ab workout

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Kung Fu Training and Health
21

What Ironfist says is correct. Yeah you can work your abs a trillion reps per day but if your bodyfat is high you will only look more fat. Why? Because you will have developed your abs if you trained for mass and then cover it with a good layer of fat…nobody would know that you have great abs they’d just see a bulge in front…sorta like when you see off season bodybuilders…sure they are bulking but their guts get pretty big, or appear to be because they aren’t cut. Everyone has abs to some degree, others will have low bodyfat and underdeveloped abs perhaps due to metabolism, genetics or whatever, but you don’t get a six-pack directly from doing ab work. You lose body fat to do that…so yeah if you do 100 crunches per day you may burn an extra 400-500 cals which would equate to about a pound a week which will eventually drop enough fat to show your abs. But you could do the same by skipping that big mac meal once a week also.

The ab IS one big muscle and basically cannot be worked region by region. Scientifically speaking, yeah you can work a region of a muscle more than another but not to the point of failure or anything close. When a muscle is stressed the muscle fibres contract…as stress is added more and more fibres are used to lift the load. So technically if you lifted extremely light weight your body wouldn’t recruit 100% of all the muscle fibres to lift the weight…but at that point you are lifting such a small amount of weight you aren’t doing any damage to your muscle so it can rebuild bigger and stronger. So don’t believe in bs like outer and inner pec, or upper and lower abs or biceps…a muscle is either flexed or not…that’s all folks.

Oh and on a last note 2% bodyfat isn’t really possible. Some bodybuilders training for a competition may drop to 4 or 5% for one day only but at 2% you couldn’t sustain it and would simply be dead…but that’s just a trivial matter. 10% bodyfat is quite low so don’t think all those bags of bones out there are like 0%. Just thought I’d add that in.

Oh and to the one that asked if they are wasting their time with an exercise…I would answer that you are never wasting time doing exercise…just because what you do can be done another way doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Do what you are comfortable with.

22

guys i just saw all your replies now. but, i have to go to class :frowning:

i’ll respond to everyone tonight when i get home

Iron

23

came in here all excited to see what ironfist had to say and he didn’t even post like he said he was going to.

what a horrible let down.

man … now i almost feel like iron thinks other things in his life are more important than kfo.

i tell ya . ..

where’s my beer?

24

Heres the abdominal routine we do at my school every monday and wednesday: (Takes aprox 30-45 mins if done properly)

Start in corpse pose, relax body. Pay special attention to control of the muscles during this excercise. It is meant to give you a better awareness of your legs and also give you better control. You may not be able to all that much when you start, it’s ok if you need to let your muscles regain strength.. If you keep doing this though, you’ll notice an improvement within a week or so. This works very well to cure hip problems.

  1. Apply light pressure to left ankle, lift right leg exhale.. hold.. bring down.. Repeat 10-15 times. Repeat with left leg. Repeat with both legs.

– Return to corpse pose, relax body.

  1. Lift right leg, circle outwards for however long. Reverse direction. Repeat with left leg.

– Return to corpse pose, relax body.

  1. Ligt right leg, make a bicycling motion with leg.. Reverse.. Return to corpse for a few breaths.. Switch legs.. Reverse.. Return to corpse.. use both legs as if riding a bicycle.. Reverse direction.. Return to corpse.. Both legs at same time, reverse..

– Return to corpse pose, relax body.

  1. Bring right knee as close to chin as possible, wrap arms around, bring chin to knee. Repeat 5-10 times each leg. Use both legs.

– Return to corpse pose, relax body.

  1. Come up into boat pose, hold.. relax.. Repeat a few times..

– Return to corpse pose, relax body.

The End.

Geeze I hope I don’t get shot for telling my schools secrets! hehehe

25

I used to have defined abs (6-pack/8-pack?), from doing wrestling as well as many many crunches during the day. Perhaps 100-300.

Then I started doing taiji, and now my abs are relaxed and covered with a relaxed layer of skin/fat. Suprisingly though, my stomach/back/lifting strength is far greater than it ever was when I had defined abs.

Nothing wrong with either though, praises to those who exercise and keep good health!

  • Nexus
26

Big ass reply to everyone :slight_smile:

GunnedDownAtrocity said:

am i wasting my time doing leg raises? i really friggen hate them, and if crunches will do the same thing why should i bother? i don’t mind crunches at all.

