These will absolutely obliterate your obliques. Of course the most difficult exercise on this list is the one made famous by Bruce Lee. Raise your hips off the ground and keep tension in the core to form a straight line with your body. Load the other end of the bar. Now comes the incredibly difficult part: while keeping your legs and core straight, lift them off the ground and up into the air. Start in the kneeling position facing a cable machine with rope a rope or bar. Keeping your entire body straight, lower your arms to about a 90-degree angle or less and hold this position for a second. Extend your arms to their original starting position and perform additional repetitions. Start with your legs 90º vertical in the air. Side planks are great for targeting the obliques. Hold the ab wheel between your hands and push it out in front of you going as far forward and as low to the ground as you are able while at the same time keeping your back straight and core tense. Raise your feet 6 to 12 inches off the ground and hold until failure. I meant to say coach with an a. She is now certified in Personal Training, Group Fitness, and Sports Nutrition and contributes health and fitness knowledge to websites like Noob Gains. Repeat and don’t round your lower back. 5 Crunch Alternatives to Get Your Abs Popping for Beach Season. When you add weight to pushups through chains or weight plates on your back, you can work your chest a little more and see greater gains. Now pull the rope down toward your knees using your core as if you were doing a crunch. Begin with your hands and toes planted on the floor with your entire body completely flat, making sure to keep this straight body position through the entire movement. With a slight lean forward and one foot forward, bring your hands inward, meeting at a central location in front of your body. A variation of the leg raise but instead of laying down on the ground or on a bench, you instead hang by your hands on a pullup bar. It’s rumored that Russian shot putters created this exercise to strengthen their rotational throwing motions. With your arms holding a barbell or two dumbbells directly above your chest, begin lowering the weight until the weight(s) are at about the level of your chest. Your grip should be around eye level or just above your head. After mastering this, you’re ready to try a dragon flag. Like the bench press, pushups can also be extremely useful in targeting all areas of your chest. Just like the lying down version of the leg raises, the hanging version can have many variations. rope or D-handles). For this exercise, all you’ll need is a low stationary object that can support your body weight (like a bench). The decline bench press is one of the best exercises for … Hold yourself up in a straight line and pull your belly button in to create tension. Start with one end of the barbell held down by a barbell landmine, or some plates, or stuck in the corner of a room so that it doesn’t shift from its grounded location. While holding your legs a foot above the ground, them over one another horizontally like they are a pair of scissors and keep crossing until failure. By Jay Willi s. May 28, 2017. First do a negative dragon flag by starting with your legs in the air and slowly lowering them while keeping the back and legs straight – squeeze your core and glutes tight. Grasp the top of the barbell above the collar and weights with outstretched arms. It’s an an even more difficult version of the plank because while assuming a similar position, your stability point rests on a small moving object. Autocorrect nooo. The advantage here is that you’re doing an upside down crunch and your back isn’t fighting gravity to lift itself off the ground because it’s now facing the ceiling and being pulled up by the weight of the cable, which is in your control. One great variation of this exercise is pulling the rope down diagonally to each side rather than just straight down to work the obliques more. In your rotation, pretend you are drawing a perfect circle with your arms rather than a diagonal line. By performing any combination of the exercises on this list, you can get more out of your chest day and build stronger lower pec muscles. A more safe variant of the seated Russian twist is performed standing with an Olympic barbell, but a medicine ball may be used as well in the standing version. Although this is a crunch, it’s safer to perform than your regular lower back ache-inducing situps and more effective than a normal crunch if you do it right. The ab wheel is a highly underrated core exercise. Hold for as long as you can before your back sags to the floor. Keeping your arms nearly straight, lower the dumbbell or barbell behind your head. When you perform the decline bench press, you can better focus on the lower chest muscles and build more defined pecs. Check out the Bowflex SelectTech 552 dumbbells! Stand next to a cable machine with your side. The greatest part about the regular bench press is that it hits all areas of the chest in a single movement, including the lower pecs. Now rotate your hips, while keeping your waists and lower back tight to one side with your outstretched arms acting as levers. Though incline pushups reduce the amount of resistance your chest muscles are working against, they do better target the lower pecs. This includes being able to plank for a good amount of time and doing plenty of lying leg raises with ease. With your arms still extended, lower the dumbbells to your side, allowing for a slight bend in the elbows while doing so. Not many people can perform a dragon flag, but it is one of the most effective core strengthening and abdominal building exercises in the gym. That is what our couch has us do. Now pull the rope down toward your knees using your core as if you were doing a crunch. Use the strength in your chest to return the dumbbell or barbell to its original starting position. Planks are a great core stabilizing exercise. There still is some bending of the upper back to contract the abs at the end of the movement but you can adjust the resistance to what your core can handle.