Video: Abdominal Exercises: Basic Crunches

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Crunches are one of the best ways to exercise your abdominal muscles. Learn how to do basic crunches to strengthen ab muscles with tips from a fitness trainer in this free core exercise video.

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Video Transcript

We're going to start with just a basic crunch. You have to get your foundation down before you can move on to any advancement and this is a good way to asses and find out what range of motion you're working with and what's your true cervical and core strength, is starting that. So we're going to roll down, articulating all vertebrae and take our feet in line with our hips. Start by letting your back melt into the surface that you're working on. One of the best ways to do a basic crunch is to take your fist, put them on top of your chest so you create that space in between your chin and your chest, and maintain neutral cervical posture. We're going to think of an accordion as we lift. So it's not how high we lift but how you can facilitate that contraction by bringing rib and pelvis together. So take a big inhale, relax your arms and exhale and crunch, don't hold your breath, and inhale back. Now how far you'll come up will depend on the strength that you've built in and the range of motion that you've built in. If you can only get to here remember it's quality over quantity because that's where you are truly working abdominal, transverse abdominal strength. Anything other than that, if you don't have control over the movement, it's just momentum. So inhale, exhale as you contract and release. You can maintain a neutral gaze with the eyes, right through, in between the knees or you can look down at your belly, but make sure that you can maintain cervical posture throughout. Work on about 10 reps at first, and then keep working your way to fatigue before you advance on.

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Abdominal Exercises: Basic Crunches

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