Lying torso lifts are not lifts, but twists. From the side it looks as if a person lifts the body, lifts his shoulders off the floor, and therefore the exercise is called by first impression. In fact, the shoulders are lifted as the rectus abdominis muscle contracts and the lower ribs are brought up to the pelvic bones. The exercise is available to beginners and professionals, but doing it correctly is a whole art.

In modern bodybuilding gloss, refusal to train the press is often promoted. Indeed, the rectus abdominis is loaded when we pull the deadlift, or squat, and stretched when we perform a technically correct bench press.

Now let's imagine a beginner. For now, he crouches with a mop stick to develop a skill. Pulls her for the perfect angles. Presses - an empty bar. He lacks flexibility, and that's perfectly normal. It will not be possible to "pump" the press simultaneously with the study of basic exercises.

Why download it

For beginners, and practicing "for themselves and for health", training the press performs the following functions:

• Helps relieve stress from the spine in basic exercises. A strong press will take on some of the weight of the bar, it is advisable to make the press strong before the bar becomes heavy;
• Relieves back pain due to muscle spasm;
• Looks better aesthetically than a round belly

Security officials swing the press to avoid injuries due to hypertonicity of the back. Runners - for greater stability of the body during movement and more efficient leg work. Bodybuilders are for beauty. And losing weight - to exhaustion, and this is just wrong. The rectus and transverse muscles are just enough to tone;

When

If the workout is strength, it is worth doing light abdominal exercises at the beginning, during muscle activation. This means training with basic exercises. Then a couple of sets of hyperextension and a couple of sets of crunches will help warm up, increase mobility, and “turn on” your core muscles before you place the barbell on your shoulders and start squatting with it. By the way, for the bench and deadlift, such a warm-up is also good. But activating the abs and training it are two different things. Usually, power workers 1-2 times a week also perform twisting with weights in order to work out the rectus muscle.

It makes sense for fitnessists to do crunches at the end of the session. This will allow you to work out the rest of the muscles with high quality, and not to miss the press, because if the program is already installed, you will not violate it.

Important: Abs workout cannot be a "hitch" for most people. Strength training should be completed with light walking, fitness training - perhaps also with stretching, if there are no contraindications. Those who want to develop strength pull the muscles on a separate day. The purpose of the cool down is to improve tissue circulation and recovery. Twisting won't help here.

Opinions were divided. Some athletes believe that the abs are something like the muscles of the calves, it must be trained every day, since it is hardy, and does not respond well to traditional movements for hypertrophy. Others - that the press needs to be worked out like the rest of the muscles. For "cubes" - with weights or the inclusion of static modes, but not every day, but through training. For relief - in a multi-repetitive mode, and every other day. Still others believe that one ab workout per week is enough, but it must be heavy.

Some train their abs at home every day, as previously recommended in martial arts and athletics. In fact, the result and style of training depends on the individual characteristics of the structure to a large extent. You can try different options and track what gives the best result.

Lifting options

Raising the house on the floor

For beginners - option 1

1. Lie on the mat, fingers to ears, heels 20-30 cm from the buttocks, feet pressed to the floor, lower back - too, belly tightened;
2. Pull in the stomach even more and bring the lower ribs to the pelvic bones;
3. In proportion to the force of twisting on exhalation, raise the body;
4. Do not "throw" it up with inertia, but work as much as the strength of the muscles allows

Continuing - option 2

1. Lie on the mat and take the starting position as in the previous version;
2. Pull in your stomach, press your lower back to the floor, tear your heels off the floor a few centimeters;
3. Keep your feet in balance;
4. Twist the lower ribs to the pelvic bones, do not pull the head up;
5. Rise to an accessible height, do not change the angle at the knees and hips;
6. Gently lower yourself as you exhale. Do not "push" the anterior abdominal wall so that it takes the shape of a ball

For those with back pain - option 3

This option is safest for back pain from a sedentary lifestyle and overwork:

1. Lie on the floor next to a sofa or chair
2. Put your heels on a sofa or chair, the angle at the knees should be straight;
3. Twist, that is, bring the lower ribs to the pelvic bones, exhaling quite sharply;
4. Perform the required number of repetitions;
5. Make sure that the pelvis does not move and the lower back lies on the floor

Important: talking about a training plan "for everyone" does not make sense. Usually they start with 3 sets of 10-15 repetitions, and adjust the load as their own practice shows. For some, daily activities are really suitable, for others - only 2-3 times a week. Track your own results.

