Thirteen abdominal exercises, with and without accessories, to work your average area

Our middle area, known as abdominals or rather core , is the most important point of our entire musculature, because if it presents weaknesses, something as basic as our body posture will be directly affected . And to begin our day to day with a bad posture, is not but the beginning of infinity of problems and future injuries.

For this reason, working in our average area, whether in the gym or in our home, is something that seems vital to prevent possible injuries that reduce our state of health.

Abdominal work with the core sliders

In our previous article we talked about this accessory and gave a series of exercises with which we could work almost our entire body, although it is true that they are often used more to add intensity to our core work .

Plank jacks

Starting from the classic position of abdominal plate , the objective of this exercise is to open and close our legs trying not to lose tension in the whole area of ​​the core . This exercise can be done both with the support on our forearms and in the position of flexion.

Another variant that we can prove from this exercise is, instead of placing the discs on our feet, placing them in our hands and performing the movement by opening and closing the arms. This exercise is going to be quite demanding, so it would not be very recommendable for beginners .

Mountain climbers

The movement of the climber is one of the most common exercises when we talk about the core musculature: starting from a position of flexion, the goal is to bring the knees alternately as close to our chest as possible without the hip “sinking” , that is, keeping the tension in the muscles of the central segment constant .

With the use of the core sliders , this exercise can be done with some modifications, such as drawing a half moon while performing the movement of the climber.

Frog movement

Called thus by its similarity with the movement that makes a frog with its legs when jumping, this exercise is very similar to the movement of the climber , with the difference that in this one, the movement of legs is going to be simultaneous.

As it happened in the mountain climbs , this exercise allows us a certain margin in the movement of our legs and to go drawing circles while we perform the exercise.

The passage of the alligator

This exercise consists of moving forward only with the strength of our arms while maintaining (or at least trying) a front plate position with our feet resting on two core sliders .

The pica

This movement of core with sliding discs is a challenge , especially for those who do not have some control and strength in the abdominal muscles, so it should be done at advanced levels.

To do this, we must place the sliding discs in the toe of our feet and adopt a position of iron with support on the palms of our hands. From this position, the objective is to adopt a position similar to an inverted V , that is, trying to bring our feet towards our hands. The previous work of flexibility is also important.

Exercises on pulleys for your abs

The Lumberjack

The woodcutter or ” woodchoper ” is one of the most typical exercises that we can perform on pulleys to work our abdominal muscles , and has variants depending on how we want to work.

The basic movement is designed to work mainly our obliques , and is to draw a diagonal: we can start from the grip of low pulley, in which case we must take the pulley from the lowest position to the opposite diagonal and above, or we can start from grip in high pulley, in which case we must draw the diagonal downwards ( always maintaining the tension of the cable of the pulley constant , since otherwise we would relax our muscles and the exercise would be completely inefficient).

Press pallof

This is another great exercise that will help us work our oblique aabdominals with the help of a pulley . The main precaution that we must adopt is not to use too much weight for its execution , since we could cause an excessive increase of the rotation force in our column. It is, therefore, an exercise indicated to work with low loads.

To begin with, we will stand on the side of the pulley machine, hold the grip with both hands and stick it to our chest at the level of the sternum. Next, we will separate from the pulley machine until we notice that the rope is tense enoughand, from here, we will separate the hands from the chest.

We will notice that the pulley tries to “pull” us to the side, and if we do not keep the tension of our abdominal muscles constant, this force will overcome us .

Abdominals with abdominal wheel

The abdominal wheel is another of the accessories with which we can work the core musculature avoiding harmful and dangerous movements such as crunches or Russian turns, so its benefits will be greater.

To work with the wheel, we can start from two positions: either supported on our knees, or, if we have enough control and strength in our core, start from the standing position. In any of the two cases, there are two points that we must take into account to avoid injuries:

  • The position of our dolls: when going down and sliding the wheel, people tend to slightly arch the wrists, and this ends up almost always resulting in an injury. To avoid this, we must “lock” the wrist and always place it so that it forms a straight line in extension with our forearm .
  • The back: as we go down, we must ensure that our back is as neutral as possible , avoiding any type of bow, as this could cause injury.

Taking these two points into account, the goal is to get to adopt a final position as horizontal as possible, regardless of whether our initial position was kneeling or standing.

Abdominal exercises with body weight

Iron with lateral displacement

Starting from the initial position of the front plate with support on our hands and feet, we will include movement to this exercise to add intensity. The objetvo is to go moving laterally moving at the same time arm and leg, always in a controlled way (avoiding jerking and abruptly).

We can set the goal of the width of the living room of our house and travel through this type of plates. This exercises will help us gain strength in our core and improve our coordination and balance .

Iron with cross support

The plate with cross support is a variant of the classic abdominal plate , but with the difference that instead of resting on both hands and both feet, we are going to lean on one hand and the other foot. That is to say: we went from four support points to only two .

Side plate with knee support

This variant of the side plate differs in that instead of adopting a lateral position with the leg stretched, we flex this and rest the knee laterally on the floor. In this way we will reduce the tension that can be generated in the knee if we perform the lateral plate with the legs stretched.

Abdominal work with a bosu and fitball

Incorporating a bosu to our abdominal work will incorporate the component of instability that this accessory generates, which will increase the intensity with which we must work and, consequently, the results.

Abdominal iron on bosu

To perform this exercise, we will support the bosu on the ground on its flat part, supporting ourselves on the semi sphere with our forearms (another option is to rest on the palms of the hands, increasing the distance of the lever and instability).

Another option to carry out this exercise is to support the bosu on the floor on the half sphere and support ourselves on the flat part, either with the forearms or with the hands in position of ironing or bending.

Sliding abdominal iron on fitball

To make this variant of the abdominal plate, we will have to lean on the fitball with our forearms and adopt a classic ironing position. Then the movement to perform would be similar to if we were sliding on the fitball on our forearms back and forth .

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