Ab Mat | Abdominal Exercising

What is an Ab Mat? The Ab Mat is the new science of abdominal training. The Ab Mat will train your abdominal muscles effectively. If you’ve ever felt you weren’t getting the results you wanted, or you leave your abdominal workout with fatigue in your back or hips – you should reconsider your workout. If you aren’t using the Ab Mat to achieve full range of motion which is needed to complete the kinetic chain – your workout is not effective and the desired washboard abs may never become a reality.

Why You Need an Ab Mat – You need to use an Ab Mat because the abdominal area is one of the least understood and improperly worked areas of the human body. Most people still go by the premise that if they feel it in the abs, then they must be working them. Well, we will try to bring you up to date on the history of abdominal training, as well as the latest techniques for training the abdominal muscles.

For years, abdominal training was performed by doing situps. We took it for granted that this was the only way abdominal training could be done. Our teachers told us this, and we felt the pain of the situp in our stomachs, so we didn’t argue. The same was true with leg lifts for the lower abdominals. We reclined on a bench, held on with our hands and did leg lifts and flutter kicks until our stomach hurt, and we exercised until we could do no more.

In the early 1970′s, exercise physiologists started taking a closer look at these exercises and discovered that they had an adverse effect on the lower back. Actually, the pull on the spine during leg lifts by using the trunk and hip flexors is what led to the lower back problems. Their hypothesis was correct – but only to a certain extent. As a result a new era of abdominal training started. The crunch became the exercise of choice for the abdominal area. You were now supposedly isolating the abdominal muscles and eliminating the use of a muscle that could cause injury to the lower back. The leg lift was eliminated, and lower abdominal area was left out.

The Ab Mat is the most effective tool for developing and strengthening the abdominal area – bar none. The simple fact is that no large or complicated piece of equipment is needed to work the midsection effectively. What is needed is full range of motion at specific angles, and this is acquired with the use of the Ab Mat. The Ab Mat, although relatively simple and inexpensive, is a perfectly suited tool for developing your abdominals. You no longer have any excuses for not realizing your potential.

Don’t waste time and money on expensive electronic ab belts such as Abtronics, Ab Fast, Ab Energizer. While electronic stimulation machines have some legitimate uses (physical therapists use similar devices to ease muscle spasms), flattening and toning your midsection is not among them. While it’s true that these gadgets do make abdominal muscles contract, in order for your muscles to grow stronger and firmer, they also need to work against a force, such as a weight, a rubber band or gravity. That’s why exercises like crunches are so effective.

Myths of Abdominal Training & Abdominal Exercises with the Ab Mat!

The AB Mat is:

• inexpensive
• simple & convenient to use
• the perfect abdominal training device.

The AB Mat is scientifically designed with the exact angles needed to give you that extra 35 degrees of range that you do not get lying on a floor, or with abdominal equipment.

“Killer Abs” shows you how to set up your abdominal and low-back routines.

Myths of Abdominal Training – First, we will cover some of the myths that have led to our current state of ab training. The biggest myth involving the abdominals is that ab exercise works because you feel a burn in your midsection. The major reason for this is that the center of the human body, or abdominal area, is the weak link. It has the least amount of bone and muscle. Any time you hold on with your hands or anchor your feet and begin a movement, your trunk area must stabilize the movement. The abdominal area must then work also to stabilize the movement.

The abdominal area must then work also to stabilize the upper and lower body as well as the movement itself. This is usually done isometrically. The isometric tension results in a lack of oxygen to the muscle. Lactic acid builds up in the muscle, inhibiting any further muscle contraction – thus the burn. When you are doing leg lifts, the abs act as a stabilizer for that movement with the same results. Place your back against a wall (Fig 1.) with your legs at 90 degrees or in a half seated position hold this for a minute. Feel the burn in your legs? Do you expect this to get your legs in shape?

The second mistake is that just because floors are flat we limit the range of motion of trunk movements to this flat surface. No one ever really asked if this was correct. The truth is that this is not the full range of motion for the abdominals (Fig. 2).