Hall options

This option is strictly intended for people without lumbar hyperlordosis in a calm state. If you just stand and see a large deflection, you should not do the exercise in a Roman chair, it is better to do a simple straight twist on a rug, or work on a block trainer.

The movement is done like this:

1. The feet are located in the retainers;
2. The buttocks "sit" on the bench, the body is upright;
3. Pulling up the stomach, you need to tilt the body back as far as possible;
4. Then actively bring it back, twisting;
5. Bringing the ribs to the pelvic bones occurs on exhalation;
6. Hands can be freely placed along the body, or fixed in front of the chest, or "fingers to ears";
7. Gripping the head with a finger lock is prohibited

The Roman chair is an option for physically healthy people who do not have spinal problems.

Rise on an incline bench

This option is more democratic, in addition, beginners can choose the minimum angle of inclination so as not to get injured.

The rise technically looks like this:

1. Place your knees on the rollers of the simulator, and fix the ankles in the stops;
2. Hands must either be freely placed along the body, or fingers must be brought to the temples;
3. Next, the stomach is pulled in, and the lower ribs are brought to the pelvic bones, performing all repetitions in this style;
4. This option can be performed in a small amplitude, lying with your back on a simulator bench.

Machine angles and load severity

The greater the angle of the incline bench, the more difficult it is to technically correctly raise the body. Angles greater than 15 degrees are not recommended for beginners. Otherwise, beginner athletes transfer part of the load to the hips, or "stand up" due to the force of inertia.

Important: angles over 50 degrees are considered accessible only to physically very strong athletes.

What to look for

These tips will help you pump your abs more efficiently:

1. There is no need to climb sharply to great heights. It is enough just to twist to the available amplitude, especially since you should not chase the back angle for overweight people;
2. You should carefully bring the pelvic bones to the lower ribs as you exhale, and descend as you inhale, and not hold your breath at the top;
3. You can put an extra piece of foam rubber or a mat on the clips if there is a need for protection from bruises;
4. It is better to take the burden in hand. If you hold it in front of you, it will be easier, but you will need to monitor the work of the legs;
5. It is easier for many to learn to work without weights but at the pace of "rise by 5 counts, pause, lowering by 5 counts." This is also effective for increasing the load.

You can swing the press on a Roman chair in any yard, and on an incline bench - where there are playgrounds with outdoor gyms. But for most people, getting started and crunching on the floor will be enough. Exercise regularly, eat well, and your abs will get in shape.

] Exercise Description

Lying Upper Body Raise
Twisting (eng. Crunch)
Exercise technique
Exercise type:
Traffic :
Kinematic chain:	open
What muscles work
Target muscles:
Subsidiary muscle:
Performance
Inventory:
Execution options:	Classic crunches on the floor twisting with rotation twisting on a bench with a downward slope twisting on the block reverse crunches options with fixed legs Crunches in the simulator Fitball crunches Twisting with body turns Twisting with turning the body Twisting with lifting the body on an incline bench Double twist Two-stage twisting Diagonal twist Straight twist Combined twisting Side crunches Reverse curl on the ball
Complexity:
Advantages:
Effective abs workout for both beginner and professional does not require a lot of sports equipment.
Disadvantages:
without an effective diet, the result of training cannot be seen

In an exercise that lifts the upper torso on the back, the abdominal muscles act as mobilizers. Exercise options are useful to include in any abdominal muscle development program. (Note: Inelastic extensor muscles of the back, such as the erector spine, will not allow for maximum contraction and full range of motion.)

