You need abdominal strength for carrying out daily life activities with ease, for relieving back pain and for improving sports performance. Specific exercises will build the 4 muscles of the abdominal group. In this write up, we will train the first muscle – Rectus Abdominis, also known as the six-pack, washboard or cubes-in-the-tray. Achieving the six pack requires both, muscle hypertrophy (increase in size of the muscle cell through strength training) and fat loss over the abdomen. This can only be attained by losing fat from the body as a whole.

The Rectus abdominis muscle is strap-like in appearance, is long and flat and extends the whole length of both sides of the abdomen. To strengthen it, the basic movement is Forward Crunches or simply Crunches.

Here is the correct way to do them:

1. Lie down with knees bent, feet aligned with hips (about 45* angle at the hip).
2. Interlace your fingers and place them behind your head.
3. Tuck your chin, keeping your eye gaze towards your navel.
4. Bring your elbows close to each other keeping them parallel.
5. Inhale deeply and begin to flex your trunk, assuming a fetal position.
6. Exhale throughout the movement.
7. Come up with a lot of force, contracting your abdominals hard. Your shoulder blades should rise off the floor
8. Don’t use the arms. Only crunch.
9. Inhale as you return to neutral position on the floor.
10. Go in for the next rep.

Note:

1. Keeping elbows close helps in good orientation.
2. How high you rise from the floor will also depend on how mobile/flexible you are in the spine.
3. A visual cue for yourself: Roll up and roll out down (completely) like a carpet.

2-3 sets with 12-15 reps is a good way to start training.

Once you are comfortable with this, progress to the Ab Crunch Machine to do weighted crunches, keeping the reps between 10-12.

Lata Rajan
Senior Faculty (Exercise Science)
K11 Academy of Fitness Sciences
by
Fitness Icon Kaizzad Capadia