That is right! For all these years, we have been doing only a portion of the range of motion. Let’s do a little test. Sit in a chair and arch your back, by putting your chest up high. Now move to a straight up position, now crunch the rest of the way forward (the normal lab crunch movement). What muscle do you think moved you from arched back to straight? Yes, your abs. The problem when you use the floor is that, because floors are flat, only part of the movement is being done. If you take a close look at most sports, you are often in this slightly arched-back position. Many back injuries are due to a lack of strength in this neglected range. The next big mistake in abdominal training was the elimination of the situp movement. The sit up motion is part of what is called a “kinetic chain”. This means that muscles work together to create compound movements. Other examples include the squat, bench press, shoulder press and lat pull downs. It is not the sit up movement that is so wrong, but the way it is done.

The New Science of Ab Training – Let us examine the situp movement for a moment. When done properly, the movement works as follows. Lie flat on your back with the knees bent about the way you would in a normal situp. Maybe out to 45 degrees, which means stretched out further. The feet are not anchored, but heels are on the floor. Place an Ab Mat under your lower back. (This allows for a full stretch, or range of motion of the abs). Put your hands between your legs (Fig. 3).

Now remember what we are about to do – work the abdominal muscles. Do not move your head to your knees. Start by leaving out the movements using your head. Begin by concentrating on the origin of the abs at the lower part of the rib cage. Now we are ready. Crunch the abdominal muscles – let them pull you over the Ab Mat, into the old crunch position (Fig. 4) and continue the movement by curling the body up to a vertical position (Fig. 5).

When you lie back down, just uncurl, or reverse the situp movement. Did you notice, after you did the crunch, the weak range you encountered as the lower abd and internal obliques took over pulling you up? This is the missing link. What does this weak range of motion mean? It means you have a weakness in the kinetic chain. This weakness is responsible for not being able to obtain the look you desire, especially in the lower-ab area. (Women often have a little pot in the lower-abdominal area, just over the weak muscles, which they can’t get rid of). Also, these muscles stabilize your torso when you walk or run.
This means your body has a weak range that could impede your speed and agility movements as well. A weakness is in the muscles of this area will also stop further development in the surrounding muscles. The body knows when it has a weak link and resists stress around that link to prevent injury. Example: If the lower abs have a weakness, it may prevent your squats from going up. What you have done in this perfect situp is to take your upper-abdominal muscles and external obliques through a full range of motion. Secondly, you used your lower abdominals and internal obliques, moving into the hip flexors. This was a complete movement for the front of the torso.

Cheating (or how we usually train) The movement of the trunk area is so complex that it encourages numerous forms of “cheating”. So it is important that we go through the situp movement again. This time, we will explain some of the natural “cheats” the body goes through. You must learn to be aware of these poor movements, to feel them, and to prevent them.

The center of the human body in the situp position is a line across the navel. When you do a situp, the focus of the work is through this area. If you anchor the feet, the center of gravity of the body moves down into the hip flexors, thus changing the focus of the work. When doing a situp the first mistake people make is defining what they do this movement for. Is this movement to see how many reps we can do, or to work the abdominal muscles? Most people want to work the abs by doing a situp, but instead instruct the human computer to simply move the head to the knees, thus “doing” the movement. When you tell the body to move from point A to point B, it will do it the easiest way possible.

The easiest way to do this head-to-knee movement, especially with the feet held down, is to crunch, lock in the abds and perform this movement with the hip flexors. Being the perfect computer, the body instantly determines what muscles are ones going to be used in the movement; which ones are strong, which ones are weak. Thus, how does the body make us do that situp? Well, the first thing it does is create momentum by starting the head moving with a snap. This stars the upward and forward movement. Now the momentum is picked up by the abs, they lock in, and, because the lower abs are too weak, the movement jumps to the hip flexors to finish the movement (Fig. 6). When you lock in the abs, you are forcing them to do an isometric contraction, not working through a range of motion.