Raising the upper torso while lying on your back with bent legs

Exercise characteristics

• Additional exercise
• Isolated
• Traction
• With own body weight
• Beginner and advanced fitness levels

Brief description of the exercise

Lift your upper body slowly. Lift your shoulder blades off the floor, and leave the lower back still. Pause, return to starting position and repeat the exercise. (Keeping your arms crossed on your chest will make the exercise easier, but without the support of your head with your arms, unnecessary tension in your neck muscles will not be relieved.)

Stabilizing muscles

• Abdominal muscle group.
• Neck: Sternocleidomastoid muscle.

STARTING POSITION

• Lying on your back with your legs bent at the knees with your feet on the floor.
• Hands behind your head.

• Do not move your neck or chin while doing the torso lift. Keep your chin down slightly and neutral towards the cervical spine.

• Do not use the strength of your arms to lift your torso. Use an isolated movement of the abdominal muscle for this.

• Don't slouch. Keep your chest straightened, and pull your shoulder blades together.

Raising the torso lying on your back with bent legs[

Raising the torso lying on your back with bent legs

Exercise characteristics

• Main exercise
• Combined / multi-joint
• Traction
• Open circuit
• With own body weight
• Intermediate to advanced fitness levels

Brief description of the exercise

Lift your upper body slowly. Finish lifting and bending your torso by pulling your upper torso towards your knees. Pause, slowly lower yourself to the starting position and repeat the exercise.

Starting position

• Lying on your back with legs bent at the knees, feet pressed to the floor.
• Hands behind your head.
• Keep your neck in a neutral position.
• Maintain abdominal tension at all times.

Tips for correct exercise technique:

• Do not use the force of inertia. Perform a slow, controlled movement at full amplitude.

• Do not move your neck or chin when lifting your torso. Keep your chin down slightly and in a neutral position with your cervical spine.

• Do not use the strength of your arms to lift your torso. Must be used to perform an isolated movement of the abdominal muscles

• Don't slouch. Keep your chest straightened and your shoulder blades brought together.

• Exhale as you move up.

• It is preferable to do fewer reps without fixing the lower limbs than more reps with a partner or fixed legs. If you are held by the legs, then as the speed increases, inertial force will be generated, leading to an increase in the load on the lower back when lifting the torso. This can injure the lower back.

Motion analysis	PHASE 1 First plus or minus 30 ° amplitude of trunk movement	PHASE 2 Remaining range of motion, including raising the lower back
	Spine	Hip
Directions of movement in the joints		Up - flexion, Down - extension
Mobilizing muscles	Rectus and oblique abdominal muscles	Iliopsoas, Rectus femoris
Stabilizing muscles	Neck: Sternocleidomastoid muscle Shoulders: Serratus anterior muscles, Rhomboid muscles and lower trapezius muscles	Neck: Rectus and oblique muscles of the abdomen, Sternocleidomastoid muscle Shoulders: Serratus anterior muscles, Rhomboid muscles and lower trapezius muscles

The main problem when doing core lifts is weak rectus abdominis muscles. To make it easier to understand the reason, we will divide the exercise into two phases:

• twisting, when you lift the upper part of the body off the floor, and the lower back remains pressed to the floor;
• lifting the body when you lift your lower back off the floor and move into a sitting position.

In the first phase, the contraction of the rectus abdominis muscle pulls you forward.

First phase. muscleandmotion.com

When the lower part of the spine is lifted off the floor, the hip flexor muscles are involved in the work: the iliopsoas muscles, the rectus femoris (one of the heads of the quadriceps), the sartorius muscles, and the tendons of the wide fascia of the thigh. Due to them, the body bends at the hip joint, and you move into a sitting position.

Second phase. muscleandmotion.com

Strong abdominal muscles twist the pelvis during the lifting phase so that the load from the lumbar spine is relieved and the exercise becomes safe.

Correct exercise. muscleandmotion.com

What happens if your abs are weak? After the twisting phase, you cannot hold the core with the rectus abdominis muscles and try to rise with the hip flexors. The pelvis moves backward, the lower back flexes, and compression of the vertebrae is created. The iliopsoas muscle pulls the vertebrae forward, disrupting the neutral position of the spine, which negatively affects its health.