Leg raises are basically just staticly contracting the muscle (if you do the kind where you just lay there and raise your legs). If you do the kind where you lift your legs up and then lower them for reps, that is working the hip flexors and abs through a full range of motion. However, assuming you are laying down, because of leverage, the higher you bring your legs the easier the exercise gets. If you are hanging and doing it, then the higher you bring your legs, the harder it gets.

what is the bennifit of having strong hip flexors

Hip flexors help immensely with kicks, and other movements that require your leg to come up. Here is a way to test your hip flexors. Throw a side kick, except instead of bringing it back down when you’re done, hold your leg up there, as high as you can (at least a little above waist height). Keep holding it. Do you feel a tightness on the side of your hip? That’s your hip flexor. I don’t know how conditioned you are for kicking, but when newbies try this they end up going “ow!” after like 5 seconds because the hipflexor is rarely trained by most people (especially laypeople, or newbies starting MA), and so their hip flexor goes from never working hard, to being responsible for holding up the whole leg and consequently cramps up very easily.

Here is another hip flexor exercise you might prefer to leg raises. Well, basically just hold your kicks out. Try it with a front kick, a side kick, and a back kick (to work the hip extensors, the antagonist muscle of the hip flexors). Hold each kick for 10 seconds to start with. In my opinion, doing this exercise will have a more direct carryover to your MA skills (and also doesn’t hurt as much as regular leg raises :slight_smile: ).

Standard crunches were designed to not involve the hip flexors, but they still do, a bit. With traditional situps, once you get halfway up your hip flexors do the rest of the work. Janda situps completely eliminate the hip flexors, making you rely on your abs alone; something most people have never done. That’s why they’re so hard.

Kumkuat said:
Strong hip flexors? You can bend your knees to your hest stronger…

That’s basically all a hip flexor does, but as I mentioned, you will notice greater endurance in your kicks if you practice what I mentioned (holding the kicks).

Oh yeah I forgot :wink: Another hip flexor exercise is this. Stand still. Then, slowly bring your leg out up to the front as high as it will go, keeping it straight. At the top, hold for a sec and then slowly bring it back down. Do the same thing to the sides. That’s basically the same thing, just through a range of motion. Try doing ten in each direction for each leg. Fun, eh? I’ve read in old books that the old strength athletes used to like this exercise (like the really old guys from the early 1900’s).

Scarletmantis said:
Which theoretically would benifit all of your kicks.

Yeah they would. I didn’t read his reply when I was writing mine. Strong hip flexors = better kicks. Good call.

ElPeitro said:
yeah if you do 100 crunches per day you may burn an extra 400-500 cals which

I don’t think 100 crunches would burn 400 calories, but, everything else he said was right on.

He also said
Oh and on a last note 2% bodyfat isn’t really possible. Some bodybuilders training for a competition may drop to 4 or 5% for one day only but at 2% you couldn’t sustain it and would simply be dead…but that’s just a trivial matter.

Damn you beat me to it, ElPietro! This is exactly what I was going to say :slight_smile: . 2% = cadaver. As a general rule, for most people, abs become visible at 10%.

Hey GunnedDownAtrocity! Sorry to let you down by not posting that night. I came home and I was exhaused so I went right to bed. But look! I wrote a friggin book just now in this reply, so I hope I got all your questions :slight_smile:

Iron

27

what was funny was that about this bodyfat thing is that my health teacher measured my body fat using caliphers, and I got to be 4%. I thought it was pretty funny. Man, those health teachers really don’t know anything. They still teach that girls should do more reps with weights to “tone” the body and stuff like that. Too

Anyway, my current, more accurate body fat is around 13% which I’m pretty much satisfied with. Oh yeah, to stay in topic, um… decline weighted situps rule.

28

400-500 cals from 100 crunches? the average person only burns about 150 calories from jogging a mile. There’s no way crunches burn more than jogging. I agree with the inner and upper pec thing though. I get so tired of hearing that in the gym.

"Just because I joke around sometimes doesn’t mean I’m serious about kung-fu.
" - nightair

29

Bah! Quit with the criticism over the number of cals…it was an approximation!!! :smiley:

And fine if you two want me to justify it even though I was just giving an example…if you are 800lbs, have never done cardio before and are at like 70% bodyfat and do 100 crunches (without going into cardiac arrest) you COULD burn 400 cals…SO THERE!!! :wink:

On a side note I still don’t understand everyone’s obsession with bodyfat %. The only accurate way is in a water tank and that’s a bit cumbersome. There’s a better way…look in the damned mirror and if you like what you see good…if not then get your a$$ on a treadmill and fix your diet.

Ironfist good to see we can verify are info against each other at least…well other than minor technicalities… :wink:

30

good posts all.

where’s my beer?

31

ElPietro,
LOL! I like that, I’ll use the mirror to measure my body fat percentage from now on. :slight_smile:

Jaguar Wong

32

Jaguar Wong,

That’s what I tell my female clients who are obsessed with the scale. I tell them if they lose 2lbs of fat and gain 5lbs of muscle, they will weigh the same but look a lot better.

But they don’t believe me. So, I just explain to them why, for the most part, the mirror is more helpful than any kind of scale.

Iron