I have slight lordosis and an osteopath said my center of mass is slightly
out of place. I have also been doing a lot of ab reps lately but wonder if it has been making my hip flexors stronger than the abs. My posture has not improved.
Are there any exercises that get the lower abs a bit more than the hip flexors?
What about;
Reverse sit-ups and reverse crunches where the hip comes of the ground aswell as the upper body with the leg bent in a 90 degree angle,
feet of the floor.
I am trying desperatly to improve my posture. It’s not that bad, but not perfect and I won’t settle for anything less. I also do a lot of hip flexor stretches after ab work outs and sprints so I don’t think that mobility is a problem.
Ian King and Paul Chek both have alot of exercises for the lower abs. You can´t really fire JUST the lower abs, but you can find exercises that really hit them. Do a search at tmag.com for Ian King´s ab workouts, and Paul Chek may have an article on his web site about ab training. He has a book out called Awesome Abs which is pretty good. Make sure that when you do your hip flexor stretches that you are using your abs and glutes to keep your pelvis in a neutral position.
Just a few comments… you cannot build a house with only a hammer! Meaning that you cannot significantly change your posture simply by working a certain muscle.
Correcting muscle imbalances is just one piece of the posture puzzle. You must correct the structural problems that prevent you from adopting a proper posture, if you have any (which includes strength and flexibility imbalances). But you must also learn to have a good posture. Simply correcting imbalances will do little do improve the way you hold yourself if you don’t change the way you hold yourself!
Correcting imbalances will allow you to be free of adopting what could be called an optimal posture, but you must still learn how to adopt such a posture and make it a habit. Few peoples understand that most of the time, bad postural habits CAUSE muscle imbalances NOT vice versa! So if you correct your imbalances, but do not change your postural habits, the problems will come back quickly.
Remember that you learned and automatized your bad postural habits over 10-15-20-30+ years … doing a few sets of reverse crunches here and there will not solve the problem.
As my coworker Martin Normand Ph.D. (biomechanics), DC., would say :“Posture correction is a full time job!”
Good comments, Christian. The 16 hours per day one spends standing, sitting and walking (and how the postural muscles are working in this time) are probably more important than the 30 minute ab program one performs 2 to 3 times a week. I really notice this after a couple of hours slumped before my PC at home or in the office. One has to be ever conscious of posture.
Which is really why every athlete should have a portable computer.
Why stand when you can sit.
Why sit when you can stand etc…
(but don’t buy an internet-cable that is 20cm too short so that you have to sit on the brink of the bed anyway, like I’m doing now.)
Thor,
maybe you should invest in an airport base station (for Mac) or a wireless router or wifi router (for PC). This way you can surf the net wirelessly from not only your bed comfortably, but from anywhere in your house, maybe even from outside your house (depending on the range allowable from your unit).
I use an airport base station and I thinks its the best thing apple came up with, I can surf and play games while sitting outside on my patio or while I’m on the shitter . I have 3 computers all networked together so I can send files back and forth without having to hook up any cables or anything. Great piece of technology.
I Appreciate the answers everyone, here’s a question;
I have read that it is important to breath into the lower lungs, not just the mid and upper lungs, so as to be healthy. However, when I hold in the muscle (i think the one that’s behind the abs ?) to draw inwards my naval/ belly I find it difficult to breath into the lower part of the lungs. Wether I’m walking, standing, sitting or exercising it seems that holding the belly in prevents lower lung breath. All those gymnasts, swimmers and many track athletes (plus He-man avatar left) with there “pulled in” waists, are they getting the lower lung breath, or have I missed something? Thoughts/comments?
You have to learn to ‘coordinate’ the different abdominal muscles. Go the the Testosterone web site, search for Ian King´s ab program, and then look for the exercise which I believe is called thin tummy. His description is NOT hard to follow. In time you will learn to contract your tranverse muscles and still be able to breathe. Try it out.
Yes, I have now read Ian Kings and Pual Checks + Christian T’s mid-section and abs advice from T-mag, and now I fully understand. I did a lot of those exercises last night and feel a differance straight away.
They certainly include wider variety of stimulas than what I was doing before and I now realize I wasn’t previously training the transverse abdominals. Some of the exercises seem high intensity to me, or maybe I just had weak abs (not for much longer and I love high intensity anyway.)
One of the situp exercises recomended by Ian King suggests raising in 5 seconds, puasing for 1, then , lowering in 5 seconds. No room for cheating there! Still, is that good for a sprinter?
Ab exercises, like all others, have to be put into a program with thought. The exercise above is IMO a ‘base’ exercise to help with rectus abdominus strength and control. It is not thought to be done year round. You will soon see (or already have) where the ‘holes’ are in your rectus adominus ROM. It eliminates momentum so the weak areas are quickly exposed. IMO it is not a good exercise for sprinting precomp or competition. We don´t need to get technical here, but read the other threads on core work and think of what you need to accomplish with your core program. What is in CFTS and the forum ebook? Have a look at the whole ab program of King´s and try to figure out what he is doing with his cycles and why. Create a program for you that makes sense for your needs.
. I have 3 computers all networked together so I can send files back and forth without having to hook up any cables or anything. Great piece of technology.