What exercises with additional weights on the abs exist? Why should they be done with caution? The fitness trainer answers.
If simple crunches no longer cause the former burning sensation in the abdominal area and the treasured six-pack still doesn’t appear, don’t worry. You can continue training with weights. You can choose equipment with a weight that is comfortable for you: dumbbells, weights, weights, and even water bottles. We’ll tell you now what exercises you can do to pump up your abs with additional weight.
Elena Starostina
fitness trainer, nutritionist, body fitness athlete
It is important not to overdo it with weights. It is worth noting that with hypertrophy of the oblique abdominal muscles, which are also involved in the exercises, the waist will not narrow. It will increase in volume. And although this growth is precisely due to muscle mass, if your plan was to model a silhouette with a narrow waist, you should be careful about abdominal exercises.
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Straight crunches with weights
Technique:
- We lie down on our backs. We bend our legs slightly and fix our feet under something heavy;
- place a weight plate of the required weight behind your head and hold it there with both hands;
- from this position we tear the shoulder blades off the floor;
- twist the body forward and upward;
- then lower it back to its original position. We do not allow the body to completely relax until the end of the approach.
Photo: istockphoto.com
The importance of daily morning exercises
It is difficult to overestimate the benefits of regular morning exercises. It speeds up awakening, improves mood, and tones muscles. Literally after the first movements, you can feel how you are filled with energy - this is the physiological processes that “turn on”, transferring your body from “night” mode to “day” mode. It has been proven by science: people who perform any simple set of physical exercises in the morning have stronger immunity, rarely get sick, and tolerate stress more easily.
Interesting fact. With regular morning exercises, a person begins to wake up easier in the morning! A conditioned reflex is developed, the body gets used to the fact that soon after waking up it becomes active. Mornings cease to be so painful and sorrowful.
Psychologists say that daily exercise in the morning develops in a person such important qualities as determination and attention. Well, don’t forget that morning exercises help you stay in good shape, and this is important for both women and men.
Finally, morning exercises improve sleep. A group of people was given a simple plan : morning exercises should be performed daily for ten minutes. After some time, scientists found that in addition to feeling excellent throughout the day, the experiment participants increased the duration and quality of night sleep. Problems with falling asleep and the number of night awakenings decreased, and the participants described the sleep itself as more complete and refreshing.
Selection of exercises
First of all, you need to figure out the load, which exercises should be performed in the gym. Indeed, there are a great many exercises: these are ordinary exercises with dumbbells and barbells, which can be performed at home, and many different exercise machines that help us perform exercises in the gym more concentratedly and safely. We will not go into details and consider any specific ones. Once you start exercising, you will quickly acquire your favorite machines and exercises. A much more important point is not exactly what exercises you perform, but how you complete them, how exactly the exercises are distributed across training days, what needs to be trained in one workout and what in another, which muscles to work at the beginning and which at the end of the workout.
There are three basic rules that can be followed when distributing exercises between training days. Basically, these rules are used to fill the training program with exercises.
Top bottom
The legs are the largest muscle group in our body. Therefore, there is an opinion that these muscles should generally be given a separate training day. This is also facilitated by the fact that the hamstrings and quadriceps belong to different push-pull groups, which makes it possible to train them simultaneously without any problems. Among other things, there is also an opinion that muscles such as biceps and triceps do not need to be trained separately at all, since they already receive enough load when performing exercises on the chest and back. Guided by these rules, we can conditionally divide our body into the upper part: back, chest and lower part - legs, and train these parts alternately. Although it is generally accepted that this scheme is more suitable for beginners to train two days a week when moving from a fullbody system to a split system, the same scheme can be used by already experienced athletes in an intensive four-day training program. An example would be the following distribution of muscle groups by training day:
- Chest, back, shoulders
- Legs, abs
Pull - Push, synergists
The thing is that our muscle groups can be divided into pulling and pushing. Pulling groups include: back, biceps (biceps brachii), biceps femoris (biceps femoris). Pushing muscles include: chest, deltoids, triceps (triceps brachii), quadriceps (quadriceps femoris), calves. The essence of the rule is not to train muscles from the same group in one workout. This can be explained using the example of the back and biceps. These muscles belong to the same group “Pulling” and the biceps are also involved in many back exercises. It turns out that if you first perform an exercise on the back, and after that an exercise on the biceps, it will be ineffective, since the biceps have already worked to help the back. Performing an exercise on the biceps, and then an exercise on the back, is also not the best option, since the biceps, already tired after its exercise, will not allow you to completely perform the exercise on the back, because it will fail first. To prevent this from happening, it is customary not to include muscles from one group in one workout. As an example, we can consider a three-day training program with the following distribution of muscle groups by training days:
- Chest, biceps
- Back, triceps
- Legs, shoulders
Antagonists, bend - unbend
In this case, the muscle groups should be divided into flexor and extensor muscles. The point here is that our muscles often “walk in pairs” and perform opposite movements when working. Thus, some bend the joints, others straighten them. These pairs of muscles are called antagonists. An example is the biceps, which is responsible for flexing the arm at the elbow joint, and the triceps, which is responsible for extending the arm. The same situation is in the case of the legs: the biceps of the thigh flexes, and the quadriceps extends the leg at the knee. When you perform an exercise on a certain muscle, the opposite antagonist rests or is in slight static tension. Thus, following this rule, muscle groups can be distributed among training days according to the principle of working them in pairs, for example:
- Chest, back
- Legs, shoulders
- Hands, abs
All at once or all separately
Undoubtedly, the easiest way is to either train everything at once in one workout or train each group separately in a separate workout. The first is more suitable for completely beginner athletes, since they usually do not have much muscle mass and do not require much recovery time. Therefore, a three-day training program, with a full workout of the entire body on each training day, would be quite normal.
