Core Exercises - Crunch
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The second body weighted movement I am going to cover today is very common movement known as the crunch. Now what the crunch is, it is two separate movements putting tension through your abdominal wall by lifting your shoulders off the floor and your knees off the floor at the same time and bringing the tension to the centre and then back out to that full extension. The crunch is very good at engaging your full abdominal wall, because as you lift your shoulders up off the floor, your upper core is engaged to lift your shoulders and create you that crunch position in the middle and when you bring your knees into centre as well, you are also engaging through the lower core. So you are getting a nice contraction all the way through that abdominal wall.
Now, the slower you do it, the more tension on the abdominal wall you will put. So once you put more tension, it will then build the tension in the muscles far quicker. For example, you can take the right knee to left elbow and crunch in the centre, alright, so you have got less tension on the abdominal wall, then back into a resting state. And then take your right elbow to your left knee and crunch in the centre. So from that position, you are using less body weight, so therefore you will have less tension in the abdominal wall. So that is more of a beginner's position you can be in. Then as you advance it, you can lift them all up off the floor at the same time and then back out to that full extension. On the extension, try not to drop the feet on the floor, so you can keep your tension on your abdominal wall throughout the full range.