Improper exercise performance. muscleandmotion.com

In reality, correct and incorrect techniques look something like this:

If you do several approaches incorrectly, you may feel pain in the lumbar spine. And if you already have back problems, then you will only exacerbate the situation.

How to fix it

Replace the ups with a twist or plank

Instead of lifting the body, do twists without lifting the lower back from the floor. This will protect the spine from injury and strengthen the rectus abdominis muscles.

However, twisting has its own danger. This time we are talking about tension in the cervical spine. Some beginners push their necks forward a lot. Repeated repetitions of this exercise plus working at a computer with constant tension in the cervical spine - and training can turn into pain. But there is a way out.

When doing twists, try to keep your neck relaxed, do not pull your chin to your chest.

You can also replace the body raises with or pulling the knees to the chest while hanging on the horizontal bar.

Raise the body slowly

If you slow down the repetition too much, you simply won't be able to stretch yourself with the hip flexor muscles. In addition, slow body raises are a great option for working out the press. So he will strain much more than during fast or sudden movements.

There is an interesting variation on this exercise - a slow twist with arms above your head and straight legs. Lie on your back, straighten your legs, stretch your arms over your head and begin to twist, lifting the body. The goal is to complete the exercise as slowly as possible. After straightening, begin to descend, too, very slowly and, if possible, linger at the point at which your muscles feel the most tension.

That's all. Do the exercises correctly, and you will protect yourself from injury in the gym and during.

Raising the body from a prone position

Raising the body from a prone position belongs to the category of additional. This is an isolated open circuit traction exercise, which involves the work of the athlete only with his own body weight. To complete it, an initial level of training is required at least, which does not exclude the inclusion of lifting the torso from a supine position in the program of bodybuilders with an advanced level of body pumping.

When performing this exercise, the abdominal, sternocleidomastoid, anterior dentate, rhomboid and lower part of the trapezius muscles work as a mobilizing and stabilizing muscle groups. Therefore, lifting the trunk from a prone position is standardly included in programs for the development of abdominal muscles.

The exercise can be performed in two basic leg positions. In both cases, it means lifting the body from a prone position with legs bent at the knees, however, depending on the level of training, fixation of the feet on the floor with the help of a partner or a projectile is used. We will talk about the technique of their implementation below.

Execution technique

The starting position that the athlete needs to take is lying on his back. In this case, the legs, as mentioned above, are bent at the knees. The athlete's arms should be behind the head and the neck should be kept in a neutral position. The abdominal muscles are constantly tense. The starting position is accepted.

For the direct implementation of the exercise, it is necessary, slowly lifting the shoulder blades from the floor, to raise the upper body. The movement does not touch the lower back. In the raised state, you need to gain a foothold for a few seconds, and then also slowly return to its original position. It is worth repeating that even in the starting position, the abdominal muscles must be tense, otherwise the effect of the exercise can be significantly reduced.

An important and often overlooked point is the correct position of the neck and arms. The neck muscles do not need to strain when lifting the trunk from a prone position. This has no effect other than the possibility of earning micro-fractures. That is why, when taking the starting position, the hands are placed under the neck. If you cross them over the chest, the exercise will take less strength, but some of the effect and support of the neck muscles will be lost.

Raising the torso from a supine position is often not popular among self-taught athletes. This is due to the fact that not everyone achieves the set results, although the number of approaches and repetitions significantly exceeds the recommended ones in the programs.

The point here is not at all in the individual physiology of the athlete's body, but in the high-quality performance of the exercise. In order to understand exactly what a mistake can be made, here are some basic recommendations for the correct training of the abdominal muscles. So:

• Do not use inertia, but perform the movement at full amplitude slowly, controlling each of its stages.
• When raising the body, the chin and neck should be in a neutral position and motionless, their tension takes away extra strength.
• Raising the trunk occurs only due to the tension of the muscles of the body, the strength of the arms in this case is not used, but is directed to maintain the neck in a neutral position.
• When performing the exercise, the chest should be straightened; this can be controlled by the shoulder blades brought together.
• When moving up (lifting), it is best to inhale.

