Sunday, March 15, 2009

3 Abs Exercises You Must NOT Do

On Sunday morning I was supposed to meet a friend and train them...but they suckered me into doing an abs workout with them, and I'm glad I did because it was awesome!

It all started with me running to the gym as fast as I could (doing about 1.5 miles and a big hill in about 11 minutes - a new record).

As soon as I got there, I met a friend and we did Workout A from the April TT AAA Abs program.
Glad I did because it was insane and the most intense TT workout ever.

It includes a bunch of new ab and total body exercises, including...

1) Side Plank Dumbbell Lateral Raise
2) Stability Ball Plank Rollout
3) Burpee & Chin-up Combo (perfect way to end a workout!)

However, while I was there I also watched folks wasting their time with these three ab exercises that you don't ever need to do:

a) Crunches
b) Sit-ups
c) Cross-crunches

Those 3 should really be called...

Lame. Harmful. Useless.
You don't EVER have to do those exercises again!
On the other hand, I'm always on the hunt for total body ab exercises to use in my programs, and my friend Mike Geary gave me these ones:

1) Renegade Dumbbell Rows
2) Front Squats with Barbell
3) Ab Wheel

Classic. If you want more exercises from Mike, check out his newsletter here:

=> The Truth About Abs
In his newsletter, Mike loves to give out recipes, including home-made ice cream suited for a fat loss program, as well as the the truth about eating eggs, nuts, and other superfoods.

Stop doing crunches and start getting abs,
Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I completely agree with how useless crunches and sit-ups are. I also believe they are hard on your lower back, which is no good. Perhaps in a future post you could go into more detail as to why you think these exercises are so bad? I'd like to hear your opinion.

- Dave

Unknown said...

Everytime I see someone pounding out crunches, I want to hand them a copy of the Tar Heel Medicine Ball workout.

I found it ironic that you mentioned Renegade Dumbbell Rows, Front Squats with Barbell and Ab Wheel...I put those in my workout today.

Good stuff..again

MikeZ

Craig Ballantyne, CTT, Certified Turbulence Trainer said...

Hi Dave, exact same reason as you!

Hey Mike, great to hear from you!

More ab info to come...

Craig

wtfree3 said...

A little late to commenting here, but one question and one point:

1. To Mike - the Tar Heel MB circuit has full-on situps in it, which is apparently one of CB's no-nos.

2. To Craig - you mention cross-crunches as another no-no. I do recall (haven't looked at your recent stuff in detail) that a bunch of your older BW workouts tended to include bicycle crunches. Do you put those in the same category of no-no, or something different? I'm guessing the former, but am interested in your view on that.