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The Crunch for Tight Abs

The most popular abs exercise of recent times is the crunch. It can get you great abs results. However, many people do it very wrong and are not only in danger of making zero progress, they can also injure their back. Here is how to do the crunch.

The Crunch

I have always used the crunch. It continues to bring me abs progress. However, I am always seeing people at the gym doing it incorrectly. So, I wanted to write a post decicated to helping my readers get their crunch technique perfect.

How to do a Crunch

As the name implies, the crunch is more about the crunching tension that you apply to the movement than the movement itself. Just going through the motion, up and down, will not yield you any abs results. So, the first thing is to remember to crunch your abs not only at the top of the motion, but the whole way through.

Here are the steps you should follow each time to ensure the crunch is perfect:

1. Lay on a semi-hard surface making sure your lower back is on the floor.
2. Place your hands by your temples and not behind your head as this tempts you to pull yourself up.
3. Keep your feet flat on the floor and a little wider than shoulder width apart.
4. Contract your abs muscles and curl yourself up starting with your head and then chest as if your are rolling up a newspaper.
5. At the top of the motion crunch your abs and then maintain that tension as you slowly lower yourself down.
6. Breathe out as you crunch up and breathe in on your way down.
7. Keep it slow and controlled.
8. Never lift your lower back off of the floor.

Crunch V Sit up

Remember a crunch is not a sit up. A sit up is an old-school way of working the abs and uses the hip flexors and obliques a lot as well as being harmful to the back. The crunch motion is a rolling motion as opposed to just lifting your torso up in the air.

Crunch Tips for Tight Abs

Here are some tips that you can apply to your abs workout when you are focussing on the crunch.

• Add a weight to your chest as you progress. If you can do more than about 15 reps then you are doing too many.
• Treat the abs like any other muscle. They need weight, technique and rest to grow. Don’t train them more than 3 times a week.
• Experiment with different feet positions in order to hit other areas of the abs by shifting the tension.
• Try doing some reps so slow that you can only do below 10 reps.

That is the basic crunch. I wanted to have this in the archives so I can refer people to it as we go on.

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Is this how everyone is doing the crunch?

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