This exercise is of the type in which the number of repetitions and approaches is far from in the first place. It is much preferable to perform fewer lifts with unsecured feet, but slowly and with optimal muscle tension, than quickly, due to inertia, to complete all repetitions. In addition to the fact that this will not have an effect, when doing this, the likelihood of getting a back injury increases.

Exercise Description

Lying Upper Body Raise
(eng. Crunch)
Exercise technique
Exercise type:
Traffic :
:	open
What muscles work
Target muscles:
Subsidiary muscle:
Performance
Inventory:
Execution options:	Classic crunches on the floor reverse crunches options with fixed legs
Complexity:
Advantages:
Effective abs workout for both beginner and professional does not require a lot of sports equipment.
Disadvantages:
without an effective training result you cannot see

In an exercise with raising the upper body on the back, they work as mobilizers. It is helpful to include exercise options in any abdominal muscle development program. (Note: Inelastic extensor muscles of the back, such as the erector spine, will not allow for maximum contraction and full range of motion.)

Raising the upper torso while lying on your back with bent legs

Exercise characteristics

• Additional exercise
• Isolated
• Traction
• With own body weight
• Beginner and advanced fitness levels

Brief description of the exercise

Lift your upper body slowly. Lift your shoulder blades off the floor, and leave the lower back still. Pause, return to starting position and repeat the exercise. (Keeping your arms crossed on your chest will make the exercise easier, but without the support of your head with your arms, unnecessary tension in your neck muscles will not be relieved.)

Stabilizing muscles

• Abdominal muscle group.
• Neck: Sternocleidomastoid muscle.

STARTING POSITION

• Lying on your back with your legs bent at the knees with your feet on the floor.
• Hands behind your head.

• Do not move your neck or chin while doing the torso lift. Keep your chin down slightly and neutral towards the cervical spine.

• Do not use the strength of your arms to lift your torso. Use an isolated movement of the abdominal muscle for this.

• Don't slouch. Keep your chest straightened, and pull your shoulder blades together.

Raising the torso lying on your back with bent legs

The supine torso lift has a bad reputation mainly due to improper technique. But, if done correctly, it is effective for advanced trainees. Pay attention to the quality of the movements, not the frequency of the repetitions.

Raising the torso lying on your back with bent legs

Exercise characteristics

• Main exercise
• Combined / multi-joint
• Traction
• Open circuit
• With own body weight
• Intermediate to advanced fitness levels

Brief description of the exercise

Lift your upper body slowly. Finish lifting and bending your torso by pulling your upper torso towards your knees. Pause, slowly lower yourself to the starting position and repeat the exercise.

STARTING POSITION

• Lying on your back with legs bent at the knees, feet pressed to the floor.
• Hands behind your head.
• Keep your neck in a neutral position.
• Maintain abdominal tension at all times.

Tips for correct exercise technique:

• Do not use the force of inertia. Perform a slow, controlled movement at full amplitude.

• Do not move your neck or chin when lifting your torso. Keep your chin down slightly and in a neutral position with your cervical spine.

• Do not use the strength of your arms to lift your torso. Must be used to perform an isolated movement of the abdominal muscle

• Don't slouch. Keep your chest straightened and your shoulder blades brought together.

• Exhale as you move up.

• It is preferable to do fewer reps without fixing the lower limbs than more reps with a partner or fixed legs. If you are held by the legs, then as the speed increases, inertial force will be generated, leading to an increase in the load on the lower back when lifting the torso. This can injure the lower back.

Motion analysis	PHASE 1 First plus or minus 30 ° amplitude of trunk movement	PHASE 2 Remaining range of motion, including raising the lower back
	Spine	Hip
Directions of movement in the joints		Up - flexion, Down - extension
Mobilizing muscles	Rectus and oblique abdominal muscles	Iliopsoas, Rectus femoris
Stabilizing muscles	Neck: Sternocleidomastoid muscle Shoulders: Serratus anterior muscles, Rhomboid muscles and lower trapezius muscles	Neck: Rectus and oblique muscles of the abdomen, Sternocleidomastoid muscle Shoulders: Serratus anterior muscles, Rhomboid muscles and lower trapezius muscles