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Overview
Crunches involve a small movement and may not appear to be as dramatic or difficult as other abdominal exercises, but this exercise actually isolates very intense stress on the abdominal muscles as a whole and is excellent for building the abs. This exercise can be performed on the floor with your feet crossed. Alternatively, you could perform this exercise on a crunch bench which many gyms provide.
Setup
Crunches are best performed in a padded area that most gyms provide for ab workouts and stretching. Lie on your back on the pad and place your hands behind your head with the fingers interlocked. Bring your knees upward directly over your waist and cross your feet or place them against a wall. This exercise is more effective and provides a better range of motion when your knees are kept directly over your waist instead of allowing them to pull closer and be directly over your upper body.
Movement
Use your stomach muscles to crunch your shoulders and upper back as high as possible off the ground and toward your knees. Hold at the top of your crunches for a couple of seconds and allow your abs to feel the burn as they pull together. Slowly relax your stomach muscles and lower your shoulders back down until they are touching the mat again.
Tips From the Trainer
The sides of the abs can be effectively worked by rotating your shoulders throughout the movement. It may be helpful for your to do one crunch with your shoulders facing directly forward, one with your shoulders twisted to the left, one forward, one to the right, and so on.
Many gyms provide crunch benches or rolling devices that provide head and arm rests while doing crunches. Whether these help you to do better crunches or not is up to you to decide, but the important part to remember is that amazing abs can come only with the effort and burn that really works the stomach muscles. If you do choose to use these devices, make sure that keep the stress on your stomach muscles.
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