In the second case, we are talking about training programs for already professional athletes. On the contrary, they have large muscle mass and in order to work out their muscles well, they need to try hard. Therefore, it is not possible to train muscles together. Moreover, such a program requires a lot of free time, which in most cases those who do not do this professionally do not have.
Sequence of exercises
The effectiveness of the training process also depends on the order in which the exercises are performed during training. The muscles of our body vary in volume. The effort that needs to be spent on working it depends on the volume of the muscle; larger muscles need to be loaded more intensely. Also, the recovery time of the muscle depends on the volume of the muscle, so small muscles recover faster. Large muscles include the chest, back, and legs. Small muscles include shoulders, biceps, triceps, calves. There is a rule that recommends starting your workout with exercises for large muscles, and ending it with training smaller muscles. The logic here is that the small muscles trained at the beginning get tired and prevent the large muscles from being fully trained at the end. You should also take this rule into account when planning training days for the whole week, training according to the antagonist scheme or training everything separately. We train large muscles at the beginning of the week, and small muscles at the end.
Contraindications for implementation
Despite the large number of benefits of regularly performing exercises for the back and spine, they have their own contraindications, which must be taken into account before gymnastics:
- the course of pregnancy (during this period, none of the above is recommended);
Pregnancy is one of the contraindications - diseases of the cardiovascular system;
- renal failure;
- mechanical damage to the spine resulting from trauma;
- chronic diseases of the spine;
- internal bleeding;
- pronounced pain syndrome.
Exercises are contraindicated in case of severe pain.
If therapeutic exercises are performed incorrectly, then instead of relieving back pain or strengthening the muscle corset, you can cause a deterioration in the condition . Therefore, if you doubt the correctness of execution, be sure to consult a specialist.
In any case, it is better to visit a qualified specialist
Conditions for effective workouts for losing weight at home
Of course, creating the necessary conditions will help you train effectively and lose weight. First of all, this is proper nutrition with a calorie deficit. It is necessary to limit the caloric intake of the diet so that it is slightly less than energy expenditure - in this case, the body will spend additional energy from its fat reserves. Next, it is important to balance proteins, fats and carbohydrates in your diet. It is best to reduce calories through carbohydrates, because proteins are necessary to maintain muscles, and fats are necessary for the functioning of the hormonal system. The normal amount of fat in a diet for weight loss is 25-30% and there is no need to reduce this amount. Protein intake should be 25-35% depending on the intensity of training. Only 35-50% remains for carbohydrates.
We must not forget about vitamins and mineral components - fresh vegetables and fruits. But, unfortunately, they do not always contain the required amount of nutrients, so sports nutrition can be used to further balance the diet (increase the amount of protein, add vitamins or healthy Omega-3 fats). Vitamin supplements such as ZMA or vitamin D will help support your immune system and reduce your risk of getting an infection.
Another important problem is the lack of normal rest. Work and household chores often do not allow us to relax properly. We often don't get enough sleep. But if insomnia caused by anxiety, stress and accumulated fatigue is added to the short sleep, then the situation will become much worse. It is important to drink herbal tea with mint, lemon balm, passionflower or supplements with the amino acid 5-htp for better relaxation of the nervous system and maintaining healthy sleep.
So, effective workouts at home for weight loss are quite possible if you approach the matter with common sense and determination.
Split program
In this case, at each workout we work out 2-3 muscle groups, loading them to the maximum. The principle of selecting the number of exercises is the same. “If we use the traditional three approaches for each movement, then the number of exercises we will get is 5-6,” explains Maxim Oborin. — If we change the ratio, for example, we do 4 approaches, then the number of exercises may decrease. In split training, 2-3 exercises are performed per large muscle group, and it is not recommended to perform more than 10-12 sets of all exercises, even for a large muscle group.”
Circuit training
This type is built on the fullbody principle, but there are fewer weights. “The exercises are performed one after another in a series of one approach and without rest between them,” says Maxim Oborin. - This is called a circle or round. Between the circles, active rest is done in the form of light cardio exercise. There can be from 3 to 5 such rounds per workout. But if complex multi-joint exercises are used in a circle, then the exercises themselves may be fewer (3-4), and the number of circles larger (5). If the exercises are local, involving few muscle groups, then their number should be greater; accordingly, the round itself will lengthen in time, and there will be fewer rounds, for example, three.”
Please note that split training, like fullbody training, is mainly used to build muscle mass and is aimed at local fatigue of individual muscle groups. Therefore, in it we do from 8 to 12 repetitions per set, which equals approximately 20-30 seconds of work. Circuit training is more aimed at developing endurance. Therefore, the work here lasts longer and does not require local muscle fatigue. The interval of each exercise can last about 40-45 seconds, and the number of repetitions is 20-25. The circle can last about 5-8 minutes.
Now you know how many exercises to train with and how to choose them for different muscle development and other purposes.