The hip flexors are considered by many to be as much as seven times stronger than the abs. The body will, of course, let the stronger muscles do the work. The hip flexors will continue to work as long as the weaker abs can hold the isometric contraction. Usually, you feel a burn and then the movement must be stopped. This is the main reason the lower-stomach area in both women and men cannot be flattened.

The real problem, of course, comes to haunt you when you want the body to perform a sports movement that utilizes this weak area, and in this case a weakness in the range of motion of the abs. If you cannot perform a situp without securing your feet or legs, we recommend that you start from a sitting position with the torso curled and slowly lean back (while maintaining a curled posture of the torso) to approximately the 30 degree angle of elevation and return to the sitting position (Fig. 8 & 9).

This is more effective for development than the traditional “crunch”. Performing this routine would assure activation of the internal obliques and transverse abdominis which does not occur with the crunch. This is significant for women who have a wider hip structure. Women traditionally have less activity of the internal obliques and transverse abdominis due to greater fiber angulation away from the direct line of movement. It should also be noted here that with all the abdominal muscles, none attaches below the pelvic region or to the legs. Therefore, the abdominals do not lift the legs. They do, however, stabilize the pelvic region so that legs can be lifted by the muscles of the hip flexors. This is why you feel your abs work when doing leg lifts.

Center of Gravity & Full Range Movement Let us reason why you do not achieve maximum abdominal activity the traditional situp until the lower back has been elevated from the surface. Our “center of gravity” is located within the anterior, or front, segments of the upper sacrum, or 5th lumbar vertebra (Fig. 10).

This essentially is the point where 50% of bodyweight is above and below. Therefore, this point must be the fulcrum for the abdominals to reach maximum activity. To attain this, the hip flexors must function within the lower pelvic region. If you fix the legs, you essentially lower the axis of movement and cause more hip flexor activity to occur than abdominal activity. Conversely, if you draw the legs too far upward by placing your hips and knees in too great a bent position, you have condensed the “mass” in the lower segment, elevating the center of gravity or axis within the torso, creating greater reliance on the upper abdominals only to perform the task, never allowing lower abdominal function to be fully attained.

We recommend utilizing legs flexed at the hips and knees and legs apart to allow for proper torso and pelvic rotation during a situp exercise. We never promote securing the legs (Fig. 6). Once full abdominal activity has occurred with the above described situp, one can progress to exercising the abs through their full range of motion without fear of injury to the spine.

Sit up Mechanics – It is important to realize that the muscles of the abdomen function sequentially in various patterns during functions, and only as a unit at the end of a forward curling of the torso. They do not attain maximum resistance loading during a situp until the entire torso has been elevated. This elevation cannot be accomplished by the abdominals alone’ the kinetic chain incorporating the hip flexors is necessary to effectively activate and stress-load the lower abdominals. Torso curling is essentially the work of the upper portion of the abs and external obliques. Elevation of the entire torso incorporates the lower portion of the abs. Situps performed while securing the feet or lower legs will do very little for your “lower abs”. Despite what many believe, we do little to specifically strengthen the lower abs by utilizing leg raises or resistance loading to the legs.

The only effective way to strengthen the lower abs is forcing them to function within the kinetic chain. They must be made to work in conjunction with upper ab function and the pull of the hip flexors on the pelvic region. Elevating the entire torso during a situp permits full function. Not securing the feet allows for greater ab training within the kinetic chain and less substitution for the lower abs by the hip flexors. We have referred frequently to effective kinetic “linking” and have not yet clarified how it can be obtained.

Essentially, training the proper sequence can be attained only if no external forces are applied, such as securing the feet during the situp. The main consideration is limiting the early pulling of the hip flexors, or psoas muscles. The best way to reduce early pulling is by reducing the direct line of pull of the primary hip flexor. This is accomplished by rotating the legs outward at the hip and allowing both flexion of the hips and knees. (Fig. 11)