. Same with doing an exercise like a standing shoulder press, which is a good indirect ab movement.

Your abs have to work hard to ensure that your body doesn’t fall forward or backward when you are raising and lowering the weight.

Same with doing an exercise like a standing shoulder press, which is a good indirect ab movement.

Your abs have to work hard to ensure that your body doesn’t fall forward or backward when you are raising and lowering the weight.

Your abs have to work hard to ensure that your body doesn’t fall forward or backward when you are raising and lowering the weight.

Do Crunches for a Short Period of Time Then Maintain

It won’t take long to reach the maximum benefit from crunches.

I would say six months tops. The great thing is once you build your ab density and increase your mind-to-muscle link with crunches, it takes very little to maintain dense abs.

I haven’t done a crunch or any other “spine

The great thing is once you build your ab density and mind-to-muscle link with crunches, it takes very little to maintain dense abs.

I haven’t done a crunch or any other “spine flexion” movement of any type for over 10 years and my abs look better than ever.

How Do You Maintain Six Pack Abs Without Crunches?

It is simple to maintain muscle density in any muscle by performing isometrics.

This is basically flexing the muscle without any movement involved. The nice thing about isometrics is that you will build muscle density without increasing the size of the muscle.

This is exactly what you are aiming for if you want amazing looking abs.

The nice thing about isometrics is that you will build muscle density without increasing the size of the muscle.

Have you ever seen a person with ripped six pack abs, but their mid-section sticks out past their chest?

There Are Other Ab Exercises That Use the Same Principles

There are many exercises that force the body to contract the abs hard without flexing the spine forward.

Here is a creative one!

This looks like an amazing ab exercise, but the video makes me laugh. It has some seriously jacked up disco music playing in the background.

One Final Reminder About Ab Definition

You won’t see your abs if your body fat is too high. Do what it takes to lower your body fat if you want a nice defined mid-section.

Your diet needs to be on point and your workouts should include a either HIIT or circuits of some sort after your brief resistance training workouts.