Abs @ Home

May 01, 2008
Abs @ Home

Get a sexy slim waist-line with these helpful tips that are so easy, you can do them @ Home.

SOME GREAT WAYS TO EXERCISE YOUR ABS AT HOME

It is a sheer myth that ab exercises can only be performed with hi-tech equipment and under strict supervision. Many or most ab exercises can be done at home and without any special gym equipment.

The best known exercises to firm up and tighten ab muscles are crunches. Crunches make you bring your body forward, curling enough so that you can bend yourself into a 'V' shape. Crunches can be of various kinds.

The exercise ball crunch, being the most popular, needs only an exercise ball as an accompaniment. You lie down onto the ball, and then perform a crunch at a low pace, keeping the ball stationary. This procedure has two advantages. It maintains your crunch speed, and it also acts as a firm support to your back while you do the crunch.

Another effective crunching method is the full crunch. Here, you stretch your legs at full length and put your hands behind your head. You pull yourself up with your hands and push out, away from the body, with your legs. If this exercise is done in the right fashion, it will benefit both the upper and lower body.

Even the reverse crunch (also known as a V-up) helps but it is less difficult and creates the same amount of strain on your abs. It is comparatively easier because you are lifting lesser weight. How does this exercise work? You lie on the floor and put your legs up in the air. Instead of bending your bust towards your legs, you bend your legs towards your upper half of the body.

A warning bell: with the rising popularity of ab exercises, some companies are increasingly looking out for making huge cash benefits by selling ab exercise machines and equipment. These are the oft-advertised frames that you are asked to put around yourself, and that help to rock you back and forth. Extensive research, on the other hand, has shown there is hardly any difference between the effects of these machines and the normal ab crunches performed with practically no assistance. The difference lies elsewhere. The price difference is obvious – that between something that comes free and the other, expensive. Realistically speaking, one can do very well without such exercise equipment.

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