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Oblique Muscles Function & ExercisesCont' from "The Skinny on Abs" part one...While a bodybuilder would not want massive obliques - this would take away from symmetry and give the illusion of a thick waist, these muscles do need to be trained in order to maintain ideal postural alignment. A great lower abdominal exercise for these muscles is the side bends performed on a swiss ball. Another exercise that also needs to be performed for these muscles in order to exercise its rotating capabilities are the Russian Twists. The Intercostal MusclesThe intercostals are the muscles of breathing that lie between the ribs and show as bands of muscle angling downward in the sides of the rib cage and the upper abdomen. The intercostals come into play by flexing the torso and causing it to twist, so doing any type of twisting crunch on a swiss ball will stimulate this group maximally. The Serratus MusclesThe serratus anterior muscles are the finger-like strands of muscle on the rib cage between the front abs and the lats. Use lower abdominal exercise workouts for these. Their job is to depress the rib cage and also assist in bringing the upper arms from a position pointing directly up from the shoulders to one pointing directly below the shoulders. A good exercise that will stimulate these muscles is the one-arm cable crunches (using an overhead pulley). How Much, How Often?Since we have now identified which lower abdominal exercise should be present in our specialized abdominal training routine, let's now figure out how much will we do of each and how often. Believe it or not, the abdominal muscles are composed mainly of fast twitch fibers. These fibers (as opposed to the slow twitch, endurance type ones), are composed of the strongest types of muscle fibers and are thus designed for short bouts of explosive hard work. Because of this, fast-twitch fibers respond best to heavy weight/low repetition work. Therefore, performing more than 15 repetitions per set on your lower abdominal exercise will be largely a waste of time! So for abs, lets keep the lower abdominal exercise repetitions from as low as 5 to a maximum of 15. As far as sets, if you perform days of lower repetitions, you can do as much as 5 sets per exercise, while on higher repetition days you can get away with 3 sets. For abs, you want to mainly concentrate on the intensity of the contraction and really try to feel the movement. However, ensure that you choose a tempo that allows you to finish all of your lower abdominal exercise repetitions within a time span of 40 seconds. Typically, as you lower the lower abdominal exercise repetitions and increase the resistance, the lower the tempo should be and the higher the repetitions, the faster the exercise should be performed. Also, as you get stronger, you may want to start adding resistance to your exercises, except for the ones that target the obliques. Oblique exercises should be executed with no weights even as the lower abdominal exercise repetitions get lower. On lower repetition days, just concentrate on holding the contraction longer at the peak of the movement. As far as how often, we need to keep in mind that fast twitch fibers take long to recover. Therefore, we need to train these muscles like we train any other muscles and give them the rest they need. This lower abdominal exercise article was written by the Best selling author of the Body Sculpting Bible for Men and the Body Sculpting Bible for Women Hugo Rivera. http://www.hrfit.net Return from "Best Lower abdominal exercises! Free workout information." to the Fitness Start Page |
